The Whole Hog: Panama What?

As a friend recently commented, you don’t know what you’ll be confronted with, when you pull back the curtains in the morning.

The latest sensation is the leaking of the so-called Panama Papers – 11.5 million confidential documents from the Panamanian legal firm Mossack Fonseca – which reveal how very rich people have avoided paying large amounts of tax and used offshore vehicles to shelter wealth and to influence huge financial scenarios.

The scale of the revelations – originally delivered to the German newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung by a source who identified himself simply as John Doe, and subsequently researched by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists – is enormous and reaches into banking, property, politics and football. But it also extends to fraudsters, drug cartels and rogue nations.
It is grotesque and revolting – but of course it is also unsurprising. This kind of thing has been going on for decades. Indeed, some readers are old enough to remember the case of the Ansbacher accounts in Ireland, revealed in the 1990s. The Panama papers leaks merely confirm how widespread – and how embedded in the prevailing global financial systems – it all is.

In essence, clever lawyers and accountants can create a spidery shadow world where funds can be in a bank down the street but nominally situated in another jurisdiction – and therefore beyond the reach of the authorities. And so on.

Strictly speaking, much of the activity revealed in these documents may be legal. Furthermore, many people might well have some sympathy with the desire to hang on to what you’ve got. But that doesn’t make it ethically sound, nor does it justify the extraordinary loops and hoops constructed to keep wealth secret from the eyes of taxpayers and tax collectors.

Business In Uzbekistan
Hundreds of thousands of shell companies have been established. A large proportion of these are based (nominally) in British Overseas Territories such as the Caymans and the British Virgin Islands.

We in Ireland should note this with concern, because it now seems probable that the UK will leave the European Union in the near future. If that happens certain elements – nobody can foretell how many – of the financial services industry will decamp from London to Dublin, and they won’t travel alone. Their toxic behaviour and, most likely, some of their toxic customer-base, will accompany them...

We need to think carefully about this. We all inhabit a moral landscape and, despite what you may read elsewhere, Ireland is actually a relatively clean place to do business. Okay, maybe Denmark is cleaner, and Finland... and Norway. But overall, Ireland is okay.

You won’t hear that from the commentariat. They will point to Transparency International’s corruption index and say we’re only ranked 18th. They ignore the fact that the UK is ranked 10th in the same index. No offence, but there’s no comparison. The UK is up to its oxters in corruption: just look at the oligarchs, gangsters and thugs who dominate London’s property market (though, in fairness, Transparency International says that the UK has improved).

As Transparency International are at pains to point out, many of the apparently non-corrupt countries simply export corruption. They instance Sweden which, as a Nordic country, is one of the models that the commentariat would like Ireland to match. According to TI, Sweden comes third in the index. Yet the Swedish-Finnish firm TeliaSonera – 37 per cent owned by the Swedish state – is facing allegations that it paid millions of dollars in bribes to secure business in Uzbekistan, which comes in at 153rd in the index.

Financial Circus Tricks
Take a look at the number of offshore companies, referred to in the Panama Papers, that are used to hide money across the globe. According to one analysis published in the Irish Times (April 4th), there are 38,433 of these companies in Switzerland and 37,919 in Hong Kong. There are 15,895 in Panama, 14,364 in Jersey, 10,848 in Luxembourg and 9,670 in the UK. They number in their thousands elsewhere too. And in Ireland? There’s 322.

No, that’s not a mistake. Three hundred and twenty two.

Now, whatever place you’re coming from politically, that’s low for a banana republic, isn’t it? Okay, if the 322 aren’t above board, well, that’s too many. But from the endless hectoring and finger-wagging about Ireland, frankly, I expected a few thousand at least. You can sense a weird kind of disappointment out there in media-land, a frustration, a feeling that we should have more of these bad things to show that we’re really down there in the cesspit with the world’s worst.

The impression is that we are full of corrupt business people and bribable public officials. But compared with, say, Azerbaijan, Ireland is as clean as a whistle. I mean it! Yes, there have been corrupt public officials and wayward bankers and paramilitary bank robbers turned social activists as well. But overall? Ireland is not as bad as you might fear.

Now, none of this is to condone wrongdoing on tax evasion. There are moral and political choices to be made. Ireland needs to be four square behind efforts to normalise the personal and company tax systems and eliminate financial circus tricks, while also maintaining its own position on corporate tax. Legitimate competitiveness should never be confused with corruption or softness on tax evasion.

It’s politically tricky, but morally and ethically straightforward. We should, as The Beatles might put it, strive to keep our fire engine clean, it should be a clean machine.

As Brexit looms, we can take the high road or the low. Either or both may well be profitable in the end. But the key decisions won’t be taken by you or me or our elected representatives.

Indeed they may not be taken at all as such. If we’re not alert, they’ll just happen willy nilly – and we’ll only uncover them when it’s too late. Now is when we should talk of these things, not then.

Anybody listening?