The Pandora Project was released this week, a years-long investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which examined more than 11.9 million financial records, private emails, secret spreadsheets and clandestine contacts to uncover politicians, business leaders and even celebrities who have tucked away billions of dollars’ worth of assets in tax shelters around the world.
So far, the fallout has not been severe. Billionaire-turned-politician Andres Babis, who is up for re-election as the Czech Republic’s prime minister in a vote held this Friday and Saturday, was revealed to have used offshore companies to buy a $17.7 million French mansion, according to one of the partners in the ICIJ investigation, The Guardian.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie, saved the equivalent of about $408.6 million in taxes by purchasing a London office building after acquiring part of an offshore, British Virgin Islands company co-owned by Bahrain minister Zayed bin Rashid Alzayami, The Guardian says in a separate news report. The office building was sold to them for $8.85 million, and it presumably will further bring in a tidy sum in lease revenues.
King Abdullah II of Jordan was another of the prominent names in the investigative data dump. His name grabbed its share of headlines early in the week, when the ICIJ report dropped, because he spent $106 million on 12 luxury homes, mostly in Malibu, California. But Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi told the Associated Press there was “nothing secretive” about the purchases, and that the king used none of the billions of dollars-worth of international aid that has gone to Jordan in recent years.
What’s the big deal? It’s true that all of these transactions detailed appear to be completely legal. It’s also true that offshore accounts and numbered bank accounts can be a haven for money laundering and other illegal activities. To detractors of such bald-faced displays of wealth, the Pandora Papers serve as another coat of gold paint on the layers of the 21st century Gilded Age, obscene as the Gilded Age of more than a century ago. To those neutral on the use of offshoring, or even supportive of it, it’s simply another capitalistic defense against profligate taxing and spending by government bureaucrats addicted to ineffective social programs.
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--Todd Lassa