It's a bold claim, Gaddy admitted in an email Friday, and one that he isn't totally sure of himself. "It's certainly not a theory, hardly even a 'hypothesis,'" Gaddy wrote, adding that it was "more a suggestion of something that ought to be seriously investigated."
Even so, this suggestion has caused a bit of a stir in the Russia-watching world. Karen Dawisha, an academic who also studies Russian corruption closely, tweeted Friday that despite her respect for Gaddy, his latest idea has failed to convince her.
I'm convinced of everything else Gaddy writes, but not this. Americans aren't n #panamapapers because US hasDelaware https://t.co/rUGVj90q19
— Karen Dawisha (@Dawisha) April 8, 2016Others offered carefully worded praise. Russian American journalist Masha Gessen called it "excellent conspirology" on Facebook, while Brian Whitmore of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty suggested in a tweet that Gaddy was "trolling" the Kremlin.
There are certainly parts of the idea that make a lot of sense. For one, it seems clear that the $2 billion stuff hasn't really hit Putin hard, while some other world leaders who have fraught relations with Russia -- for example, Britain's David Cameron and Ukraine's Petro Poroshenko -- are being seriously rocked by their own links to the scandal.
Why isn't Putin facing a domestic scandal? Well, part of it is simply that Putin is an enormously popular figure in Russia, and it would take a seriously enormous financial scandal to really knock him down. Additionally, many critics are already sure Putin is corrupt — allegations of the Russian president's wealth go as high as $200 billion, which would easily make him the richest man on earth — and it's hard to see how the relatively loose links between Putin and the $2 billion moved through Panama could really shift anyone's thinking on the matter.
Of course, there are other parts of the idea that don't fit together. For one thing, while the lack of U.S. citizens has been widely noted, there are, in fact, a few American links to the Panama Papers. (See this article from McClatchy for details.) It's also possible that more names could come out as more scrutiny is given to the vast amounts of data in the leak. Or perhaps it's just that Americans prefer tax havens other than Panama (as The Washington Post's Scott Higham reports, U.S. citizens are thought to favor more secure havens such as the Isle of Man, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland).
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