The Pandora papers prove that secrecy jurisdictions and their super-rich clients are still running rings around the rest of us
Five years after the Panama papers exposed the vast scale of offshore banking and business services via the activities of the wealth management specialist Mossack Fonseca, hundreds of billions of pounds are still being secreted away in tax havens. The leak of almost 12m documents, known as the Pandora papers, reveals that 35 current or former heads of state are among the customers of secrecy jurisdictions where huge sums of money are hidden in order to avoid tax and transparency. King Abdullah II of Jordan, Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš and Azerbaijan’s ruling Aliyev family are among those with serious questions to answer, along with more than 100 billionaires and rich individuals from all over the world.
Beyond any specific acts of venality, as outrageous as these are, looms a system whose existence is a global disgrace. As a matter of course, and in spite of their immense personal advantages, the ultra-rich are ripping off everyone else. They do this by refusing to pay their share towards the services and resources (health, education, energy, water and governance) on which everyone depends. And they are facilitated and encouraged in this by an industry whose purpose is to shield their wealth and conceal what they are up to.