Pandora Documents in 10 items

It should be emphasized that the situation that emerged while discussing the Pandora Documents is not a distorted state of capitalism, but it is itself. We can say that it is premature to say “Pandora’s Box has been opened, all evil has been revealed”, at most the lid has been opened.

Pandora Documents in 10 items

The Pandora Documents were presented to the world public opinion by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with the efforts of 650 journalists in 117 countries. The files contain financial information of 35 world leaders and 330 politicians from 91 countries.

The documents in question also contain information on 220 names from Turkey. Pelin Ünker and Serdar Vardar from DW Turkish made great efforts to reach us with the information on the Turkey leg of the research. While AKP media almost ignored the Pandora Documents, real media organs, including our newspaper BirGün, covered this news in detail.

In this article, I will make a bird’s-eye view of the process that started with the Panama Papers in 2016, continued with the Paradise Papers in 2017, and extends to the Pandora Documents today. However, we can already say that it is premature to say “Pandora’s Box has been opened, all evil has been revealed”, at most the lid has been opened.

1- After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, although it was declared that tax evaders and offshore tax havens would be addressed, no concrete steps were taken. Then in 2016, documents belonging to the Panama-registered Fonseca law firm were leaked. The Panama Papers were more about tax evasion crimes. The 2017 Paradise Papers, on the other hand, were intended to expose companies’ tax avoidance strategies. As for the Pandora Papers, we can say that the research focuses on the offshore shell companies founded by the super-rich and influential politicians.

2- In the documents in question, it is stated that the global elites, “democratic” countries (for example, Tony Blair of England), monarchical governments (for example, King Abdullah of Jordan) or authoritarian regimes (for example, Putin’s circle in Russia) are trying to evade taxes and keep their money in secret accounts. they seem to be combined. The interesting thing is that even those who are in the position of “rule maker” on tax regulations and financial freedom in their own countries do not follow the rules they themselves set. Presumably, they take detours out of concern that “I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or my wealth doesn’t stand out”. In fact, most of these practices are legal but against ethical rules. More precisely, they comply with the law of the country where the money is parked. However, ordinary citizens who make a living by their labor do not have these opportunities and the pasha has to pay the pasha’s taxes, and are subject to penalties at the slightest disruption.

3- The Panama Papers contains information leaked from 14 different companies. Offshore paradises such as British Virgin Islands, Seychelles, Belize, Samoa are important sources of information as expected. The peculiarity of these geographies is that they are very small settlements and contain a limited population. For this reason, even the very low taxes they receive from companies that do not have a name make a serious contribution to their budgets. However, another fact revealed in the Pandora Documents is that the states of South Dakota, Florida, Nevada and Joe Biden’s hometown of Delaware, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, the favorite of Binali Yıldırım family, have themselves become tax havens. In the meantime, let us remind you that information on the Cayman Islands, one of the leading tax havens, is missing.

4- Incidentally, it should be noted that the rise of significant tax havens is closely related to the process of decolonization. According to Vanessa Ogle from the University of California, who has researched on this subject, with the spread of progressive income tax applications after the First World War, the wealthy are turning to Switzerland and British colonies such as Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey. The second wave of tax havens brings the involvement of Hong Kong, Singapore, Bahamas, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands during the post-WWII welfare state applications requiring high public income. Later, in the 50s and 60s, with the independence of Asian and African colonies, wealthy European white settlers preferred to park their money in tax havens such as the Bahamas, Jersey, and Malta rather than in their relatively high-tax homeland. The rising bourgeoisie of the newly independent countries will follow the route of the colonialists and will soon knock on the door of the same tax havens.

5- We learned that the contractor Mehmet Cengiz, who is remembered with his blasphemy against the public, transferred his wealth to the British Virgin Islands. Inevitably, you can think of this island in the Caribbean, whose name Cengiz can hardly pronounce…

https://www.birgun.net/haber/10-materide-pandora-belgeleri-361761