in February 2013 the public debt of Portugal had grown to about 203,000 millions at the end of 2012, equivalent to 122,5 % of the national GNP.
In March of this year it was expected to reach 233,000 millions, largely as a result of the accumulated interest. During 2014-2014, nearly 10,200 millions were transferred to the off-shores, largely to Cayman islands so as to escape the State taxation, which was deemed excessive by the clients of off-shores. The actual president of the EU commission, while PM of Luxemburg is known to have opened the doors to offshore seekers in his country banks by paying lower rate of taxes, causing thereby damage to other EU partners. Ironically, he was even rewarded by being elected to the post he now holds.
Asks the above mentioned judge with rightful indignation, why and how are such fortunes accumulated by those engaged in such transactions? If they need to be hidden from the State vigilance, would that not mean laundering of black money through off-shores and other ways? I have been reading and puzzled that such transactions do not imply legal violations, but permitting them would not mean a self-protecting legal system manipulated by a confraternity of large-scale looters, which include business houses and some prominent individual citizens, many of them influential in shaping the political and fiscal policies of their respective governments?
I have been denouncing repeatedly in these columns and elsewhere the games that bourgeoisie plays in a democratic political system, which suits well their capitalist interests, while feeding and keeping satisfied the small collaborators with liberal doles, and promising to the rabble of naive voters freedoms and human rights, all empty of any substance?
The so-called Panama Papers may have helped to disclose some of these abusers and to identify the experts in hiding their rightful or misgotten fortunes, but it contributes to loss of moral authority of the responsible politicians and their claims of serving the public. The common citizens have the right to know why they can be looted from their modest earnings, while some citizens are privileged to bypass the laws imposed upon them.
If such off-shorish behavior is regarded as legitimate, no one should be surprised if public anger and outcry seeks to question the legitimacy of the so-called democratic regimes, and mob violence takes care of those hiding their fortunes and sends them too to take refuge in the Virgin islands or other such nests of hoarders.
These issues have merited world-wide attention and are frowned upon ever since the middle classes of the western, including former colonialist powers, are becoming the victims of fiscal frauds. I doubt it would matter if only ordinary masses of former colonies and less developed countries continued to be the victims. Since 2008, following the collapse of the Lehman Brothers, with its domino effect upon leading banks of Europe, the dirty games of the financial elites are getting exposed. State structures grown dependent upon banks for their routine functioning, are getting sucked in and seek remedial measures through recapitalization of banks at the cost of the savings of the ordinary citizens arousing their anger and despair.
I believe that my theory (supported by economic historians like Jacques Adda) leaves no place for any surprise about the new developments. The capitalism was born and has always grown in an ambiance that favors lack of transparency. All the discourses about democratic transparency is a hoax and fraud played upon common citizens. The long distance trade, including overseas trade, were particularly favorable in this respect. The institutional loopholes were many, new and difficult to close. It became increasingly difficult for the home authorities, initially the feudal rulers in Europe, who could keep watchful eyes upon the internal transactions, but were unable to follow the riches acquired overseas. All that we see happening now is only a replacement of overseas with off-shores.
Prior to this new phase of looting through off-shores, the looting overseas was a routine form of colonial exploitation. There was obviously nothing to object about it, because since 17th century of the age of Discoveries the West had created an international law that suited its interest, soothed its conscience, and protected its colonial loot against rival looters, or against colonized people whose development as “civilized”, or even as “humans”, was at times questioned by western legal luminaries. But the dominant colonial elites have had no appetite to solve until now the problems of their own citizens who opted to flee from the colonies as “retornados” in the wake of decolonization. Strange though it may seem, some former colonial title holders in Goa are hoping to be indemnized by the Indian government on the basis of international law and a treaty of 1974 whereby the post-Salazar regime in Portugal “renounced” its rights over Goa which they had already surrendered to the Indian armed forces. It remains unclear to most Goans how a previous colonial conqueror can claim rights over and above a new conqueror.
Writer is the founder-director, Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Goa (1979-1994).)
