Unfortunately in emerging marks, unlikely not very much as these kind of activities are all too well known/familiar and rarely are elites brought to account.
For example, do the Russian allegations bring that much more new information to the fore?
Likely not, especially after the U.S. Treasury have in recent months made very strident and direction allegations of corruption right to the top of the Russian administration.
Moscow will likely just brush this all off as some Western anti-Russian PR exercise while the Russian largely state controlled media will likely now go into full swing to deflect potential damage again playing the foreign conspiracy theory line. And already there has been very little popular unrest over the allegations levied against elite Russians – likely due to state domination of media channels – so sustained popular protest/unrest on he back of the latest revelations seems unlikely.
Zuma in South Africa, faces similar allegations of wrongdoing over spending on his private residence, and then the allegations over the undue influence exerted by the Guptas, but seems to be digging in for the long term, and seems resilient.
I guess they could have more impact on regimes in emerging marks already on the edge – e.g. in Brazil, if they further unearth wrongdoing close to the Dilma administration.
Similarly, allegations have been made to those close to the Petro Poroshenko administration in Ukraine, and it will be interesting to see how this now pans out given the difficult political scenario playing out there.
However, as with Russia, already plenty of allegations of graft and wrongdoing have been levied at Ukraine’s elites, but in the two years since the EuroMaidan Revolution, few if anyone has been brought to book or gone to jail.
So is this likely to be the tipping point? Unlikely not.
But all this noise might begin to change elite behavior going forward, as politicians and business leaders begin to understand that their activities can potentially come under much greater transparency and scrutiny going forward.
But perhaps the bigger impact risk will be in developed market economies, where expectations are higher, and the assumption is that our policy makers, business and political leaders operate differently and by different and higher codes of behaviour and conduct. The Panama files might suggest otherwise and still could claim some high-profile scalps. Interestingly, they could just buoy the current anti-establishment mood/fever sweeping across developed markets and could play into the UK Brexit camp, and the Donald Trump/Bernie Sanders campaigns US presidential elections, and perhaps Marie Le Pen in France in 2017. So while expectations might be that these allegations might focus more attention on graft and wrong-doing in emerging markets, actually the bigger impact might be felt nearer to home.
