The Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the Rich and Powerful Hide Their Money Paperback – June 30, 2016

Eye opening and mind busting journalism.Unfortunately, it only amplifies the shocking state of a corrupt world order.Thank you Mayer & Maier

Wow, what a story…I remembered when it came out. It was like wildfire but it didn’t consume all who engaged in offshore accounts. I think the author pulled off pretty good writing. There are two things that I wished the author would be included in this book would be a demo of the visual on entangle of the whole account setup. It was hard for me to imagine how complex but simple it is. Also, 2 terabytes seem insignificant to me but as the author mentioned all previous data leaks were gigabytes but the picture cue would help to bring in the imagination. Overall, I think this book is decent to read!

This is a very important book covering as it does the whole appalling international scandal revealed by the leaking of millions of confidential finanicial documents from the Panama lawyers Mossack Fonseca. Reading like a John Le Carre thriller, it documents the story of how this scandal unfolded with the unprecendented collaboration between journalists at Suddeutshce Zeitung and responsible elements of the press in many countries. The toxic effects of the criminality revealed has resulted in resignations of senior political figures in a number of counries, and undermined trust in politicians across the world. There really is one rule for the rich and powerful and another for the rest of us. Bastian and Frederik Obermayer's account of the unfolding story is a classic.

I was expecting the book to be more intense and a page turner. But sadly it was not to be. I’m sure if I will recommend this book unless you are really interested in the specific details of how each politician/country/corporation works they system. The specifics get pretty dry after you read the first one.Once you get the gist of how it is done and get surprised at some of the big names involved, there’s not much more to keep you interested.The company at the center of it is called Mossack Fonseca. It helps politicians, stars, corporations, etc hide their money. It is global, so this formula applies to the elite in almost every country. We’re the chumps paying taxes, the rich float above it all.The number of big names using their service was the most startling finding. Here’s a sample :Syrian President Assad and his wife, President of UAE, Former President of Jordan, Palestinian Deputy PM, Prime Minister of Pakistan, Brother in low of XiJing Ping, Putin, other high officials in the Chinese elite, Argentinian Prime Minister and the former Prime Minister as well, German companies hiding slush funds to influence various South American countries/companies to lean in their direction, Kofi Annan’s son, Kojo (Kofi was UN Secretary General), Iceland politicians and on and on.I just got about one fourth of the book. I’m sure more names were listed in the remainder of the book.This list of names that they list is based only on the documents leaked. It is not ‘all’ of the clients. The way the names keep unfolding in the book makes you suspect that if they managed to get all the documents, probably every major politician in EVERY country hides stuff through Mossack Fonseca.One technique often used by the culprits often is to use relatives and close friends to own the accounts. That way they can’t be tied to the money directly and thus escape prosecution. Also if the account is in a name with a different last name than the culprit (say a friend rather than a relative), you can’t tell who the real culprit is. For example, one could make the case that Kojo (Kofi’s son) maybe is hiding money for Kofi to allow plausible deniability. But Putin for example was using his best friend to hide his money. In his case though, they still managed to tie it to him. I suspect it would be much harder to do the same in other cases where this is not much public information available on the person.I never got far enough in the book to see if they addressed India. I have Indian friends who mention that everybody in India knows that every politician hides money in foreign bank accounts (most often Swiss). The prime attraction to be a politician in India is this ease of access to corruption and not public service. I suspect the same might apply to every politician in other third world country where financial oversight is pretty lax.

Amazing body of work based on a huge amount of private company data provided by an anonymous whistleblower employee of one of the most notorious law firms who set up shell companies offshore in international tax havens. The technical workings are beyond my knowledge of financial doings, but the writers make the points quite digestible as to the damage this "other world" of the super-wealthy does to society as a whole. EVERYONE who cares about income inequality should read this book!!! Only well-informed people can take the steps needed to force our government representatives to change the laws to the side of fairness and transparency.

Elected representatives, business people, entertainers and others, are shown to be no different from drug smugglers, traffickers and other criminal syndicates criminal syndicates that conceal their ill gotten gains, avoid tax and leave the common man ( who may or may not realise) to bear the costs of society including the evaders.

A very detailed account from two courageous journalists. I appreciate all the juicy details, but their broader implications require other writers to expand them. This is the task facing an inquisitive reader, and it's also a task that sadly covers all the guilty offenders from paying their full price. For a better world to emerge from all this, everyone needs to work hard, and reading this book is a good start.

I like this book. Breaks down the world of offshore companies into small understable bits topic by topic. The whistle-blower is also important considering the fact that she/he chose to remain anonymous. My takeaway is that offshore companies are the gateway to invisible slavery. And that the people must arise and break those chains. "from start to finish, inception to global media distribution, the next revolution will be digitized". Great book