Of course, those are two prime characteristics you want in a tax haven. You want it to have rule of law since you don't want your money/assets/secrets expropriated or exposed, and you don't want a new regime to come in to do the previous for their benefit. Just as long as the haven is concerned about their laws, not other countries laws.

Haha I thought the same thing. The more I read it, the more it seemed like a list of countries where there's actually due process, even for the bad guys.

Mainly it's countries with easily setup legal anonymous LLPs or without directories of ownership, that are economically stable and where there is little political pressure (internal or external) to decrease secrecy. Lack of internal pressure is common when the country strongly benefits from being an offshore secrecy location (Switzerland, Singapore, HK) or when it's not very susceptible to international pressure (US, UK).

Whether it's "stupid" or not depends on how much you weigh bank secrecy and privacy against the fight on money laundering, corruption, terrorism financing and sanctions evasion.

Either way, the degree of secrecy you get is also usually a lot higher if your assets are not in your home country, which means that bank privacy is much higher for the global rich.

Financial secrecy, or financial privacy?