Panama Papers can't clean up the truly bad actors

New York

THE Panama Papers can only clean up so much. A leak of more than 11 million documents from Mossack Fonseca, a law firm in the Central American nation, has kicked off a global offshore tax hunt. At least one world leader is already under fire and others could be damaged, too. The impact may be limited, however, in the least democratic regimes.

Far-flung accounts used to circumvent tax bills are sometimes perfectly legal, but also often cater to questionable and unscrupulous activity.

Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, for example, had one in which he and his wife allegedly held stakes in financial institutions as he was negotiating with them. The country's opposition parties have called on him to resign. Other elected officials may struggle to explain the size of their offshore acc…