A common theme underpins support for Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece and even Donald Trump: the idea that there is a world within our world, inaccessible to the ordinary citizen, where super-rich elites play by different rules. The so-called Panama Papers, the largest leak of financial documents in history, show that idea to be the ugly and humiliating truth. The march of globalisation has enabled aggressive international tax avoidance. At best, national governments are too enfeebled to prevent these dodges by themselves; at worst, they have cynically abetted them.
The leak of 11.5 million files from Mossack Fonseca, a law firm headquartered in Panama, is both enormous and small. The papers contain details of 214,000 offshore companies incorporated by the firm on behalf of more than 14,000 clients. But Mossack Fonseca is only the world’s fourth-biggest offshore law firm. This leak is the tip of a hulking iceberg.
Content from our partners
