Panama Papers Expose Another Way Our Trade Agreements Fail Us

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Should our own government help oligarchs, billionaires and their corporations, criminals and terrorists hide their loot, launder their funds, and drain countries and their governments of needed revenue? Or should our government try to help stop this?

Global Witness recently presented this TED talk on "how exposing anonymous companies could cut down on crime."

So far our government has too often been on the side of the bad guys.

Criminals, drug cartels, human traffickers, arms dealers, tax evaders, corrupt politicians, terrorists, oligarchs and plutocrats can use anonymous, secret shell corporations in tax-haven countries to stash, launder and hide their money. There are trillions of dollars of hidden wealth, much of it accumulated through crime and corruption. The secrecy is draining governments around the world of badly needed tax revenue, and it is enhancing and accelerating poverty and inequality.

Frederick E. Allen explains at Forbes, in "Super Rich Hide $21 Trillion Offshore, Study Says":

"A new report finds that around the world the extremely wealthy have accumulated at least $21 trillion in secretive offshore accounts. That's a sum equal to the gross domestic products of the United States and Japan added together. The number may sound unbelievable, but the study was conducted by James Henry, former chief economist at the consultancy McKinsey, an expert on tax havens and offshoring. It was commissioned by Tax Justice Network, a British activist group."

The Panama Papers

The Panama Papers expose by The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has helped expose how certain countries enable the world's plutocrats, outlaws, corrupt leaders, terrorists, warmongers, and the rest of the worst to use tax havens and anonymous shell corporations to hide their wealth, dodge taxes, dodge sanctions and even drain the wealth of countries. The reporting so far shows that just one Panama company had created up to 215,000 offshore shell companies for 14,153 clients. The reports link 143 politicians (or their families and close associates) to the use of tax havens to shield huge amounts of money. Again, this is from just one company in just one tax-haven, anonymous shell corporation-enabling country.

This also exposes how our own government is sometimes a party to enabling, even encouraging this activity. Our own government allows anonymous shell corporations here at home, and does not fight countries that enable them abroad when it negotiates so-called "trade" agreements that are supposed to lay down rules for financial interaction.

So-Called "Trade" Agreements, For Example

Our government negotiates what are called "trade" agreements with other countries. These negotiations are an opportunity to set up the rules for financial interactions between countries.

The 2012 U.S.- Panama Trade Promotion Agreement is promoted by our own U.S. Trade Representative's office as "a comprehensive free trade agreement that provides elimination of tariffs and removes barriers to U.S. services, including financial services." This agreement was an opportunity to fight global tax evasion, shell-corporation secrecy and other results of Panama's bank and corporate secrecy. We could have negotiated to require an end to bank secrecy and shell corporations. But bank and corporate secrecy were not even part of the negotiations.

This demonstrates how the warped priorities of our "trade" process are hurting not just U.S. citizens and government but all citizens and governments.

Repeated Warnings