An international crime thriller, worthy of the best-seller section is hidden in plain sight, operating in every corner of the planet. Join us when we shake down the “quasi-lawless space” of tax havens -coated by financial secrecy, elites and multinationals- and how they endanger democracies, through the lens of crime-fiction.
Since 2016, a series of data leaks known as Panama, Paradise and recently Pandora Papers have revealed to the public the murky side of global finance: how money and power really operate in the 21st century, and how related to widening authoritarianism, rising inequalities and social unrest.
Petra Blum, an investigative journalist from Germany (WDR) has participated in a number of cross-border investigations, uncovering secret bank accounts, corruption cases in resource-rich countries, unearthing the hidden money and relations of people associated with authoritarian states. Sometimes she asks herself whether the journalists had actually succeded in presenting the importance of these relations.
In her research, Assist. Prof. Lucia M. Sommerer, Ph.D., LL.M. (Yale) focuses on the intersection of criminal law, criminology, emerging technologies and white-collar crime. She works on understanding how the rule of law is bent and broken around the world, benefiting the wealthy and well-connected at the expense of social cohesion, and endangering democracies. The session will be moderated by Fabian Walter, who is very well known as Seuerfabi on Tik-Tok
An international crime thriller, worthy of the best-seller section is hidden in plain sight, operating in every corner of the planet, including the world’s largest democracies. The key actors being those sitting at the top of the societal pyramid, part of elite institutions, multinationals, banks, law firms and accounting companies, covered through the “industry of anonymity”. Both journalists and lawyers are on their tails, but accountability remains long odds.
In this session, we shake down the “quasi-lawless space” of tax havens, coated by financial secrecy, layers of companies, trusts and off-shore accounts through the lens of journalism and storytelling, and try to understand how, what Prof. Sommerer calls a “rift in the code of the world society”, threatens the core of democratic equality and social cohesion.
- A panel of the SILBERSALZ Science & Media Festival at re:publica 2023 -
Afterwards, come to our SILBERSALZ meet-up at the Flutgraben at re:publica, starting at 5:30 pm with our curators. We are looking forward to seeing you!