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Panama Papers could add to outrage in US presidential race
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Panama's Cabinet Chief Alvaro Aleman, right, and Deputy Foreign Minister Luis Hincapie give a press conference regarding the "panama papers" in Panama City, Tuesday. Millions of confidential documents were leaked from the Panama-based law firm, coined the "panama papers," revealing details of how some of the globe's richest people funnel their assets into secretive shell companies set up here and in other lightly regulated jurisdictions. President Juan Carlos Varela has promised to cooperate with any judicial investigations stemming from the leaked data. (AP/Arnulfo Franco) ( AP/Arnulfo Franco)
T
he revelations in the Panama Papers could add to the populist outrage in the US presidential race by confirming many of the fears of Bernie Sanders supporters on the left and contributing to the distrust that drives people to Donald Trump on the right.
So far, the 11.5 million leaked documents have shed light mostly on foreign figures such as the prime minister of Iceland, who resigned Tuesday after the public learned that he used a shell company to shelter large sums of money while his country's economy foundered. The reaction in the US has been relatively muted.
But voters and experts suggest that the papers could still validate the frustration of Sanders supporters who feel that hard work is no longer enough to get ahead in America and the anger of Trump partisans who say it will take someone who knows the insider system to dismantle it.
The papers illustrate how a small class of global elites amass staggering wealth and find elaborate ways to hide it from tax collectors, bank regulators and police.
Retired Wisconsin teacher Steve Nibbe, who was voting for Sanders on Tuesday in Wisconsin's presidential primary, said word of the documents made him "sit up and take notice." But he said he was not shocked.
"It just seems that those who have wealth — and sometimes that comes with privilege — are able to do things that other people are not," said Nibbe, 60.
Joe Brettell, a Republican strategist based in Houston, doubted whether the public's fury in this election season could get much worse.
"The populist anger being fueled primarily by white working-class Americans didn't need any more fuel," Brettell said. "They've already lived through the financial meltdown."
The passports of at least 200 Americans are included in the documents, according to news organizations that have access to them, though none are thought to be as famous as celebrities and politicians from other countries, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi.
In all, 12 current or former heads of state are included in the legal records from Panama's Mossack Fonseca law firm. They were first leaked Sunday to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper based in Munich, Germany.
Charles Postel, a history professor at San Francisco State University who has studied American populism and wrote a book titled "The Populist Vision," said of Sanders, "This is just the type of thing that is animating his base."
As for Trump, the New York billionaire might even actually win points with supporters if he were among the rich and famous mentioned in the documents, Postel said.
"If Trump said, 'Of course I put half of my money in the Virgin Islands,' none of his voters would object to that," Postel said. "They'd say, 'Sure, he's a billionaire. If I was a billionaire, I wouldn't pay my taxes either.'" (bbn)
Associated Press writers Greg Moore in Milwaukee and Bryna Godar in Verona, Wisconsin, contributed to this report.
