Panama Papers: Here’s What You Need To Know About The Black Money Expose Of The Century

What in the hell are the Panama Papers?

The Panama papers is a leak of official documents of a law firm that helped rich and powerful people around the world launder their black money.

Remember how we heard of wild statistics being thrown around that rich politicians and actors have trillions of dollars stashed abroad in tax havens?

Turns out, they were right.

The rich and the powerful set up fake offshore companies in tax havens like Panama, Canary Islands, and the British Virgin Islands.

Then these companies are used to stash and launder all the black money earned by the big shots.

 

How do the accused stash all their black money?

They employ lawyer firms in these countries that help them evade whatever the loose tax laws there are.

One of the firms was Mossack Fonseca from Panama.

 

How did the newspapers find about these Panama papers?

This is one of the best highlights of investigative journalism, where they got hold of more than 11 million documents from Mossack Fonseca.

11 million documents; to put it into perspective is 11,000,000 documents.

The Indian Express is the Indian newspaper that collaborated with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism.

The ICIJ spent more than 8 months in investigating this story and uncovering the vulgar details we are seeing now.

 

Who are the people involved?

A lot of names are coming out.

The usual suspects Vladimir Putin, Nawaz Sharif, relatives of Xi Jinping, late father of David Cameron.

Politicians are not that big of a surprise.

The surprise additions are Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Bachchan, Lionel Messi.

Apollo Tyres, Indiabulls, Gautam Adani’s brother Vinod Adani and DLF owner K P Singh.

If these names weren’t enough, there are people from the slums of Mumbai who have their money stashed in Panama.

You read that right. SLUM PEOPLE HAVE MONEY IN PANAMA.

 

Is this it?

No, there is more! The Indian Express has only released one part of the expose.

We are waiting eagerly for the subsequent parts.

Watch this space for new developments.

Cover Image Source 1, 2, 3.