Sir,
There are over two hundred Pakistanis, not just members of Sharif and Zardari families, including retired khakis, bureaucrats, traders, land mafia dons etc who utilized services of Mossack Fonseca, a Panama based company that specializes in parking black money, assuring their clients of secrecy. This is just tip of iceberg. Just like our Panchayats pronouncing illegal judgments, the Free World Economies have allowed creation of offshore companies. Organized financial rape of countries in under developed world has been going on with support of corrupt elite that rule them. Those who resort to acquire services of Off-Shore companies do so because they want to hide their sources of income and avoid paying tax; otherwise in terms of fee charged they pay more than levied by regular banking channels.
For over two centuries colonial powers occupied countries like India, bleeding their resources and transferring riches back home to feed their economic and industrial grown as financial powers. World War 2 and events that followed forced them to vacate occupation. But their appetite and greed for more had become an addiction and they cultivated corrupt rulers and regimes in former colonies and for that legal experts and accountants put together systems to transfer billions to help boost their economies, while countries with vast resources kept on bleeding.
Setting up Offshore companies in Panama, Virgin Islands etc and giving them legal cover was evolved to continue this one way flow of wealth for investment in Western developed world, giving tax benefits and secrecy for those involved, who feared backlash in their own countries. For decades, money laundering by corrupt civil and military rulers, tyrannical monarchies, drug and arm dealers, all those who master black criminal economies in Asia, Africa and South America used these secrecy assured offshore companies to park their ill-gotten money in West, no questions asked about source of income.
There are countries in Gulf etc where no taxation exists and others in South America, Far East, Gulf etc, some of them have become trading centers, offering residential status to those who bring in millions and are allowed to even transfer these funds after paying fee etc. It is only when this channel was used by terrorists and Corporate America started utilizing it to evade taxation, has there been an outcry. Loopholes, built in to fleece others, was given legal cover, but now it haunts them.
ALI M. T.
LAHORE
