Bank for Int'l Settlements

The central bank of central banks, in Basel, immune — literally — from national law.

The Bank for International Settlements, Basel: founded 1930 to handle German reparations, granted immunities that survive to this day — its archives, buildings, and assets are inviolable by Swiss or any national law under its founding convention. Its wartime conduct (accepting looted Nazi gold, documented in the 1990s gold commissions) nearly got it dissolved at Bretton Woods; the resolution to liquidate was adopted and then never executed. It now hosts the central-bank governors' bimonthly dinners, off the record. The theory needs no embellishment: a legally extraterritorial club where the world's money is coordinated is just its charter, read aloud.