A lot of emails have been coming in with regard to the Panama Papers. Let me say this from the outset; Panama has been the key place to establish offshore accounts for decades. An insider has stolen all documents and handed to the press. This was not a government hack. The press has not made all the documents available and that is curious for they too can be protecting favored people. We now have the biggest document leak in history exposing world leaders and their secretive offshore financial dealings. Some 11.5 million documents have been leaked from a Panama-based law firm with offices in 35 countries; Mossack Fonseca. This leak has exposed a trove of confidential financial dealings by the elites of aides to Russian President Vladimir Putin all the way to relatives of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Naturally, the press likes to focus on Putin. There is much more hidden behind the press curtain.
The stash of records from legal firm Mossack Fonseca was obtained from an anonymous source by German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung which they then shared with more than 100 media groups by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The documents show links to 72 current or former heads of state including dictators. The ICIJ is hell bent on attacking the rich, not politicians. So the question really is, are the protecting fellow socialists?
While the elite seek to hunt people for taxes, they often live separate financial lives. What has been also exposed is the tremendous conflicts of interest. Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson had secretly owned millions of dollars of bank bonds during his country’s financial crisis when the country’s financial system collapsed and banks had to be bailed out. Thousands are now demanding Iceland’s Prime Minister resign over ‘Panama Papers’ revelations.
This post was published at Armstrong Economics on Apr 4, 2016.
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