A gripping tale, particularly in the wake of the the wide spread corruption that has had a choke hold on the global and US political and economic systems for over four decades! A MUST READ if you want a does of truth and reality about the world in which you've lived.

At this writing, a lot of people are seemingly terrified of people dressed as clowns, yet are completely comfortable with people dressed as lawyers or accountants. I put it to you that this is unreasonable because, as far as I know, no clown has ever looted a pension fund for widows and orphans of coal miners (Kindle location 909), nor has any member of the red-nose-and-floppy-shoes crowd ever caused the suicide of a small businessman by committing insurance fraud (location 3769). These tragedies were caused by, respectively, a lawyer and an accountant, both using the services of Panamanian off-shore shell-company specialist Mossack Fonseca. This firm, right up to and past the moment they were exposed to the world, insisted they did not suspect any of their clients were involved in illegal activities. Mossack Fonseca also claimed their lackadaisical attempts to inform themselves about their clients’ activities exempted them from any liability or blame.

A Panama Papers-related tragedy that you won’t read about in this book is the 16 October 17 murder of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. This is no fault of the author’s -- the murder took place after the electronic galley proof was made available, free of charge, to reviewers like me. Daphne Caruana Galizia is only mentioned briefly in this book (l. 4864), and only because she was able to put certain pieces together and told the world the Panama Papers investigations were coming 24 hours before their official release. However, since then, Caruana Galizia mined the wealth of Panama Papers information and other sources to expose the hypocrisy of the wealthy and powerful in her home country. Her work caused her death.

A lot of this very readable book is about the efforts of a large and far-flung team of investigative journalists who, often defying personal egomania, stifling bureaucracy, and the 24-hour-newscycle-driven desire for content now at any cost, worked effectively as a team and published simultaneously across the globe for maximum effect. There are many interesting (in an enraging kind of way) digressions in the story on the path to this end. For example: the 292-foot yacht Donald Trump bought in 1988 (l. 396) had a previous life as a floating brothel for a corrupt arms dealer, and former Vice-president Dick Cheney “was no stranger to offshore companies” (l. 1181), especially during certain Wyoming land deals in the 1990s.

Also interesting was Chapter 8, “The Art of Secrecy” (l. 2132), which explains how many of the world’s treasures, both from antiquity and later, some looted and sold by the Nazis, lie crated in climate-controlled Geneva warehouses, seemingly beyond the arm of any law.

President Trump, unsurprisingly, figures prominently throughout this book, buying yachts, lamenting the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (l. 5239), and engaging in lunatic failed development projects on various continents (e.g., New York (l. 5328) and Baku (l. 5415)) with partners who regularly used offshore banking. Most interesting, though, is the author’s contention that the revelations in the Panama Papers led to Trump’s election.

The argument goes like this: It is impossible to determine who the leaker of the Panama Papers (who styled himself “John Doe”) is. It is of course possible that the leaker was a state agency, meaning, a Western intelligence service. It is nearly impossible to prove it was not a state actor. However, Doe himself has said: “I do not work for any government intelligence agency, directly or as a contractor, and I never have” (l. 5113). One web site specializing in information security said hacking Mossack Fonseca ”wouldn’t even tax a beginning security analyst”, while Forbes magazine wrote ”a teenager with no hacking knowledge other than basic googling skills could have done it”.

Nevertheless, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his circle of cronies, whose many corrupt dealings were exposed, lept to the conclusion that the Panama Papers leak was a CIA plot. This tendency to attribute a starring role in misfortunes to nefarious government agencies is common in Russians (and, to be fair, other nationals as well) because it both makes the self-proclaimed victim feel important (see next paragraph) but also allows the victim to proceed without examining the role his or her own personal shortcomings had.

I mean, having your unalloyed avarice paraded in public is bad enough, but if you knew that the cause of your woes was actually some 14-year-old in his mother’s basement in Cleveland, it would be another serious blow to your personal dignity.

But I digress: The argument continues that the rage and desire for revenge by Putin and cronies against the perceived author of their misfortune led to the mobilization of great Russian resources, including the mobilization of troll farms in St. Petersburg and elsewhere, and wholesale manufacture of fake news, etc., which in turn led to a lot of the credulous to vote for the bloviating failed developer and reality television star for President.

As is probably obvious, I found this explanation compelling and well-argued, and I think you should, too. I recommend this book both for its thesis and its relative readability (meaning, while not a novel, it is easy to follow).

An unconnected note or two:

At Kindle location 667, the Liberian ship registry, a New York-based enterprise that has for many decades allowed ship owners to avoid onerous safety regulations and labor protectors required in other jurisdiction, is said to be the brainchild of an unnamed “former U.S. [S]ecretary of [S]tate”. Of course, I wanted to know which one. It was Edward Stettinius, who served under President Franklin Roosevelt.

There have been reports that this book will be made into a movie.

I received a free advanced electronic galley copy of this book for review. Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt and Company for their generosity

The world of secret offshore companies is outrageous. The rich and corrupt, seeking to hide assets and income from taxes, set up shell companies, foundations and trusts – by the hundreds of thousands – every year. Despite the harm it does to local government and the likely illegality of it, the industry holds public trade shows and conferences where shady lawyers, accountants, financial planners and consultants flout their services. The numbers are mind-numbing: over $100 trillion hidden from view, costing middle class taxpayers trillions to make up the difference. The treasure trove of the Panama Papers has imposed a little sunshine here, in Secrecy World.

Jake Bernstein has followed the leads backwards and forwards. He fills in the details of who the players are and how they got there. He also takes some minor side trips to corrupt practices like drug dealing, a slave ship, abandoned construction and a fraudulent reinsurer, to show how these players are actively ruining the lives of others with their fake firms. There is even a side trip to the Swiss tax-free art warehouses, where a good hundred billion dollars in precious art is hidden from view and taxation.

The book is structured like a tree. Each of the roots gets an airing, and they all lead up to the visible trunk – Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm from which all the documents were leaked. The roots consist of Mossfon bureaus around the world, dealing with various corrupt governments, corrupt banks and eager clients. The crown is the billowing scandals the journalists perpetrated, going off in many directions, covering the sky with corruption on a truly global scale.

Bernstein has an interesting style. He does with paragraphs what good writers do with chapters – entice. His paragraphs become cliffhangers for the next paragraph, keeping the reader hooked over a long, incredibly diverse and involved exposé. He gives the Panama Papers worldwide relevance.

The roll call of leaders using hidden offshore accounts is a who’s who. The perps include Vladimir Putin and his cabinet, Xi Jinping, Hosni Mubarak, Hafez Al Assad, both Kirchners, the king of Saudi Arabia, Nawaz Sharif, the ruling Aliyev family of Azerbaijan, David Cameron, Dick Cheney, the prime minister of Iceland, the world football regulator FIFA, and Oderbrecht. It seems like there is not a single financial corruption case in the news today that does not pass through the offices of Mossack Fonseca. And there is an entire chapter on Donald Trump’s connections and dealings with Mossfon clients and their offshore firms. They are his partners and friends.

The real hero of the story is the unique collaboration among journalists around the world, called the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, where Bernstein works. They spent a year trying to make sense of the documents and data. Their familiarity with their own country and region allowed them to identify players and plug them into deals. There was so much data it took 33 8-processor Amazon servers to execute a search in parallel. 12 million documents worth 2.6 terabytes had been sent to the group over many months. No one knew when it would stop or what the final size might be or what it all meant. More than 300 journalists in 65 countries researched the hoard, on a deadline so they could all publish on the same day. And the whistleblower/leaker/hacker has wisely remained unidentified, seeing what has happened to the likes of Manning, Snowden and Assange.

Finally, with the decline of the huge offshoring operations in Panama, Luxembourg and the BVI, the global leaders of this nefarious industry of corruption are the US states of Delaware and Nevada.

David Wineberg