The Panama Papers story has been over a century in the making
It is amazing that the Panama Papers were leaked almost a year ago but the story was only broken when journalists had done the necessary research.
Originally an anonymous hacker handed the files to journalists on “Süddeutsche Zeitung” who shared the information with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Then 400 reporters working in 80 different countries and 75 different languages piled through 2.6 terabytes of material. Nobody leaked anything.
Everybody piled in on the appointed day, producing stories so far and so wide they couldn’t be stopped, but also targeted from region to region and country to country. This is why in the UK Prime Minister David Cameron has been targeted.
But the origin of the whole scandal lies in the origin of the state of Panama itself.
In 1903, the administration of Theodore Roosevelt created the country after bullying Colombia into handing over what was then the province of Panama. Roosevelt acted at the behest of various banking groups, among them JP Morgan & Co, which was appointed as the country’s ‘fiscal agent’ in charge of managing $10m in aid that the US had rushed down to the new nation.”
The reason, of course, was to gain access to, and control of, the canal across the Panamanian isthmus that would open in 1914 to connect the world’s two great oceans, and the commerce that sailed them.
Full story here.