A few days ago the leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, called on the British Prime Minister to consider taking direct control of Britain’s Caribbean overseas territories. His remarks – not without irony, as of all of the members of the British Parliament, he is among those with the strongest track record as an anti-imperialist – respond to the global furore over the so called Panama Papers.
These are the 11.5m files taken from the database of the Panama based offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca & Co, which were sent in 2014 in digitized form on an unsolicited basis from an anonymous source to the German newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung. They were subsequently shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in Washington and then researched by about 100 newspapers and broadcasters worldwide.
The documents’ contents link national leaders, politicians, their families, close associates, leading business people, individuals subject to UN sanctions, global figures in sports and entertainment, and narcotics-traffickers and other criminals, to companies and legal vehicles registered in or
