The Paradise Papers were published on November 5 and revealed that a huge number of global companies, politicians and public figures are involved in tax evasion and money laundering. However, this new wave of leaks did not yield the expected reaction in terms of mobilizing the local and international public opinion to pressure governments to take legal measures against these practices.
This happened because electronic leaks are no longer viewed as an exceptional development that attracts the attention of the public and political elite, but they have become daily facts related to political practices in what is now called “war of leaks” and deliberate “electronic misinformation.”
Paradise Leaks
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Guardian, the BBC and the New York Times published on November 5 massive amounts of documents about tax havens and tax evasion. The leaked documents were called Paradise Papers.
These documents exposed a big number of politicians and public figures in around 50 countries. They also exposed companies, which supervise money laundering in tax havens such as in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.
Most of the leaked documents pertain to the law firm Appleby in Bermuda, which supervises the investments of a large number of companies. The documents include emails, loan agreements and bank statements of over 25,000 companies. Appleby has supervised these operations since the 1950’s until 2016.
The documents confirmed the involvement of global companies in tax evasion. These companies include Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Ebay, Uber, Nike, Walmart, Siemens, McDonald’s and other companies, which established companies in foreign countries to evade taxes in their countries.
The documents also included the names of some politicians such as US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. However, there is no evidence that Tillerson committed any economic violations. According to the documents, US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross has investments worth millions of dollars in Navigator, which is linked to the Russian energy giant Sibur that has strong ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his family.
Paradise Papers also revealed that Britain’s queen invested in offshore companies and that Stephen Bronfman, an advisor of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Turdeau, is involved in undeclared investments in the Cayman Islands as part of tax evasion operations.
Among those named in Paradise Papers are Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, Spanish politician and Barcelona’s former mayor Xavier Trias, three of Canada’s former prime ministers (Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin and Brian Mulroney), Argentine’s Finance Minister Luis Caputo, Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Nigeria’s National Assembly chief Bukola Saraki, Kazakhstan’s Minister of Oil and Gas Sauat Mynbayev and former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.
The documents also included names of Middle Eastern figures such as Rami Makhlouf, the cousin of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Ghassan Shawkat, former member of the Iraqi parliament, the sons of Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim and Shaukat Aziz, a former prime minister of Pakistan.
Although the EU and a number of countries announced that they will investigate the involvement of political figures in tax evasion, a huge amount of the leaked documents did not receive the expected reaction in terms of stirring the local and global public opinion against the exposed figures. Many of the concerned countries have so far not taken any judicial measures based on these documents.
Pressing Variations
Unlike the waves of major leaks, which received global attention and follow-up, electronic leaks in the recent phase – primarily the Paradise Papers – were influenced by some variations that affected their efficiency and how much they are trusted among those who usually follow up on them. These variations are:
1. Increased flow of leaks: Documents are no longer leaked over distant durations in huge bulks like the past. They are now being leaked on almost a daily basis on the local, regional and international levels. This affected the people’s capability to comprehend these massive amounts of conflicting leaks. Leaked documents also include a lot of information, which are difficult to verify as they include documents, phone calls, audio recordings, e-mails, social media messages and conversations via apps. This stirred huge controversy regarding what can be accurately called “electronic leaks” as invaluable information got mixed up with valuable ones.
2. War of leaks: Leaks became a “weapon” in information wars. The leaks by some American security and judicial institutions regarding the rapprochement and coordination between members of Donald Trump’s administration and Russia before the presidential elections are an example of how leaks could be employed for political purposes. These leaks became more significant after Trump fired FBI’s chief James Comey in May 2017.
Meanwhile, some sources said Trump deliberately leaked some information to show that he was worthy of his post as president – similar to how he revealed information about ISIS, which the US attained from an ally, to the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in mid-May 2017.
The same applies to the “war of leaks” among countries as Russia exploited hackers to influence American elections and support the rise of the extremist right-wing in European countries.
3. Hacking using proxies: The independence of global leaks’ networks decreased due to the increased influence of some countries, which began to hire hackers to leak information in their favor. There are global organizations and journalistic institutions that leak electronic information after verifying them, such as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. However, we have recently witnessed the emergence of anonymous groups that leak information, which cannot be verified and whose sources cannot be known. These groups are affiliated with some countries and they leak information in the latter’s favor.
In April 2017, the Shadow Brokers hacker group said they hacked the American National Security Agency and seized malicious software to hack electronic devices. It made these hacking tools available for free and this resulted in the major WannaCry ransomware attack on May 12.
WikiLeaks was accused of being affiliated with Russia and of leaking information that threatens global security, such as the Vault 7 leaks, which included hacking tools used by the NSA. This posed threats to the cyber security of millions of users across the world.
4. Conflicting interpretations: People who follow up with leaks no longer accept them as undisputed material. Their increased awareness resulted in raising many questions regarding who leaked the information, in whose favor they were leaked and how credible they are. There are also different interpretations regarding the significance and usefulness of these leaks. For example, the consecutive leaks about contacts between members of Trump’s electoral team and Russia did not find any echo among Trump’s supporters.
Trump’s supporters viewed these leaks as part of his political rivals’ campaigns against him while others thought these contacts were normal and do not call for this fuss as they fall within the context of foreign communication during presidential campaigns.
The Dilemma of Trust
Electronic leaks reflect the disintegration of traditional models of political contacts and reveal the decline of states’ capacity to control the flow of information. However, this global increase of electronic leaks has been subject to sharp criticism, and it also faces several obstacles that limit their efficiency. The most important obstacles are:
1. Decline in credibility: Leaks are no longer as credible as before due to social media networks, like Facebook and Twitter. These platforms have created wide patterns of interaction that lack restraints, amid the absence of a higher authority that organizes the flow of information and ideas among users. Absolute facts are, thus, absent in the flow of this huge amount of information which cannot be verified, especially with the increase of operations that promote inaccurate information or rumors via virtual platforms. This is in addition to contradictory information, the absence of professional standards, and of media ethics on alternative media platforms that are run by individuals.
Some researchers think this virtual chaos is a manifestation of postmodern capitalism, which created an alternative space for social debate governed by uncertainty of communication between the recipient and the sender within the context of what Immanuel Wallerstein calls “the global communication system which is governed by the principles of excessive pluralism, individualism, absolute freedom and diverse versions of different events as seen by different.”
2 Fake leaks: Verifying some electronic leaks revealed that some official documents, phone calls and audio recordings have been forged. During the recent Arab revolutions, some social media pages revealed that documents, which were allegedly seized during raids on security institutions, were in fact forged using editing programs in order to spread rumors.
3. Political selectivity: Some leaks focus on selecting certain information that backs up a certain cause in order to promote it and serve the interest of sponsoring countries or parties. This is called “interpretation of facts.” Some information is thus deliberately kept secret and only a part of the information is revealed. Some parties also mix up information with their interpretation of it as they aim to solidify a certain idea among the public.
4. Deliberate targeting: Electronic leaks are based on moral arguments about the necessity of exposing illegal practices and corruption. Some call this “ethical hacking.” This strengthened the efficiency and influence of leaks in the past; however, in the recent phase, leaks have been deliberately employed to target others and to get involved in unethical competition among companies.
Some leaks are selective and focus on certain involved figures while hiding other figures’ names. This was seen in the Panama Papers, which did not fully reveal the names of those involved in financial transactions with the Mossack Fonseca law firm. This selectivity led to doubting the authenticity of leaked documents. This further weakened the efficiency of leaks, particularly in terms of using them as legal documents.
In general, the amount and increased pace of electronic leaks had a negative impact as these leaks lost a huge part of their efficiency and significance since they have lost credibility, particularly amid the absence of proper tools to verify them, the chaos of social media, fake leaks and misinformation, deliberate targeting and selectivity when revealing information and interpreting it.
