A Munich Germany mainstream pro-NATO newspaper editor we are told gets an anonymous gift of alleged files of thousands of high net worth tax dodgers from around the world. To read the front pages of major mainstream western newspapers or BBC and CNN these past days one would be convinced that some hacker had uncovered smoking gun proof that Russia’s Vladimir Putin along with China President Xi Jinping and other “enemies” of the Washington Agenda had stashed billions in secret accounts managed by a Panama law firm called Mossack Fonseca.
With no explanation how or from whom, the Süddeutsche Zeitung says it came into possession of 11.5 million confidential documents sent them by someone they never met who went by the anonymous name “John Doe,” a typical American moniker. The “Panama Papers” handover was done a year ago, with, we are told, detailed information about more than 214,000 offshore companies listed by the Panama law firm, Mossack Fonseca. The file cache contained the identities of shareholders and directors of the offshore companies.
Immediately Süddeutsche Zeitung’s editors say they contacted a highly select cabal or group of journalists and a year later, with precise timing, western mainstream corporate-owned media have now begun coordinated, orchestrated selective leaks of alleged contents.
Now it gets quite interesting.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung was perhaps unwittingly helpful for genuine investigative journalists in detailing the methodology the mainstream media journalists holding the huge file cache used to find certain offshore tax dodgers. They simply did a data search for any names associated with sanction-breaking dealings of UN sanctioned regimes. That naturally targeted regimes pursuing policies inimical to the USA which pushes almost all economic sanctions these days. So, abracadabra, names from North Korea, Russia, Syria and Zimbabwe feature in the “exposes.” The Panama Papers is being promoted as “the largest leak journalists have ever worked with.”
ICIJ?
Süddeutsche Zeitung editors also stated proudly on their website that they immediately decided to go to an organization called the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) to help them decide how to deal with the huge store of stolen data files they had come into.
We might ask what exactly is this International Consortium of Investigative Journalists or ICIJ? If we do a little investigating of the consortium for “investigative journalists” or ICIJ, it turns out ICIJ is a “global network of more than 190 investigative journalists in more than 65 countries who collaborate on in-depth investigative stories.” Founded in 1997, “ICIJ was launched as a project of the Center for Public Integrity to extend the Center’s style of watchdog journalism, focusing on issues that do not stop at national frontiers: cross-border crime, corruption, and the accountability of power.”
Gosh, this really sounds like a noble, selfless organization of heroic journalists seeking “truth, justice and the American way of life,” as Clark Kent used to say in the Superman TV series. Only thing is, it isn’t.
First let’s investigate the founder and funder of ICIJ. It is the Washington DC-based Center for Public Integrity, their name something of an oxymoron in today’s Washington, where public integrity seems to be very out of fashion. The Center for Public Integrity, according to its website, was founded in 1989, “to serve democracy by revealing abuses of power, corruption and betrayal of public trust by powerful public and private institutions…”
They neglect to say they are very selective in whose corruption they reveal. Very much so with the Panama Papers where no significant western names such as George Soros or David Rockefeller or Bill Gates or countless other US or EU figures are named other than a few expendables such as the Prime Minister of Iceland or the father of David Cameron, or several former heads of government in places like Iraq who are of no consequence for Washington. In fact, as the Saker points out in an analysis of the CIA Panama dirty ops, the leaks name, “Not a single American citizen, not one. The best I found was “Tina Turner, American-born Swiss singer.“ The only other American citizens mentioned are four indicted or convicted US citizens accused or convicted of serious financial crimes, including securities fraud. But not convicted financial fraudster and insider trader George Soros who does all his serious business offshore. He finances the game.
If we follow the money trail of the Center for Public Integrity we find the following listed financial sugar daddies as among their sponsors:
- George Soros’ Open Society Foundations
- Rockefeller Brothers Fund
- Rockefeller Family Fund
- Carnegie Corporation
- Ford Foundation
- Foundation for National Progress, Soros-backed mother of Mother Jones
- Fidelity Brokerage Services, second largest mutual fund in the world
Right away we begin to smell those Texas Fourth of July picnic skunks behind the selective Panama Papers leaks.
He’d Have to Be Crazy…
For example, let’s take a closer look at the “Putin revelations” revealed in the Panama Papers. To read mainstream UK, German or US mainstream corporate media press we would get the impression that the Panama Papers’ main expose is hard proof of billions stashed away by that nasty Russian ‘Evil Knievel’, Wladimir Wladimirowitsch Putin, known in the West as Vladimir Putin, not to be confused with Vlad The Impaler, who was Romanian.
On the first day of the Panama Papers story, Putin’s face was on the front page of most every major NATO country newspaper. BBC News of the UK, one of the elite media given the full Panama Papers document cache, in its sub-headline the first day writes, “Links to politicians including President Putin and Iceland’s PM exposed.”
What links to President Putin actually were found? If we manage to get past the strong impression created by artful headlines and photos of Putin, we find the following “hard” proof that Putin has stashed a cool billion dollars with the Panama boys at Mossack Fonseca: None.
There is nowhere one iota of evidence revealed in the leak of the Panama Papers that Putin or any relatives have stashed their alleged dough offshore. The best they come up with is a Russian cellist from St Petersburg who was a childhood friend of Putin. The documents leaked indicated that Sergei Roldugin, a professional cellist described by the anti-Putin Novaya Gazeta as Vladimir Putin’s best friend, had acquired assets worth at least $100 million, including a 12.5% stake in Video International, Russia’s largest television advertising firm.
PROOF! Send Putin to the gallows! Better, off with his head!, like the Red Queen would demand in Alice in Wonderland.
In the interest of truth, let’s look more closely at Vladimir Putin in this dodgy Panama Papers affair. If I imagine for sake of argument I were Putin, former head of Russian intelligence, a life-long KGB agent and a master of international networks of the US intelligence, I’d have to be crazy, plumb out of my mind, to hide money in offshore Panama, a country under total treaty disclosure requirements to US regulators. Panama is the offshore haven for Colombian and Mexican cocaine cartels, and is well-known worldwide as a fully-controlled mailbox dirty offshore entity completely under the thumb of Washington. Excuse me? Would I be so suicidal, were I to have such billions to stash, to go to Panama of all places? I’m afraid not. On that basis alone the Putin Panama Papers allegations show up as putative fraud, CIA dirty ops.
Waffen SS Totenkopf Division
Moreover, a look at the law firm is also revealing. No doubt KGB files would have also shown that Erhard Mossack, father of Jurgen Mossack, co-founder of Mossack Fonseca, served as soldier in the Waffen SS during World War II, a member of the savage “Totenkopf” (Death’s Head) SS Division. The Totenkopf members were selected from the most savage guards of the Nazi concentration camps starting with Auschwitz. Erhard Mossack, left Germany to Panama in 1948 with his family including son Jurgen. While in Panama, Jurgen offered, nice guy that he was, to work for the CIA. In short, Langley, Virginia CIA or something very close across the Potomac River is behind the Panama Papers. The entire operation is being executed with the sophistication and finesse of an elephant in a Chinese porcelain shop.
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
