Malcolm Turnbull is not a criminal. And - based on the media reports that came out on Thursday - he has not acted illegally.

Nor have many of the other ASX 200 companies - from BHP Billiton to the big four banks - and wealthy Australians named on the list.

So while as ordinary taxpayers we are fascinated by the secret dealings of the rich and famous, we need to distinguish the criminals from the rest.

The Panama Papers - more than 11 million files over a period from 1977 through to December 2015, which were leaked to a German newspaper and then shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists  - is a mixture of the following:

• Criminals who use offshore companies to facilitate bribery, arms deals, tax evasion, financial fraud and drug trafficking. 
• Those who made legal use of shell companies and offshore jurisdictions.

The Prime Minister  falls into the latter category. 

Mr Turnbull defended his involvement in the company when questioned on Thursday.

"Let me say to you that the company of which Neville Wran and I were directors was an Australian-listed company and had it made any profits - which it did not, regrettably, - it certainly would have paid tax in Australia, but obviously you haven't studied the accounts of the company concerned," he said.

"As the article acknowledged, there is no suggestion of any impropriety whatsoever."

The use of Mossack Fonseca services - again while politically unfortunate for Turnbull - is not in itself illegal.

According to The Australian Financial Review in the 1990s, the Prime Minister and former NSW Premier Neville Wran were both on the board of a company serviced by Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca.

​The documents obtained by ICIJ and shared with the AFR - which are not part of the publicly searchable database - show that Turnbull and Wran were on the board of Star Mining NL and its subsidiary in the British Virgin Islands, Star Technology Service, which had been incorporated by Mossack Fonseca two years earlier.

The company was set up by Mossack Fonseca to explore development of an estimated $20 billion Siberian gold mine called Sukhoi Log, but Turnbull has said that he didn't know it was incorporated by the law firm or a registered office.

And in response to allegations Star Technologies had made donations to Russian politicians - which in itself is concerning - Mr Turnbull's spokesman told Fairfax Media on Thursday the Prime Minister was not aware of any such donations in the time "during or prior to" being a director.

Mr Turnbull and Mr Wran joined the board of Star Mining on October 29 1993, after mining entrepreneur Ian MacNee sold Star Technology to Star Mining in return for cash and shares.

In December 3 1993, Turnbull and Wran were appointed directors of Star Mining's subsidiary in the British Virgin Islands, Star Technology Services Limited. This company held the group's stake in the Sukhoi Log prospect, a joint venture called LenaGold.​

He and Mr Wran resigned from Star Mining and Star Technology in September 1995.

The use of a British Virgin Islands company was common at the time for companies that wanted limited visibility and whose entities would not be subject to audit.

The AFR also reports a note from a Mossack Fonseca employee stating that half of Star Technology's shares were "bearer shares", which were to be converted to registered shares.

Bearer shares are not used much now - the banks hate them as it allows ownership of the company to change without the bank knowing, and leaves the financial institution exposed.

But in the 1990s, bearer shares were more common - it made it easier to move shares from one entity to another or one person to another without registers being kept.

The mere fact the Turnbull-linked company was represented by Mossack Fonseca, even if unknowingly, is a bad look.

Mossack Fonseca acted for whoever chose to come to it for its services in order to make profits.

The firm has publicly denied wrongdoing. A spokesman told ICIJ that Mossack Fonseca relies on intermediaries such as banks and other law firms to review the backgrounds of the customers that they refer to the firm.

It should have had proper due diligence. The confidential source who leaked the Panama Papers, known as "Joe Doe", said he did it because he thought Mossack Fonseca was behaving unethically.

The ICIJ also reports that Mossack Fonseca made money by creating shell companies that have been used by suspected financiers of terrorists and war criminals in the Middle East; drug kings and queens from Mexico, Guatemala and Eastern Europe; nuclear weapons proliferators in Iran and North Korea, and arms dealers in southern Africa.

Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan told a parliamentary hearing last month that the Panama Papers leak is not a "one off", with dozens of other firms running similar operations around the world. "They rely on the ever-dwindling secrecy havens," he said.

The crooks will now likely end up in jail - on Wednesday the Australian Taxation Office confirmed that it soon expects the police to lay charges against some of the shadowy Australian cases appearing in the list.

The ATO has identified 800 Australian taxpayers in the data, and according to Deputy Commissioner Michael Cranston, has now linked 140 of them to an associate offshore service provider located in Hong Kong.

Around 80 names have also matched with names on the Australian Crime Commission's serious and organised crime intelligence database.

Globally, a hunt for some of the world's worst criminals is underway.

Governments are also exploring how to follow OECD recommendations on law changes that will stop the use of tax havens. But international cooperation is lacking.

The Tax Justice Network estimates that up to $11.5 trillion worth of assets are held offshore - about a third of total global wealth - and that the tax not paid as a result of these funds being held offshore might exceed US$255 billion ($347 billion) each year.

Governments need to work harder to stop the use of shell companies - those with no obvious operations, employees or physical assets.

As I have argued before, transparency is the best solution in this regard.

If shell companies and secret tax jurisdictions didn't exist, Malcolm Turnbull wouldn't have been in this mess.