Panama partners in crime

“We have broken no laws and cooperated with the government at all times.”

Variations of that statement seem to be the default defence of everyone from bankers to politicians when their names come up in the Panama Papers.

In the UK the latest to resort to some version of it, was first Downing Street on behalf of the Prime Minister David Cameron, and then HSBC on behalf of it’s notorious Swiss subsidiary.  The former because his father who lived in the UK, set up an off-shore company which has never paid any taxes in the UK, and the latter because it turns out HSBC has once again been handling dirty money, this time holding and moving money for off-shore companies owned by relatives of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Now HSBC is a well known money laundering bank. They have been indicted and convicted of money laundering so many times in so many different countries.  The best known case was in 2012 when HSBC were found guilty of  laundering drug money out of Mexico. HSBC were tried in the US and fined $1.9 billion. They paid and said how sorry they were, and their group Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver accepted responsibility for their past mistakes, but assured everyone they had now put all that behind them and had even,

spent $290m on improving its systems to prevent money laundering,

That was 2012. In 2015 HSBC all that was found to be blather. HSBC were caught laundering  – again. This time it was HSBC’s Swiss subsidiary which had laundered

the proceeds of political corruption and accepted deposits from arms dealers while helping wealthy people evade taxes.

And so I have been thinking about this phrase we keep hearing, about not breaking laws and cooperating with governments.  Now obviously the first part is rubbish for the likes of HSBC, but perhaps not for the origin of the Panama papers themselves the Panamanian Law firm, Mossak Fonseca. I think they probably have been operating within the law. Doing so by having laws with more holes in than a sieve and governments who leave critical areas of compliance in the semi dark of self regulation or even connive with skirting round the rules.  And this connivance is why I am so interested in the second part of the phrase we keep hearing, the cooperating with governments.

You see I think when we hear the whole phrase, in one variation or another, we are meant to think the two halves of the statement are linked. The bank, law firm or individual has never, at least not ‘knowingly’, broken the law and is now cooperating with the government. The cooperating is seen as the antidote and response to the embarrassing lapse in obeying the law.

But let’s tease the two halves apart. The ‘knowingly’ is precisely how HSBC, Wachovia, Citi or Standard Chartered all admit laundering was done at the bank, but are never guilty of having laundered it…not knowingly.  It is always a huge surprise. A discovery which saddens and angers them. Which they then move on from…. with the blessing of their government.

This is how they are fined but never guilty, how dirty money can have engorged their balance sheet but they never lose their banking license.

I think we could be forgiven for getting the sneaking suspicion that governments cover for their banks.

So I look again at the phrase I started with and hear it differently now. Instead of hearing how the  bank, law firm or individual is contrite about an ‘unwitting error’ about which they are now cooperating with the government, I now hear first a lie about not breaking the law, but then a startling truth.  You see, I wonder if we shouldn’t think that the one truth being hidden in plain sight in all this is that the financial world has indeed been cooperating with governments – but doing so all along.

Does it not make more sense to think that what we are seeing is not a few rogue bank employees and lawyers breaking the law and embarrassing their employers and their pathetically useless, regulators, but rather two cooperating parts of a system of finance and government who are suddenly revealed together? It’s not dirty bankers and corrupt lawyers who are – now they have been caught – having to cooperate with government, to clean up. Not at all. I think we should at least consider that the better explanation is that the two, financial/legal world and government have been cooperating all along.

It stretches the limits of credulity to keep imagining that the bankers aren’t well aware who their clients are and how dirty the money is they are accepting. Equally it is ridiculous to think that governments aren’t aware of how oligarchs become wealthy or presidents suddenly become billionaires. And that dirty but hugely wealthy system is there just whispering to our leaders – who let’s face it are mostly drawn from the wealthiest families.

I suggest that what we are seeing with the Panama Papers is two partners in crime who have been caught together – The ‘criminal’ and the inside man/bent cop together. Normally the criminal – or at least the organisation that he works for – look to the bent cop to protect them. Someone will have to do time of course, but the arrangement remains hidden and therefore protected.

But now the arrangement itself might be uncovered. And if the bent cop, the inside man, is revealed, that threatens everything doesn’t it? That is far more serious. And so here they are, both caught in the light, both being questioned in public. The bankers and lawyers must be wondering how far they can trust the politicians.

Normally this sort of thing is covered over by finding some poor low level fall-guy. Who even if he tries to say the corruption goes higher is easy to discredit or shut up. But now big level people on all sides are blinking in the unwelcome lights.

I think we should admit that both the global financial/legal system, and our governments are both systemically corrupt and have been partners in crime – laundering money and evading taxes – as a matter of undeclared policy. It has been and remains just the way the system they profit by, works.  The only people who were not to know is us – The little people of every country, who are told they must pay their taxes, accept cuts because they aren’t paying enough taxes, and obey the laws and respect their betters.

Time to wake up surely?

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