A German newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, just released the “Panama Papers”. A 2.6 terabyte document dump exposing over two hundred thousand of offshore shell companies.
USA Today is also reporting on this story.
A multi-national group,of journalists has spent a year digging into this data. So, what will happen?
Whoa, this and the Unaoil leak are going to be big tests of how big media corporations do inform the public properly. Will check how this develops too.
So far, it seems the Prime minister of Iceland and Putin from Russia seem to be involved.
Heh, there is even a Godfather involved in this.
I don’t really understand what this is all about.
Some rich and powerful people were doing morally questionable things with money–that I get, but it’s not really surprising.
What here is new, interesting, and plausibly will lead to some kind of consequences for the bad actors involved? (And should it lead to such consequences?)
I think, in a nutshell, this part explains what the big deal is:
Nothing.
My understanding, from the report I heard today, is that it uncovers not just skeevy behavior, but also illegal behavior. It’ll be interesting to see what prosecutions result.
Nonsense. The PM of iceland may lose office over this. Various other politicians will face probes from their home countries. A bunch of hundred-millionairies will now have their home countries revenue services going over the evidence and racking up fines for hiding assets. Various countries may try and change laws to try and make it harder to hide assets offshore.
Will the top people (eg King of KSA and Putin and multi billionaires) get harmed? Probably not. Will it really change anything? Probably not, but it might make it harder to hide assets in the future.
Thats not nothing.
Oh, you got me there! Frosty the Snowman may lose his job. Some of these guys will lose a tiny fraction of their ill-gotten gains. And now they have to find a new place to hide their money. What a global impact!
Sorry, but if heads of government are losing office over this, that ranks fairly highly on the scale of “impact”. What were you expecting - a nuclear war?
Corrupt bankers actually go to jail in Iceland?
Wow! That’s an interesting concept they have over there.
Ever hear the phrase ‘new boss, same as the old boss’?
I have. I’m not seeing any evidence, or even argument, that it applies here. Are you saying that every mother member of the Athing is similarly compromised, and that none of them are in the least dismayed at the prospect that they might lose office if their behaviour comes to light?
The editor of the German Newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung was asked on twitter about the lack of US individuals in the documents and said, “Just wait for what is coming next.”*
…and what new regulations will be put in place will make it an even greater hassle for some regular person/business to do regular banking for legitimate purposes offshore. Has already happened before.
Now now, you’re just jealous because your country doesn’t actually hold misbehaving politicians accountable. Iceland apparently still takes that sort of thing seriously:
You do realize that they hate when that happens, don’t you?
They hate it when that happens too. Mind you, I’m not saying that actual jail time wouldn’t also be appropriate in some cases, and perhaps considerably more effective.
But until citizens of the non-Icelandic nations abandon their lazy cynical posturing and start being embarrassed enough about looking like banana republics to push for more stringent penalties, we’ll have to settle for whatever minimal accountability we can get.
One theory I saw is that there is pressure to give some [del]perpetrators[/del], I mean businessmen 
a way out by allowing them to declare their actual worth and pay their real taxes for the year.
I agree, but it is quite interesting to find that Iceland was a Banana republic. 
QI was wrong, some greenhouses in Iceland produced bananas before but not at the scale of Spain, nowadays they are just being grown in one university greenhouse and not sold anymore.
Planet Money did an interesting podcast last week on setting up an offshore company and the basic takeaway is that it’s incredibly easy. I don’t know if the timing was a coincidence or whether they had heard through the journalistic grapevine that this was going to be a big story. I am guessing they will do a follow-up about these revelations.
Vox has a good background piece on the whole issue.
While at some level, this is something that “everyone knows” is going on , the specificity and sheer volume of these revelations will have an impact. At the least, politicians and celebrities around the world will face some unwelcome scrutiny and hopefully it will increase the global pressure to crack down on these offshore havens.
I work for an offshore company (Isle of Man) - that’s hardly the issue here, I think. The issue is having an offshore company and *hiding *that fact.