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Panama Papers Affair Widens As Database Goes Online (bbc.com)
In late April, it was reported there would be a huge new 'Panama Papers' data dump on May 9th. The report did not disappoint as today the Panama Papers affair has widened, with a huge database of documents relating to more than 200,000 offshore accounts posted online. The database can be accessed at offshoreleaks.icij.org. The papers were leaked by a source known as "Jony Doe," and the papers belonged to the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) decided to make the database public despite a "cease and desist" order issued by the law firm.
If I am not mistaken, the fact that these accounts are legal is a significant contributor to the public outrage (fabricated or otherwise) concerning this media event.
EG, if there were no laws against poisoning pigeons in the park, then a group of kids showing up with cans of bugspray and hosing down birds to watch them flop around until dead would not be illegal. That does not mean that the behavior is socially acceptable-- just not illegal in this contrived example. (Yes, I am well aware that it is indeed illegal to poison pigeons in most western countries. This is just an analogy; tortured and not ideal perhaps, but just an analogy.)
The real world example of the panama papers reveals a substantive effort by many power elite to obfuscate holdings, financial connections with industries they may be regulating as elite power brokers, and dealings with agencies or groups of less reputable character, as well as run of the mill tax avoidance, and sheltering of assets from unsteady local economies.
The practices are not "illegal", but they are socially unacceptable, which is why there is a scandal. The fact that "such things are actually legal" throws gasoline on the fire, not water.
Another tortured analogy might go something like this:
In many European countries, prostitution is perfectly legal. A conservative political figure publicly decries the practice of prostitution, but uses obfuscated holdings such as these to pay for such services on a very regular basis. No laws are violated-- the money was his to spend, and the service he obtained with it is legal. That does not make the circumstances stop being scandalous-- That of his blatant hipocracy, and abuse of client privilege to hide it to continue to snooker his electorate.
So, the fact that these accounts are not illegal does not remove the controversy, it is what causes it.
Can we move past that line of reasoning now?