Ian Bremmer
April 6, 2016
Political scandals in Brazil, South Africa, Malaysia and other emerging markets feed the deep suspicions ordinary people have that political and business elites are gaming the system to enrich themselves. Resentment over widening wealth gaps is also fueling populist U.S. presidential campaigns in both parties. Against this backdrop, the publication this week by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists of the so-called Panama Papers—some 11.5 million encrypted internal documents leaked from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that handles offshore business—will add to the cynicism.
There’s a lot of information here. The WikiLeaks documents published in 2010 amounted to less than two gigabytes of information, yet the Panama Papers have already yielded about 2,600 GB. According to the report, Mossack Fonseca helped set up secret shell companies and offshore accounts for some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people, owners who usually act through intermediaries to hide their involvement. Representatives of the firm vehemently deny they have done anything illegal. These five facts detail the charges and the political fallout of the biggest information leak ever.
