>Tax avoidance is legal, tax evasion isn't. I am a tax professional and this is pretty much the motto of the profession. ;) Anyway, I don't think the signific

>Tax avoidance is legal, tax evasion isn't. I am a tax professional and this is pretty much the motto of the profession. ;) Anyway, I don't think the significant thrust of this story pertains to tax avoidance or evasion. There are some relatively minor figures implicated by the usual offshore tax shenanigans, but the really important news is the evidence of fraud, money laundering, and corruption at the highest levels of government, business, sports, and society across the globe. This shit makes tax evasion look like shoplifting. We all may have suspected Putin of bribery and using illicit financial assets to fund his network of cronies, but now we have direct proof. What's more, we can now see how his activities (and those of many other powerful figures across the world) contribute to a massive shadow financial system which operates utterly unbound by moral or legal principles, enabling money laundering, human trafficking, drug and arms dealing, corruption in sports, corruption in politics, and just about every other shitty, awful, poisonous human activity you can imagine. This system is monumental in scale and the evil it sustains unfathomable in scope. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, though, or at least we had better hope so.