A PROJECT by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) known as the Pandora Papers exposed the wealth and influence of many rich and famous public figures, including senior politicians, and the elaborate measures they put in place to hide their activities.

The Pandora Papers reported on around 12 million leaked documents.

These documents showed how eye-watering levels of wealth are hidden by entirely legal tax avoidance schemes and in secret bank accounts.

It is important to understand that while there are most likely unlawful activities also involved in these transactions, for the most part these are entirely legal loopholes that are being unscrupulously exploited.

That is the problem. This is no aberration or a broken system. The system was set up this way to protect the wealth of the uber-rich, helping them get even richer in a way that made it as impenetrable as possible.

In reality, the activities revealed by the Pandora Papers were no secret. It has never been a secret that that uber-rich pay little or no tax and that the tax receipts sit in tax havens.

The International Monetary Fund reported only recently in 2019, that up to $600 billion a year in tax is lost to these avoidance systems.

This is a massive spider’s web of deceit. Shell companies have been set up across the globe and used to hide the elaborate transactions that protect the assets of the uber-rich.

This deceit enables major corporations to force countries of the global South to allow them to set up within their borders under favourable incentives.

They then take advantage of the natural resources that the nation has to offer before paying the often ununionised workers a pittance and then, somehow, show little or no income in that country, meaning they need to make minimal local tax payments.

This is pure financial and economic exploitation of the global South. On the one hand, these countries need jobs for their populations, who, incidentally, always pay tax on their earnings, but they also need the tax receipts that should come from these major corporations.

Instead of benefiting the people who sold their labour, the tax receipts instead show up in faraway tax havens.

In the meantime, developing countries of the global South struggle to deliver healthcare for their populations and quality education provision for their children.

The workers, the people who generate the wealth, are forced to struggle to keep a roof over their heads and to put bread on the table.

One of the richest people in the history of the world, Jeff Bezos, with an estimated personal wealth of around $210 billion, routinely gets these sort tax breaks for his company Amazon.

Neither he nor Amazon pay virtually any tax. Bezos seems more concerned about space exploration and displacing human beings as workers with elaborate robotics in the warehouses that he and his company operate.

This is simply the rich waging war on the poor. It is the prioritisation of profits over the people. It is inevitable under capitalism, but it is, however, also mega corporate corruption as well as a new financial and economic colonialism.

Having exploited working people, the uber-rich then use their vast wealth to get elected to parliaments or presidencies across the world so that they can protect these systems of evasion and protect themselves from any scrutiny.

If they don’t get elected themselves, they provide financial support for candidates to do their bidding.

If these people are somehow removed from office then there is usually a nice well-paid job waiting for them on the board of one of the companies they have been protecting.

Companies are able to behave this way because far too many politicians are in their pockets through the donations they receive or the promise of immense unscrutinised wealth for themselves once they leave public office.

This is why partial attempts at reform simply will not work.

These operations of financial hoarding and laundering are thoroughly ingrained into the system.

A fundamental shift in power in favour of working-class people is the only thing that will make a difference.

They can also behave this way because we are not aware enough and organised well enough to stop them.

The Pandora Papers are important — anything that identifies more than 336 corrupt politicians is fine by me — but it remains to be seen what the fate of these corrupt politicians will be.

However, it is surprising that such a comprehensive investigation failed to name a single US lawmaker.

Perhaps the funding of the ICIJ by the Ford Foundation, George Soros and its links to USAid and the State Department might have something to do with this oversight?

Hopefully, though, there are more documents to follow that may provide further clarity on what is happening on this front in the US.

I welcome the Pandora Papers and anything that exposes the web of deceit that exists at the heart of our financial and political system.

The exploitative and elaborate system of new colonialism that has emerged to further exploit the people of the global South and make the rich even richer needs to be exposed at every opportunity.

Roger McKenzie is general secretary of Liberation and a union and anti-racist organiser.