8 April 2016 around the world began publishing the so-called “Panama archive” of Mossak Fonseka: 11.5 million files for a total 2.6 terabytes, containing many “offshore secrets” of the world economy and politics.
The title “stolen billions offshore” appeared in the editorials of almost all the world’s media: from the poor African Sudan and Cameroon to quite wealthy European the UK and Iceland — the only difference was in whose name and whose photos were splashed on the front pages of magazines and Newspapers and in “Prime time” of radio and television programmes.
“The Panama archives” was allegedly obtained as a result of breaking of servers of a major (but not only) Panamanian company that deals in Panama, the registration of offshore companies. The declared volume of leakage legal information is enormous — in the hands of hackers-crackers got over 2.6 terabytes of financial data, is an order of magnitude more than what was published in the famous “Wikileaks” for the entire period of its work. Documents received by the editors of the German newspaper “süddeutsche Zeitung” in 2015, and nearly half went to their decryption — so extensive was the Panama archive. As it turned out, after quite trivial a security hole “Mossack Fonseca”, which is just “savings” on upgrading of its programmes, access restrictions, leaked data on the financial operations of the various foreign clients for the period from 1977 to 2015.
The source archive is not yet published in open access — the so-called “international consortium of investigative journalism” published in April, only a part of their own research Panama archive, just list a lot of offshore companies “powers that be”, surnames and names of Trustees and Directors, as well as specifying the amount of funds withdrawn from various countries to the Panama offshore companies.
So, summing up: the situation is reminiscent of peeping into a dark room with a flashlight through a keyhole. Randomly Panamanian dossier has highlighted only a tiny part of the ugly underside of the global economy, but that was enough to have swung and shook the political system in many countries.
What is the perversity and perniciousness of the offshore business? A long-standing dream of every capitalist and the merchant is the privatization of profits and socialization of costs. Surprisingly, the first “offshore” appeared in the ancient world — to fight against Mediterranean piracy, annoying merchants-navigators, ancient Athens imposed a small (just 2%) of export and import tax for all goods passing through the market of Piraeus. Savvy traders immediately moved their trading operations on a small uninhabited island near Athens, preferring not to go with cargo in the harbour of Piraeus. But in just a decade, these “home-made offshore” antiquity themselves turned into a pirate haven, which Athens had just cause to burn with a hot iron, and Greek fire took these Islands under their care. And the pirates and the first “tax evaders” had to seek refuge away from Athens on the coast of modern Turkey, in Cilicia.
Just do the modern “tax pirates”. Legislation in many countries now clearly links the business with social obligations through state and local taxes. It is on this solid basis was built the model of “welfare state” built in the late twentieth century in the West as opposed to the socialist system of the USSR. With the collapse of the USSR Western business thought that the taxes and obligations to the society of excess and began to withdraw their capital in countries with low or even no taxes — Panama, Cyprus, Belize and a host of others. Well, the latter-day “Soviet capitalists”, parasitizing on the remains of the Soviet economy, went even further than his Western teachers — just cutting huge factories for scrap and taking the loot abroad, in the same the offshore companies, and then buying these laundered money for yachts and football clubs.
The offshore and gave the Western, and former Soviet and African Nouveau riche illusion of impunity and anonymity — well, in fact, who integrate some kind of “Horns and hoofs Inc.” with the proud President of Ukraine or Prime Minister of Iceland successful? Not uvazhat and you will not find — so “eat the rich”: the power and influence can be converted into cash, money away in an offshore shade “small Islands” and not pay taxes to his country and then invest it in countries where the climate is better, and the natives less questions asked. And, as it turned out, before the “Golden calf” could not resist all. Or well — almost everything.
Offshore, like a painful and deadly cancer, saps the foundations of the world economy. No business can exist without the support of society and state — the creation of the offshore countries or offshore zones, sooner or later, will face opposition from strong countries who want to live by the laws of pirates, and according to the laws of Athens. We remember Pericles and the Parthenon, Plato and Aristotle — but who remembers the Cilician pirates offshore and antique merchants? They earned their silver pieces, but nothing left behind.
And the funny thing. On 5 April 2016, after the scandal with “the Panama papers,” resigned Prime Minister of Iceland. The flashlight beam had found a random victim in a dark room. But did you know that Iceland is one of the oldest European offshore? That’s really the irony of fate. This means that the Panama investigation found only one of the many offshore metastases of cancer tumors which covered the whole world economy.
