The Real Target of the Panama PapersBy 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
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