Although there has been very little reaction to the Panama papers revelations in Russia and a very muted response from the state-dominated media, one Russian is not ignoring the developments. Nikolai Suvorov, a resident of a village in Saratov Oblast, has filed a lawsuit with the regional arbitration court naming Russian President Vladimir Putin as "an enemy of the people, a friend of oligarchs and bureaucrats" and charging him with "robbing Russia; impoverishing the Russian people; and enriching the bureaucrats, bankers, and robber-billionaires."
The suit asks the court to remove Putin from his post as president.
A preliminary hearing in the case has been scheduled for April 28, and both Suvorov and Putin have been informed.
RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service is working through the implications of the Panama leaks for President Petro Poroshenko. Here is the first long section of their investigation in the original Ukrainian and in a Google-translate version.
An editorial on The Economist website today tries to draw some lessons and offer a reform agenda in the wake of the Panama leaks.
Cleaning up tax havens will not end graft. The prime responsibility for this lies with national governments, many of which should do more to make their finances transparent and their safeguards against cronyism stringent. But it would help if kleptocrats were less able to hide their stashes. Hence co-ordinated global efforts are required to crack down on corporate anonymity and to stop the middlemen who make it so easy for crooks to launder their loot.
Many schemes described in the Panama papers involve anonymous shell companies, whose real owners hide behind hired “nominees”. Such vehicles are known as the “getaway cars” for tax dodgers, launderers and crooked officials. It is time to untint their windows by creating central registers of beneficial ownership that are open to tax officials, law-enforcers—and the public. The penalties for lying when registering a firm should be stiff. Britain and a few smaller countries have led the way in this. Others should follow.
Next, regulate the law firms and other intermediaries that set up and husband offshore companies and trusts. They are supposed to know their clients, weeding out the dodgy ones. But too many are paid to act as buffers, offering an extra layer of protection against those who pry. Governments make great efforts to ensure that global banks comply with anti-money-laundering rules, while this shadow financial system is barely policed. That must change.
The Atlantic has a piece that expresses some of the same ideas, saying the shocking thing about the revelations isn't the illegal activity but the exposure of what is actually legal:
The U.K. is far from unique in holding this conflicted position relative to the offshore world, and nations like Panama know it. For example, the U.S. has been very aggressive about cracking down on overseas tax avoidance in recent years. But it has also become a popular tax and secrecy haven in its own right, earning it the nickname “the new Switzerland.” Thus, calls by European and North American countries for crackdowns on “harmful tax competition” are increasingly met with derision and anger offshore. Panama and other offshore financial centers know that individual firms like Mossack Fonseca are just part of a web of “legal corruption” that reaches virtually every country in the world. Destroying that web would bring down many firms, and probably a few governments as well. So far, no one has been willing to do more than pull at a few strands at a time.
We have heard a lot about Panama, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, and the like. But the U.S. state of Delaware also belongs on this roster of corruption, The Guardian reports, citing the work of Transparency International.
In 2015, in a ranking of tax havens most attractive for those looking to hide assets, the US came in third – surpassing Cayman and Singapore. The two places that were even better suited as tax havens for the rich were Switzerland and Hong Kong, according to the Tax Justice Network that published the ranking.
What was Panama’s ranking? It was 10 spots behind the US, at 13.
We have to spice up the Panama papers story with some comic relief to keep us all from going insane. Here's a piece from The Onion.
“Wow, I haven’t thought about that in years. How much was it again? $30 million? $40 million? Anyway, I’m glad they reminded me. Who knows how long that would have slipped my mind.”
And you can get a few more laughs by using Google images to come up with "Panama papers cartoons."
The Panama papers may also end up changing the way the secretive world of art dealing works. The Guardian looked at that angle in depth.
The Panama Papers reveal enough art in private collections to fill a museum. They show the extent to which art has become a commodity – its value used for everything from the guarantee for a loan to the settlement for a divorce.
And the BBC also reports that the Panama leaks may have solved the mystery of who owns a classic 1918 painting by Italian artist Amadeo Modigliani:
A Paris art dealer's estate wants the art-collecting Nahmad family to return Amadeo Modigliani's Seated Man With A Cane, which it claims the Nazis seized in World War Two.
The family claimed in court it was held by International Art Center (IAC).
The leaked papers have now shown the company is owned by the Nahmads.
And one more on the art angle here from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
Locked in the files of a Panama law firm are the answers to mysteries involving Van Goghs, Picassos, Rembrandts and other masterworks.Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi commented on the Panama leak at a press conference in Beijing on April 8, but didn't hold out much hope for a real investigation:
"China is currently continuing its fight against corruption," Wang said. "Just as our leader has said -- the fight against corruption is a constant journey. As to the so-called documents you are referring to, we have noted that Panama is producing some explanations and clarifications. I'm afraid we first must receive clarifications and understand what it really is all about."
And this article discusses how Chinese government efforts to restrict access to information about the Panama papers.
China has moved to limit local access to coverage of the matter with state media denouncing Western reporting on the leak as biased against non-Western leaders.
Searches for the word “Panama” on Chinese search engines bring up stories in Chinese media on the topic, but many of the links have been disabled or only open onto stories about allegations directed at sports stars.
Searches for “Panama Papers” in Chinese bring up a warning that the results “may not accord with relevant laws and rules so can’t be shown."
In responding to questions about cellist Sergei Roldugin, who was named in the Panama papers, Russian President Vladimir Putin praised his friend for having spent "nearly all the money he has earned on buying musical instruments abroad and bringing them to Russia."
This remark inspired the newspaper Vedomosti to look at Russian customs records on the import of musical instruments and create an illustrative photogallery.
In 2015, Russia legally imported musical instruments worth $48.1 million (less than 1/40th of the sum exposed by the Panama papers), including 40,000 digital pianos worth $13.2 million and nearly 300,000 acoustic guitars worth $11. The country also imported nearly 4,000 accordions and almost 54,000 harmonicas.
Opposition politician and anticorruption activist Aleksei Navalny was far more direct in his response to Putin's assert that he is "proud" of people like Roldugin. He says the documents clearly show Roldugin's offshore firm spent its money speculating in shares in state-owned Russian companies, often selling and buying the same shares within days at significantly inflated prices. As for Putin's comments, Navalny says:
He is a monstrous liar. A thief and a liar. And the people sitting around this lying thief are nodding their heads: Yes, yes. He spent all the money on musical instruments.
Navalny also wrote a post examining state purchases of musical instruments for the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg and found that all of them were paid for by budgetary funds. He adds that his researchers have not been able to find a single media reference to any program involving Roldugin to import and donate musical instruments in Russia.
Russia's independent Dozhd TV made a short video (in Russian) also making fun of how many musical instruments could have been imported for such money:
Vice has a rundown of the conspiracy theories generated by the Panama leak so far, for those who refuse to face the fact that it is about corruption, money laundering, and unethical tax evasion.
ICYMI, this April 4 piece from The New York Times public editor, Margaret Sullivan, is interesting. She talks about why the Times was not part of the consortium of journalists that broke the leaks story and why it has been so slow to produce its own stories.
Writing in Salon, Andrew O'Hehir adds that perhaps the Times was not invited to the party because "the Gray lady has a long and tormented relationship to the powers of big government and big capital, which largely speaks for itself."