Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite

by Jake Bernstein Narrated by Jake Bernstein

Overview

Secrecy World is the inspiration for the Major Motion Picture The Laundromat from Director Steven Soderbergh, Starring Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, and Antonio Banderas

A two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist takes us inside the world revealed by the Panama Papers, a landscape of illicit money, political corruption, and fraud on a global scale.

A hidden circulatory system flows beneath the surface of global finance, carrying trillions of dollars from drug trafficking, tax evasion, bribery, and other illegal enterprises. This network masks the identities of the individuals who benefit from these activities, aided by bankers, lawyers, and auditors who get paid to look the other way.

In Secrecy World, the Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter Jake Bernstein explores this shadow economy and how it evolved, drawing on millions of leaked documents from the files of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca-a trove now known as the Panama Papers-as well as other journalistic and government investigations. Bernstein shows how shell companies operate, how they allow the superwealthy and celebrities to escape taxes, and how they provide cover for illicit activities on a massive scale by crime bosses and corrupt politicians across the globe.

Bernstein traveled to the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, and within the United States to uncover how these strands fit together-who is involved, how they operate, and the real-world impact. He recounts how Mossack Fonseca was exposed and what lies ahead for the corporations, banks, law firms, individuals, and governments that are implicated.

Secrecy World offers a disturbing and sobering view of how the world really works and raises critical questions about financial and legal institutions we may once have trusted.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

11/06/2017
Bernstein, a reporter on the Pulitzer Prize–winning team that broke the Panama Papers story, pulls back the curtain on a shadowy underworld of tax havens, offshore accounts, and shell companies in this heavily detailed yet surprisingly bloodless exposé of the illicit financial system and its 2015 collapse at the hands of anonymous leakers. Bernstein begins with the story of Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm at the center of this web of criminal activity. He explains how the rise of the superwealthy in the 1980s and 1990s led to a new market in secrecy. By taking advantage of the services offered by such firms as Mossack Fonseca, wealthy individuals could store art, launder money, and avoid taxes with impunity—until a few rogue journalists brought the whole thing crashing down. Bernstein’s revelatory source material, including interviews and secret videotapes, demonstrates the extent to which global banks such as HSBC were complicit in unlawful activities. However, the brief introduction and epilogue rush by too quickly to do justice to the complex material in the middle. Bernstein’s book should be a juicy read, but its plodding pace and monotone prose turns it into a dossier. (Nov.)

From the Publisher

"A compelling, fast-paced narrative . . . enlightening and deeply troubling."—Texas Monthly, "Best Books of 2017"

"[Bernstein] concentrates on telling the stories of those who broke the law, evaded taxes, circumvented international sanctions, hid assets, cheated partners, or 'normalized' fortunes made through crime and corruption." —The Washington Post

“A searching look at the tangled, deeply buried financial network exposed by the publication of the so-called Panama Papers. . . . Bernstein does first-rate work in providing a map to a scandal that has yet to unfold completely.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2017-11-07
A searching look at the tangled, deeply buried financial network exposed by the publication of the so-called Panama Papers.Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bernstein (co-author: Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency, 2006), a reporter with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, recounts the story that the millions of documents leaked from a Panamanian law firm tell about how corporations and wealthy individuals hide their money in offshore accounts. As he notes, that firm has its origins in the Third Reich, when a former SS commando made his way to Latin America, "a beacon for former Nazis following Germany's defeat," and became an expert in maritime law. His partner in Mossack Fonseca had long roots in Panama's political class as well as a fearless embrace of a questionable clientele—arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, for one. "In Panama, moral flexibility was a professional selling point," writes Bernstein; the country has a long history of catering to an international criminal cohort in exchange for a cut of the action. Mossack Fonseca, by the author's account, went headfirst into the business of parking massive fortunes in places where they supposedly would not be detected: the Seychelles, Liechtenstein, the British Virgin Islands. As "Mossfon" grew, it expanded its markets to places like China, whose wealthy had been sheltering money in Panama and Liberia but needed a new haven with the fall of Manuel Noriega and Samuel Doe; Mossfon obliged with fake foundations, silent partnerships, and a range of other strategies, some quite illegal. As its influence grew, others came into Mossfon's orbit—including members of Vladimir Putin's circle and, it seems, of Donald Trump's as well. Bernstein alleges that "Trump had long made a practice of consorting with dodgy characters for financial gain, so Mossfon wouldn't have been a stretch. In the months since his election, notes the author, it has been difficult to distinguish whether the administration's actions are in the public or private interest.Mossfon remains a maze worthy of a Cretan palace, but Bernstein does first-rate work in providing a map to a scandal that has yet to unfold completely.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171952983
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	11/21/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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