Opinion: The more we learn about Brexit, the more crooked it looks
By Anne Applebaum Anne Applebaum Columnist focusing on national politics and foreign policy Email Bio Follow Columnist March 8 Elements of the 2016 British referendum campaign have long seemed familiar to Americans. There was a close, controversial election, full of rancor and anger. There were a lot of wealthy men talking about “the people” and their “will.” There were targeted advertising campaigns, stolen data and fake social media accounts.
Some of it, he says, comes from an insurance company he owns. Some comes, supposedly, from “diamond mines.” All of it is spread among dozens of companies based in Gibraltar, the British Virgin Islands and the Isle of Man, according to documents revealed in the Panama Papers, among other things, as well as Britain.
But even if this story won’t delay Brexit, it does firmly locate the referendum within a larger context. The truth is that Britain has become a place where untransparent money, from unknown sources, is widely accepted with a complacent shrug.
And here’s the final irony: If Brexit was the creation, in part, of this new world of offshore money and political influence campaigns, Brexit may well ensure that it continues unrestricted. The E.U. is probably the only power in Europe — maybe even the only one in the world — with the regulatory strength to change the culture of tax avoidance. And since 2016, it has been slowly enacting rules designed to do exactly that. Britain, once it leaves the E.U., may well be exempt.
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