I would take the "leaks" with a grain of salt. The leak comprises 2.6 Terabyte of data, one of the biggest(volume) leaks ever, excerpts have been sent to around 400 news outlets. There is no open source storage, people do not have access to the whole body of data. My guess is, we will see what benefits specific interests and the right peasants, towers or even kings will fall.

And when I watch the infographics videos about Putin with the Bond music in the background or see the syrian war story explained in 30 seconds and that Assad can do this only with the help of these offshore accounts...Propaganda, nothing more in my opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6XnH_OnpO0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6xUOF-d9Ig

...the pictures, the music, f*ck me...journalism and objectivity...

edit:
Just have a look of the supporters of the ICIJ.

I wish they would disclose these papers but here in our country they are heavily censored. Only one website disclosed that our finance minister is implicated in these papers but off course the state media and all the other "liberal" media have censored that data or are behaving like nothing is happening.

First casualty of the scandal, Iceland's Prime Minister steps down:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-panama-tax-iceland-pm-idUSKCN0X2234

Kudos to you, sir. LOGIC. If everyone had that, alas... This. Exactly this!

Well there are louder and louder voices in more and more countries saying that. Sooner or later I think they have to release them.

True(?), but I wanted to point out that charity and paying taxes aren't fully comparable. For charity, first of all you get to decide yourself where exactly that money goes. With taxes, it goes where it goes, even things you don't necessarily support (handouts to farmers? your army, possibly fighting a war abroad you don't support? asylum seekers? etc.)

And the second thing was, just as you said, taxes are considered as a "duty". You don't get similar halo on the top of your head for paying millions for taxes, like you do for giving millions into a charity chosen by yourself, and making a big number out of it.

All this taken into account, I am not surprised many, if not most, people choose to avoid paying taxes, if they just safely can. No matter whether it is by buying your beers/gas/medication/cars from abroad, or moving your money or even yourself offshore (like Gerard Depardieu) to avoid taxes.

Note: I am not talking about clearly illegal things like money laundering etc., but legally avoiding paying taxes by moving your fortune out of the country that wants to use it to fund whatever they want. For instance, the Finnish millionaires which have moved (themselves) abroad, even merely to Sweden, to avoid the Finnish inheritance tax. Or moving to Portugal so that they can avoid the higher Finnish tax on private pension. Things like these have been lately in the headlines here. They are legal things, but they can be considered possibly immoral because then you avoid paying taxes to Finland, where you received your free university education, probably made your millions etc.

That is or at least was different here, there is no initial tax on your lottery winnings in the national lottery. I guess this is because one national company (Veikkaus.fi) has/had monopoly for setting up lottery here, not sure if this has now changed in practice due to internets and such.

Also I am unsure what the rest of the taxes you mention would be, making you lose 90% of your winnings on mere taxes. Do you have some kind of very high capital levy there for any money you own, or how all that really adds up to 90%?

Whatever the case is, what do you think: if most of those highly taxed lottery winners there would have some relatively easy and safe way to avoid at least most of those 90% tax on their lottery winnings, would most of them still choose not to use it, because they feel it is their duty to give 90% of their winnings to the tax system? Remember, these are largely the same people who before their lottery jackpot would be damning rich people for avoiding taxes.

Ah yes, no doubt that since only his friends' names are mentioned Putin is squeaky clean.

Regardless, I feel like the people's anger is completely misdirected. Why is everyone so mad about rich people using perfectly legal methods to pay less tax? Even the most law-abiding citizen, who would be willing to completely declare any cash-based "under-the-table" income that they have earned, will take advantage of every tax-saving opportunity that they can. Why is it wrong for richer people to do the same? At what point does finding ways to save on your taxes go from "smart" to "morally reprehensible"?

People should be mad at their governments for allowing tax shelters to be legal, not at the people who take advantage of them.

We won't miss him :)

Here, approximately 45% of the lottery prize is gone right off the bat with federal, state and in some cases local taxes. Take the prize as an annuity and you pay that tax annually. Give friends or relatives a gift, you pay a gift tax. Put it in the bank, the interest gets taxed. Use it to invest and make money, capital gains tax. Use it to buy a nice house, property tax. Buy a car, sales tax.

So let's say you win $100 million. $45 million is gone in taxes immediately, leaving $55 million.
You buy a new house for $2 million; property tax varies by region, but let's keep things simple and say it's 5%: $100000 in tax annually. Assuming property values don't change dramatically and you plan to live there for at least ten years, you are now down to $52 million in cash.
Then your relatives find out you won some money and start calling. This is where things get complicated. In the US, you are allowed to gift up to about $5.4 million in your lifetime without paying a gift tax, however, that $5.4 million also includes any inheritance you might leave to your heirs. A gift can be almost anything, not just cash, and is taxed based on its fair market value. So you are feeling generous and sell your old $400000 house to your brother-in-law for $1. For tax purposes you just gave him a $400000 gift. Then you buy your mother a nice retirement home for $1 million, give your brother a million to start his business, set up a $1.5 million trust fund for each of your two kids... you've already given out $5.4 million in gifts.
You're down to $47 million in cash and every dime you have left to give to anyone, even your inheritance, will now be taxed at 40%. You effectively only have $28.2 million left. Almost 72% of your winnings are already gone and you've only actually spent $8 million of it. You haven't even bought a car yet.

Granted, this a greatly oversimplified scenario and I didn't even get into all the options for investing the money (way too complicated), but I hope you can see just how easy it is to go broke on lottery winnings, especially with the taxes the way they are. The thing is, the easiest and safest way to protect that money from the tax man is not a very risky off-shore tax shelter, it's smart investing. Tax shelters mainly just keep the man from taking his dime and are only useful when you get into multi hundreds of millions or billions of dollars; investments make more money from your money. Done right, investments pay for the taxes themselves and keep making more money.
It's not simply that they were avoiding taxes, it's that they were using a legal loophole to avoid taxes by potentially funding illegal activities. Some of the companies listed in these documents have been directly linked to drug trafficking and terrorism, just to begin with. Then there are the instances like Iceland where their PM was not only avoiding taxes, he was also defrauding their banks when his shelter took a bailout.

EDIT - Not to mention, the people taking advantage of these loopholes are the governments that allow the shelter loophole in the first place. Presidents, prime ministers, cabinet members... the very people entrusted with enacting and enforcing laws to prevent this kind of abuse are the abusers.
I would not expect you to :)

So I guess this Panama papers is kind of a big deal. Wish I had the time and energy to research it more. 5 years ago this story would have given my journalist brain an orgasm. Now all I can think of is the fact that my car's dirty and needs to be washed.

This pretty much, which I also mentioned earlier. I think people who wouldn't use an (at least an easy and legal) way to pay less taxes are a rarity, even here in Finland where people are not that actively trying to avoid it.

Sure some people are far more tax-friendly saying that people should pay their taxes, especially people who work in the public sector (their wages come from tax money, after all), but I am pretty sure that even among them, if they found a way to save a lot of money by not paying taxes, they'd use the opportunity.

"No one" willingly pays more taxes than absolutely necessary.

Next bit of fallout. Swiss police raid UEFA offices:

http://in.reuters.com/article/panama-tax-uefa-idINKCN0X31WA

Putin says this is ridiculous and irrelevant. The panama papers, of course, or at least him being (one of) the central figure(s). I know where to put my money and what upon to bet. The balls of steel never disappoint and have always spoken with hard evidence. In wait for more details!

Also, Messi went already to court aggressively. Case stinks of fabrication!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vladimir-putin-says-the-panama-papers-leak-is-part-of-western-efforts-to-weaken-russia-a6972761.html

http://www.goal.com/en/news/722/la-liga/2016/04/04/22017252/breaking-news-messi-family-dismisses-panama-papers

Ah, yes. No doubt it is a conspiracy to destabilize the Russian government.

Well, since people are not sheeple and didn't buy into the "Russia is the greatest threat against Europe" crap ultimately, it was obvious that some half assed toilet paper was needed.

Leave Russia aside, then. Messi openly declares it faux too and even moves aggressively with court action. If one listed inside is by mistake (or agenda) there and hasn't been entangled in illegal case indeed, then what guarantees that the number of mistakes are only down to 1?

Let alone that certain people are left outside of thorough inspection, you are forgetting that...