The Paradise Papers: A glimpse at unfair reality of our world

It's more than 1,000 years since King William the Conqueror of England commissioned the Domesday Book, a record of “The Great Survey” of much of England and parts of Wales to establish “how many hundreds of hides were in the shire, what land the king himself had, and what stock upon the land; or, what dues he ought to have by the year from the shire”. 

Were that exercise repeated today the revelations of the Paradise Papers, and the 2015 Panama Papers, Luxleaks and Swissleaks as well, would feature prominently as each project focused on wealth, where it resides, who owns or controls it and whether or not it is, or ever was, visible to tax authorities.

That the Paradise Papers show that William the Conqueror’s successor Queen Elizabeth has invested around £10m of her private funds in Caribbean tax havens — such a polite term for such a rancid business — shows that the preservation and accumulation of wealth by any means, fair or foul, remains an over-riding objective for the world’s richest people.