Members of British prime minister David Cameron’s family, friends of Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian president Petro Poreshenko, a member of FIFA’s ethic committee, and up to 70 more heads of state or government are listed in papers leaked from a Panama-based law firm which reveal a huge network of offshore companies set up to hide wealth and evade taxes.

The Australian Tax Office said it is is investigating more than 800 wealthy clients of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm from whose files more than 11.5 million documents were leaked, and British tax authorities asked for a copy of the leaked data so it could "closely examine" the information and act on any possible tax evasion "swiftly and appropriately”.

Mossack Fonseca denied any wrongdoing but acknowledged the firm had suffered a successful but ‘limited’ hack on its database. Director Ramon Fonseca claimed the hack was "an international campaign against privacy”.

Fonseca said his firm, which specialises in setting up offshore companies, has formed more than 240,000 such companies and stated the vast majority had been used for "legitimate purposes”.

The 11.5 million documents made public expose a vast web of offshore companies used by members of the global elite to evade taxes, hoard money, and skirt economic sanctions.

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The ‘Panama Papers’ leak implicates 72 current and former heads of state. The documents were obtained by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

The ICIJ issued an overview of the papers, stating: "The leak exposes the offshore holdings of 12 current and former world leaders and reveals how associates of president Vladimir Putin secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow companies. The files contain new details about major scandals ranging from England's most infamous gold heist, an unfolding political money laundering affair in Brazil and bribery allegations convulsing FIFA, the body that rules international soccer.”

Iceland's prime minister Sigmundur Davîo Gunnlaugsson is facing calls for his resignation and a snap election, as the Panama Papers show he is one of many politicians using shell companies to hide money. Documents show that Gunnlaugsson, together with his wife Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottis, set up a shell company with Mossack Fonseca in 2007 in the British Virgin Islands in which $4m in bonds were sheltered.

Another head of state, Petro Poreshenko of Ukraine, has presented himself as different from a run of corrupt leaders and politicians, but the Panama Papers show him stashing assets from his companies in offshore accounts. In 2014, the tycoon became the sole owner of Prime Asset Partners Limited, a company in the British Virgin Islands.

Why The Panama Papers Could Lead to Capitalism’s Great Crisis
By Rana Foroohar, TIME’s assistant managing editor
Reprinted from Time.com

It’s hard to know where to start in tallying up the explosive revelations in the Panama Papers, an analysis of leaked documents from global law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Yes, we’ve known for a while now that the shadow financial system was growing. But it’s another thing to take in 11.5 million documents showing the way in which Mossack Fonseca was working with big name financial groups like UBS, HSBC, Société Générale, and many others to help elites from the Communist Party leadership of China, to soccer star Lionel Messi, to global financiers hide cash in offshore havens around the world.

It’s just the tip of a much bigger iceberg. “The size of the leak is unprecedented, but the tricks Mossack Fonseca has allegedly used for its clients are neither new nor surprising. Anonymous shell companies and the failure of governments to require lawyers, corporate service companies, or banks to collect beneficial ownership information on clients leave the door wide open for dirty money to flow around the globe virtually unhindered,” says Heather Lowe, the Director of Government Affairs for Global Financial Integrity, a Washington DC-based consultancy.

To me, this is one of the key issues at work in the U.S. presidential election. Voters know at a gut level that our system of global capitalism is working mainly for the 1 %, not the 99 %. That’s a large part of why both Sanders and Trump have done well, because they tap into that truth, albeit in different ways. The Panama Papers illuminate a key aspect of why the system isn’t working–because globalization has allowed the capital and assets of the 1 % (be they individuals or corporations) to travel freely, while those of the 99 % cannot. Globalization is supposed to be about the free movement of people, goods, and capital. But in fact, the system is set up to enable that mobility mainly for the rich (or for large corporations). The result is global tax evasion, the offshoring of labor, and an elite that flies 35,000 feet over the problems of nation states and the tax payers within them.

Intense Scrutiny

Where do we go from here? I think we’re heading towards a root to branch re-evaluation of how our market system works–and doesn’t work. The debate over free trade is part of that re-evaluation. The calls for a global campaign against tax evasion are, too. I think there will also be intense scrutiny about the ease with which financial capital can move around the world – we’ve already seen that with the hoopla over tax inversions, but we’ll see a lot more backlash, in new areas.

“I expect that the populist backlash will be intense and will impact everything from high-end real estate to PACs (effectively political shell companies),” says one of my favorite sources, Peter Atwater, a behavioral economist. “Voters are increasingly angry at the seeming transience of the financial/corporate/political elite. The 1% can move anywhere they want—and profit handsomely from the relocation, but the 99% can’t. Worse, the 99% are left with the aftermath—the empty buildings of a deserted Detroit, the toxic waste from chemical plants in West Virginia or the unsustainable tax liabilities of Puerto Rico.”

Fixing all this is a growth issue, and not just for the U.S. and other rich countries. As Global Financial Integrity recently found, developing economies lost $7.8 trillion in cash because of maneuvers like those allegedly done by Mossack Fonseca, between 2004 and 2013. What’s more, illicit outflows are increasing at a rate of 6.5 % a year—twice the rate of GDP growth. At a time when most emerging markets are slowing, and are the reason for the drag on global economic growth that smart people say could cause another recession by this year or next, it’s an issue that we all need to care about.

Read Jessie Drucker's take on the Panama Papers