Secret bankers be warned: "Panama Papers" were the first shots of a "Helvetian War."

Here's a long one -- a major posting about the coming war that no one seems to have on their scopes or horizons. Although this scenario was loosely described in fiction, it may take the world's powers by surprise. And it will not need their permission. A few small nations could decide on this desperate course, tomorrow.

Let's start with last month's headlines -- and hence "old news." The spill of confidential records from a Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca & Co., was called “the Wikileaks of the mega-rich.” Despite revealing only the tip of a very-dirty iceberg, the Panama Papers shine light upon a vast network of powerful people around the world who use shell corporations and secret, offshore accounts to dodge taxes, or evade sanctions, or to launder money.  Mossack Fonseca is one of the leading creators of shell companies, according to the Center for Public Integrity.  Released files include data on 214,488 "offshore entities" involving individuals in 200 countries and territories.

Edward Snowden, the 2013 CIA-NSA leaker, comments that the “Biggest leak in the history of data journalism just went live, and it's about corruption.” Cronies of Russian President Vladimir Putin were implicated as well as the prime minister of Iceland. “There are dictators, members of the Japanese Yakuza, the Sicilian mafia, Russian mobs, weapons dealers, drug dealers, and pedophiles,” according to this report. Governments rock and boardrooms vibrate in the aftermath. 

The anonymous whistleblower behind the Panama Papers released a statement – passed along by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists - explaining his rationale and offering paper originals of the documents to law enforcement agencies, in return for immunity. More significantly, he indicts the web of deceit that makes a mockery of every "free-and-open market" justification for capitalism.

And yet, the most surprising thing of all would have to be… the shock expressed by so many. Seriously? That current levels of secrecy are unsustainable? Year after year – without much help from law or government – whistleblowers grow more bold. Disclosures get bigger, leading inevitably to one likely end, or another:

Either the world will see a steady, secular trend toward ever-more light shining into formerly dark places – or else the world’s elites will find excuses to clamp down, as the mighty did in every past human society, plugging the era of leaks the only way that it can be, through fierce repression. 

The choice is binary. Either Big Brother forever, or Big Brother never.

== The Great Heist of National Wealth ==

Let’s step back and deal with this the way that I am paid to do, with scenario and metaphor. Almost a decade before I wrote The Transparent Society, my novel EARTH (1989) foresaw a traumatic event occurring around the year 2025.  The “Helvetian War” would start to unfold when a dozen newly-democratic but poor nations grow tired of asking politely for the return of trillions of dollars that were looted from them by former, kleptocratic leaders. The war scenario may be fictional, but the cassus belli is all-too real.

"Global Financial Integrity recently found that developing economies lost $7.8 trillion in cash from 2004 to 2013 because of maneuvers like those allegedly perfected by Mossack. Illicit outflows are increasing at a rate of 6.5% a year, twice the rate of global GDP growth," says Time Magazine journalist Rana Foroohar, adding that this drain might prove a contributing factor to the slowing economies of many developing countries, which could set off a global recession.

The problem is global. Ukraine is seeking ways to recover vast amounts that senior officials stole during former President Viktor Yanukovych’s four years in office. “Even taking a conservative estimate of the scale of fraud for just VAT and public procurement, one ends up with a figure of $30 billion.” 

I would add that stopping this plunder could make a crucial difference between hope and despair, between life and death, for tens of millions of children. People are becoming more aware of the impact of corruption and how much it actually costs Africa, for example. The Panama Papers revealed that one company in Uganda avoided $400 million in taxes in an oil deal. That represents more than the country's annual health budget.

To be clear, this pandemic of secret, kleptocratic vampirism is the great lake of lucre that banking havens are most determined to keep secure and off limits from prying eyes. 

Did you ever wonder why Switzerland and its smaller peers caved-in recently, without much of a fight, tattling the names of rich Americans and Europeans with tax-evading accounts, tossing them from the sleigh? They did it in order to placate big, First World nations, bribing the U.S. and E.U to leave alone the havens’ other, much bigger and more lucrative business – catering to klepto pools and ‘sovereign wealth funds’… some of which have been laid bare in the Panamanian leaks. But only some. 

Take the case of former Nigerian military ruler Sani Abacha, who led Nigeria between 1993 and his death 1998 and is suspected to have looted up to $5 billion of public funds during his reign. As of April 2016, Switzerland agreed to return more than $300 million of funds stashed by Abacha. Not satisfied with eight cents on the dollar, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari – elected on an anti-corruption platform - is demanding greater international cooperation in returning more Nigerian funds hidden abroad, including another $7 billion that Nigerian auditors claim was looted between 2006 and 2012 “We are looking for more cooperation from the EU, United States, other countries and international institutions to recover the nation’s stolen assets,” Buhari recently said.

Of course this is the tip of the iceberg and a solution must be found by developing nations, themselves – first by cleaning up their own political and civil servant castes, but then by joining together, finding innovative ways to demand redress. An inevitable coalition that I portrayed (perhaps over-dramatically) as the “Helvetian War.”

We’ll get back to that scenario in a bit. But first, some of current details. We know that more than 100 news organizations have studied the leaked 2.6 terabytes of data from Mossack Fonseca & Co. -- once only known among the global elite, the fourth-largest law firm for offshore tax havens. The bared files go back 40 years.

== It started some time ago ==

But this is far from the first such leak. In fact, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has a rich database on offshore companies and their clients. Past spills include the April 4, 2013 “Offshore Leak,” connected to code name Hidden Agenda, which revealed:

...“2.5 million documents: the registration data of 122,000 offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands; lists of people who have made use of offshore companies; copies of personal documents including passports; correspondence; and information on banking transactions and other databases related to world-class politicians and businessmen, major companies and banks.” Then as well, teams of journalists vetted the documents with remarkable cooperative discipline and coordinated confidentiality, proving yet again that their maligned and beleaguered profession is capable of amazing skill and professionalism.

Of course conspiracy theories abound. At the time of Offshore Leak, there were murmurs that it mostly shredded the banking haven credibility of the British Virgin Islands, which had created a nested network of more than a million shell corporations. The fact that BVI’s rivals benefited from this loss of trust made some wonder if that had been the goal, all along. Similarly, the Panama Papers case has some assigning blame on rivals of Mossack Fonseca & Co, or else adversaries of the Panamanian regime. Because many cronies surrounding Russian President Vladimir Putin have used shells to squirrel away hundreds of millions, might this all be a put-up job, intended to justify “regime change” and oust Putin? That scenario, absurd to the point of hilarity, has actually been bruited extensively by U.S. right wingers, who maintain a “frenemy bromance” admiration of the Russian strongman. Alternatively, there is the ‘not-completely-crazy theory’ that the Russian regime itself leaked the Panama Papers! In order to stir resentment of western media, one supposes. Seriously. 

Indeed, let’s bear in mind that Mossack Fonseca is actually a pretty small outfit, when it comes to the larger world of crypto money shelters. The Tax Justice Network (TJN), a U.K.-based nonprofit, estimated that nearly 75 percent of all offshore private wealth is either directly or indirectly concentrated in the hands of the world’s top 50 private banks.

Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, whether the data spills come from some whistleblower’s conscience or machinations within elite castes, the lesson is the same.  Our experimental civilization – this rare departure from the normal human pattern of hierarchical authoritarianism – is almost always a net beneficiary of light. It generally suffers grievous harm when shadows reign. 

Those are the salient traits of our era.

== Pertinent to home ==

With that bald fact made clear, is it time to view all this in proper terms – as an existential matter? Nations and borders may not be at stake, but the very nature of this civilization is. And let’s not forget those tens of millions of children.

Suppose people around the world, especially in democratic but poor nations, started looking at matters that way. Who might be the belligerents in a “Helvetian War”? 

Well, start with a list of the top ten countries providing secret banking services. Yes, Switzerland— despite many ballyhooed “transparency reforms” — still is tops by far, along with Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, Cayman, Lebanon and Bahrain.  Also on the list, for the way several states like Delaware offer shelter loopholes… the U.S.  Indeed, one transparency attorney explained the relative lack of American names in the Panama Papers quite simply.  “Yanks don’t need Panamanians to set up their shell corporations. We have Delaware and Nevada.” 

Quoting Matt Pearce of the Los Angeles Times: “More than a century ago, Delaware sought to attract businesses by allowing companies to write governance rules that shielded management from liability and eliminated standard protections for shareholders. Today, the state is the legal home to 1.1 million companies, 95% of which have their principal location in another state or country. Tens of thousands of businesses list the same Delaware addresses, home to their incorporating agents. The businesses registered in Delaware include 65% of Fortune 500 companies.”  

“You’ve heard the expression ‘follow the money’?” said John Cassara, a former agent for the U.S. Treasury. “Well, when the money trail leads to a Delaware corporation, it is almost a dead end for law enforcement.” Similar rules are found now in Nevada and several other states seeking to raise revenue for the state “by creaming off fees from large numbers of companies incorporating there — and the consequences be damned,” according to a 2015 report by the U.K. Tax Justice Network.

In response, President Obama has pushed forward a measure long in preparation, but till-now stymied politically -- a rule forcing U.S. banks to vet the real identities of any individuals who own 25 percent or more of corporate entities that open bank accounts, as well as any individuals exercising control over those entities. American banks are supposed to “know their customers” who open accounts. But banks have not been required to identify customers who set up accounts in names of shell companies. The new rule, “would clarify and make absolutely clear to our financial institutions that they must know and understand the beneficial ownership of their customers.”

Oh, that’s a modest measure, compared to what is obviously needed… starting with a ban on U.S. states acting like the Cayman Islands. Still, Americans need to bear this in mind during the coming elections. One party would clearly move on this issue, albeit too timidly and slowly. If pressured, it might even act significantly, with a bill demanding clear audit trails to every living human being that benefits from any shell company.

The other party has fiercely blocked any action for decades. And it can be relied upon to keep protecting hidden wealth with all its might.

== Flags of Convenience ==

Shell companies aren’t just ways to dodge taxes, or rob developing nations, or launder ill-gotten gains. One of the most egregious and outrageous versions has long helped the unscrupulous to evade responsibility or accountability to basic standards at sea.

Starting shortly after World War II, Edward Stettinius, who had been Franklin D. Roosevelt's Secretary of State, bribed the government of Liberia into a sweetheart deal, whereunder ship owners might register their vessels with a minimum of supervision or fiduciary care, escaping accountability to the U.S. Seaman’s Act and other regulations. Many have heard of the “Liberian ship registry,” but few realize that American aristocrats still siphon off many of the profits and benefits from this dodge through the original shell company that Stettinius established to offer this cheat, splitting revenue with the Liberian government. Since then, others swarmed into this lucrative, if shady, business. Panama, the Seychelles and many other small nations offer “flags of convenience. ”

This practice doesn’t only apply to ships that move. The drilling platform Deepwater Horizon – which blew out catastrophically in 2010, flew a Marshall Islands flag of convenience, easing the way for lax safety enforcement and helping lead to harm inflicted on the planet we all share.

“In many cases, the flag state cannot identify a ship owner, much less hold the owner civilly or criminally responsible for a ship's actions. As a result of this lack of flag state control, flags of convenience are criticized on grounds of providing an environment for conducting criminal activities, supporting terrorism, providing poor working conditions for seafarers, and having an adverse effect on the environment.” A 2004 Report of the UN Secretary General reported that "It is very easy, and comparatively inexpensive, to establish a complex web of corporate entities to provide very effective cover to the identities of beneficial owners who do not want to be known."

Are you convinced yet that my “obsession with transparency” might be one that you and your fellow citizens ought to share? That rising consensus is what happens under my fictional scenario in EARTH, when – around the year 2025 -- the charismatic leader of a developing nation gathers a dozen other democratic presidents and prime ministers to make an joint announcement. 

That enough is enough. That the trillions siphoned by earlier kleptocratic rulers could save tens of millions of lives and give countless children hope. Moreover, those who shelter and help to hide the stolen lucre are complicit, just as liable as the original thieves.

And therefore… 

== What is to be done? ==

Oh, but that imaginary scenario is still too much of a reach, so let’s go back to reality for a bit longer. 

“According to my estimates there's about 8 percent of the world's wealth — almost ten trillion dollars — in tax havens, and 80 percent evades taxes, meaning only 20 percent is duly reported,” says economist Gabriel Zucman.

In other words, the current burden of taxation – to maintain the world’s roads and schools, police and armies, health systems and infrastructure – is carried by folks like you and me. You know. Saps. 

There should be nothing surprising about any of this. Look across the last 6000 years of recorded history, there has never been a time when a society’s elites did not include many who aimed to preserve and enhance their top status – maintaining a hierarchy-pyramid of unearned and inherited privilege -- not by fair competition but by cheating. They were human, after all, and this temptation appears to be an embedded part of human nature.

But that’s the whole point of our new, 200 year enlightenment experiment! We have succeeded (imperfectly) in freeing competitive systems (markets, science, democracy etc.) from the worst and quickest and most blatant forms of cheating – at least we have, compared with every other society that ever existed. (Not compared to, say, Star Trek, of course.)

As a result – and despite those imperfections – the rule of law has let us flourish in more prosperity and freedom than all the pyramid-shaped, feudal nations. Combined.

Of course, this only forced cheaters to find innovative ways to cheat. These new methods are more risky and convoluted than the old one (hire a bunch of thugs with swords and take everything from peasants.) But they are progressively succeeding, as we speak.

Our difficult task, maintaining a civilization of empowered citizenship -- the "diamond-shaped social structure" about which I often speak – requires constant effort, not only to fight each generation’s oligarchic putsch, but also to avoid the opposite calamity of monolithic socialism… which has always led to just more feudalism under a different vocabulary.  A different, socialist-sounding priesthood.

Our quandary was well described by the famous historians Will and Ariel Durant, in The Lessons of History. 

"…the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.” 

The irony in all this is that our greatest need, at present is not redistribution of wealth.  (Though note that the American Founders seized and redistributed up to a third of all the land in the original 13 colonies.) No, we can probably accomplish enough of a reset simply through transparency!

Suppose we planetary citizens manage to sway our most moderate and decent governments to prioritize the limiting of “shell companies.” By applying their still-potent First World clout, they might achieve a globe-spanning treaty, under which such shell companies may only go two or three deep before the true “beneficiary owners” – living humans – must be identified. Would this not gift our children with a vastly better and more accountable and transparent world? Note that this requires no confiscation at all, only light and accountability.

Sure, shell corporations are only the tip of the iceberg. A mere lava-trickle from the world’s super volcano of dangerous, cryptic trillions. A more general case can be made for a Transparency of Ownership Treaty, under which the following principle becomes a core element of worldwide law:

If you own something, you must openly point to it and say “I own that.” 

Anything that remains unclaimed, under at-most a couple of transparent shells, goes into a pool to pay off the world’s crushing burden of debt.  Moreover, you know that a lot of wealth would go unclaimed, by those who “own” it nefariously.

There is precedent! Look up the land reforms that Peru executed, under sway of the brilliant economist Hernando de Soto Polar, which vested in poor farmers clear title to land they had farmed for generations, enabling them at last to offer collateral for loans that in most cases vastly increased productivity, lifting peasants out of poverty. In a rare example of happy collaboration, both progressives and libertarians saw their hopes fulfilled, by thinking outside the foolish “left-right axis.” Losers? Drug cartels who could not contest these vestings with “I own that” claims of their own. Another example of a general principle… that bad men avoid light, so the rest of us should be drawn to it.

Concealment of wealth is the worst, but not the only cancer gnawing at our enlightenment bones.  In this insightful article: “They Don’t Just Hide Their Money. Economist Says Most of Billionaire Wealth is Unearned. The concentration of wealth from rent-seeking,” Didier Jacobs continues the efforts of the brilliant Evonomics site… not to hate capitalism but to save it from the recurring failure mode denounced foremost by Adam Smith! 

There are signs that the political caste is realizing all of this.  German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has proposed a major step - an international network of registers that list the actual owners of companies. If company registers listing the owners of firms were networked internationally, it would (at least purportedly) then be possible to find all the people hiding behind offshore companies. He said the Panama Papers were ratcheting up pressure on those that had not joined, such as the United States, to sign up. 

Okay then, suppose the planet’s nations agreed to a Transparency of Ownership treaty – discussed in more detail here. Not one honest person, not even billionaires, would be much inconvenienced.  Indeed, tax rates for citizens who currently file honest returns should go down! Because we are the saps who now pay extra to cover dodgers and parasites.

Okay, we're ready. To talk about the war. One that is inevitable, if we fail at reform.

== Helvetia delenda est ==

No, you Latin scholars, I am not calling for the events described as backstory in Earth… destruction of Switzerland and all the other banking havens that are complicit in the manslaughter of tens of millions of children, who might be saved by the return of klepto-stolen trillions. 

That story was fiction. In order to make that distinction, my novel uses instead the ancient term Helvetia, to represent only evil practices which must die. Earth was a dramatic exaggeration. In real life, the “Helvetian War” would never devolve into such violence, reducing the Glarus Alps to irradiated slag.

But the backstory to the backstory…

Picture that charismatic president of a developing nation and her colleagues, explaining to the world that they had exhausted every other option, in courts and international fora and the arena of public opinion. Moreover, since the secret bankers’ obstinacy was no less than complicity in outright murder of millions of children, a dozen poor nations had therefor agreed to call this cassus belli, or grounds for war.

Not a war aimed at conquest, or the death of even a single enemy soldier or citizen! But war in the very legal sense that allows belligerent nations to act aggressively against the interests of their foes. To seize, for example, ships or planes owned by nations who had become rich off parasitical banking practices and the suffering of the poor. To demand other assets be handed over by third parties. To blockade or shut down ports and to wreck business deals by threatening the interests of any company doing commerce with “the enemy.” 

All of that would be legal under millennia-old rules of war! 

Above all, this would empower the aggrieved countries with a powerful psychological weapon, depriving their foe-nations of something they’ve long relished – a reputation for centuries of 'peacefulness.'

I never wrote this backstory in any detail. But in my author’s mental screening room I envision the consortium of poor nations issuing letters of marque, empowering people all over the world to act on their behalf. Not to kill or injure a single Helvetian or Banking-Axis citizen, but to attack the enemy’s offices and other interests around the world with stink bombs, making clear their guilt-by-association-with-nausea. And there are so many other imaginative ways that “war” might be waged in this new-modern way. Not by rationalizing the crude and ancient meting out of death, but using the still-standing laws of belligerence to make a point. 

You will no longer help to murder our potential and our hope and our kids, with impunity.

Give it all back.

== Sticking to the plausible ==

Yes, I get it. Even after preparing the case, I cannot lead you out that far.

Only, did you read the Durant quotation, above? If we cannot solve the problem by cool, negotiated and rational legislation, then where do you think all this can possibly lead?

There are possible compromises, in fact. If those hiding the loot of Ferdinand Marcos and Mobutu Sese Seko were to reveal it, then the Philippines and Congo might agree to keep the actual cash in Swiss (or Cayman etc.) accounts, simply swapping names! Those poor nations would then be able to use the money as collateral for development projects aimed at uplifting the poor. A win-win.

Alas, the banking havens are led by humans, and hence they won’t agree to anything so sensible, not unless they see real pain coming their way.

And so, let’s reiterate what is fundamental in all this. Year after year – and without much help from law or government – whistleblowers grow more bold.  Encouraged by each Panama Papers-style leak, and by new technologies of information copying and sharing… and possibly by what-if stories like the Helvetian War, the trend is unstoppable, short of a worldwide Orwellian tyranny.

We need strong protections for whistle-blowers. But they will come forth, with or without such laws. The conscience of a new generation will be different than its parents’. The sons and daughters of struldbrug bankers will not want the guilt.  Some of them will tell. And a few is all that it will take.

Again. Either the world will see a steady, secular trend toward ever-more light shining into formerly dark places – or else the world’s elites will find excuses to clamp down, as the mighty did in every past human society, plugging the era of leaks the only way that it can be plugged, through fierce repression.  

The choice is binary.

Either Big Brother forever, or Big Brother never.

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