Panama Fat

Sleaze on a global scale:

A massive leak of documents exposes the offshore holdings of 12 current and former world leaders and reveals how associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow companies.

The leak also provides details of the hidden financial dealings of 128 more politicians and public officials around the world.

The cache of 11.5 million records shows how a global industry of law firms and big banks sells financial secrecy to politicians, fraudsters and drug traffickers as well as billionaires, celebrities and sports stars.

In addition to Vladimir "Vlad the Invader Evader" Putin, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Ukranian President Petro Poroshenko have direct or family ties to offshore companies. There are a lot of stories on this that you can search for, but the link above and this associated interactive page are recommended.  We note that no American pols have shown up in the leak so far, but are 100% sure that will change in the next couple of hours/ days.

If money is the lubricant of politics, it appears a lot of political leaders have been getting their skids greased to a fare- thee- well.