The fate of tax dodgers. Photo (presumably) Duncan Green.
Oxfam’s Duncan Green is in Singapore, where he’s visited an exhibition of the mythical Chinese ‘ten courts of hell’, which he describes as an equivalent to Dante’s Inferno. The punishments?
Well, for misusing books, you get “‘Thrown onto tree of knives; body sawn into two’,” while for corruption you face “Thrown into volcanic http://healthsavy.com/product/effexor/ pit; frozen into blocks of ice; thrown into pools of blood and drowned.”
Nice. He linked each infraction to an NGO working in the area, and what caught our eye was this:
“NGOs: Tax Justice Network, Christian Aid, ActionAid
Crime: Tax Dodging
Punishment: ‘Pounded by stone mallet, grounded by large stone.’ “
Perhaps strange, then, that Singapore has made a business model out of encouraging all this stuff.
The author
Related articles
🔴UN tax convention hub – updates & resources
When measurement is political: Accounting for natural resources and the true location of sales under unitary taxation
A 500-billion-dollar decision for the world: the revenue impacts of global unitary taxation
2 August 2026
Detecting Profit Shifting in Administrative Data: A South African Perspective
28 July 2026
A heartfelt farewell to our dear Óscar
Public finance is feminist terrain
New Tax Justice Network reports on real estate transparency
Beneficial Ownership of Real Estate Around the World
7 July 2026
Integrating the Collection, Use and Exchange of Real Estate Ownership Information
7 July 2026
Four definitions to change the world: Struggles over meaning in the UN tax convention negotiations
