THE unprecedented scale of the leak from Panama this week has shone the brightest spotlight yet on the pathways of the world of illicit finance. Crucially, it has paved the way for a complete rethink of whether offshore tax havens are justifiable in the modern age.Just the scale of this leak alone is impressive, dwarfing the Wikileaks files released in 2010, or the HSBC Swiss banking files last year. In all, 11.5m documents emerged from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, revealing how it had created shell companies around the world which, in some cases, were used to help clients hide assets.These clients included 143 politicians or their families, implicating UK prime minister David Cameron, Pakistan’s prime minister Nawaz Sharif, and Iceland’s prime minister Sigmundur Davio Gunnlaugsson. Damagingly, the leaks show that the inner circle of Russia’s strongman president Vladimir Putin benefited by deals worth $2bn.So what do these leaks tell us about SA?Well, for a start, it sho...
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