The Panama Papers have jolted the elite in China, Russia and other parts of the world. Some politicians are greedy by nature and many take advantage of anyone or anything to accumulate wealth because they think that they are never going to die! Even the decades-old Socialist austerity failed to change the elitist behaviour that still remains governed by a primitive lust for acquisition and hoarding shrouded in secrecy away from the public gaze and reach of the law.

Let us take Vladimir Putin for example. He has rejected claims of hidden millions in offshore accounts, ruthlessly dismissing reports that some of his close associates had moved around $2 billion through offshore accounts in the Caribbean and calling the allegations an American plot to try to undermine Russian unity!

Mr Putin’s name has not been in the leaked documents, but he rolled out the standard Kremlin excuse for any bad news regarding Russia from abroad. Russia, he said, deprives the West of its monopoly on economic and military power, which irritates the leading nations. So the West dreams up plots to undermine the ‘unity and cohesion’ of Russia. Specifically, Mr Putin named Washington, saying that WikiLeaks had reported that the Panama Papers were an American-funded plot.

However, after Russian state news media began citing WikiLeaks as proof that the Panama revelations had been an American plot, the WikiLeaks Twitter account said: “Claims that Panama Papers themselves are a plot against Russia are nonsense...”

Moreover, knowing how Machiavellian Vladimir Putin can be, his statements are of no particular value, and as such they must be considered as trash – no more, no less!

Last week, someone hung a poster at a bus stop in Moscow showing a picture of Mr Putin wearing a Panama hat, with the words “What Panama?”  Unfortunately, this poster was quickly removed.

 

Jos Edmond Zarb

Birkirkara