How wives, children and relatives of world’s rulers and other elites uses tax avoidance arrangements in secretive tax havens to keep their ‘money safe’ is depicted by the just released Panama leaks.
Being hidden in distant destination lockers, the owners of these money need not worry about any enquiry on the origin of their money or tax scans.
Mossack Fonseca is a legal firm that weaves tailor made tax avoidance arrangements for its customers. Its activity is to arrange or create companies that need little disclosure about the identity and activities of the client. At the end a tax avoider becomes an investor.
Its customer base is wide and include rich from the oil sheikdoms of the middle east, politico-business profiled rich from other developing countries and the more risk taking elite from Europe and America.
The legal firms work is a masterclass one so that the client remains safe in the eyesight of law in each country. Money is mostly invested in what we call ‘shell companies’ that are qualified to be fit in front of most laws.
The Panama leaks is a result of the hard work of investigative journalism that brought light into political leaders and business people of nearly 140 countries.
It has done a Julien Assange type work as it has put the political leadership of every country in deep trouble. Governments who have deep knowledge about the secretive arrangements of the elite and the closed ones will find it difficult to stand straight for the time being- people are watching.
For India, nearly 500 persons appear in the list. Mind that Mossack Fonseca is a small service provider for the world’s tax avoiders.
Some of the listed people from the country replied that they have used legal arrangements like Liberalized Remittance Scheme to send money abroad.
*********
