x.
The latest revelations coming from the release of the Panama documents are not going unnoticed, and the hope is that the information revealed will inform the public to pressure global elites into coughing up at least SOME of what has been secured in offshore funds through major tax evasion. Unfortunately, the narrative has been more than slightly tipped in the direction of tabloid stories and name dropping, a sort of public shaming that feels like vindication, but in fact is entirely missing the point of what the Panama documents represent. Over 11 million documents reveal at least 15 previous and sitting royals and heads of state having enormous hauls of money in tax havens and names the companies and trusts that dilute the true nature of that money, of where it comes from, and where it goes. But this isn't about personalities, this about systemic abuse of power and the existence of a modern oligarchy.
The scale of the investigations now taking place into the murky, yet widespread world of financial misconduct is unprecedented, but journalists and the established storytellers are central to the story itself. The ICIJ (The International Consortium of Investigative Journalism), and over 375 journalists from over 76 countries were involved in reporting the findings, and Edward Snowden is calling it the “biggest leak in the history of data journalism”. We know all of this already, presumably, considering it has been plastered over all news sources, and made headlines around the world since the April 3rd leak. So the media understands the gravity of this story, and knows that to ignore this new information would make it obvious they may somehow be complicit in allowing information to be overlooked, or that (ding! ding! ding!) corporate media plays a role in keeping stories about tax evasion and corporate finance secret. It would also add to the discourse about how elected officials sit comfortably snug in the back pockets of arrogant corporate interests precisely because the public remains misinformed as to what financial deviance is actually at play. So, how exactly does the non-unified, fist-shaking public make some dents in the financial system that despots rely on, if established media is somehow in on the whole thing?
I.
In the digital age we know that there is far more data out there to analyse, and far fewer independent news agencies operating who can do it. This makes the Panama Papers essential to the public’s understanding about how to penetrate institutions that are growing in scale and secrecy around the world. So, when the established press, and corporate newsrooms choose to focus on naming individuals who are linked to tax havens, they are shying away from examining the trade and taxation systems that allow for corporate and state-level malfeasance to occur in the first place. It is easy to see the tabloid value in personal examples of tax evasion, and public pressure has already forced the Prime Minister of Iceland to resign, for Putin to make public statements about where he keeps his rubles, and for PM David Cameron to back away from family ties to Mossack Fonseca; the Panamanian law firm that hid billions worth of assessments in poor countries around the world. While the list goes on and on around personal stories and their rebuttals, can the public really trust corporate news rooms to hammer down on the very institutions that represent them? How can those who benefit from tax-avoidance schemes be the ones who tell the whole story?
For example, looking at Robert Murdoch’s News Corporation, and its 136 subsidiaries, notable Western media organisations such as Twentieth Century Fox are actually operating (legally) OUT of Panama, this newfound modern hotbed of bad business. This highlights an enormous conflict of interest about how reporting on these leaked documents will occur, about what will be included and what will be left out. The Panama leak also happens at a time when institutionalised secrecy around financial practices is rife and has somehow become accepted worldwide as “something the rich will always do”. In the United States, Hillary Clinton has had the Democratic congress on her side since day one, as well as having Time Warner and 20th Century Fox as some of her primary donors painting a most flattering portraiture. This combination of the largest media outlets on the planet together with scuzzy Wall Street backed financial institutions like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, The Lehman Brothers and Citigroup mean that obviously Clinton's path to a nomination has been pre-determined by the media WHILE bolstering the tale of an “unelectable” Bernie Sanders.
This ownership of media also permeates public understanding and policy decisions made about resource development strategies, militarisation and the fossil fuel industry. Divestment and anti-fracking organisations, along with advocacy networks for the renewables economy is STILL often overlooked as fringe environmentalism and seen as somehow separate from the story of a handful of corporate elites who will do anything to quash a growing movement. Information is key to these mobilisations, and it is tragic that it is made so difficult to connect the dots between corporate elitism, lobbying, industrial masochism and the media. Also, it's like the only thing people even remember about Wikileaks is what happened to Julian Assange personally, and no actual examples of political court cases or indictments on warcrime charges (had the leaked documents been used as evidence in the International Criminal Court). This is relevant to the Panama Papers because it's the same story about to be told in nearly the exact the same way. Persecute the messengers, highlight sensationalist individual leaks and avoid commenting on why these structures are allowed to operate in the first place.
We are now watching big media outlets show a complete disregard for abusive tax structures and the relationship between corporate donors and a 21st century political hegemony, and that is the real story here. It is a cryptic story of collective acceptance that the rich and powerful can do what they want, indefinitely. It's also forgetting the history of how this type of economic structure was created in the first place. The global markets that were installed by expansionist market forefathers have ok’d global exploitation of the poor as a sort of permanent, unquestionable part of modern life. Tax-avoidance schemes are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to an entrenched loss of ethics at the state level.
Obviously the current political climate is one of hostility, fear and alienation. It feels thick in the air, and like quicksand on the ground. A key rationale in hyper-conservative fear-mongering strategy is boiling over, and that strategy starts with villainisng the poor, or those in need of urgent financial and political aid. Discussions around the poor have been narrowed down to a childish shouting match between people worried about welfare leeches and this manufactured idea that immigrants take jobs and provide nothing. Global migration have become such a polarised issue that it is now accepted that political leaders create anti-immigration platforms by spouting racial slurs as a form of public debate. This same set of non-factual, pro-individual, "the American-Dream-is-still-intact" type of information has leaked onto the discussions around climate change and the global environmental consequences of greed and bad business. Trade and corporate barriers to better environmental regulation barely made headway within the Paris Agreement.
The Panama Papers represents what happens to the hovering upper crust of financial players when they are told it's fine for them to keep their money, un-taxed, growing indefinitely in havens around the world. The established trading rituals of the 21st century have allowed for this new pinnacle of corporate impunity, with established financial institutions like the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending as usual, as well the terrifying, morphing qualities of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), not to mention the birth of what may be the scariest new set of trade agreements; the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). As if that many acronyms in a row doesn't tell you something. The rise in private dispute settlement mechanisms, where corporations can effectively SUE governments in privately held courts, is also rarely, if ever front page news. If the inalienable cornerstone of modern democracies are to remain intact (one pillar being that the public make informed decisions about who they elect based on access to sound information) the nature of slanted media bombast cannot continue to be overlooked. Callous behaviour is instead applauded and made concessions for - and sure, the immediate tangible effect of these documents on public opinion will be felt by deputy leaders and the global elite in dramatic PR pushes- but to what degree will it have an effect on established practices, and will that be covered at all?
The dynamics at play are still dominated by ruling elites who get off scot-free for financial crimes while blaming the poor to sway public opinion. The debate is now being set up as two camps that will always be at odds with each other, one that is for monopolies and economic growth at any cost, and one that promotes taxation, social welfare and transparency. This is by no means the extent to which the different camps include proprietary ideologies around freedom of speech, family values, gay rights, debt re-financing, race equality, environmental protection, women's rights issues, anti-terrorism measures or military spending, but the idea that there is one "conservative" side versus one "liberal" side is now treated as an acceptable form of political rivalry world-over, when it is a complete and total construct meant to divide the public and halt participation in the democratic process.
The documents revealed by the Panama leak show how little each side knows as to what is considered public money, or how it is actually spent... And because it is not a private matter if tax has not been paid, public records of overseas investments can actually remove the guise of accumulative-righteousness and unveil corporate criminals, but what more of the loss of structural financial integrity? At the mercy of a modern code conduct, or more specifically at the mercy of global economic globalisation, we are confronting the weighty reality that our democracies cannot ride on the trusty steed of suspended market ideologies, as they are no longer compatible.
The Panama documents highlight a very important global trend, which is that money can buy you impunity, but that will never be front-page news as long as media is doing the bidding for global elites.
II.
The public requires more information about whether true democracies are compatible with an unregulated and secretive global market economy. And personal stories of tax evasion will not cut it for this fight. The dominant neo-liberal trade model has only ever existed to create and grow wealth for extinguished colonies and their corporate counterparts. Growing disparity of wealth and access to resources forcefully excludes most of the people on the planet, and economic chains of command seem to appear more and more like pyramids built off the backs of exploited people, rather than the "level market playing fields" touted by those who still champion free trade as the only global market option. In a very short time, the words around exploitative practices have been altered and replaced by an ideological veneer that disguises them for what they really are. Tax-evasion in 2016 is nothing more than high-tech colonialism. Words like “slavery” and “racism” have been replaced by “global development”, “economic expansionism” or accepted “waged work forces”, and the myriad of alienating words to describe those who are in someway different than very rich (and often white) people has hijacked the conversation leading to a rhetoric of fear and intolerance.
III.
To believe that the Panama Papers can be reduced to reports of individual tax-evasion is keeping the public in the dark, and making it impossible to define informed critiques that birth better democratic decisions. It is as hallucinatory as it could ever be. So while the leak may highlight personal stories of credibility dying from overindulgence, the standard practices of un-regulated markets and the commodification of ignorance is predatory and at large. This is the real story and it will be hidden in mainstream media until they take their dying breath. Modern democracies and the right of all men and women to elect those who may best represent their interests has been continuously shaken and is now entirely warped. So, when looking at tax-evasion and sneaky hoarding it is incredibly important to challenge the commonly accepted assumptions about how countries were included in trade agreements in the first place, and to re-define the narrative around neo-liberalism.
The point is, tax-havens, secrecy and greed are distinguishable features of a global free trade system. Not paying taxes was practically written into the conditionalities member states agreed to when becoming part of the big boy free-trade club under the Bretton Woods agreements. The reconfiguration of occupied lands as the base for tradable commodities and the wealth that has left developing countries along with their exports should be FRONT PAGE NEWS, every single day. When infrastructural development projects were marketed to ex-colonies, and commodity trade structures were set up by a minority of elites with administrative or commercial positions, the intention was to reduce the role of government and hereby protect corporate and economic interests. The market economy we know and love comes as a result of violent occupation and brutal divisions of labor. And when the story of de-colonisation is told as a peaceful and co-operative pact of nations, we dismiss the fact that de-colonisation was truly just the shift of old power into new structures of privilege in today's modern market economy.
Tax-havens exist to this day because the dynamics of exploitation and the desire to maintain control over ex-colonies was writ into law. Understanding this pattern is crucial for those who consider themselves informed citizens and it should move us - the public - to criticise, re-define and mobilise towards a modern battle that might dismantle financial supremacy and elitism that we have accepted to now.