What The Panama Papers Leak Isn't Telling You

If you haven't heard of the Panama Papers Leak yet, you need to get up to speed .
Basically it is a massive insider leak of the internal papers of a law Firm that specializes in creating shell companies to help people laundry money among other things. The leak documents forty years of the tax avoiding scams they have been involved in for the likes of world leaders and drug lords to help them launder or hide money.

There are some very easily recognized names being drug through the mud but as Emptywheel points out, so far there are no Americans yet.

We are talking Terrabytes of information here, much bigger than the Snowden leak.

Something stinks to High Heaven here.

Where are the corrupt Americans?

As with the BVI leak before it, thus far this leak has included no details on any Americans. Some have suggested that’s because the Panama trade deal already brought transparency on US persons’ activities through the haven of Panama, except these files go back four decades and Americans not only used Panama as a haven before that, but the CIA used it as a key laundering vehicle for decades, as Manuel Noriega would be all too happy to explain if western countries would let him out of prison long enough to do so. Moreover, the files are in no way restricted to Panama (indeed, some of the stories already released describe the establishment of shell companies within the US).

This opens up all kinds of questions.

I'm thinking someone is going to be providing us the answers here shortly.

There are too many journalists and people in general who will be poring over these documents in the coming months for this information to stay buried.

It will be very interesting to see who's heads start popping out from under the rocks that get turned over.