Latest: Corruption and Money Laundering.
AFP, PANAMA CITY.
Getting rid of tax havens depends on the US and Europe, but is unlikely to happen any time soon, journalists behind the publication of the Panama Papers said on Friday.
“The biggest tax haven in the world today is probably in the United States,” Jake Bernstein, a US investigative reporter with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), told a conference in Panama hosted by anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International.
“The biggest offshore providers have traditionally been American and European” and the banks they use “are often American or European,” he said. “Much of this corruption could be stamped out if the United States and Europe decided to act.”
Frederik Obermaier, a German journalist for the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily who received the Panama Papers leak and passed it on to the ICIJ, said the only real prospect for shutting down tax havens was if the public demanded governments do so.
“I am currently rather pessimistic that it will be possible very soon because real change in the offshore world is only possible if the big players go for it as well. The big players are the UK and the US,” he told reporters. “And both countries now have governments that I fear are not in favor of more transparency.”
Obermaier said the Panama Papers revelations were based on a leak from an anonymous source who handed over digital files from a Panama law firm, Mossack Fonseca, which showed how it had set up offshore structures to allow the world’s wealthy to stash assets away from scrutiny.
However, he said there were many tax havens around the world — and “some of them are within the borders of the US and some of them are UK overseas territories.”
Obermaier added that he hoped Panama Papers-style information will one day peel the secrecy back from structures set up in the US states of Delaware and Nevada, and in the British Virgin Islands (BVI).
“If societies really want change, they need the US and the UK joining this fight for more transparency,” he said.
Separately, Transparency International has bestowed its 2016 Anti-Corruption Award on the task force investigating the massive corruption-kickback scheme at Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras.
The task force driving the investigation known as “Operation Car Wash” received the award on Saturday during the 17th International Anti-Corruption Conference in Panama City.
Since 2014, the task force has been probing charges of corruption and money laundering at Petrobras.
Dozens of executives and politicians have been arrested or are being investigated for allegedly overcharging contracts with Petrobras and using part of the money to pay for bribes and electoral campaigns.
Additional reporting by AP
This story has been viewed 1428 times.
No comments:
Post a Comment