By Melanie Rodham Jenkins

Reviewed by Afilonius Rex, for FT Weekend

Madrid, Monday 9th March 2026

In an era when wealth inequality feels like an intractable virus, Martyn Jones’s Revealing Wealth: Combatting Tax Evasion with Data, Political Will and Technology arrives as a potent antidote – or at least a blueprint for one. Published in 2025, this ambitious tome blends technical savvy with moral urgency, proposing a global “World Asset Register” (WAR) to unmask hidden fortunes. Jones, a data architecture veteran once hailed as one of the world’s top information experts, teams up with his alter ego, Afilonius Rex – a pseudonym for a collective of contrarian thinkers – to argue that technology can pierce the veil of offshore secrecy. But as Gillian Tett might observe, drawing from her anthropological lens on finance, this isn’t just about algorithms and databases; it’s about the cultural rituals of power, where the ultra-rich perform elaborate dances to evade civic duty, leaving the rest of us footing the bill.

Jones opens with a nod to Warren Buffett’s quip that the wealthy should pay more taxes, framing tax evasion as a “silent saboteur of economic justice.” From there, he dives into the mechanics of evasion, cataloguing tax havens from the Cayman Islands to the City of London – that “command post of global finance,” as he dubs it. These jurisdictions, he argues, aren’t mere anomalies but systemic enablers, fostering shell companies and trusts that obscure ownership. Echoing Tett’s Fool’s Gold, which dissected the cultural blind spots leading to the 2008 crisis, Jones reveals how financial opacity isn’t accidental but a designed feature, perpetuated by “political cowardice” and regulatory failures.

The book’s heart lies in its proposal for the WAR: a FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data ecosystem integrating land registries, securities depositories, and financial flows worldwide. Jones envisions this as a digital panopticon for assets, from stocks and bonds to art and real estate – the latter a particularly juicy target for evasion, as properties in London or New York are often parked in anonymous offshore vehicles. Here, he draws on pioneers like Gabriel Zucman, the economist whose The Hidden Wealth of Nations (2015) quantified trillions stashed in havens, estimating that 8% of global wealth evades taxes. Jones builds on Zucman’s work, advocating for data analytics to trace “multidimensional projections” of ownership, much like Zucman’s calls for automatic information exchange under the OECD’s Common Reporting Standard.

Corporate real estate emerges as a key battleground. Jones dedicates sections to how multinationals and high-net-worth individuals use property as a evasion tool, leveraging trusts in places like the British Virgin Islands to hide holdings. Investor profiles – from hedge funds to private equity – are dissected with precision, highlighting how real estate’s illiquidity and valuation ambiguities make it ideal for laundering or underreporting. This resonates with the work of Thomas Piketty, whose Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013) pioneered inequality metrics by mining historical tax data. Piketty, whom Jones dedicates the book to (alongside a eclectic pantheon from Malcolm X to Kate Bush), warned that unchecked wealth concentration erodes democracy. Jones extends this by proposing blockchain-audited registries to make real estate ownership transparent, countering the “toxic havens” that allow corporations to shift profits via property deals.

Technologically, Jones is in his element. As a former contributor to The Guardian and TDWI, he demystifies tools like data meshes, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and Large Language Models (LLMs) for forensic analysis. Imagine an AI sifting through Panama Papers-style leaks to flag anomalies in real estate transactions – a far cry from the manual audits of yore. He references whistleblower programs and data matching, invoking the LuxLeaks scandal exposed by Antoine Deltour in 2014, which revealed Luxembourg’s sweetheart deals for corporations. Yet Jones isn’t naive; he acknowledges downsides, like privacy risks in a global registry, and upsides, such as funding post-Covid recovery through recovered revenues.

In Tett’s style, one might anthropologically probe the “tribes” involved: the evaders as a secretive elite, tax authorities as beleaguered hunters, and data architects like Jones as modern shamans conjuring visibility from chaos. He critiques the “history of tax evasion” from ancient times to modern leaks, but his optimism shines in chapters on infrastructure, urging a United Nations Financial Compliance Organisation to oversee the WAR. This echoes Nicholas Shaxson’s Treasure Islands (2011), a pioneer in mapping havens’ corrosive impact, which Jones implicitly builds upon by adding a tech-forward prescription.

Strengths abound: the book is encyclopedic yet accessible, with summaries recapping dense sections. Jones’s dual voice, technical Martyn and fiery Afilonius, adds flair, though it occasionally veers into polemic. Weaknesses? It underplays geopolitical hurdles; how to coerce havens like Dubai or Singapore into compliance? And while referencing pioneers like Piketty and Zucman, it could engage more deeply with critics, such as those fearing a surveillance state.

Ultimately, Revealing Wealth is a clarion call for “political will” amid crises. As Tett might conclude, in a world where finance is a cultural construct, Jones reminds us that data can rewrite the rules. For policymakers, economists, and anyone weary of inequality, this is essential reading – a roadmap to reclaiming hidden trillions for the common good.