Nine years of help: thank you, David Marchant

October 18, 2026

Cover image for the thank-you to David Marchant of OffshoreAlert

David, you have helped me for nine years. I have never properly said what that has meant. This is my way of saying it.

This is an independent piece. It draws on OffshoreAlert’s own published material, and I say where a figure comes from OffshoreAlert itself.

The journalist behind OffshoreAlert

David Marchant is the founder, sole shareholder and chief executive of OffshoreAlert. He holds British and American citizenship. He trained with the National Council for the Training of Journalists in the UK and has worked for news organisations in Wales, England, Bermuda and the United States.

Today he runs a news, documents and events business focused on high-value international finance, based in Miami. The company behind OffshoreAlert was incorporated in Florida on 21 November 1996 and, in its own words, has been in continuous operation ever since.

What OffshoreAlert does

OffshoreAlert watches courts, regulators and offering documents in places where information is hard to find, and publishes what it finds. By its own figures, the archive holds more than 29,000 court cases from the Bahamas, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands, over 4,500 articles and more than 175 exposés of investment fraud.

He has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and in American Greed. He also wrote the money laundering chapter of a training handbook for financial journalists published by Columbia University Press.

The conferences

The other half of the business is its conferences. Miami came first, launched in 2002 and still the longest-running. OffshoreAlert says it draws around 250 people from dozens of countries. London followed in 2012. A first Latin America conference was held in São Paulo in 2019. Online events ran each December from 2020 to 2022. Bangkok launched in February 2024, the same year as a June conference at Estepona on Spain’s Costa del Sol.

The lawyer Jack Blum described the atmosphere to The Wall Street Journal in 2009, and OffshoreAlert still quotes him: “It’s like that famous bar in ‘Star Wars’, where they all come together … and they all exchange information on neutral territory.”

The milestones

Here is the story in order.

  1. 1996. The company behind OffshoreAlert is incorporated in Florida on 21 November.

  2. 2002. The first Miami conference is launched.

  3. 2012. The first London conference is held in November.

  4. 2019. The first Latin America conference is held in São Paulo.

  5. 2020 to 2022. Online events run each December.

  6. 2024. Bangkok launches in February. Estepona, on Spain’s Costa del Sol, hosts a conference in June.

  7. 2026. Bangkok in March, Miami in April. London follows from 30 November to 1 December.

  8. 2027. Bangkok on 17 and 18 March. Miami from 25 to 27 April.

Eight years in the room

David has given me access to the OffshoreAlert conference in London for eight years, and this November will be my ninth. I have met many interesting characters there and heard many speakers. I am grateful for that access, and it is a big part of why I wanted to say thank you properly.

Over the years I have listened to speakers at OffshoreAlert London including Don Fort of IRS Criminal Investigation, Simon York of HMRC, Marc Hurner on Liechtenstein and Simon Bowers, in 2018 at the Grange St Paul’s Hotel, where I recorded their sessions on video.

An early look, and a nod to Ken Silverstein

I also want to mention Ken Silverstein, whom I met a few years ago. In December 2014 he wrote “The Law Firm That Works with Oligarchs, Money Launderers, and Dictators” for VICE, an early look inside the secretive world of offshore secrecy, shell companies, oligarchs and money laundering, well before the Panama Papers. I admire his early insight. The article is his work, with illustrations by Ole Tillmann, and you can read it on VICE. I mention it because it belongs to the same story: patient reporting on a complicated world.

What is coming next

London, 30 November and 1 December 2026. The Leonardo Royal London St Paul’s, in the City. This will be the ninth London conference I attend. The agenda and registration are at oalondon.com.

Bangkok, 17 and 18 March 2027. The Siam Kempinski Hotel Bangkok. Listed topics include the flight of capital out of China, a subject I have written about on this site.

Miami, 25 to 27 April 2027. The Ritz-Carlton, South Beach, Miami Beach.

Dates and venues are as published by OffshoreAlert at the time of writing. Agendas can change.

Thank you

David, thank you for the help, and for a body of work that shows patient, well-documented reporting still matters. Here is to the next nine years.

More about David and OffshoreAlert is at offshorealert.com.

An independent piece by Charles Pycraft, written from public sources and OffshoreAlert’s own published material.

Sources