It is the largest leak in journalistic history, has led to a prime minister’s resignation in Iceland and calls for the reform of tax havens and has exposed the potentially shady dealings of many other world leaders.

And yet, I found it hard to be shocked by some of the revelations of the Panama Papers. The revelation that Putin might have a fortune hidden away in offshore accounts in the names of his friends doesn’t surprise me if I’m honest. I imagine I’m not alone in feeling like this – it’s yet another story detailing the many unjust advantages enjoyed by the rich.

In particular, I think I am not alone among members of Generation Y. As a recent Guardian investigation revealed, millennials (those aged 20-35) are particularly frustrated with the political and economic status quo, with one study finding that the key reason offered by young people about why they are disenchanted with democracy being that it “only serves the interest of the few”.

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So it doesn’t come as a surprise to us, nor I imagine to older generations, that leaders are out for themselves, that some wealthy people do immoral, or possibly illegal, things to make more money for themselves and keep as much of it out of the communal pot as possible. It’s easy to get blase about what are extraordinary revelations, and to dismiss them with a world-weary shrug of the shoulders.

Which is exactly why today’s revelations about the connections between tax havens and property ownership are so important. Revealed in the leaked documents was the fact that 2,800 Mossack Fonseca companies are connected to more than 6,000 UK title deeds, worth at least £7bn . On top of this, according to Guardian analysis, more than 90,000 properties in England and Wales are listed in the Land Registry to overseas owners, at least 75,000 of which are owned by companies or individuals registered in tax havens.

In a country where most young people cannot afford to buy a home, the fact that thousands of properties are bought through tax haven-based companies, by people who are already wealthy enough to restructure their finances to take advantage of tax havens, driving up house prices, and pushing out owner-occupiers, matters. And it especially matters to millennials.

The Guardian’s recent series focusing on the plight of Generation Y, revealed that increasingly the inequality in western countries is a generational one. The UK’s social mobility tsar warned that unless the “wind of change” swept through the country, Britain could soon become “permanently divided” as a result of intergenerational inequality.

We revealed that, compared with a decade ago, young couples and families in the UK were £900 a year worse off whereas the incomes of recent retirees had increased by £5,500 over the same period. The president of the European central bank warned that workplaces in Europe were rigged to protect older workers at the expense of young people; we read of how young Brits were “bearing the burden of past pension mistakes” and how the situation in the US is so severe that one professor of economics warned that “the US is out to bankrupt its children”.

And then there was housing. Home ownership is out of reach for most young people in the country, something that has been known and reported for a long time. But in our series, the Guardian revealed that for young couples who want to start a family, even renting an appropriate property (one with two bedrooms) on what is accepted as an affordable rate (30% of the median income of the region) is now impossible in two-thirds of the UK.

This is where the Panama Papers come in. Now we know just how much property is owned by companies linked with Mossack Fonseca, we can see how it affects young people. These companies buy property for very different reasons and with very different resources at their disposal than the average millennial looking to get on the property ladder.

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The tax haven-operated company is not wondering whether it can scrimp and borrow from their family to get together the deposit for a two-bedroom apartment that might allow them to have a child, rather than the one-bedroom property that’s already bankrupting them. They’re not debating whether the savings they get from buying in the furthest-flung suburbs of the city are worth the cost of the commute. In fact they may not be thinking about the property as a place in which people live at all.

Properties owned by offshore landlords aren’t illegal, nor are they the only reason for the precipitously escalating house prices across the country, but they are a factor. And as these companies and the, until now, mostly anonymous people behind them, buy more properties across the country, the dream of young adults buying a house, not as an investment, but as a home, gets further and further out of reach.

Millennials probably won’t be surprised by the revelations of how the tax haven system keeps the rich and powerful rich and powerful, but it’s important to remember that such wealth often comes at the expense of others. Even if it doesn’t shock us, it should make us angry.