Thursday, April 7, 2016

The 'Panama Papers' Scandal Explained in Easy to Understand Piggy Banks Animation


Trying to keep up with and understand the mechanics behind the Panama Papers?! Thanks to Vox and the work of redditor DanGliesack, we can get a thorough explanation by watching an animated video that clarifies all of it with the help of piggy banks.


It's easy to get confused by all the headlines about the Panama Papers, a massive 2.6-terabyte leak of documents that reveals a global web of corruption and tax avoidance. But Vox's German Lopez uncovered a great explanation of what's happening, and it's courtesy of brilliant redditor DanGliesack.


He uses piggy banks to help explain the main (and complicated-sounding) thing that was happening in Panama: foreigners setting up Panamanian shell companies to hold financial assets that obscure the identities of their real owners. We thought this analogy was quite fitting for a comic, so we created these illustrations to explain the key issue at the heart of the Panama Papers scandal.