CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Massive Document Leak Details Offshore Accounts Connected to Putin and Other Leaders.

In one of the largest and most far-reaching document leaks in modern history, more than 370 journalists from 76 countries spent over a year plowing through 11.5 million records on offshore accounts and dummy corporations created by a secretive Panamanian law firm.

What the group—which was co-ordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and over 100 media entities around the globe—found was a trove of files that detail the holdings of 140 politicians and public officials, including the prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan and the president of Ukraine.

The documents, which cover more than 40 years worth of offshore companies created by the Mossack Fonseca firm, also exposed the holdings of a dozen other global leaders. According to the ICIJ they show how officials tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin moved as much as $2 billion in Russian currency through a variety of banks and dummy corporations.

The millions of leaked documents were obtained by reporters at the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which shared them with the ICIJ and other media partners. In the U.S., those partners included Univision, the Miami Herald and The McClatchy Co. Univision-owned Fusion has published a look at the documents and their impact.

The leak “provides details of the hidden financial dealings of 128 more politicians and public officials around the world,” the ICIJ says. “The cache of 11.5 million records shows how a global industry of law firms and big banks sells financial secrecy to politicians, fraudsters and drug traffickers as well as billionaires, celebrities and sports stars.”

There’s plenty of crookedness and corruption here, but the real problem is that tax laws almost everywhere are too intrusive, and take too much money. Simpler taxes and lower rates wouldn’t stop the Putin-bribery, but they’d put a big dent in the rest, which provides cover.

More here.