“We hope there will be more transparency, people around the globe will now pay attention to the issue and there more will be done to keep security on what is happening in the underground happening,” the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) senior Editor Michael Hudson said, when he was asked about his expectation from the huge documents leak that exposed world’s offshore companies and tales of tax evasions.
In an interview with VOA, responding to a query about the person who provided his orgnaisation with this 2.6 terabyte confidential data, Hudson categorically stated that it was someone anonymous.
He further added that ICIJ was not the first look at this huge data, but it was German police which used several sections these documents and information about offshore companies to track few people. The German authorities had conducted raids on a German bank that they say was connected to the banks which worked with Mossack Fonseca, he went on to say.
To a question about Russian response to Panama Papers in which Moscow said it was an information attack on Putin and people close to him, Michael Hudson said that it was journalism, not an attack on anyone. And you now reporting on this kind of financial matters is public service, he said.
On the occasion, he also disclosed that ICIJ had forwarded several questions related to the leak to Moscow before they were released on Sunday but Russian officials were not interested to answer us.
It is also relevant to be mentioned here that Michael Hudson formerly worked with Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post, and is author of several books including The Monster and Epic History of Subprime Mortgage. He also associated with ICIJ’s project titled “Evicted and Abandoned: The World Bank’s Broken Promise to the Poor.”
