Swiss Cheese

Last year, a whistleblower presented a German journalist at Süddeutsche Zeitung with a trove of data. The data included information about accounts held in Panama by some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people: Vladimir Putin’s best friend, cellist Sergei Roldugin; the Icelandic prime minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, who subsequently stepped down; even the young British actress Emma Watson, who is known for her role in the Harry Potter films. When the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) began to publish articles on the “Panama Papers,” the stories came peppered with a disclaimer: there isn’t anything inherently illegal about anonymously holding one’s wealth in accounts sheltered in a secrecy jurisdiction.

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian reviews The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens by Gabriel Zucman.