By Atty. Eduardo T. Reyes III
Documents that leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) now known as the Pandora Papers had blown the cover of world leaders, politicians and billionaires who have stashed away their monies offshore in shell companies.
In China, thousands took to the main office of the Evergrande- a developer of thousands of housing projects- to seek some assurance that their investments had not evaporated after the government placed a limit to credit financing and other credit facilities upending Evergrande’s corporate and business viability.
The pandemic had dramatically changed people’s lives around the world. Companies had adapted to the remote working schemes by allowing employees a flexible work arrangement. While bloggers and others who are self-employed had taken it to a different level when they took the easing of restrictions as an opportunity to travel and sojourn in some palm-fringed co-working and co-living space and yet continue working. They are now referred to as digital nomads.
Pandemic or no pandemic, the world is shaped by our different realities.
The controversy that was spurred by the leak of the Pandora Papers is disturbing. Indeed, the news had confirmed what used to be a reality that existed only in whisperings. Until recently, hiding some loot in places known as tax havens had only been taken with a grain of sand (in some island offshore) when the deliverer of the message is another politician whose motives are likewise suspect. But keeping funds offshore by itself is not at all bad so long as the source is legitimate. Wealthy people have the right under the law to keep their money elsewhere for reasons of privacy. But when the provenance of the funds is dirty money, it pollutes the stash as well wherever it may be. In law, tax avoidance is legal for as long as it does not rise to the level of tax evasion. The difference between the two is that the latter entails jail time to the tax evader.
For Evergrande, its teetering on the brink of insolvency for failing to meet obligations brings to mind economic recessions in history that were caused by a confluence of events. But is the Evergrande’s predicament pandemic-induced or one caused by a repressive regime that seeks to clampdown on Capitalism for being contrary to Marxism? For the Chinese government as well as the investors, it could be both. This exposes how some business empires only exist through the reality of credit facilities which can be punctured by other harsher realities.
Meanwhile, for the digital nomads who had found the opportunity to mix work with pleasure and conflate the two into a singular passion, the pandemic may have opened their eyes to a new reality. A new world. A new life.
Life is about choices. It is also about perspective.
In matters of the heart, one’s love life is teeming with different realities. Exes. The ones who got away. In business and career, co-workers who chose to take the different path. All these are our alternative realities. For the fatalistic, it was meant to be. For the practical, so be it. While for the romantic, it serendipitously opened the door to what fate has in store.
Covid-19 has not created a new world. It merely magnifies the world that already is. Mortality however has now a more tangible form. For this columnist, sojourning middle age is a wonderful reality. Being in the middle of the journey helps one to appreciate how it is to be once young and at the same time have glimpses of what advanced years hold as a promise.
As the stoics would put it: “From the very beginning, make it your practice to say every harsh impression, ‘you are an impression and not at all what you appear to be.’ Next, examine and test it by the rules you possess, the first and the greatest of which is this- whether it belongs to the things in our control or not in our control, and if the latter, be prepared to respond, “It is nothing to me”. (Epictetus, Enchiridion, 1.5).
Again, life is a matter of perspective. It is also about choices.
As I write this piece, the thoughts and words are of my choosing. But once this column is out, they are in my readers’ control.
They will be colored by different realities.
(The author is the senior partner of ET Reyes III & Associates- a law firm based in Iloilo City. He is a litigation attorney, a law professor and a book author. His website is etriiilaw.com).
