OH THE joys of seeing the hypocrisy of the rich and the powerful exposed as they run rings round the laws they claim to support.

But there is part of the Panama Papers which is getting far less coverage - the story of the hangers-on without whom the rich and the powerful would be unable to hide their wealth and dodge pesky people such as tax collectors.

In today's world, power and money go hand in hand. You need money to get power - see the vast sums being spent on the US Presidential campaigns - and losing money means losing power.

So the skill set of the rich and powerful includes holding onto money as well as getting it. Add the common mindset of powerful people that the usual rules don't apply to them, and you get the tax dodges, shell companies and other financial shenanigans revealed in the Panama Papers.

Politicians and businessmen often don't have the technical expertise needed for these dodges, but where there is money there will be hangers-on anxious for their share of the pot. Step forward the bankers, the accountants and the lawyers who know to the millimetre just how far they can go while staying within the law and are willing to do whatever is needed provided they are well paid. Step forward the hangers-on of the hangers-on prepared to do their bidding provided they too can be well paid.

Some months ago BBC Radio did an expose about how easy it is to set up shell companies in Scotland and how shady people were using them to bankrupt an entire country. They stole 12 per cent of Moldova's GDP - more than a billion dollars. The agents who set up the swarms of shell companies needed for the scam were not legal or financial professionals, just people who had found a way to make money out of money. They lived in a council house.

As any fraudster will tell you, it is easy to set up a company in Britain, because the checks on who can become a company director are minimal.

Money talks. It talks so loud it drowns out the small still voice of conscience. How else can the bankers, lawyers, accountants and other hangers-on named in the Panama Papers live with themselves? The amount of money they are handling must have set alarm bells ringing as to where it came from and why it had to go to Panama. Perhaps they console themselves with the mantra that if they don't do it, someone else will, and in any case they are just carrying out instructions.

The Scottish shell company creators professed total ignorance of any connection with international fraud and were adamant they were acting within UK law. Were they seriously expecting anyone to believe they hadn't at least wondered what was going on?

Without the locals who knew Scottish company law, the international fraudsters who bankrupted Moldova couldn't have carried out their fraud. Likewise everyone named in the Panama Papers depended on the bankers, the accountants and the lawyers involved not asking awkward questions.

Those questions could include who else would provide the funds for the NHS, schools, social care and roads that should come from the taxes the hanger-ons help the rich evade on a grand scale. Think of how many hospitals could be funded from the Panamanian accounts.

If only the hangers-on listened to their still small voices rather than to the sound of cash cascading into their bank accounts. Then the NHS, schools, social care and so on would find life a lot easier and rich people would find it much harder to run rings round the laws they claim to support.