Panamá City :: © Michael McCullough
Forgive me for not resisting the temptation to do a timely but premature post regarding the latest chapter in a global criminal story of seemingly epic proportions.
A financial, economic, political and social drama that is still evolving as I write this and also one that surely reverberates in the secluded quarters of Zhongnanhai in Beijing as well as in other places where China's top leaders congregate.
Call it Schadenfreude (a peculiar German term that doesn't translate well into English, hence no translation), but this is just too good to let it slide. When you finally convinced yourself that you can't be surprised by anything or anyone anymore, oops, there it happens again:
I am still a bit stunned by this major international scandal involving an illustrious offshore law firm (co-founded by a German, by the way) headquartered in the tax haven of Panamá City that inadvertently provided encrypted internal documents about its international clients (courtesy of a system hack by an unknown attacker and via an insider source) to a German newspaper.
The firm's extremely lucrative business model evidently includes services clearly intended to whitewash dirty money or hide, transfer and reinvest undeclared financial assets owned by the global lot of VIPs (mostly :: powerful, criminal, famous, obscenely rich and greedy men and women).
It should come as no surprise that members of China's so-called 'red nobility' are quite numerous in this special group of One-Percenters who are confident to deserve even more luxury condominiums and real estate, sports facilities, yachts and planes, sports cars, jewelry, mistresses (ernai, in Chinese) and 'canaries' (the male version) or high-end spa treatments for themselves, their relatives and trusted business partners.
The strange behaviour and odd hobbies of the Chinese 'bling aristocracy' (aka new rich), especially the ones exhibited by the offspring of current or former political top brass (dubbed 'princelings' and 'princesses' or taizidang), have been a thick thorn stuck deeply inside every honest, tax-paying and law-abiding Chinese citizen for decades.
When newly-elected president Xi Jinping vowed to combat corruption at all levels and to hunt down 'flies' as well as 'tigers', many Chinese were skeptical at first. Alas, the lofty promise to eradicate age-old systemic corruption was made to the Chinese people so many times before.
But soon after, it became quite clear that the new helmsman at the major steering wheel was deadly serious - much too serious for some factions inside China's opaque party apparatus.
What would they think? Founding group of the CCP / CCP Museum, Shanghai :: © Gavin Anderson
The enormous data leak involuntary provided by incriminated law firm Mossack Fonseca in Panama sheds new light on the dubious business dealings of Gu Kailai, wife of former up-and-coming polit star and mayor of Chongqing, Bo Xilai.
Gu Kailai was finally sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of the murder of an English business partner in crime by a high Chinese court. Her husband, who first proved very successful in making one of the Chinese mega-cities a lot more 'red' (meaning 'socialist' in neo-Maoist propaganda speak), soon became the first prominent 'tiger' to fall from grace and end up in prison for life.
But more embarrassing to the Chinese government (and highly explosive given the current political climate in the PR China) as the murder-cum-corruption affair involving Gu Kailai and her English / French business associates is the pile of documents containing names and shady financial transactions of close family members of other former or current CCP top officials.
The countless phony companies and business transactions spotted in the massive bulk of data obtained by Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared by The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with The Guardian and others implicate not only the daughter of former premier Li Peng, but also the brother-in-law of reigning strong man Xi Jinping, the brother of former vice-president Zeng Qinghong or the son of former politburo member Tian Jiyun, for example.
(For more on China-related disclosures in Süddeutsche Zeitung, see here; for an English-language account, look here)
Eight members of the CCP elite whose family members used offshore companies to camouflage their riches and assets have been revealed so far in the on-going series about findings in the so-called 'Panama Papers'. And as usual, the well-oiled Chinese censorship machinery reacted swiftly.
An army of online 'soldiers' seems to be working nearly around the clock to remove all traces of this latest criminal story involving highest-ranking Chinese officials and their relatives from Chinese web and social media sites and to block international coverage of the unfolding mega-scandal.
The first question that came to my mind after reading some of today's pieces:
Who needs Shanghaiesque or Hollywoodesque film productions or fictional book projects about the connection between semi-legit offshore companies, secretive overseas investment, capital flight and tax evasion, systemic corruption, moribund banking systems and ethical failure when the real stuff is so much more exiting (and irritating)?
P.S.::
Kudos to the small bunch of investigative journalists and their assistants who (hopefully) thoroughly analysed, fact-checked and closely cooperated with each other to enable (criminal justice) courts around the world to convict at least some of the 'characters' involved and put them where they actually belong: behind bars.
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