This week, there have been a whole slew and deluge of stories
coming out form the leak of 11 million documents
from a Panamanian-based law firm called Mossack Fonseca.
The release of these papers from Panama
lifts the veil on a tiny piece of the secretive offshore world.
We get an insight into how clients and banks and lawyers
go to companies like Mossack Fonseca
and say, "Okay, we want an anonymous company,
can you give us one?"
So you actually get to see the emails,
you get to see the exchanges of messages,
you get to see the mechanics of how this works,
how this operates.
Now this has already started to have
pretty immediate repercussions.
The Prime Minister of Iceland has resigned.
We've also heard news that an ally
of the brutal Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad
has also got offshore companies.
There's been allegations of a 2 billion-dollar money trail
that leads back to President Vladimir Putin of Russia
via his close childhood friend
who happens to be a top cellist.
And there will be a lot of rich individuals our there
and other who will be nervous about the next set of stories
and the next set of leaked documents.
Now, this sounds like the plot of a spy thriller
or a John Grisham novel.
It seemed very distant from you and me ordinary people.
Why should we care about this?
But the truth is that if rich and powerful individuals
are able to keep their money offshore
and not pay the taxes that they should,
it means that there is less money for vital public services
like healthcare, education, roads,
and that affects all of us.
Now for my organization Global Witness,
this exposé has been phenomenal.
We have the world's media and political leaders
talking about how individuals can use offshore secrecy
to hide and disguise their assets,
something we have been talking about and exposing for a decade.