How often have we heard about tax havens, how little has been done about them?
Tax avoidance is not harmless, it strips our societies of services for the most vulnerable, in fact it kills.
The richest believe they are above the law, the rest of us pay our dues and more to make up for what they steal from the countries that made them rich in the first place. This is class war and the 99% did not declare it.
Once you have secretive movement of wealth then you open the can of worms, money laundering, drug cartels, terrorist funding and pillaging of nations by dictators.
The firm at the centre of the Panama Papers leak serviced a string of companies for a top financier in Bashar al-Assad’s government in the face of international concern about corruption within the Syrian regime.
Documents show Mossack Fonseca’s links to Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of the Syrian president, who was described in US diplomatic cables as the country’s “poster boy for corruption”.
Mossack Fonseca is the world’s fourth-largest offshore company provider.
You can bet anything you like that the three largest “providers” are playing the same game.
The whole enterprise is based upon secrecy and hiding and is robbing the rest of us of the benefits of our hard work.
Hopefully this launches investigations both by the press and our own governments. Better late than never.