The big story breaking are the Pandora Papers, the story of a global elite that has managed to hide its wealth in offshore accounts (meaning any accounts away from their country of citizenship) thanks to deregulation and lack of oversight. The so-called Panama Papers, a previous disclosure, were tiny compared to this. A massive leak of almost 12 million files from 14 firms around the world exposes how 35 world leaders and hundreds of politicians, billionaires, and celebrities, among others, use the offshore system to hide cash. The Pandora Papers were obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which worked with 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries to dig through the documents and find stories.
Globalization—arranged by both Demopublicans and Republicrats— has permitted the rise of a global elite that, as the Pandora Papers reveal, often overlaps with criminality. In January 2011, when he was the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III gave a landmark speech in which he explained how globalization and technology had created “iron triangles” of “organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders” who were “motivated by money, not ideology.”
The United States government, as the servant of bourgeois power, has fostered and encouraged this anti-democratic global elite, where petite bourgeois figures like Mueller occasionally raise concerns. The Papers shine a bright spotlight on the way the United States has really become a top offshore destination for the rich and powerful to hide their assets. The United States is such an appealing destination for the cash that many have moved their money from other better-known tax havens to the United States. South Dakota in particular has emerged as a top destination for foreign assets. “Over the past decade, South Dakota, Nevada and more than a dozen other U.S. states have transformed themselves into leaders in the business of peddling financial secrecy,” ICIJ writes. The papers also show, among other things, how the rich finance their parties and control governments.
This, in addition to the legal corruption such as the Hunter Biden/Burisma scandal, or Trump’s own naked nepotism, continue to show how the capitalist system is beyond repair, replete with criminality.
As Oxfam put it “This is where our missing hospitals are. This is where the pay-packets sit of all the extra teachers and firefighters and public servants we need. Whenever a politician or business leader claims there is ‘no money’ to pay for climate damage and innovation, for more and better jobs, for a fair post-COVID recovery, for more overseas aid, they know where to look.”
Notes
https://www-washingtonpost-com.baldwinlib.idm.oclc.org/business/interactive/2021/pandora-papers-offshore-finance/ess/interactive/2021/pandora-papers-offshore-finance/