Mass media protects the rich and powerful involved in the Panama Papers

This is affirmed by Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and former Rector of the University of Dundee (UK), currently a Human Rights activist and writer.

Similarly, the British Newspaper The Guardian (one of the media outlets with granted access to the leaks) admitted, shortly after the scandal was disclosed, that most of the documents revealed will be kept confidential.

“What did you expect? The massive leak is being handled by the InternationalConsortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which is funded and organized by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) of the US”, highlights Murray.

Indeed, according to CPI’c website, the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Endowment, Rockefeller Family Fund, WK Kellogg Foundation, Open Society Foundation (founded by George Soros) are among the long list of their most prominent financiers.

Therefore, “do not expect to genuinely unmask Western capitalism. The dirty secrets of Western corporations will remain unpublished”, declares Craig Murray.

WikiLeaks calls for full document disclosure

Wikileaks spokesman, the Icelandic investigative journalist Kristinn Hrafnsson, has recently requested that the Panama Papers be published in full on the Internet.

Hrafnsson, who was involved in the leak of diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks as of 2010, stated that withholding documents can be "understandable" as a strategy to maximize media impact, but in the end all the public ought to have access to them.

The Panama Papers “should be accessible to the general public so that everyone, not just the group of journalists now working with the data, can investigate the documents”, asserted the WikiLeaks’ spokesperson.

Moreover, the German financial expert Ernst Wolff, in an interview granted to the German news agency Sputnik, stated that “the so-called ‘Panama Papers’ scandal is an attempt to redirect large financial flows from the 'off shores' tax havens to the United States".

According to Wolf, it is significant that no US companies appear on the disclosed lists: “What is happening now is that the US is trying to ‘drain’ certain tax havens to position itself as the world’s new and largest tax haven. Some 30 – 40 trillion dollars have been distributed in these ‘offshores’. And the United States, of course, is interested in redirecting this money into their country".  

Tax Havens

According to Brazilian sociologist, political scientist and coordinator of the Public Policy Laboratory at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Emir Sader,  there exist between 60 and 90 tax havens in the world, which are “micro-territories or states with lax or even non-existent tax laws”.

“One of their common characteristics is the practice of receiving unlimited capital anonymously. These are countries that sell-off their sovereignty by offering a favorable legislative and tax regime, whatever its origin”, the expert claims.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), money-laundering represents between 2 and 5% of world GDP and half of international capital flows; “between 600 billion and over a quintillion dirty dollars circulate or reside in these states”, Sader indicates.

Furthermore, according to the Brazilian scholar, a Minister of Economy of Switzerland – one of the larger recognized tax havens – stated on a visit to Paris, defending banking secrecy (a key factor for tax evasion and money laundering): “For us, this reflects a philosophical conception of the relationship between the state and the individual”, and added that the secret accounts represent 11% of Swiss Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The cost of tax evasión

According to the book titled “The Hidden Wealth of Nations”, recently published by economist Gabriel Zucman from the University of California-Berkeley, the costs faced for tax evasion by governments of the world is approximately 200 billion dollars each year.

In addition, Zucman estimates that tax avoidance, (as distinct from evasion which is carried out openly and is technically legal) by US companies, it costs governments an additional  130 billion dollars annually (European and Asian companies have the same tax avoidance incentives, but there is insufficient information to estimate their amounts).

The different mechanisms of tax evasion and avoidance that have been revealed by the Mossack Fonseca leaks have meant that governments around the world are grappling with losses well above the 300 trillion dollars annually, which must then be compensated through austerity, debt and/or increasing the tax burden on ordinary citizens beyond right, Zucman research claims. 

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ICIJ protege a los más ricos de los Papeles de Panamá