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Thursday March 28, 2024

Conspiracy theorists abound on Panama Papers 

By Sabir Shah
April 13, 2016

Since April 3, when the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) had flashed headlines worldwide with the announcement that it and a German newspaper "Suddeutsche Zeitung" had received a leaked set of 11.5 million confidential documents from a Panamanian law firm Messrs Mossack Fonseca, the noticeable absence of Americans from the Panama Papers has let human imaginations run wild across the globe as many conspiracy theorists feel that the leaks were orchestrated by the CIA to destabilise Russia and other countries.

According to the April 4 edition of an eminent British daily newspaper "The Guardian," the Kremlin had dismissed revelations contained in the Panama Papers as "Putinphobia," besides stating that the journalists investigating the Russian President’s financial affairs had "found out little new."

"The Guardian" had added: "Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said that the publication of leaked offshore files from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca was designed to destabilise the situation in Russia ahead of elections. It’s clear that the level of Putinphobia has reached a level at which it is impossible a priori to speak well of Russia, and it’s required to speak ill of Russia."

Peskov also denied Putin's wife had been the beneficial owner of a company registered in the British Virgin Islands. 

He was quoted by another Russian media outlet "RBC Group" as saying: "It’s obvious the main aim of this dump is our President in the context of parliamentary elections and, in the longer term, presidential elections... It’s obvious the barbs of this attack are directed against our country and, personally, against our president." 

About a week later, in its April 9 edition, the "Washington Post" had published an interesting counter argument--or call it yet another conspiracy theory---according to which---a Moscow-backed Russian hacker had created all the fuss.

The esteemed American newspaper had stated: "After a few days of silence, the Russian president himself has taken aim at the allegations, suggesting they were part of a broader US plot to destabilise Russia. But another very different theory is making the rounds in the Russia-watching world. In short, the theory says that Moscow isn't a victim of a Panama Papers plot. Instead, perhaps it is the Russians who are behind the leak."

To add conviction to its argument, the prestigious US newspaper had also published a blog post from Clifford Gaddy, an economist who worked with the Brookings Institution, a former advisor to the Russian Finance Ministry in the 1990s and one of the foremost Western experts on Russia's economy.

"The Washington Post" correspondent had then copied Clifford Gaddy's blog post carried by the Brookings Institution website on April 7.

Here follow some excerpts from Clifford Gaddy's blog post:

"It was a hacker backed by the Russian government who emailed the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung to offer the leak in early 2015, the initial contact that would eventually lead to the release of the Panama Papers."

"There's deliberately little information within the Panama Papers that harms Putin: While the $2 billion figure has been reported widely, the link to Putin is relatively obscure, and the Russian president has survived far worse accusations of corruption."

"The fact that so few Americans have been linked to the Panama Papers could suggest that their details were deleted from the documents given to 'Suddeutsche Zeitung' and passed on to other media outlets. If this is true, the lack of this information in the release means that it could be being held back for blackmail purposes."

Reacting to Gaddy's views, Karen Dawisha, an American academic at Miami University and the director of its Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, had tweeted: "I'm convinced of everything else Gaddy writes, but not this. Americans are not in the Panama Papers because US has Delaware."

Delaware, we all know, is a notorious tax haven within the United States. 

In his blog post, Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and a prominent human rights figure, had said: "German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung has made the dreadful mistake of turning to the western corporate media to publicize the results.

"But why focus on Russia? Russian wealth is only a tiny minority of the money hidden away with the aid of Mossack Fonseca (a Panamaian lawfirm). In fact, it soon becomes obvious that the selective reporting is going to stink."

"Do not expect a genuine expose of western capitalism. The dirty secrets of western corporations will remain unpublished."

Murray had pointed to the US-based ICIJ’s funders as being a reason why no American politician or public figure has been named so far. 

"Their funders include the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Endowment, The Rockefeller Family Fund, the WK Kellogg Fund and the Open Society Foundation (Soros) - all significant (and significantly wealthy) industrial and corporate entities."

"The filtering of this Mossack Fonseca information by the corporate media follows a direct western governmental agenda. There is no mention at all of use of Mossack Fonseca by massive western corporations or western billionaires—the main customers," Murray wrote. "Do not expect a genuine expose of western capitalism. The dirty secrets of western corporations will remain unpublished." 

"That layer of the onion is just the tip of the iceberg though, but as we peel back another we learn that the media isn't just biased, it's in the pay of the US government. See, the ICIJ is partnered with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which is funded in part by—duh duh duh—the US government."

However, all these conspiracy theorists have offered little evidence supporting their theories and hypotheses. 

Like British Ambassador Craig Murray, a lot of other conspiracy theorists have also doubted the credibility of the International Consortium for Investigative Journalists and its parent organisation---the Center for Public Integrity (CPI). 

Some think the leaks have a Jewish connection too!

These conspiracy theorists have alleged that the Panama Papers were surely a Washington DC-directed design since the CPI predominantly received funding and financial support from a number of American foundations like the Jewish Community Federation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Sunlight Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Microsoft Matching Gifts Programme, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation the Barbra Streisand Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Rita Allen Foundation, the Atlantic Philanthropies of New York and the California Endowment etc.

Well, along with dozens of other foundations (with ongoing support of $20,000 and above), the names of the above-mentioned organisations do appear on the website of the Center for Public Integrity.

In 2014, the Center for Public Integrity had received contributions of less than $250 from 766 individual donors. The total amount of revenue received from this group of individuals was $33,200. In addition, the Center received 105 gifts anonymously, totaling $13,451.75.

But despite all the criticism regarding the pivotal role and influence of its sponsors behind the Panama Leaks, there is no denying the fact that the Center for Public Integrity had released a report called "Fat Cat Hotel: How Democratic high-rollers are rewarded with overnight Stays at the White House."

This investigative report, released in 1996, was an examination of the connection between overnight stays of President Bill Clinton's re-election campaign financiers in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House during his Presidency. 

In 2003, the CPI had published "Windfalls of war," which was a report arguing that campaign contributions to President George W. Bush had affected the allocation of reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In year 2000, the CPI had published a story titled "Cheney-led Halliburton to feast at Federal trough: State Department questioned deal with firm linked to Russian mob." 

In this report, the authors had argued that while US Vice President Dick Cheney was the CEO of Messrs Halliburton---from 1995 to 2000---the company had received $3.8 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans.

In 2013, CPI's sister concern--the International Consortium for Investigative Journalists---had released the results of a 15-month-long investigation based on 260 gigabytes of data regarding the ownership of secret offshore bank accounts. 

In this report, the ICIJ and partnering agencies like The Guardian the BBC, France's Le Monde newspaper and the Washington Post etc had used the ownership information to report on government corruption across the globe and the tax avoidance schemes used by wealthy people. The report had shed light on the active role of major banks in facilitating secrecy for their clients, and the strategies and actors that make these activities possible.

As far as the ICIJ is concerned, it claims on its website that is also supported in its individual capacity by the Adessium Foundation, Open Society Foundations, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, the Fritt Ord Foundation, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Ford Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Waterloo Foundation and by an Australian philanthropist and businessman, Graeme Wood. 

Responding to all this flood of criticism, the ICIJ director, Gerard Ryle, had stated: "The folks who write ICIJ’s cheques don’t write its stories. A firewall between the newsroom and its funders means they know only that a big story is coming. We do not accept donations from sources who want to dictate coverage, and there is no evidence to such that funders like Ford try to play a hands-on editorial role. I’ve turned away money and I don’t believe in taking money just to do stories on a topic. We do not receive direct funding from organisations like the trusts run by the Rockefeller and Carnegie families."

Many leading media organisations of the world have also viewed that had the Panama Papers exposed more Americans, fewer skeptics might have emerged.

A lot of websites claimed Panama Leaks were targeting emerging economies, though men writing on those web pages were perhaps unaware of the fact that Britain was not an emerging nation.

The only direct US link to the Panama Papers so far is that of financial writer and life coach Marianna Olszewski - who had allegedly employed a 90-year-old British man as a stand in to mask funds she had confidentially invested in an offshore company.

The "Times of India" had held: "From Russia to China, and Britain to Iceland, the revelations of the "Panama Papers" have tarnished officials and the wealthy over the implication that they hide riches offshore. But one group is not there: prominent Americans. US tycoons and politicians are notably absent in the leaked files of the Panama law offices of Mossack Fonseca, which created thousands of shell companies worldwide to hide the identities of their ultimate owners, some of whom may have been evading taxes."

The afore-cited leading Indian publication had quoted Marina Walker Guevara, the deputy director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, as clarifying: "There are a lot of Americans, but they are more like private citizens. However, that hardly means Americans have fully embraced financial transparency, she told AFP. It doesn't show that the US is outside of the offshore system; the US is actually a big player."

The "Times of India" had gone on to write: "One possible reason for their small presence in the Panama documents is that US citizens hoping to hide funds and activities offshore were not drawn to Spanish-speaking Panama as a haven, when there are options like the British Virgin islands and the Cayman Islands."

The widely-respected Indian media house had also quoted Nicholas Shaxson, the author of "Treasure Islands: Tax havens and the men who stole the world" as observing: "Americans have so many tax havens to choose from." 

The newspaper had then given its own opinion: "Indeed, Americans do not have to go abroad to hide funds and activities behind anonymous corporations: they can create them at home. States like Delaware and Wyoming allow the creation of such companies for just a few hundred dollars. These companies conceal their ultimate financial beneficiary. And while US banks are normally required to "know their customers," they can bypass that rule and open accounts for shell companies, ensuring total discretion for someone who wants to move money around quietly. The US Treasury is moving to stop the practice, which can be used by arms and drug traffickers to launder funds and ranks the United States third in the Tax Justice Network's ranking of the world's least transparent countries, well above Panama. The Treasury is moving to plug that loophole, however."

The "Times of India" had deemed: "But there is another possible reason that Americans are not so visible in the Panama Papers. Spurred by the need to halt huge, blatant tax evasion by Americans using foreign banks, Washington in recent years has cracked down with lawsuits, arrests and tighter laws that have targeted both the banks offering safe haven and those hiding money in them. Swiss banks were hit in particular. UBS and Credit Suisse, respectively, had to pay fines of $780 million and $2.6 billion for having helped US citizens hide money. Nevertheless, the seeming absence of Americans from the Panama Papers has fed conspiracy theories, such as claims the leak of the files was orchestrated by the CIA to destabilize Russia and other countries." 

It is extremely surprising to note that the content of a report published by the "Japan Times" was similar to the afore-mentioned "Times of India" report!

Another key Indian newspaper "The Hindustan Times" had another point to make: "Given that the ICIJ has listed 617 middlemen in the US, it would be surprising, to say the least, if American figures were not linked to the growing scandal." 

"The Associated Press," an American multinational nonprofit news agency having headquarters in New York, had recently quoted Ramon Fonseca (one of the two Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca partners) as saying: "Our law firm only has a handful of American clients, most of whom are members of Panama's burgeoning expat retirement community. It's not out of any anti-Americanism or fear of the Internal Revenue Service. My partner (Jurgen Mossack) is German, and I lived in Europe, and our focus has always been the European and Latin American market. He (Jurgen) loves the United States a lot, and I do, too. My kids were educated there. But as a policy we prefer not to have American clients."

The renowned American media outlet had also contacted "Sueddeutsche Zeitung," the German newspaper that had first obtained the documents, for a version.

Spokesperson of "Sueddeutsche Zeitung" told the "Associated Press" that the records include copies of the passports of 200 Americans and about 3,500 shareholders in offshore companies have listed addresses in the United States.

The US media house had added: "That's a tiny fraction of the more than 250,000 companies Mossack Fonseca has set up for clients in four decades of business. One reason for the dearth of American clients may be because such companies can be easily created in US states such as Wyoming, Delaware and Nevada, attracting less attention than they might in Panama, a country with a reputation for shady financial deals and money laundering. Europe is also home to countries that provide banking secrecy that could provide haven from taxes, such as Luxembourg, Switzerland and Andorra."

Even the globally-acclaimed whistleblower Julian Assange's organization "WikiLeaks" had come out casting reasonable doubt on either the origins of the documents pertaining to over 214,000 off-shore companies or the integrity of the journalism.

This is what the WikiLeaks had said in its April 6 tweet: "If you censor more than 99 percent of the documents, you are engaged in one percent journalism by definition." 

Another Wikileaks tweet: "The US government funded Panama Papers attack story on Putin via USAID. Some good journalists, but they are not models for integrity."

The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, had then launched a poll asking social media users on Twitter whether the "Panama Papers" should be made available online in their entirety in a similar vein to WikiLeaks' hallmark publishing style.

Reacting to Wikileaks' poll and criticism, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists Director, Gerard Ryle, had told "Wired," a US magazine: The documents would not be published online, arguing that it could expose sensitive information of private individuals and public figures. We're not WikiLeaks. We're trying to show that journalism can be done responsibly."

Meanwhile, WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson, an Icelandic investigative journalist, had told Russia's state-run international broadcaster RT (originally Russia Today) that he disagreed with the ICIJ's decision.

Hrafnsson had said: "I do have sympathy to stalled releases. We certainly did that in WikiLeaks in 2010 and 2011 with the 'Diplomatic Cables' … but in the end, the entire cache was put online in a searchable database. That is what I'd want to see with these 'Panama Papers.' They should be available to the general public in such a manner so everybody, not just the group of journalists working directly on the data, can search it."

In one of its reports on the subject under review, Germany's international broadcaster "Deutsche Welle" had opined: "Wikileaks, the whistle blowing organization, has criticized the ICIJ's decision to not provide open access to the cache of documents. The ICIJ's director said the organization wants to show that 'journalism can be done responsibly.' WikiLeaks, the organization that published thousands of classified documents detailing the US military's activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, has criticised the management of information with regards to the world's largest data leak, commonly known as the "Panama Papers."

On the other hand, some infuriated Panamanians have undertaken a likely quixotic crusade on social media to change the "PanamaPapers hashtag" to one that is less compromising of their country's reputation.

The BBC News had maintained that the 'La Estrella,' one of the main newspapers in Panama, had carried a front page headline claiming "The Panama Papers are a global attack against the financial system."

The BBC News had quoted Gian Castillero, an adviser to Panama's Foreign Ministry, as viewing: "The criticism Panama is getting is unfair. It is media sensationalism. This week's revelations on the mechanisms used by the rich and famous to hide their fortunes refer to multiple jurisdictions, but the world is only focusing on one: Panama."

It is imperative to recall that the team of International Consortium of Investigative Journalists includes 190 investigative reporters in over 65 countries and this international network was launched by the Washington DC-based Center for Public Integrity in 1997.

The Munich-based German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung had decided to analyze the data in cooperation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and around 400 journalists 107 media organisations in over 80 countries had taken part in researching the documents, which had accused former and present rulers of Pakistan, United Kingdom, Iceland, Russia, Argentina, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates and King Mohammed of Morocco of owning secretive financial accounts and shell companies in low-tax havens.