'West Can't Function Without Dirty Eastern European Money' - Shevtsova

What You Need To Know:

✓ The leak of documents from Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca has provided journalists with a boon to investigate ill-gotten gains as well as shed light on a global shadow economy;

✓ Shevtsova is skeptical about Western reaction to the discoveries, “because so far the Western political class and Western business cannot function without dirty money coming from Russia; and from other countries of the former Soviet Union.

✓ "There is a huge class, service class, that has emerged around a laundry machine, around Panama, around The British Virgin Island etc.;”

✓ Russian elite: “will be trying to find much more elaborate mechanisms of money laundering.”

The leak of documents from Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca has provided journalists with a boon to investigate ill-gotten gains as well as shed light on a global shadow economy engineered to help the rich avoid paying the taxes. While a number of rich and powerful have resigned from their respective positions due to the scandal, Ukraine has yet to launch an official investigation into the offshores of the country’s president, Petro Poroshenko.

Lilia Shevtsova, Senior Associate of the Carnegie Endowment, is skeptical about Western reaction to the discoveries, “because so far the Western political class and Western business cannot function without dirty money coming from Russia” and from other countries of the former Soviet Union. “There is a huge class, service class, that has emerged around a laundry machine, around Panama, around The British Virgin Island etc.,” creating a very strong resistance in the West on the part of the Western political class, she adds.

When speaking of the Panama Papers' influence on Russian elite, Shevtsova says that it was a crucial blow to the political and business class, because “Russian elite survives by personally integrating itself into the outside world.” While the leak might influence their attitude towards Putin and the regime, they “will be trying to find much more elaborate mechanisms of money laundering.”

Hromadske’s Volodymyr Yermolenko spoke to Lilia Shevtsova, Expert from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Senior Associate on April 14th. 2016 in Kyiv.