Everyone is saying the Panama leaks show that "global capitalism is broken." But the revelations haven't left communist China untouched.
"Mossack Fonseca's booming China business is evidence of an even bigger trend: the reliance of China's wealthiest people on offshore investments.
"Around $1tn (£700bn) left China last year, draining the country's foreign reserves.
"It is a shift that could destabilise the entire Chinese economy.
"And the relatives of China's leaders are among those who have stashed their wealth abroad."
Here's a petition calling on British Prime Minister David Cameron to do something about the tax havens under British jurisdiction, especially the British Virgin Islands, which has 15 registered companies for every resident:
Although the Panama leaks are blurring the distinction between "normal" financial activity and the mafia, it turns out that organized-crime figures may also be exposed (as well as some of the lawyers and others who helped them).
"The documents show how the global elite hide their money in tax havens and shell companies. The offshore accounts and shell companies aren't in and of themselves illegal. And not everyone involved with them will be found to have broken the law. But, at best, they are vehicles for tax avoidance; in the worst cases they assist in money laundering. In all cases they leave jurisdictions around the world with less revenue and require average people to pay more tax.
"Among the clients of the law firm are drug dealers and mafia members.
"The job of law enforcement organisations only gets harder as the means of hiding money from prying eyes gets more and more sophisticated.
"Tax havens are an ideal environment for organised crime to launder the piles of cash they accrue. There is evidence the Italian mafia have used tax havens and invested their dirty money in the legal economy for decades."Inevitably, bookmakers are taking wagers on who will have to resign because of the Panama papers. Ireland's Paddy Power has the odds. Russians who want to get back some of the money that has been off-shored can bet on President Vladimir Putin stepping down at 33:1 odds.
"Feilim Mac An Iomaire, a Paddy Power representative, said bets were 'yet to be set alight, so far we've taken €133 ($188). The biggest single bet is £35 on Nawaz Sharif at 10/1.'
He said the market was only open for 6 hours Wednesday. It might improve."Economist and political scientist C.J. Polychroniou has an op-ed on Al-Jazeera says the Panama papers leak shows the need "to change global capitalism itself."
"According to Tax Justice Network 2012 estimates, some $21 trillion to $32 trillion is hidden away by the super-rich in offshore entities.
"Just imagine how many schools and hospitals could have been built in various countries by the tax proceeds of this enormous amount of black money.
"Just imagine how much less inequality there would be both inside and between countries if the mammoth problem of tax avoidance could be avoided."The Panama papers leak amounted to more than 11.5 million documents, a total of 2.6 terabytes of data. A company called Nuix provided some of the software that was used to unlock the secrets.
And here is Computer Weekly's look at some of the other software that was needed to create the visualizations that are helping us make sense of the information.
Andrew Boff, a Conservative member of the London Assembly, has set a section of the Internet on fire with this controversial tweet about the Panama leaks scandal (worth clicking through and reading the comments):
Great New York Times piece on the Panamanian law firm at the heart of the leaks and of all the money laundering that is being revealed.
"The partners had become very wealthy, and Mr. Fonseca leveraged the firm’s success to gain an influential role in the upper ranks of politics. He told associates that he wanted to clean up the government, serving as a special adviser to President Juan Carlos Varela until the corruption scandal in Brazil forced Mr. Fonseca to resign this year.
In an interview, he said that entering politics was, in part, a way of giving back. “I believe in sharing the pizza,” he wrote. “At least to give others one slice.”
And here is Fonseca's cynical prediction of how the Panama papers story will end up:
"'At the end of this storm the sky will be blue again and people will find that the only crime is the hacking' of the firm’s documents, he said in an hourlong interview conducted over the messaging platform WhatsApp."
This LiveBlog could become a new full-time job. This graphic compares the sheer size of the Panama leak to previous "data dumps."
Pro-Kremlin political scientist Sergey Markov, who often appears on Western media to give the Russian government's interpretation of global events, has not ignored the Panama papers scandal. On April 5, he published the following analysis on Facebook:
"The prime minister of Iceland has resigned because of the accusations in the Panama dossier. Because in Ireland [sic] they have oligarchs, but also democracy. And the referendum in Scotland was real because Great Britain has democracy. And the United States has democracy. The Anglo-Saxons made democracy for themselves. Because for Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxons are people of the first sort -- they have a right to democracy.
"But the thief Poroshenko will not go anywhere because in Ukraine there is no democracy, but a pro-American junta instead. Because for the Anglo-Saxons, the Russians in Ukraine are people of the second or third sort. They don't deserve democracy. Biden has not given them freedom of speech. Washington won't grant them federalism. The United States took federalism for itself, but forbids it to Ukraine. The Anglo-Saxons have stolen democracy from the Russians in Ukraine, saying that they would just use it to unite with Russia. Maidan was the turning point from an imperfect democracy to a terroristic, nationalistic dictatorship. And we Russians cannot agree with this racism.
"And in Russia, Putin will not resign because he, unlike Poroshenko, is not a thief and a traitor, but is an honest patriot of his country. The citizens of Russia trust Putin and want him to rule the country and defend it. He is ruling and defending it. This is called democracy, when the ruler does what the people want."