Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite

Bernstein, a reporter on the Pulitzer Prize–winning team that broke the Panama Papers story, pulls back the curtain on a shadowy underworld of tax havens, offshore accounts, and shell companies in this heavily detailed yet surprisingly bloodless exposé of the illicit financial system and its 2015 collapse at the hands of anonymous leakers. Bernstein begins with the story of Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm at the center of this web of criminal activity. He explains how the rise of the superwealthy in the 1980s and 1990s led to a new market in secrecy. By taking advantage of the services offered by such firms as Mossack Fonseca, wealthy individuals could store art, launder money, and avoid taxes with impunity—until a few rogue journalists brought the whole thing crashing down. Bernstein’s revelatory source material, including interviews and secret videotapes, demonstrates the extent to which global banks such as HSBC were complicit in unlawful activities. However, the brief introduction and epilogue rush by too quickly to do justice to the complex material in the middle. Bernstein’s book should be a juicy read, but its plodding pace and monotone prose turns it into a dossier. (Nov.)