Just recently, we all had our eyes exposed to a global array of crime and corruption from the world’s most giant leak of offshore financial records, or else the very much known Panama Papers scandal.
This incident, of which the leaked data covers nearly 40 years (from 1977 to the end of 2015), allowed us a never-before-seen view inside the offshore world. This provided us a day-to-day, year-by-year, and even a decade-by-decade look at how dark money flows through the global financial system. Dark flows of money that are stripping national treasuries of tax revenues as they breed criminality and chaos all around the globe.
What is apparently more disappointing and heart-breaking is that even those world leaders who have embraced anti-corruption platforms and whom we have entrusted our own security and peace, are also those same leaders who have given an active participation in these deleterious mischiefs.
From China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, who has vowed to fight “armies of corruption,” to the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko who has positioned himself as a reformer in a country shaken by corruption scandals, as well as to the late father of British Prime Minister David Cameron who is a leader in the push for tax-haven reform, and down to a lot more names of famous and well-known personalities from politicians to celebrities, it is very much painful to find out how they have been betraying their people and how they have been blinding the entire humanity for the longest time.
This has indeed caused a great devastation to a countless number of people. This global phenomenon had just simply magnified the doubts amongst many of us. Doubts that are now built as hard as an ironclad that will be difficult to string along. Doubts that has the potential to be humanity’s last resort.
This massive leak of documents, a cache of around 11.5 million records, simply tells us that we obviously cannot just trust any agency or any leader. This tells us that even at the most peaceful moment that we think we are in, people whom we have entrusted such peace can be out there somewhere participating in transactions together with those corrupt politicians, fraudsters, drug traffickers, killers, and other high profile criminals all around the globe.
There is no way for this incident to just simply slip away. There is no way for this crime done against humanity to just be simply forgotten. From the billions of money shuffled by many politicians through banks and shadow companies, to the global industry of law firms and big banks who sell financial secrecy to fraudsters and drug traffickers, down to the companies controlled by several notorious leaders (of which one of such companies had even supplied the fuel of the aircraft Syrian government used in bombing thousands of its own people!)—all these, from names of people to agencies and to companies, shall be remembered as long as we live and shall be recorded in our history to serve for the future generations.
The Panama Papers scandal, the world’s most giant leak of offshore financial records, shall serve as a lifetime reminder for humanity that even a celebrity, a company, agency, or a political leader of the best character, background, or advocacy, can be the same culprits who will feed the evils we fear.
gilbertofficial 