Page 45 - Ekonomija i Biznis_May 2016.indd

БАНКРАУРБСРТИВКОА

what is tragic is that the
documents indicate something
even worse. It is the indications
that the whole mess involves
people whose positions and
functions should be a role
model for everyone who voted,
everyone who work in their
companies, banks, law offices,
crying fans when the team with
their favorite player loses the
game etc. It seems like an infinite
list

(photo: http://blog.xively.com/)

the annual fee that Mossack Fonseca paid tice. However, there is a difference – now
to this region reached as much as 80% of it is a matter of their subsidiaries that are
the annual budget or 1.6 million US dol- engaged in private banking, established
lars. in these offshore regions. In accordance
with the data published by the Interna-
Reading the published text, what at- tional International Consortium of Inves-
tracted my attention were the relations tigative Journalists (ICIJ) and Süddeutsche
with the global financial institutions, law Zeitung from the early nineties of the last
offices, insurance companies and consult- century, until last year, more than 500
ing companies. All these institutions work banks through Mossack Fonseca managed
in a highly regulated environment, they to open more than 15,600 offshore compa-
are subjected to strict rules of conduct, nies for their clients. Of these 15,600 com-
they should have high corporate culture, panies, 5,954 or 38.2% are established by
annually they go through hundreds of au- the several global banks which are men-
dits, some internal and some by their regu- tioned in the documents so far. However,
lators and auditors, and still they succeed. this includes only the companies that were
How does this work? Two things are obvi- open through Mossack Fonseca. Let us not
ous: a) the regulations are not bullet-prof forget that there are at least another 4 or
and there are ways to bypass them and b) 5 global law offices that are engaged in the
the internal and external control systems same business as Mossack Fonseca. There-
often stay silent. In order to adhere to the fore, no one can say with certainty the real
professional ethics, I will not use names in number of such purpose-built companies
the text, considering the fact that no one open by the banks for their clients, and
is guilty until this is proven in court, how- in this manner they enabled their hid-
ever if the readers want to find out who is den clients to realize the desired transac-
involved, they can check this in the web- tions. Still, one should consider that all
page of “Panama documents”. It is a mat- companies that were open with an order
ter of more or less, the same global finan- from the banks for their clients were not
cial institutions that were involved in a involved in illegal activities, some were en-
sequence of scandals, which saw the light gaged in quite legal businesses. Now, after
of day since the beginning of the Global fi- the scandal has erupted, it is very nice to
nancial crisis to present day. These same read the statements of the involved banks
institutions more or less redeemed their and of Mossack Fonseca which blame
guilt paying billions of dollars for agree- each other about who was supposed the
ments usually with the US Ministry of Jus-

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