Don’t let redistribution profiteers raise your expectations. In offshore centers there are no shining treasures, only documents.

With relation to Panama, the Mossack Fonseca affair and offshore centers in general how many articles do not begin with something like “The wealthy conceal their cash”?

That gives the impression of an Ali Baba cave where fabulous unused treasuries are stored and that if only these could be recovered from the 41 thieves everyone would live happily ever after.

What devious bullshit! What exists in those offshore caves is a load of documents that gives the holders of these the ownership of a lot of assets, almost all of these to be found onshore... for instance stocks, property in London or municipal infrastructure bonds.

Granted, the ownership of some of those assets is incorrect, since in not so few cases they should belong to the governments… but that is another issue that has little to do with the assets as such.

And many of those assets are the result of loopholes… but who can throw the first stone holding that using loopholes is an odious behavior.

If you hate loopholes, I do, fight for their removal, by for instance making tax laws simpler, better and fairer.

But in the same vein we have corporations who, egged on by smart tax-lawyers, intensely exploit the opportunities loopholes provide, let us not forget that on the opposite side, we most often find redistribution profiteers waiting to lay their hands on new business opportunities.

For instance if we want to redistribute wealth and income, the most efficient way would be through a Universal Basic Income scheme, at a cost of 2 percent tops, but that leaves many of the redistributes asking "what’s in it for me?"... and so they oppose it.

If for instance we imposed a big carbon tax and distributed its revenues equally to all as a part of Universal Basic Income then we would align beautifully the fight against inequality and climate change, but a lot of the mercenary soldiers in the wars against climate change and inequality, would also ask… what’s in it for us?

Profiteers surround all wars, no matter the cause. It is impossible to avoid them, but let us at least try to point out their theoretical existence.

And please when I refer to “profiteers” I do not only speak of those who collect their profits in cash. Much much worse are those demagogues and populists who collect their profits in political power… like the late Hugo Chavez did.

PS. An interesting question is what represents more money deposited in offshore centers: that from tax fraud and evasion or that from stealing tax revenues?