Kushi Sharma - Week 12 - The Panama Papers
It’s April 3, 2016, and the ICIJ has just opened public access to a database containing information on 214,000 offshore companies worldwide.
Called the Panama Papers, this is a huge international investigative journalism project, a collaboration of 370 investigative journalists, and resulted in one of the biggest leaks of confidential papers in history. In the papers are descriptions of how the law firm Mossack Fonseca—the fourth largest law firm in the world, based in Panama—had assisted companies and individuals from over 200 countries around the world in illegally siphoning their money into offshore accounts, tax havens, and shell companies, exposing the sheer scale of a system that operates in the interest of the corrupt elite.
The papers detailed how the wealthy illegally concealed their wealth, escaped public scrutiny, and avoided paying their taxes, in addition to revealing the use of offshore accounts by criminals to launder illicit earnings and to escape sanctions. The shadow economy that comes from this benefits the wealthy at the expense of the poor and operates in every corner of the planet, with elite institutions headquartered in the U.S. and Europe, despite their so-called democracies.
The 11.5 million leaked documents consisted of emails, clients’ records, and information on bank accounts from 1977 to December 2015, and the communal database held 2.6 terabytes of data. This data identified celebrities, politicians, companies, and criminals, triggering mass protests across the world, the forced resignation of the Prime Minister of Iceland (along with many other members of the ruling party), the forced resignation of the President of Pakistan (along with many other members of the ruling party), many arrests of the rich and powerful, the return of billions in stolen assets to the people, and a change in the laws around this hoarding of wealth in 82 countries, and the collapse of Mossack Fonseca. A network of more than 214,000 tax havens involving people from over 200 different countries was exposed, specifically describing how shell corporations set up by Mossack Fonseca had been used for tax fraud, tax evasion, or the avoidance of international sanctions, how, for the wealthy, power begets power.
Hi Kushi! Your blog on the Panama Papers was interesting because it’s not a topic that is discussed often in the media. While this was a somewhat recent event that had a lot of impact, it’s a topic that could be discussed by the overall American population more. The Panama Papers were a leak of more than 11 million financial records exposing crime, corruption, and wrongdoing. This shows that crime and unfair financial processes in our society are more common than we think, especially in high profile celebrities. People such as Donald Trump, Emma Watson, Simon Cowell, and Jackie Chan were all notable figures whose names appeared on the Panama Papers, yet most of them were never questioned about this. Moreover, the Panama Papers exposed the links between Trump and Russia, and their secretive commerce practices. However, Trump was barely questioned about this during the 2016 presidential election and the 2020 presidential election, showing how this incident was covered up. This is not only an issue about finance, this is also an issue about morality. If people such as presidential candidates and high profile actors are willing to commit financial scandal, then it shows that many other lesser known people, such as congressmen and other politicians, will have no problem committing financial scandal. This incident proves how important it is to have proper security and laws over how financial dealings are handled.
ReplyDeleteHello Kushi. This is something I have never heard about but have now, and sent me into a spiral of research. It appears that the collaborative efforts of 370 journalists provided a rare glimpse into the operations of Mossack Fonseca, revealing a vast network of offshore accounts, tax havens, and shell companies used by individuals and entities worldwide to conceal wealth, evade taxes, and escape public scrutiny. Many people online joke about how the rich control everything, but this is a cover-up that is massive. The sheer scale of the leak, with 11.5 million documents spanning nearly four decades, offered an unprecedented insight into the mechanisms that allowed the wealthy to exploit legal loopholes. It makes me glad that the consequences were swift and led to arrests and resignations almost immediately, but I thought it was weird that these governments weren't able to find this conspiracy before, because it seemed that hundreds of people were in on this. This has significantly changed my worldview and I want to thank you for introducing me to this.
ReplyDeleteHi Kushi, that's actually insane that something like this happened relatively recently, yet I (and many others I'm sure) managed to never hear about it. You would think something as significant and substantial as this would be talked about for decades, but it's unsurprising that this was, like all of the information released by the investigative journalists was before, swept under the rug and kept out of sight from the general public. It really does sound like a made-up story, and I find it fascinating that members from "over 200 different countries" were involved in this scheme. I am curious as to what these confidential files were, given that they literally forced the resignation of 2 presidents in significant countries. Overall, this was a really insightful blog, and I'm glad you chose to write about this subject!
ReplyDeleteHey Kushi! Crime and mystery stories are my favorite topics, especially if they are true stories, and yours about the Panama Papers was shocking and incredibly intriguing. I find it interesting how many illegal activities surround us, while we are oblivious. The Jeffrey Epstein cases are another example of numerous high profile personas engaging in unspeakable acts while the world turned a blind eye. Your use of statistics when you mentioned how a network of over "214,000 tax havens involving people from over 200 different countries was exposed" truly showed the gravity of the situation. I can imagine a Netflix documentary being made about these papers soon! For me, the most shocking thing is that these documents contain the information to completely destroy numerous politicians is crazy, and makes me even more intrigued of exactly what those files contain.
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