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Panama Papers prove Clinton wrong, Sanders right

The Vermont Democratic senator (L) attacked the Panama free trade agreement in 2011.

The recent data leak from a Panamanian law firm proves Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders right, his campaigns says.

Panama Papers, which details the offshore wealth of politicians and public figures across the globe exposed more than 11.5 million financial and legal records on Sunday.

The Vermont Democratic senator took the chance to defend a 2011 speech, in which he attacked the Panama free trade agreement, saying the Central American country is a “haven” for American tax evaders.

“It turns out, Mr. President, that Panama is a world leader when it comes to allowing large corporations and wealthy Americans to evade U.S. taxes, by stashing their cash in offshore tax havens. And the Panama free trade agreement would make this bad situation much worse,” Sanders said in the speech, whose video was posted on Facebook Monday.

Sanders voted against the agreement in October along with 21 other Democratic lawmakers, but her now presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, praised it.

"Bernie opposed the 2011 Panama Free Trade Agreement because he was worried it would increasingly allow wealthy Americans and large corporations to evade U.S. taxes by stashing their cash in offshore tax havens," read the text below the video. "Now with the release of the Panama Papers it appears he was right. They show that over 214,000 offshore companies are using Panama to evade taxes. That is unacceptable, and that has got to change."

"My opponent, on the other hand, opposed this trade agreement when she was running against Barack Obama for president in 2008," Sanders said in a statement Tuesday. "But when it really mattered she quickly reversed course and helped push the Panama Free Trade Agreement through Congress as Secretary of State. The results have been a disaster." 

On Sunday, Süddeutsche Zeitung, a German newspaper working with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, said it had received the leaked documents from the internal database of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca and shared them with more than 100 other international news outlets as well as the ICIJ.


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