{"id":73468,"date":"2016-05-16T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=73468"},"modified":"2016-05-12T15:12:52","modified_gmt":"2016-05-12T14:12:52","slug":"the-real-target-of-the-panama-papers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/05\/the-real-target-of-the-panama-papers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Target of the Panama Papers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pepeescobar\"<\/a>Pepe Escobar Connects the Dots . . .
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

11 May 2016 – <\/em>So this is the way the Panama Papers end. Not with a bang\u2014as in \u201cPutin hiding $2 billion\u201d; you all remember the original headlines. But with a whimper; everyone lining up to duly access a prosaic database<\/a> and find out the names of nearly 320,000 entities\/offshore companies\/trusts\/foundations engaged in beautifying the finances of the rich and powerful.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 based on a NSA-style hack of Mossack Fonseca.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s left is for everyone to freely peruse names and addresses of companies in 21 jurisdictions\u2014including Hong Kong and Nevada in the U.S. Yet don’t expect to see bank account numbers, phone numbers or compromising emails.<\/p>\n

\"Argentine<\/a>

Argentine President Maurcio Macri is a victim, argues Pepe Escobar. | Photo: Reuters<\/p><\/div>\n

Panama\u2014where no one can flush a toilet without the U.S. government knowing about it\u2014is 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 \u2013 not to mention secure, Empire-based Delaware and Nevada loopholes.<\/p>\n

Fictional scenarios, anyway, will continue to prosper, such as the myth the Panama Papers leak came from one John Doe\u2014an \u201canonymous\u201d whistleblower who allegedly contacted the S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and the ICIJ with a mini-manifesto titled \u201cThe revolution will be digitized\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\u2014”I want to make these crimes public” \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

John Doe is no Daniel Ellsberg or Edward Snowden. Apart from the resignation of Sigmundur Dav\u00ed\u00f0 Gunnlaugsson, Prime Minister of Iceland, and the offshore trust set up by David Cameron\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Everyone familiar with the inner mechanisms of turbo-capitalism knows how wealthy tax-evading players across the spectrum \u2013 in this case helped by Mossack Fonseca\u2014go legally offshore. Of course, this carries the possibility of countless open roads for fraud and\/or illicit money laundering.<\/p>\n

The G-20 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.<\/p>\n

Mossack Fonseca insists the whole Panama Papers saga is \u201cbased on the theft of confidential information.” The ICIJ for its part insists the disclosure is \u201cin the public interest\u201d as \u201ca careful release of basic corporate information\u201d, and not a \u201cdata dump\u201d.<\/p>\n

Nonsense. It is a data dump. As for the \u201cbasic corporate information\u201d, in does not prove anything; the ICIJ itself\u2014in the preface to the latest release\u2014observes that the appearance of particular names and companies on the list does not imply wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A police officer stands outside the headquarters of Mossack Fonseca while prosecutors raid the offices in Panama City on April 12, 2016. (photo: Carlos Jasso\/Reuters)<\/p><\/div>\n

ICIJ hacks used Nuix\u2014an Australian computer forensics and IT investigation software\u2014to 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cMossack Fonseca\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

This has absolutely nothing to do with \u201cinternational standards for preventing money laundering.” If you know how to it\u2014ask HSBC\u2014or if you have the right connections, you get away with it.<\/p>\n

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\u2014as in informative selectiveness\u2014works wonders; remember the initial emphasis on \u201caxis of evil\u201d characters, old\u2014as in connected to former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad\u2014and new (Putin, relatives of Xi Jinping).<\/p>\n

The heart of the matter is that the Panama Papers disclosure didn\u2019t 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 US, UK and Dutch jurisdictions. We control every global financial flow\u2014legal or otherwise. Defy us\u2014or else.<\/p>\n

___________________________________<\/p>\n

Pepe Escobar is a Brazilian independent geopolitical analyst. He is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia Times Online. He has been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even before 9\/11 he specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars. He is the author of \u201cGlobalistan<\/a>\u201d (2007), \u201cRed Zone Blues<\/a>\u201d (2007), \u201cObama does Globalistan<\/a>\u201d (2009) and \u201cEmpire of Chaos<\/a>\u201d (2014), all published by Nimble Books. His latest book is \u201c2030<\/a>\u201c, also by Nimble Books, out in December 2015.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 telesurtv.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What the Panama Papers may succeed in is to eliminate competition. From now on, your fiscal paradise of choice must be in US, UK and Dutch jurisdictions. We control every global financial flow\u2014legal or otherwise. Defy us\u2014or else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}