The Real
Target of the Panama Papers
By Pepe
Escobar
May 13,
2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "teleSur
" - So
this is the way the Panama Papers end. Not with a
bang—as in “Putin hiding US$2 billion”; you all
remember the original headlines. But with a whimper;
everyone lining up to duly access
a prosaic database and find out the names of
nearly 320,000 entities/offshore
companies/trusts/foundations engaged in beautifying
the finances of the rich and powerful.
The
Soros-financed International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has not exactly
fulfilled its mandate of heaping dirt on selected
BRICS nations and the odd enemy of imperial
interests/values—based on a NSA-style hack of
Mossack Fonseca.
So what’s
left is for everyone to freely peruse names and
addresses of companies in 21 jurisdictions—including
Hong Kong and Nevada in the U.S. Yet don't expect to
see bank account numbers, phone numbers or
compromising emails.
Panama—where no one can flush a toilet without the
U.S. government knowing about it—is for suckers; the
real elite, connected (or profiting) even indirectly
from the real Masters of the Universe and the liquid
modernity enablers of top of the line
turbo-capitalism use hack-proof Luxembourg, Virgin
Islands or Cayman Islands connections – not to
mention secure, Empire-based Delaware and Nevada
loopholes.
Fictional
scenarios, anyway, will continue to prosper, such as
the myth the Panama Papers leak came from one John
Doe—an “anonymous” whistleblower who allegedly
contacted the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and the
ICIJ with a mini-manifesto titled “The revolution
will be digitized”.
John Doe
justified his alleged leak by arguing that tax
evasion was one of the great issues of our time, and
governments must do more to prevent it. Thus his
pledge—"I want to make these crimes public"—as he
unloaded 11.5 million files (2.6 terabytes of data),
which took over a year to be perused by ICIJ hacks,
in absolute secrecy, with no leaks whatsoever.
John Doe is
no Daniel Ellsberg or Edward Snowden. Apart from the
resignation of
Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, prime minister of
Iceland, and the offshore trust set up by David
Cameron’s Dad, the Panama Papers did not yield
anything really groundbreaking, as much as the
bombastic headlines in the first four days insisted
to demonize powerful players in Russia and China,
especially Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Everyone
familiar with the inner mechanisms of
turbo-capitalism knows how wealthy tax-evading
players across the spectrum—in this case helped by
Mossack Fonseca—go legally offshore. Of course, this
carries the possibility of countless open roads for
fraud and/or illicit money laundering.
The G20 has
already agreed that the government of each member
nation should know who are the real owners of
legally registered offshore companies. But
implementation, so far, has been negligible.
Turbo-finance always trumps parliamentary politics.
Mossack
Fonseca insists the whole Panama Papers saga is
“based on the theft of confidential information."
The ICIJ for its part insists the disclosure is “in
the public interest” as “a careful release of basic
corporate information,” and not a “data dump.”
Nonsense.
It is a data dump. As for the “basic corporate
information”, in does not prove anything; the ICIJ
itself—in the preface to the latest release—observes
that the appearance of particular names and
companies on the list does not imply wrongdoing.
ICIJ hacks
used Nuix—an Australian computer forensics and IT
investigation software—to sift through the data.
But, crucially, the decisions by mainstream media
organs on what to publish first, and how to edit the
information, were purely political.
Public
opinion in the global South immediately noted the
absence of Americans. Of course; Americans in the
know use the Caymans and the Virgin Islands, as well
as Delaware and Nevada, not Panama. Still, the ICIJ
now has to resort to lame excuses, such as “Mossack
Fonseca’s working relationships with dozens of
Americans tied to financial misconduct raises
questions about how well the firm keeps its
commitment to following international standards for
preventing money laundering and keeping offshore
companies out of the hands of criminal elements.”
This has
absolutely nothing to do with “international
standards for preventing money laundering." If you
know how to it—ask HSBC—or if you have the right
connections, you get away with it.
What this
is all about is one more chapter in an intra-system
hardcore financial war. To have the ICIJ
remote-controlled by Soros, the Ford Foundation, the
CIA itself, is a beauty. And obfuscation—as in
informative selectiveness—works wonders; remember
the initial emphasis on “axis of evil” characters,
old—as in connected to former Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—and new (Putin, relatives of Xi
Jinping).
The heart
of the matter is that the Panama Papers disclosure
didn’t disturb the global financial casino one bit,
because the (transnational) system badly needs
fiscal paradises to evade national laws. What the
Panama Papers may succeed in is to eliminate
competition. From now on, your fiscal paradise of
choice must be in U.S., U.K. and Dutch
jurisdictions. We control every global financial
flow—legal or otherwise. Defy us—or else.
See
also
New Panama
Papers Embroil Latin American Elite |