Panama Papers: A Perfectly Designed nvestigation
(Hard News)
What are the Panama Papers? A Guide to the Biggest Leak unfolded.
The Panama Papers are an estimated 11.5 million leaked documents from the database of the world’s fourth largest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca. The documents were leaked by an anonymous source, but they were all sent to a local German paper named Süddeutsche Zeitung. Most of the documents were quickly shared to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which sent a wave of shock across the world.
The documents clearly showed how the top 1% of the world was trying to exploit these “tax havens,” to stay on top of the world. Altogether twelve national leaders are among 143 politicians, their families and close associates from around the world known to have been using offshore “tax havens,” to save them millions of dollars a year from the tax man.
The process of this so called “exploitation,” isn’t very complicated. Here is a quick rundown how it works. Mossack Fonseca will set up a company in a country that has very flexible tax laws, and starts to setup the legitimacy of this new company. While they begin to do that, they will ask for any investors who are willing to “invest,” their money with guaranteed returns. When the process is complete this new company that is not doing anything at all, now waits as its investors send their wealth in to keep it protected from anyone.
Most surprisingly an estimated 2 billion dollar trail leads right to one of the largest leaders in the world, Vladimir Putin. His right hand man Sergei Roldugin has been tied up in all of this, and has now been confirmed of hiding money from Russian State Banks.
Among other national leaders who have been confirmed in these papers are Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq; Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine; Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypt’s former president; and the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson.
The ICIJ have also confirmed some of the trading that has been taking place in many of these off-shore “tax havens.” As of right now the British Virgin Islands have a record of 100’000 different companies holding large sums of wealth for many of these rich investors. Altogether Mossack Fonseca has been able to create more than 200’000 different companies all over the world to keep the tax man in the dark.
The total estimated wealth that these companies may be sheltering is unknown, but we do know that the Swiss are at the forefront on protecting these companies. Yes the Swiss have the most lawyers involved in keeping these companies protected.
Mossack Fonseca has come out saying “It complies with anti-money-laundering laws and carries out thorough due diligence on all its clients. It says it regrets any misuse of its services and tries actively to prevent it… It cannot be blamed for failings by intermediaries, who include banks, law firms and accountants.”
In the end of it all most of the people named in these leaked documents are very average citizens protecting their wealth from the instability in their separate countries. However, there are a lot of people out there as well trying to save as much money as possible from taxes. So hiding them in companies inside “tax havens,” really goes to show you how far someone will go to keep it all.