The Panama Papers vs Afghan Papers
By Wahab Raofi
The Panama Papers scandal triggered tsunami waves of
shock throughout the world’s media, as if this were an unprecedented event. It
is not. The concealment of fortunes, often acquired through illicit means by
corrupt politicians, world leaders and powerful individuals, has long been
commonplace.
But perhaps the light shined by the Panama Papers
could lead to actual reform. We can only hope. Within the 11.5 million leaked
documents are implications that 12 current or former world leaders, as well as
128 other politicians and public officials, engaged in various potential
financial crimes.
This information comes from an anonymous hack of a
Panama law firm which apparently has been shielding secret fortunes for almost 40
years. But before Panama, the places to go for secret offshore accounts were
Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore. And long before that, everyone whispered about
secret Swiss bank accounts.
Stealing and hiding money is almost as old as money
itself. And those with the greatest ability to steal and conceal have always
been the boldest and most powerful among us: our so-called heads of state.
Here’s just a sprinkling of contemporary “leaders”
accused of siphoning off billions of dollars of their own citizens’ wealth and
hoarding it for themselves in secret locations: Hosni Mubarak (Egypt), Pavlo
Lazarenko, (Ukraine), Sheik Fahad Mohammed Al-Sabah (Kuwait), Moammar Gadhafi (Libya),
Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines), Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier (Haiti),
Augusto Pinochet (Chile), Sani Abacha (Nigeria), Mobutu Seko (Zaire), Saddam
Hussein (Iraq), and of course Kim Jong-Un (North Korea).
What that, you say? Most of those are or were crude dictators
of disheveled states?
Yes, but the Panama Papers do break new ground by
revealing what many of us suspected all along: It happens everywhere. Some have
been just a little better at hiding it.
Named in the Panama Papers scandal are the father of
Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, Iceland Prime Minister David
Gunnlaugsson (who resigned because of this), President Mauricio Macri of
Argentina, close associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and relatives
of President Xi Jinping of China.
Investigative journalists reviewing the Panama
Papers also identified King Salman of Saudi Arabia and Argentinian soccer star
Lionel Messi (worth some $240 million). Officials from FIFA, soccer’s world
governing body, and UEFA, the governing body of European soccer, were also singled
out in the Panama Papers.
No names of U.S. leaders have surfaced in the
investigation, but one reason may be that it’s easy to form the same kind of opaque
shell companies to hide wealth in the United States. Americans “really don’t
need to go to Panama,” said James Henry, an economist and senior adviser to the
Tax Justice Network, as reported in the New York Times. “Basically, we have an
onshore haven industry in the U.S. that is as secretive as anywhere.”
Just because you were identified in the Panama
Papers doesn’t mean you have committed a crime, but it certainly does suggest
that you are trying to hide money.
Ideally, it is the corruption of stealing and hiding
money that we would like to stop.
A case in point is my native Afghanistan: Over the
past 15 years, the U.S. has spent billions of dollars there, but according to findings
by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, millions of
those dollars cannot be accounted for.
In one astonishing 2009 incident, Afghanistan’s
then-vice-president Ahmad Zia Massoud was stopped and questioned in Dubai when he
landed there with $52 million in cash, according to WikiLeaks. Massoud was questioned
by officials from the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates, but was allowed to go his way without even explaining where
the money came from.
This
was the same Ahmad Zia Moussoud who took an oath
as the special envoy for “reform and good governance” under Afghan
President Ashraf Ghani.
Sarah Chayes is a U.S. journalist who spent eight
years in Afghanistan, and in her brilliant book “Thieves of State,” she warns of
the dire consequences of corruption, which she sees as a principal threat to
global security.
Why is the west turning a blind eye to this
corruption? Perhaps because its banks and economies benefit. Much of this stolen
money will be pumped into the western economies.
The world ought to take this wake-up call of the
Panama Papers and enforce drastic measures to hinder world leaders and their
cronies from the backward Robin Hood practice of stealing from the poor and giving
to their own secret offshore accounts.
A consortium of nations could crack down on
financial institutions that shield assets from the laws of their original
lands. Full transparency could lead to enforced compliance with tax laws.
Theft and corruption love secrecy. While the Panama
Papers don’t reveal any new behaviors we haven’t seen for many generations,
perhaps they can serve the function of shining a light on all the new cockroaches.
Are we just going to let them scurry away, or are we going to do something
about it?
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