Pandora Papers: The Box was already open.

4 corners did a great investigative documentary on the Pandora papers. The documentary’s main focus is about a parallel economy that the wealthy, powerful, and famous use to hide their wealth, evade taxes, or do other illicit things. While there is plenty to be explored and said about the documentary there is single interview I want to focus on. 

The interview in question takes place between 23:13-25:39. Link here. During this interview a United states FBI agent is discussing the alleged embezzlement of billions of dollars from Nigeria and what the DOJ and FBI are doing to fight this corruption. Before diving into my thoughts and what this says about our country a few things need to be clear:

1. I do not have any sort of inside information about this investigation 

2.  I’m not making a judgment call on who this person is or their beliefs. 

3. This investigation is too large for an academic paper let alone an opinion piece.

Let’s look at the quote.

“It… It’s extremely frustrating and comes back to the fact to these known havens. Right. Whether it was Vanatu, Singapore, Cayman, Switzerland at the time. You have a handful of people that loot the resources of a country. Whether it is oil rich Nigeria, oil rich South Sudan, resource rich Congo. And yet frequently a great percentage of the population is living below the poverty line. Imagine the good that could have been done with five billion dollars in Nigeria in the late 90’s. The roads, the infrastructure, the schools, medicine, education, health care, all that could have been, all that was taken away by a handful of people.”

 Look at the second sentence: You have a handful of people that loot the resources of a country. Whether it is oil rich Nigeria, oil rich South Sudan, resource rich Congo. What I find absolutely fascinating is that in 2014 our DOJ and FBI started investigating the leaders of countries in a way to would put pressure on them for embezzlement that was over ten years old. Countries rich in resources we desperately need. It seems telling that this is how we would brand and describe the countries.  

It is no secret that the U.S. fights wars for resources. Vice President Harris admitted earlier this year that wars will soon be fought over water, not oil (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t833cvVNXpg). It is no secret that our country feels the need, because of the way our economy is structured, to control resources that sustain consumption and the growth it drives. 

These two sentences highlight the hypocrisy of the United States.  If embezzlement from the early 2000’s is worth going after why is it too late to go after those who collapsed our economy in 2008? Why are we sheltering the personal wealth of those responsible for the opioid epidemic? 

 I fully admit that I do not know the inner-workings of the DOJ or FBI. I fully admit that I do not understand the finances of our country. I do however see the results. I see the polls and studies. It is possible for anyone with internet access to look up statstics on wage growth in our country v.s. productivity and see how they have been diverging for years. 54% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, 40% of American households can’t cover a $400 dollar emergency, and some studies have shown that 61.2% of  bankruptcies, are caused by medical issues. These numbers reflect what we see in our current state of social unrest. Our society does not tell the story of people picking themselves up to discover more, but of one where people fight a system created to work against them. 

One of the most damming things exposed by these papers is that the United States in many ways has become a financial haven. In the U.S. we think about foreign island nations as being the face of dirty money, but the truth is that through our own tax codes and procedures we have created a safe haven for money. South Dakota was revealed to be a haven for 376 billion dollars. In general we have written our tax code in a way to give the wealthy a way to hoard wealth. When those savings are not enough money is still stored offshore, so much so that politicians fight on how to incentivize the wealthy to put that money back into the economy. 

We take the time to go after the criminals abroad. We take time to arrest and go after crimes here until you reach a certain tax bracket. Then we beg you to give us a percentage of what was actually due. Once you are two big to fail you become too big to prosecute. And when the company isn’t too big to fail then all of a sudden the personal wealth of the owners isn’t fair game. Wealth they built through loopholes in our tax code an off their companies profits. 

This topic is too broad for a single paper, essay, book, or library. Corruption is being done in broad daylight and has been encouraged by our failure to punish this behavior in the past. Any parent or teacher knows that failure to set standards and rules will create chaos. Inconsistently applying or having insufficient consequences does not curtail poor behavior. Nor does it encourage better behavior. Insufficient consequences encourages people to continually push the boundaries and create more harm. Because when the opportunity cost is not high enough, poor behavior is worth the risk. In many ways, what we are accusing and punishing others for doing abroad has already been written into our system today.  

I would like to leave you with a single thought, a point brought up at the end of the documentary at 40:27 mark. It is estimated that 10% of the world’s wealth is hidden in these secret accounts depriving governments around the world out of hundreds of billions in tax revenue. Think about all of the resources organizations like the FBI and their counterparts have and about the people and companies we know that hoard wealth. Those who lobby for better taxes and administrative rules for themselves and those who claim to make zero profit. Think about how strange it is that a company can pay nothing in corporate tax and yet somehow their CEO can give his friends a 100 million dollars after a space jaunt.  We can see that something is wrong with our system, this can happen, and somehow there is nothing we can do about it, because in many ways the system is working as it has been designed.

We see the ever growing list of symptoms of inequality in the country and yet there seems to be a collective amnesia and naivety on figuring out where this wealth is going and why. Once you reach a certain status or celebrity you are thought to be beyond the petty thievery and moral corruption we associate with s lower class citizen. A corruption that history has shown us is rampet among the wealthy and the powerful.

I don’t think it is any secret what is going on. Holding people in power accountable has always been hard. It becomes harder when those responsible to keep things even have been corrupted and can no longer be trusted. At that point the real question becomes if the people in power are willing to look past their personal gains to do something to benefit the many. If they are willing to do what they took an oath to do.  More importantly if they are okay with answering the question: When is enough enough? And are they really willing to face the consequences of not adequately addressing the issues.