David Cameron talks the talk about cleaning up international finance. Yet some of the biggest havens of dirty money are British territories and London property• Live blog: Corbyn says UK should impose direct rule on tax havens• What are the Panama Papers?Whoever leaked the information from the Panama-based company, Mossack Fonseca, has done for international tax regimes what the NSA leaker Edward Snowden did for international intelligence. As with the Snowden revelations, it took a fleet of assiduous journalists in half a dozen countries to start to make sense of the small print, but within hours of the first articles and broadcasts, a similar pattern emerged in the response.The Nordics, broadly speaking, were up in arms; last night, Icelanders were out on the streets calling for the resignation of their prime minister. US officialdom tried to pretend that nothing had really happened, while doubtless rushing around to limit the damage behind the scenes. The initial British reaction was to seek, and find, villains abroad; associates of Putin, Chinese leaders’ in-laws, North Korean VIPs, and now a relative of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. The grassroots response in the UK was, meanwhile, whatever the English translation is of “plus ca change”. Continue reading…
Source : theguardian.com
Read more…The Panama Papers show why Britain needs to get its house in order | Mary Dejevsky
