Sumo-
Or, offshore companies can buy things like property then rent them back to you incredibly cheaply.
Sure, and they don't even need to charge any rent at all, but at least the company has to pay stamp duty on that purchase (hence the recent hike in stamp duty for property purchases by offshore companies). But the point remains that if the property is subsequently sold the proceeds remain offshore. It doesn't help get any of the money back onshore, and now there's more of it.
To do that you (gross generalisation follows) set up a UK company to buy the property using a loan from the offshore company or, more usually, a bank that uses the offshore company's assets as a guarantee for the loan, and then claim tax relief on the interest payments (as the company is making a loss having to make those payments). That tax relief offsets profits made from another arm of the business (e.g. you make zero net profit) and so your other business makes its profit tax free. You repay the loan using this tax free money and, eventually, the loan is paid off and the property is now owned wholly by the UK company. But this doesn't move any money from offshore to onshore it's merely making a profitable business pay not tax, so bonus points for the offshore company paying some sort of licensing fee to the UK company for some reason (e.g. some kind of franchise deal) so that the income of the UK company actually comes from the offshore company. That way you get the money flowing from the offshore company to the UK company but no tax being liable.
[ What is described above is pretty much outlawed if implemented directly, which is why they end up having endless groups of companies that slosh the money around so that it's virtually impossible to unpick things given the fungible nature of money. ]
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Greenbank
Indeed, pensions are a huge way to avoid paying tax, cycle to work schemes avoid you paying as much tax, etc, etc.
The traditional boundary between acceptable and unacceptable is what that person themself does, this can equally be applied to tax avoidance, e.g. I've got tax free savings/investments (ISA, premium bonds) and a pension that I pay into tax free, plus I once bought a bike on the Cycle2Work scheme; those are all fine. But anything more than that is taking the piss because I don't do it. QED.
Offshore stuff isn't much different, most of the time tax will be due when you try to repatriate the money/profits back to the UK, it's just that these people rarely have a need to bring any of it back in any time soon. Having a huge chunk of money offshore that can only be used for some things (investments such as shares or property) is way beyond the vast majority of the population.