From Russia to China, and Britain to
Iceland, the revelations of the "Panama Papers" have tarnished
officials and the wealthy over the implication that they hide riches offshore.
But
one group is not there: prominent Americans. US tycoons and politicians are
notably absent in the leaked files of the Panama law offices of Mossack
Fonseca, which created thousands of shell companies worldwide to hide the
identities of their ultimate owners, some of whom may have been evading taxes.
There is Hollywood mogul David Geffen, the
Asylum Records and Dreamworks SKG co-founder. But there are no Americans
comparable to Iceland's prime minister, or henchmen of the Russian president --
all in the Panama records -- at least in what has been disclosed so far.
"There are a lot of Americans, but they
are more like private citizens," said Marina Walker Guevara, deputy
director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists which
coordinated the investigation and release of the Panama Papers.
However, that hardly means Americans have
fully embraced financial transparency, she told AFP.
"It doesn't show that the US is outside
of the offshore system; the US is actually a big player."
- Other options -
One possible reason for their small presence
in the Panama documents is that US citizens hoping to hide funds and activities
offshore were not drawn to Spanish-speaking Panama as a haven, when there are
options like the British Virgin islands and the Cayman Islands.
"Americans have so many tax havens to
choose from," said Nicholas Shaxson, author of "Treasure Islands: Tax
Havens and the Men who Stole the World," a 2011 book on secretive centers
for hiding money.
Indeed, Americans do not have to go abroad
to hide funds and activities behind anonymous corporations: they can create
them at home.
States like Delaware and Wyoming allow the
creation of such companies, for just a few hundred dollars, that conceal their
ultimate financial beneficiary.
And while US banks are normally required to
"know their customers," they can bypass that rule and open accounts
for shell companies, ensuring total discretion for someone who wants to move
money around quietly.
The US Treasury is moving to stop the
practice, which can be used by arms and drug traffickers to launder funds and
lands the United States in third in the Tax Justice Network's ranking of the
world's least transparent countries, well above Panama.
"We're in the last stages of drafting
the final rule," a Treasury official told AFP.
- 'Very frightened' -
But there is another possible reason that
Americans are not so visible in the Panama Papers.
Spurred by the need to halt huge, blatant
tax evasion by Americans using foreign banks, Washington in recent years has
cracked down with lawsuits, arrests and tighter laws that have targeted both
the banks offering safe haven and those hiding money in them.
Swiss banks were hit in particular. UBS and
Credit Suisse, respectively, had to pay fines of $780 million and $2.6 billion
for having helped US citizens hide money.
The result, Shaxson said, is that now
"there are a few tax havens around the world that are very frightened of
American clients, because they know that the US can hit them."
Nevertheless, the seeming absence of
Americans from the Panama Papers has fed conspiracy theories, such as claims
the leak of the files was orchestrated by the CIA to destabilize Russia and
other countries.
But Walker Guevara said there is still a lot
to be examined in the trove of 11.5 million documents that make up the Panama
Papers, and there could be more about Americans in there.
"It's a huge trove of documents and
maybe there's something hiding there that we haven't found yet. It's a work in
progress."
Washington (AFP)
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