Pandora Papers: Box of Surprises | Opinion

It is done. We already know that one percent of the richest hide their money in tax hiding places, as well as traffickers and crooks. We already know that practically all billionaires people use this instrument, which allows them to choose how much they want elude: Half of your estate? A third? All? Just pick up the phone, sign some papers, and hire a lawyer or accountant to take care of the rest.

The appearance of Pandora Papers It has that: it massifies the message against tax havens, it demonizes the rich who behaved very badly, badly enough or a little badly, according to what they declared to the treasury and what they stopped declaring, although no one will deny that they are using the companies in the dens of prosecutors to move money, no matter how, when or why, is, at least, a little wrong.

Then the lists appear and the explanations appear. And it’s true: a declared company is not the same as an undeclared one, neither is a company a hundred companies linked by opaque or semi-unknown mechanisms, and a company that does not has never been activated by a company that is not the same. that spent money from trafficking drugs, weapons or human beings. But luckily, there is no doubt that the mere fact of appearing on the lists of one of these mega leaks tax havens carries at least some social condemnation.

It’s worth clarifying: these so-called offshore companies are nothing more than rubber stamps crammed into an office. That is, they are called companies but they have no employees and they produce nothing except opportunities to hide, evade or deceive investors and minority partners in real companies linked to these screens housed in lairs of opacity and almost zero taxation.

Everything is fine, then, with this massive hack and with this blame on billionaires for not paying taxes. But it’s still a paradox that many of the media outlets that run the Pandora Papers and other International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) mega-leaks here and around the world have their own companies registered in tax havens. And that they do not say it in the articles they publish, although the journalists of the consortium know it. Typical self-censorship disguised as editorial line or corporate freedom.

Then comes the question. Where does this information come from? Almost always, as in this case, it is an anonymous whistleblower. In contrast, in the case of another famous mega-leak, the Panama Papers of 2016, the leaker generated a narrative to which the consortium responded without criticism. This leak, that of the Panama Papers, came from a Panamanian law firm specializing in the creation of offshore companies. As explained by the consortium itself, the information came from a man who called himself John Doe (something like “Juan Pueblo” in English). Out of nowhere, Doe contacted two German journalists and told them he was going to give them lots of data. So much so that they had to buy computers with more storage capacity because those of the German newspaper were not sufficient.

But it turns out that Juan Pueblo was particularly interested in transmitting data on an account of Lázaro Baez allegedly linked to Cristina Kirchner. This is the first thing he disclosed. And that he had compromising information from the inner circles of Putin and Xi Jinping. Ultimately, Cristina was not linked to this account. But the data helped the owner of the Panamanian law firm get a feel for who was hiding behind Juan Pueblo’s mask. The owner of the Panamanian study accused Paul Singer, CEO of a vulture fund that had been trying for years to recover defaulting Argentine government bonds from Cristina at a nominal price, and who for years complained to the Panamanian firm of delivering the Baez account that could supposedly compromising the then president.

Since then, the consortium has operated with anonymous sources. Why insist on Juan Pueblo or whatever if no one believes it, starting with the journalists who work or have worked on the consortium’s leaks, including who is it for? It must therefore be said that it is highly unlikely that such a volume of information on movements in Western tax havens will be disseminated without the knowledge of any part of the government of United States. Which is not bad. What to assess when posting information is first whether it is true. Second, if it is in the public interest. Pandora Papers does more than meet both requirements and to disseminate them the consortium has assembled a formidable team with some of the best journalists from this side of the Iron Curtain.

But that does not mean that we should stop asking ourselves not only who disclosed the information but for what purpose. And when you remove the litter of celebrities and politicians, who make up a tiny percentage of the money that escaped but a huge percentage of the media attention that spreads the mega-filtration, and leaving out the businessmen, who are scarcely named, what remains is an attack on the reputation of the lairs unmasked.

Just as the Swissleaks affected Switzerland, the Panama Papers in Panama and the British Virgin Islands, the Paradise Papers in the North Sea Islands and other haunts of the British Commonweath, the Luxleaks in Luxembourg, the Fincen Papers in Hong Kong, in the world, there has not been a decrease in the flight of capital to tax havens.

What is observed, yes, is a greater concentration of leaks in fical dens that do not appear striped in any leak. That is, the traditional haunts on American soil, call them Delaware, Wyoming, Nevada, and Florida, in that order. And, coincidentally, compromising information appears in the Pandora Papers for an internal competitor emerging from the traditional American caves: the state of South Dakota.

Therefore, as long as we do not know who filters and for what purpose, beyond the indisputable value of the information and the excellent coordinated work of the consortium journalists in the conservation and dissemination of the disclosed data, this doesn’t hurt to look across the geopolitical chessboard and pay attention to the competition between providers of this essential service for the financial exceptionalism that billionaires, ours and those around the world, continue to enjoy.