Democracy is an illusion! It’s become a political system fostered by the élite, for the élite, in order to fool the people that they have a stake in the system. In actual fact, they have virtually none. The whole political system in the modern era, despite having noble beginnings, is now used to benefit the few at the expense of the many. – Mark Alexander, June 29, 2018
Monday 6 November 2017
Democracy Now! The Paradise Papers
This weekend, a slew of 13.4 million leaked documents revealed how the world’s richest men stash away billions of dollars in wealth in offshore tax havens. The revelations, known as the Paradise Papers, implicate more than a dozen of President Trump’s Cabinet members, advisers and major donors. The 13.4 million leaked documents also reveal how millions of pounds of the British queen’s private estate were hidden in an offshore fund based in the Cayman Islands, and how the senior adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau helped funnel millions of dollars to offshore tax havens. For more, we speak with Frederik Obermaier, co-author of the Paradise Papers. He is an investigative reporter at Germany’s leading newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung. Obermaier also worked on a separate investigation, the Panama Papers, and is co-author of the book “Panama Papers: The Story of a Worldwide Revelation.
