Director Alex Winter has made a new film detailing the effect of the Panama Papers, a global documentary that captures one of the largest corruption scandals in history. The film is based on the book by Bastian Obermayer, a reporter who worked with a newspaper in Munich, Germany. Obermayer received an anonymous email in 2015 from “John Doe,” who called himself “just a concerned citizen,” who promised to send the reporter information about a Panamanian law firm detailing an unbelievable amount of corruption that the anonymous sender wanted to expose.
In what became “the largest leak of secret documents in history,” we learned through emails and PDFs how the most corrupt people in the world have used offshore banks, tax dodging, money laundering and other criminal acts to enrich themselves. It includes information about how drug lords hid their money and it airs suspicions that some illegal “investments” helped our president to hide his money. No wonder he doesn’t want us to see his tax returns. There are a few reasons, and they are all illegal. He probably understated his profits in order to avoid taxes, and very likely used dummy corporation to launder his money. Alex Winter’s documentary “The Panama papers,” tells us “how we got that story,” naming so very famous people, politicians, actors, athletes, socialites and others who used illegal means to hide their money from the tax man. He says that this is the story of how trillions of dollars are taken from the taxpayers. The trove consisted of more than 11 and a half million documents exposing the dark financial dealings of the world’s richest people. Obermayer was apparently scared of the knowledge he had acquired regarding the illegal dealings of so many important people, including drug lords who would not have hesitated to get rid of him. Mauricio Macri, Dilma Rousseff, Leonel Messi and other famous people were named in the documents. Rousseff lost her job as president of Brazil.
Fresh on our minds is the tragic end of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist who had been reporting on the Saudi Prince Mohamed Bin Salman known as MBS. President Trump says that we have too much to loose if the Saudis cancel contracts worth over 120 billion. But recent reports state that the figure is greatly exaggerated because Jared Kushner instead in inflating it to give the impression that Trump had done a great job in dealing with the Saudis. And when we learned about the Panama Papers it became clear that the system is rigged, that the whole reason Trump wanted to be president was to protect his wealth, to become richer and to enrich his friends. If we expected help from the leadership there was no hope. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell aided and abetted this president. Ryan is gone, but McConnell will continue to do Trump’s bidding. Maybe the Mueller report, whenever it is released will finally bring this shameful government that is destroying the land and our institutions.
Editorial.
Noticias Newswire
