Pandora papers leak reveals offshore investments of politicians, billionaires
Yahoo Finance's Julie Hyman breaks down the recent Pandora Papers leak, which revealed offshore investments and data from hundreds of current and former world leaders, politicians, and billionaires.
Video Transcript
JULIE HYMAN: What I'm watching this morning is a new release that is being called the-- the-- now I'm forgetting what the thing is called-- Pandora Papers, excuse me, mimicking the 2016 Panama Papers release. This is basically a trove of documents. It's even larger than that release from 2016 revealing a number of world leaders, both former and current, and where they are potentially sheltering their wealth around the globe.
11.9 million confidential documents in this thing. 14 separate legal and financial services firms. And it's from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. And you see there 100 billionaires and politicians and public figures being included in this whole thing.
What's interesting about this release, Brian Salesy, a couple of things. One, is that a lot of what is being done is legal. These are legal tax shelters which raises questions about what laws are on the books. And it also brings me back to our-- what now feels like age old tax argument and the idea that at least some, if not a lot, of the tax revenue that can be increased here in the United States has to do with tax enforcement. And indeed, that is something that the Biden administration has talked about.
Now, that would be stuff that is not legal, tax shelters that perhaps are not legal or not strictly so. But, the Treasury has analyzed the numbers and the tax gap was about $600 billion in 2019, would rise to about $7 trillion over the course of the next decade if indeed there is not an increase in enforcement. So there is kind of this, I think, resignation when you read these kinds of releases and read about these ultra wealthy folks who are hiding their money and not paying taxes on it or sheltering it in various other ways. But, you know, I guess there are ways of addressing this. It's just a matter of having the political will to do so. I know you want to say something about taxes here, Brian.
BRIAN SALESY: No, well, I'll just simply say Julie, it sounds like a key market risk. And then secondarily, not that I'm not interested in the Pandora Papers. I was just briefly thinking back to the car show. I was out this past weekend, you know, about these giant hulking cars with super chargers coming out of them, leaking gas, just stinking up the whole place.
And here we are talking about electric vehicles. I mean, there's this such-- it is just a different world that we live in compared to the reality that's on the ground out there. It's going to take a long time for, I think, people to adopt electric vehicles. That's my inspiration for today, and take a lot of time.
JULIE HYMAN: All right. Take-- taking it back-- taking it back to electric vehicles.
