colossal amount of money that is not being
injected into the economies of their earners,
and is simply being kept in their hidden bank
accounts to be passed on to the next
generation, fostering a huge generational
wealth gap.
It's also important to not just think about
this as individual cases. This is not just about
an individual lawyer who's spoken to our
undercover investigator and provided
suggestions. It's not just about a particular
senior politician who's been caught up in a
scandal. This is about how a system works, that
entrenches corruption, tax evasion, poverty
and instability. In order to tackle this, we need
to change the game. We need to change the
rules of the game to make this sort of behavior
harder.
This may seem like doom and gloom, like
there's nothing we can do about it, like nothing
has ever changed, like there will always be rich
and powerful individuals. But as a natural
optimist, I do see that we are starting to get
some change.
Over the last couple of years, we've seen a
real push towards greater transparency when
it comes to company ownership.This issue was
put on the political agenda by the UK Prime
Minister David Cameron at a big G8 Summit
that was held in Northern Ireland in 2013. And
since then, the European Union is going to be
creating central registers at a national level of
who really owns and controls companies
across Europe.
One of the things that is sad is that, actually,
the US is lagging behind. Bipartisan legislation
had been introduced in the House and the
Senate, but it isn't making as much progress as
we'd like to see. So it is important for the
Panama leaks, this huge peek into the offshore
world, to be used as a way of opening up in the
US and around the world.
For us at Global Witness, this is a moment
for change. We need ordinary people to get
angry at the way in which people can hide their
identity behind secret companies. We need
business leaders to stand up and say, "Secrecy
like this is not good for business." We need
political leaders to recognize the problem, and
to commit to changing the law to open up this
sort of secrecy.
Together, we can end the secrecy that is
currently allowing tax evasion, corruption,
money laundering to flourish.