The Paradise Papers. They Just Can't Stop The Leaks.

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

The release of what have been termed the Paradise Papers is causing all sorts of concern among ruling classes throughout the world. Some 13 million files were dumped on a German newspaper by sources yet unknown. They are files hacked, or “stolen” as the WSJ points out, from Appleby, a global law firm based in Bermuda, one of the world’s tax havens where the super rich hide their cash. It has been estimated on numerous occasions that as much as $30 trillion is stashed away out of the hands of the tax authorities. They do this legally of course

The files have been shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and reveal among other things:

Millions of pounds from the Queen’s private estate has been invested in a Cayman Islands fund – and some of her money went to a retailer accused of exploiting poor families and vulnerable people

Extensive offshore dealings by Donald Trump’s cabinet members, advisers and donors, including substantial payments from a firm co-owned by Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law to the shipping group of the US commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross.

How Twitter and Facebook received hundreds of millions of dollars in investments that can be traced back to Russian state financial institutions.

The tax-avoiding Cayman Islands trust managed by the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s chief moneyman.

A previously unknown $450m offshore trust that has sheltered the wealth of Lord Ashcroft.

Source Guardian UK

Writing in Left Horizons, Andy Fenwick points out that “….estimates for the amounts hidden from the taxman range between US$30 trillion and US$130 trillion, which is staggering amount when compared to World GDP of US$107.5 trillion.”

These are stunning figures.  The US ruling class is tiring of hackers; its getting impossible to hide all the loot these days and to keep all the filthy dealings that are the norm in their business from the public eye. They have tried on a number of occasions to declare hacking by nation states or representatives of states of any material declared a threat to national security an act of war. Bills have been introduced in the US Congress stating such.

It’s getting out of hand. What the bourgeois treasures more than anything is secrecy, the right to make their money and do what they will with it without interference from unions, regulators, tax collectors and the workers’ movement in general. But in this era of rapid technological changes and advancement, they are unable to stop the leaks. They have infuriated Trump.

The physical and psychological torture that Chelsea Manning received for leaking the now infamous collateral Murder video and the 35 year Sentence that followed was a warning to those who might be tempted to follow suit to keep their mouths shut. It was in particular a warning to the young people in the military as the military is already under strain we can bet on that. There are some 22 veteran suicides a day that’s not talked of much over loudspeakers at football games or on TV or in the sports pages that many workers read.

They can’t seem to stop the leaks but their media attacks them on the basis that all sorts of innocent people have their private affairs leaked to the public. Yes, let’s see, Zuckerberg, Bono, the Queen and her offspring, Wilbur Ross the crook. Nike, Apple who by the way have been fined $15 billion for tax evasion. It is an attack on a particular class of people and their interests that is a plus for wokers.

Movie moguls and other millionaires are included.  Anyone that’s been involved in rental struggles where you tried to find out the properties and business owned by slumlords know how difficult it is trying to find out anything about them. Trying to find who actually owns a corporation that’s screwed you is next to impossible.

We all know that when they want to they can easily find out anything they want to know about us about ordinary folk, about workers or small business. No, these hackers are leveling the playing field a bit. They are not telling us anything we don’t know but by releasing these details they become social fact in a much more powerful way and they give us more concrete information.

The bourgeois when cornered, explain their obscene wealth away in with all sorts of lies, misinformation and phone diplomacy.  Look at Forbes, they all describe themselves as “self-made.” How do you “self make” $7 billion? Lots of overtime?

Holman Jenkins writing in the WSJ this week is taking this seriously. There’s so much of this hacking these days he says, that is actually for, “commercial or political purposes…….attributed to national actors…..”  that is raises the question as to “…which nation’s intelligence agency might be responsible and what is the motive?”  Are the innocents whose “financial privacy has been invaded merely collateral damage in an attempt to hit a single target?” he asks.

He chides journalists for assuming that the clients whose documents were “stolen” are up to some sort of shady dealing rather than trying to find out the source of the leaks. That is understandable because Jenkins is defending the right of the wealthiest and most powerful members of his class to accumulate the billions of dollars they do and keep the details out of the public eye. It’s not illegal to exploit people, nature, land anything. That’s free enterprise.

Whatever the motive of the hackers this time, whether to expose the British Royal family, a bunch of wasters if there ever was one, or Bono, or crooks like Wilbur Ross it doesn’t really matter to the $60, 000 a year bus driver, the clerk, the waitperson the auto-worker who has had her wages and benefits savaged over the past period.  It does no harm to the more than 5 million people whose homes were stolen from them in the Great Recession, many of them bought up by private equity firms like Blackrock and rented out. What is so disturbing for the folks at the Wall Street Journal is that secrets of the ruling class are being revealed. Sure they can say it’s not illegal to accumulate $20 billion, Blackrock’s Larry Fink earned almost $50 million in the two-year period 2014-15. Thieves they all are. Trump’s $2 billion is stolen wealth.

 Life has been so good to the richest of the rich these days \and the inequality gap a chasm that they are more desperate than ever to keep their business dealings and their profits in the dark.   The UBS/PwC Billionaires Report 2017 claims the combined wealth of the world’s 1542 billionaires rose by 20% last year to $6 trillion. From the report:

Globally, the total wealth of billionaires rose by 17 percent in 2016 to USD 6.0 trillion, double the rate of the MSCI World Index.

Asian billionaires now outnumber their US counterparts, but the US still retains the greatest concentration of wealth

Billionaires are responsible for businesses that employ a workforce equal to that of the UK

Networks are playing an increasingly powerful role, with families working together on new ventures and younger entrepreneurs using contacts to orchestrate deals; billionaires are also playing an increasingly important role in art and sports.

More from the report

The 1,542 billionaires analysed own or partly own companies that employ at least 27.7 million people worldwide – roughly the same as the UK’s working population. The new entrants on the list in 2016 employ at least 2.8 million people.

Billionaires are creating alternative legacies through their cultural pursuits. They are becoming more engaged in the arts and, increasingly, investing in sports clubs. Private museums are growing in number and public museums are receiving more funding, increasing the accessibility of art to the public. Billionaires are also helping sports clubs to become more sustainable, helping them to deliver associated benefits to the communities they are part of.

Just what the world needs, more sports venues.

What workers must grasp and more than grasp but understand, is that the wealth of these 1542 human beings is created by the 27 million people they employ.  I hate to have to tell you this but if you have a fear of Marx you need to overcome it because Marx explains in convincing fashion how profits, and out of them accumulated wealth is created in the capitalist mode of production (not simply by buying low and selling high) then it’s a great weight off our shoulders, we realize finally, that it’s not “their” money.

The Wall Street Journal has another very small column tucked away on page four today. It’s about another study from Brown University that claims the Iraq, Afghanistan, Syrian and Pakistan military ventures have cost the US Taxpayers $5.6 trillion. The study arrives at a much higher figure than the Defense Department because this one includes recurring costs. All war costs aren’t borne by the Defense Dept. alone, the study points out, and it incudes costs such as, “..long-term medical care for veterans. Other costs to the taxpayer are related spending by the Homeland Security Dept and Department of Veterans Affairs and “other agencies.”

This doesn’t warrant much publicity either.

So the leaks level the playing field a bit and in this day and age they are going to continue. The US state department has thousands upon thousand of employees and we can add to them, the numerous tech savvy individuals who are driven by the desire for transparency, politics, what have you, Edward Snowden for example. It’s not simply national agencies. The national agencies of competing capitalist states do not want the rich exposed either.

The conclusion we have to draw form these revelations, concrete examples of the massive wealth in society, is that there is absolutely no reason at all that people should go hungry. That in many parts of the world people should have good public health systems, water, sewage etc. but they don’t.  It is the lack of public health that is the cause of much of the diseases in these areas, capitalism cannot develop the social infrastructure.

We can say no to austerity. We can cancel the student debt and make the education of citizens free. We can provide first class health care for all. To provide these necessities is simply returning the wealth the working class creates to us in the form of social services.

Naturally, like the alcoholic that recognizes they have a problem, we have to do something about it. We have to involve ourselves in the struggles of others that resist the policies of those whose bank accounts were hacked, struggles against racism, sexism, against the raping of nature. We have to help build a movement. As the saying goes, "An Injury to One is an Injury to All."

 

We have to recognize we have to change the way the world is run.  It’s not easy but will get easier the more of us accept we have to do it.

We’ve done it before.