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Article snippet: James H. Simons, a reserved mathematician and hedge fund operator from Boston now approaching 80, is a big Democratic donor. Warren A. Stephens, a 60-year-old golf enthusiast once called the king of Little Rock, Ark., inherited a family investment bank and became a booster of conservative Republicans. But Mr. Simons and Mr. Stephens are both billionaires who have used the services of offshore finance — the trusts and shell companies that the world’s wealthiest people use to park their money beyond the reach of tax collectors and out of the public eye. Mr. Simons was the main beneficiary of a private trust, never previously described, that was one of the largest in the world. In response to recent questions about the trust, Mr. Simons said that he had transferred his share to a Bermuda-registered charitable foundation. Mr. Stephens used an opaque holding company to own an approximately 40 percent stake in a loan business accused by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of cheating working-class and poor Americans. While earning millions from the investment, Mr. Stephens helped finance a political onslaught against the bureau, never mentioning his personal connection to the fight. The details of the two men’s hidden wealth come from the files of Appleby, founded in Bermuda more than a century ago and considered one of the world’s top offshore law firms. A collection of 6.8 million Appleby documents, obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung an... Link to the full article to read more