An old university friend called me up the other day with an unusual problem. He is general counsel at a large corporate group in Europe, and they had received a letter from their bankers.

In that letter, the bank indicated it had uncovered two company names among the Panama Papers that were similar to my friend's employer and asked: could they please explain themselves?

With very little digging, we were able to establish two things: first, that the companies in the Panama Papers were nothing to do with with his company. Secondly, that they had been dissolved more than 20 years ago. When this was relayed to the bank, the bank then asked if there was any proof of this, as if proving a negative was not a conceptual impossibility.

But – other than reinforcing the general sense of paranoia that banks have about their customers – what was particularly interesting to me was that if you looked at the references to the those two offshore companies in the Panama Papers, there was absolutely nothing to suggest to the bank or anyone else that these two companies had done anything wrong. No hints of crooked politicians, illicit tax dodges or bribery and corruption. I have no idea who formed them or what purpose they were formed for but, based on the public information, neither does anyone else.

Not only was the bank sufficiently suspicious of them by the nature of their very existence that they were willing to hang them (had it not transpired that they were dead already), but it was also seemingly willing to hang another completely unconnected company on the basis of a presumed association. It feels like the exemplification of a witch hunt.

The irony about the presentation of the Panama Papers in much of the press is that everyone is guilty by suspicion. Although much of the sifting still has yet to be done on the data, what jumps out so far is not how much dodgy dealing is revealed, but how little. The narrative relentlessly peddled by the press essentially runs: 'all of this is dodgy, because it is offshore, and because it is offshore, it is dodgy'. Of course, they are careful to put necessary grudging caveats that there are legitimate reasons for using offshore holding companies, but the narrative of the reporting then leaves those caveats behind in a cloud of dust.

In the summer of 1692, one of the reasons that fear and persecution spread like contagion was that anyone who spoke out against the Salem witch trials was assumed guilty by suspicion. Groupthink fuelled by paranoia prevailed over rational assessment. By the time cooler heads finally prevailed, 20 women had been executed, excluding those who died from conditions of confinement – the youngest just nine years of age.

It doesn't seem likely that anyone will be burned at the stake for the Panama Papers (much as some might like to see that happen), but the financial equivalent is not far behind. Sectors of the media are suitably charged with righteous fury. Having your name mentioned in the Panama Papers is sufficient to knock approximately 0.5% off a company's market capitalisation on average. Why? These companies are not under investigation and have not done anything wrong – but their stock price takes a hit anyhow because they are damned by association. Rabid populism may lead people to take a naive and simplistic view of offshore structuring, and consign it all to tax fiddles and dodgy dealing. But in the real world, sophisticated businesspeople know and appreciate that corporate structuring is far more routine and indeed, relatively boring in most instances. Their voices are few and far between.

Will cooler heads prevail in the debate over the Panama Papers? The portents are not good. Shouting loudly about corruption and tax evasion elicits an immediately emotional response, no matter how shallow the roots of the story may be. Explaining to people the complexities of cross-border structuring and the operation of holding company structures is neither simple nor in any way interesting. It cannot fit sensibly into a Twitter feed, and no one would read it if it did.

For now, those of us who know better just have to listen quietly whilst the storm rages on, and be on the lookout for anyone piling up kindling around wooden stakes.

Colin Riegels is global head of banking and finance at Harneys.