The leaked Panama Papers have implicated dozens of world leaders, their relatives, and their business associates, linking them to offshore partnerships and investment companies notorious for tax evasion and money laundering. While the first installment of the year-long investigation into 11.5 million leaked documents was published online on April 3, what you know about it may depend on what country you’re in.
That’s because some governments are censoring information on the investigation outright, while others are trying moving to discredit the hundreds of journalists involved by calling it a politically-motivated investigation. So far, China has tried a media blackout, Iceland’s Prime Minister walked out of an interview when asked about the documents, Russia is blaming the CIA, Britain has demanded privacy and Malaysia is hoping that it just blows over. And this is just the beginning.
At 2.6 terabytes, the massive leak of confidential documents now known as the Panama Papers offers a deep, complicated look at an international web of corporate finance, corruption, and tax avoidance. For real, 2.6 terabytes is insane, assuming that all of this is actually just “documents” without any multimedia data. I can’t even begin to imagine what 2.6 terabytes of documents would be like to go through.
Unfortunately the leaker (or leakers?) has made the dreadful mistake of turning to the western corporate media to publicise the results. In consequence the first major story, published on Sunday was by the Guardian, is all about Vladimir Putin.
But why focus on Russia? Russian wealth is only a tiny minority of the money hidden away with the aid of Mossack Fonseca. In fact, it soon becomes obvious that the selective reporting is going to stink.
The Suddeutsche Zeitung, which received the leak, gives a detailed level of the methodology the corporate media used to search the files. The main search they have done is for names associated with breaking UN sanctions regimes. The Guardian reports this too and helpfully lists those countries as Zimbabwe, North Korea, Russia and Syria. The filtering of this Mossack Fonseca information by the corporate media follows a direct western governmental agenda. There is no mention at all of use of Mossack Fonseca by massive western corporations or western billionaires – the main customers. And the Guardian is quick to reassure that “much of the leaked material will remain private.”
What do you expect? The leak is being managed by the grandly but laughably named “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists”, which is funded and organised entirely by the USA’s Center for Public Integrity. Their funders include:
Ford Foundation Carnegie Endowment
Rockefeller Family Fund
W K Kellogg Foundation
Open Society Foundation (Soros)
Among many others.
Do not expect a genuine expose of western capitalism. Expect hits at Russia, Iran and Syria and some tiny “balancing” western country. A superannuated UK peer or two will be sacrificed – someone already with dementia.
The corporate media – the Guardian and BBC in the UK – have exclusive access to the database which you and I cannot see. They are protecting themselves from even seeing western corporations’ sensitive information by only looking at those documents which are brought up by specific searches such as UN sanctions busters. Never forget the Guardian smashed its copies of the Snowden files on the instruction of MI6.
What if they did Mossack Fonseca database searches on the owners of all the corporate media and their companies, and all the editors and senior corporate media journalists? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on all the most senior people at the BBC? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on every donor to the Center for Public Integrity and their companies? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on every listed company in the western stock exchanges, and on every western millionaire they could trace?
That would be much more interesting. I know Russia and China are corrupt, you don’t have to tell me that. The problem, is that people who say things like that are usually dismissed as cranks and tinfoil hats. Actual proof of a global plutocracy, which functions even in ostensibly democratic countries, won’t likely arouse the attention of the general public, because they have been conditioned to discount any such claims as sensationalist.
What if you look at things that we might, here in the west, be able to rise up and do something about? And what if the corporate lapdogs let the people see the actual data?
To paraphrase Andy Warhol: In the future, we will know everything about everybody and 15 minutes later we won’t care.
-Dagobot
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