Medium By ICO Services
Panama Papers leak is massive. There are 11.5 million of leaked documents that detail everything about 214,488 offshore entities. Politicians, wealth individuals, celebrities — names are leaked to the public, stirring opinions surrounding offshore banking and company formation.
The leaks spark Governments of the world to take action against their ‘naughty’ citizens. This is good news: Finally, some bad guys were put into justice. However, the bad news is, the good guys also feel the impact of the backlashes.
Reading the news, we couldn’t help noticing that the people and organizations mentioned in the list were treated like criminals, even though it’s a fact that not all who engage in offshore activities are doing so for illegal purposes, like money laundering and tax evasion. The media loves this kind of information, and the general public loves controversial news — unfortunately, not all were reported in all fairness’ sake.
The trends
Just like any other breaking news, the Panama Papers leak rises rapidly in exposure, top the lists of the most-searched topic on the Internet. However, it didn’t last long. The trends turned out to be fads, rapidly dropping down in exposure.
To give you an illustration, consider this graph from Google Trends:
As you can see, the number of searches drop rapidly after frantic weeks of coverage on the Panama Papers.
So, what happen to the offshore world post-Panama Papers leak? Regardless of what you read in the media, it’s business as usual.
The aftermath
Protests (like this and this) and investigations are taking place.
As expected, you should expect changes ahead. There will be more scrutiny toward offshore banking and entities’ activities:
- Tomasz Kozlowski, the Ambassador of the EU in India, said that the offshore issue will be raised at the G20 summit.
- Panama, Vanuatu, and Lebanon may be included on OECD’s black list.
- Investigations on those found in any data leaks.
- Deeper research on offshore activities found in other lists, such as those who use tax amnesty programs.
- …and so on.
Some agencies and service providers reported that there are certainly drops in the number of new clients, but clients who understand what they’re doing continue with their plans. Who are those?
- People who set up trust and want to pass the inheritance to the next generations;
- People who want to do proper and legal tax avoidance;
- Businessmen who want to do business in a certain region and want an access to favorable laws by setting up an offshore entity in that region (e.g. Setting up a company in Cyprus to do business with the EU);
- Traders who want to protect their investment portfolio and strategies from competitors’ prying eyes;
- People who want to invest overseas and have access to favorable tax laws;
- …and of course, those who are unethical and downright criminals — money launderers, criminals and so on.
You see, the 8-trillion-dollar offshore world — representing 8 percent of world’s total wealth — continues to be the go-to place for stashing clients’ wealth, legally or illegally. It’s indeed business as usual…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… (medium.com)
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