The Panama Papers are bringing to light the hidden workings of a world that has gone largely unnoticed by the rest of the world.
They show how the offshore banking industry, in which many of the largest and most secretive companies in the world operate, can hide the identities of its own employees and contractors.
As a result, the Panama leaks are helping to shed light on an industry that has been largely hidden from view.
The documents show how law enforcement, banks, governments, and international financial institutions have been colluding to hide the financial assets of the companies they operate.
The industry has been doing this for decades, but in recent years it has come under scrutiny by governments and regulators.
In the last three years alone, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has published more than 100 stories about the hidden world of offshore banking, including one that showed how the US government was hiding information about the Panama Bank from the FBI, US Justice Department, and US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Panama papers have exposed a world in which offshore banking can be used as a convenient way to evade taxes and shield the wealth of the powerful.
In a new report published today, ICIJ, with help from The Intercept, reveals how the financial services industry has largely kept the Panama stories secret, despite a series of scandals that have rocked the industry.
The ICIJ team tracked the financial activities of more than 40 major banks, accounting firms, and tax havens over the last two decades.
In all, they tracked nearly half a trillion dollars.
The Panama Papers reveal that the offshore industry is structured so that its operations are opaque and that its employees and subcontractors are shielded from public scrutiny.
The story of how offshore banking works is complex.
But the Panama papers show that many of these companies have built elaborate networks, using shell companies, shell companies that appear to be owned by the companies, and shell companies based in Panama, that allow them to avoid being tracked by authorities and other governments.
The leaked documents also show how some of these corporations have used shell companies to hide their real owners.
The Panamanian documents show that the financial industry has a history of hiding its own identities and activities.
In the 1990s, the US Treasury Department banned banks and other financial institutions from using shell corporations in a crackdown on tax evasion.
This meant that banks and the financial service industry could continue to operate in secrecy.
The ICIJ report also highlights how a few of the major offshore banking companies that the ICIJ tracked are based in the United Kingdom, where the British government and other regulators have been pushing to crack down on tax avoidance.
They have been accused of facilitating tax evasion by employees of their offshore companies and their offshore affiliates.
Some of the British banks, for instance, have used their subsidiaries in the British Virgin Islands, an offshore tax haven, to avoid paying taxes.
Other banks, such as HSBC, have been criticized for using shell and other shell companies in Panama.
The US Treasury has also questioned the legality of using the UK for business purposes.
In some cases, the banks have been so transparent that their employees are required to report their offshore financial transactions.
HSBC, for example, said it had not engaged in any wrongdoing and it had reported its clients’ tax returns to the US and UK authorities.
But some of the more opaque companies, such the Cayman Islands-based HSBC, the Swiss bank Credit Suisse, and the Bahamas-based Banco Santander, have not reported their transactions to the public, despite having offshore subsidiaries.
The revelations about these companies, along with others that the report details, show how companies and financial institutions are not only hiding their own identities, but also the identities and the activities of their employees and their subcontractors.
In addition to hiding their identities, the companies that operate offshore have a variety of other secret arrangements to shield their financial operations from public inspection.
These arrangements can include the use of offshore tax havens to avoid reporting their profits, hiding the identities or activities of directors, using offshore shell companies for tax avoidance, or hiding the identity of key shareholders.
In one example, the Bahamas is the home of the Caymans Islands, a tax haven where companies that have no branches or subsidiaries can operate in the name of a Cayman company.
The Caymans has been the focus of many investigations into tax evasion and tax avoidance in recent months, including a series by the US Department of Justice and the International Monetary Fund.
These arrangements also shield the financial institutions’ offshore employees from public knowledge.
In one instance, a Caymans-based bank that had been fined by the IRS for allegedly mismanaging the assets of a wealthy investor was allowed to continue operating in the Caymann name.
The Bahamas, which is home to many of those convicted in the 2016 tax fraud, has also been a key focus of investigations into the offshore financial industry.
The information revealed by the Panama documents has a devastating effect on the global financial system
