International News, WHat's Happening, Out There?

[JackLuis]

Massive data leak reveals how world’s wealthy hide their money including $2B for Putin

A huge leak of 11.5 million documents from a Panama law firm reveals how the world's rich - including Russian President Vladimir Putin - hide their money, Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper said.

The documents, dubbed the Panama Papers, were obtained by the daily newspaper, based in Munich. It shared them with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and other news outlets, including the BBC and The Guardian.

"2.6 terabytes of data, 11.5 millions documents, and 214,000 shell companies: The Panama Papers are the largest data leak journalists have ever worked with," Sueddeutsche tweeted Sunday.

The documents link current and former leaders, including the former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, to illicit financial transactions.

"I'm Shocked to see such treachery from Politicians."

 

[JackLuis]

Icelandic prime minister refuses to resign over Panama Papers leak


The Panama Papers leak scandal: A look at who is named

The ICIJ has a detailed list of politicians, public officials and their friends and family members who were named in the documents. They include Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, the former prime minister of Qatar and Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, former emir of Qatar; Petro Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine; Rami and Hafez Makhlouf, cousins of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad; and Ian Cameron, British Prime Minister David Cameron's father.

Other high-profile figures listed below were also named in the documents, though it does not necessarily mean they were involved in illegal conduct.

It's all perfectly legal, mostly.

 

[JackLuis]

Panama Papers: The nuts and bolts of a massive international investigation

The reporting of the Panama Papers – which has been based on a massive global analysis of documents leaked from law firm Mossack Fonseca outlining how the world’s elite use tax havens – is a remarkable feat of collaboration which builds on several trends in investigative journalism.

The whole story started with a whistleblower who leaked a huge number of documents and data. At 2.6 terabytes of information, this leak is enormous, dwarfing the Wikileaks documents about the Iraq war or even Edward Snowden’s leaks of NSA surveillance details. Once again it shows how in the data age all organisations are vulnerable to vast caches of information being smuggled out on a computer hard drive or USB stick.

Following the authorities’ pursuit of the people behind those stories – Julian Assange, who is in the Ecuadorean embassy in London; Edward Snowden, who remains in exile in Moscow; and Chelsea Manning, who is serving a 35-year jail sentence, many had feared that whistleblowers would be more reluctant to come forward.

For the Panama Papers, however, it was notable that no major US media organisation was included in the initial partners. The ICIJ is based in the US and may have wanted to maximise its own profile in its home territory. It is also notable that a number of similar foundations or collectives were involved in the investigation. In the US in particular, there is a view that public interest investigative journalism increasingly has to be carried out by non-corporate media.

International partners bring different specialist knowledge to the investigation – whether geographic, political or business-related. At a time when many news organisations struggle to support permanent investigative teams, partnering is an obvious way to build a bigger and stronger team to look into a complex, long-running issue.

 

[sr71plt]

Wasn't it BotanyBoy who recently made the statement that all tax revenues went to socialism and then got shitty when I pointed out that there were tax revenues going straight into the personal offshore bank accounts of some world leaders and not into any programs at all, socialist or otherwise?


BotanyBoy posted:

Originally Posted by BotanyBoy
So then do tell....what taxes aren't socialism??

Because


To which I posted:

When El Leader collects taxes and sends them off to his Cayman's bank account, that isn't socialism. Have you been living under a rock?

After which, BB went ballistic and got shitty for several exchanges.

 

[JackLuis]

Wasn't it BotanyBoy who recently made the statement that all tax revenues went to socialist programs, and then got shitty when I pointed out that there were tax revenues going straight into the personal offshore bank accounts of some world leaders and not into any programs at all, socialist or otherwise?

He tends to be US centric. Though I don't think I saw that exchange. The question I have is, will the governments of the effected countries go after recovering these diverted funds, or will they just let the Banksters hold the capital?

 

[JackLuis]

Kill it, spin it – Putin will do anything to stifle the Panama Papers story

The Panama Papers are a wake-up call for anyone who may have doubted how deeply cronyism and corruption are rooted into Russia’s leadership. But for those who have followed the inner workings of Putin’s presidency for the past 16 years or so, they are as much confirmation as revelation.

What will be truly fascinating is watching how this new mass of information is dealt with by the Putin regime over time, and how this might affect an already tense relationship between the Kremlin and the west.

The first time a large amount of information was leaked about Russia’s power system was in 2010, when a trove of US diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks described a “virtual mafia state” and a system in which the Russian president allegedly used proxies to hide “illicit wealth”. These documents were damaging enough, detailing a kleptocratic authoritarian system where Russian officials, oligarchs and organised crime came together to amass large fortunes. At the time, the Kremlin dismissed this as “nothing interesting or worthy of comment”.

Casting Russia as a fortress resisting external onslaughts is key to Putin’s domestic political narrative

One key difference today is that the Panama Papers have emerged at a time when relations between Russia and the west are at an all-time low. When the WikiLeaks documents were published, the US and Russia were still officially in a “reset” phase, with pledges of cooperation on issues ranging from Afghanistan to nuclear disarmament. But since then, it’s all been downhill. The Russian government spoke earlier this year of a “new cold war”. Russian strategic bomber planes have flown over parts of Europe. Nato and the US are deploying new forces in the east of the continent. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine have led to western sanctions.

Along with low oil prices, this has put Russia’s economy under severe strain – with many analysts wondering whether that might lead to more aggressive ultra-nationalism in Moscow. Arguably, one key turning point, in this deterioration of relations with the west, came when the Russian regime accused Washington of stoking street demonstrations against the regime in 2011-12.

 

[LadyVer]

Reminds me of The Pentagon Papers.

 

[JackLuis]

Reminds me of The Pentagon Papers.

That was just exposing a trail of perfidity for one Government. The is ~11 million records covering many many people and some of the 'Most High.'

 

[BoyNextDoor]

The world's 62 richest billionaires have as much wealth as the bottom half of the world's population, according to a new report from Oxfam International.

The wealthiest have seen their net worth soar over the five years ending in 2015. Back in 2010, it took 388 mega-rich people to own as much as half the world.
And the Top 1% own more than everyone else combined -- a milestone reached in 2015, a year earlier than Oxfam had predicted.

Oxfam released its annual report ahead of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss city of Davos, a yearly gathering of political and financial leaders. The study draws from the Forbes annual list of billionaires and Credit Suisse's Global Wealth Databook.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/160114173556-oxfam-wealth-inequality-780x439.jpg

 

[JackLuis]

About Flaming Time!

President Obama Just Took a Major Step in Response to the Panama Papers

Why did he wait seven years to address this issue?

Inversion is one of the multiple corporate tax loopholes companies exploit to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Under inversion, an American company acquires a foreign competitor, then re-registers in the home country or territory of that competitor to get around American tax laws. The new rules enacted by the Treasury Department will put a cap on new foreign acquisitions of U.S. assets to skirt ownership requirements for potential inversions in the future.

“When politicians perpetuate a system that favors the wealthy over the middle class, its not surprising that people feel like they cant get ahead,” President Obama said on Tuesday morning. “Rather than doubling down on policies that let a few big corporations and wealthy people make their own rules, we should build an economy that gives everyone a fair shot.”

The Treasury Department’s new rules could completely derail the proposed $150 billion merger between pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Irish-based Allergan, along with other proposed corporate inversions. The New York Times described the new rules, outlined in a 300-page document, as “thorough and, if not exhaustive, exhausting.” Obama praised the Treasury Department’s latest moves, but called on Congress to pass legislation permanently ending the corporate inversion loophole.

“Only Congress can close it for good,” Obama said.

 

[phrodeau]

President Obama Just Took a Major Step in Response to the Panama Papers

Why did he wait seven years to address this issue?

He's been trying to work with Congress in the past. Now it's time to turn up the shameometer.

 

[Aella_]

Wow…
Thanks to the OP and a couple more posters for coming up with such interesting topics, and for trying to make this forum less narrow in focus.
The debates around american elections and politics are interesting too, but less appealing to a certain demographic.

 

[oggbashan]

Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion

There is confusion in the media response between tax evasion and tax avoidance.

It is not illegal to arrange your finances to avoid paying taxes. That is tax avoidance. It is a principle of tax law that you don't have to pay more than you have to. It might be immoral, but it isn't illegal.

It is illegal to evade taxation by means not permitted by your country's tax code. That is tax evasion and is a crime.

Most of the millions of accounts in Panama, the British Virgin Islands and other 'tax havens' are operating legally. However many are not.

The UK Prime Minister has introduced laws to make tax evasion more difficult, and has closed many loopholes previously used legally for tax avoidance. Some of those loopholes, including his deceased father's Panama account, were legal THEN but are not possible NOW.

But accountants and lawyers earn substantial revenues by advising clients how to AVOID taxation legally. They will just have to work harder after the leak of the Panama information because US and UK governments will introduce legislation to make some of the previous methods illegal.

It is rich for the UK Labour leader to attack David Cameron about his deceased father's tax affairs. What Cameron Senior did was legal then under a Labour Government, and Cameron Junior was the person who made it illegal.

Previous Labour Governments knew about offshore tax avoidance and did sod-all about the issue.

Tax EVASION eventually jailed Al Capone.

 

[JackLuis]

The Panama Papers Reveal all Our Worst Fears of the 1 Percent Are True

If anything is likely to push people into the arms of the Democratic Party, it is the revelations contained in the already infamous Panama Papers, a leak from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that is so consequential it makes 2010’s Wikileaks look like child’s play. And that is forgetting for a moment about the sheer volume of information released – 11.5 million documents and 2.6 terabytes of data, or 1,500 times the size of the Wikileaks trove. These records cover a 40-year span.

So yes. This is a big deal. And today a lot of rich and powerful people are feeling very exposed, if not sufficiently ashamed. After all, as Business Insider put it in their analysis of the documents,

While anonymous company structures hidden in offshore holdings are not illegal, the leaks reveal the extent to which many high-level political figures have relied on shell companies to conceal their wealth, launder money, or evade taxes.

It turns out that the 1 percent are every bit as vile as the rest of us thought they were. And that’s saying something. They might even actually be worse. An actual memorandum from the law firm admits, “Ninety-five per cent of our work coincidentally consists in selling vehicles to avoid taxes.”

And here Republicans have been telling us it is poor people and immigrants who are failing to pay taxes. All those shirkers!

 

[Aella_]

Intriguing piece of news. What sort of alliances have all these newssites? The guardian, wikileaks and so on, since they emphasize different things?

NEWS SET 2

WikiLeaks - US government, Soros funded Panama Papers to attack Putin
https://www.rt.com/news/338683-wikileaks-usaid-putin-attack/

"Washington is behind the recently released offshore revelations known as the Panama Papers, WikiLeaks has claimed, saying that the attack was “produced” to target Russia and President Putin.

On Wednesday, the international whistleblowing organization said on Twitter that the Panama Papers data leak was produced by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), "which targets Russia and [the] former USSR." The "Putin attack" was funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and American hedge fund billionaire George Soros, WikiLeaks added, saying that the US government's funding of such an attack is a serious blow to its integrity."

 

[JackLuis]

Intriguing piece of news. What sort of alliances have all these newssites? The guardian, wikileaks and so on, since they emphasize different things?

RT is a Russian site, so they will naturally protect Putin. That said, it seems true that Putin is not named in the Panama Papers, ( that I've heard of) so they have a point.

As Ogg pointed out, just because you have an offshore account doesn't mean you are breaking the law. It where the millions you put into the accounts comes from that counts.

 

[Aella_]

As Ogg pointed out, just because you have an offshore account doesn't mean you are breaking the law. It where the millions you put into the accounts comes from that counts.

Many thanks - to both you and Ogg.

RT is a Russian site, so they will naturally protect Putin.

What also baffles me a bit is WikiLeaks's involvement in all this: Why so quick to make a statement? And why in This particular case? (they weren't so quick to intervene when "slander attempts" were directed at Other targets).
- who's funding them?
- or, if not, what sort of ideology drives them?
Do they have a pattern of trying "not to offend" certain parties?

In saying these, I only started asking myself these questions after seeing the tweets. Because prior to this, I always saw WikiLeaks as being altruistic idealists who work for the "little guy". (I might have been right or naiive, who knows… .)

N.B.
Just thinking aloud - but if someone commented on that : that would be a bonus.

 

[Liar]

It is rich for the UK Labour leader to attack David Cameron about his deceased father's tax affairs. What Cameron Senior did was legal then under a Labour Government, and Cameron Junior was the person who made it illegal.

Legal and political liability are two veeeeery different beasts.

 

[Hypoxia]

What also baffles me a bit is WikiLeaks's involvement in all this: Why so quick to make a statement? And why in This particular case? (they weren't so quick to intervene when "slander attempts" were directed at Other targets).
- who's funding them?
- or, if not, what sort of ideology drives them?
Do they have a pattern of trying "not to offend" certain parties?

In saying these, I only started asking myself these questions after seeing the tweets. Because prior to this, I always saw WikiLeaks as being altruistic idealists who work for the "little guy". (I might have been right or naiive, who knows… .)

We've gone into this a little on another thread. AFAIK we (the outside world) doesn't know at this point WHO is WikiLeaks@WikiLeaks and WHAT are their role in the org and its factions, and their affiliations and sponsors.

But I'm more concerned with evidence. WikiLeaks@WikiLeaks makes a claim. What do they have to support that? And how did WikiLeaks determine in two or three days that the Panama Papers -- all 1.5 terabytes -- are a setup?

Until supporting evidence emerges, I'll treat this like claims Obama is a Muslim Communist Kenyan.

 

[Hypoxia]

Legal and political liability are two veeeeery different beasts.

Yes. If (for example) the Clintons had a fat offshore account, it might be totally legal, yet not so good as Ms Clinton seeks office. Hmmm, I wonder where all Mr Trump's accounts are?

Notice that the whole Panama Papers thang involves exactly ONE law office. A few others offering similar services probably exist, ja? I've read of a guy over by Reno who'll setup a blind Nevada account for US$175 or a complete ID package for US$1k. The cheap and easy way path to cash laundering, ja?

 

[JackLuis]

Panama Papers Revelation of Assad Family’s Stolen Wealth Helps Explain the Syrian Revolution

Interesting article about how crony Capitalists fucked the country.

The revelation in the leaked Panama Papers that Mossack Fonseca and Swiss bank HSBC serviced the companies of corrupt Syrian billionaire Rami Makhlouf (first cousin of dictator Bashar al-Assad) long after the US imposed sanctions on him is a reminder of why Syrians revolted against the regime in 2011 in the first place. Makhlouf was said to be worth $5 billion (likely more than Donald Trump) before the revolution, and to have dominated 60% of Syria’s economy. Below is something I wrote about the political economy of Syria’s revolution, which I never published– but it makes even more sense, I think, in view of the Panama Papers.

In 1963 the secular, Arab nationalist and socialist Baath Party came to power in Syria. Conflicts within the ranks of the party, which had military and civilian wings, kept the country unstable until 1970. In that year, an Air Force general, Hafez al-Assad made a coup. A member of the Alawite, Shiite minority that comprises about ten to fourteen percent of the population, al-Assad turned the Baath Party into a mechanism for dealing with Syria’s transformation from a largely rural, peasant society to a majority urban one. He reversed earlier Baath hostility to the agricultural business classes, allowing a vigorous private sector in the countryside. The public sector under his version of the Baath Part concentrated on organizing small-holding peasants and extending irrigation in the Ghab and the Euphrates Basin. The Baath building of dams and waterworks endeared it to small-holding rural Sunni Arabs, and over time incomes rose and cities expanded modestly. The regime was not universally popular, and in the small cities at the center of the country a powerful Muslim Brotherhood opposition flourished, with a class basis in businessmen, shopkeepers and artisans hostile to secular Baath socialism. In 1982, al-Assad brutally crushed a Brotherhood uprising in Hama, killing thousands. [See footnotes at bottom of article.]

 

[oggbashan]

...

Notice that the whole Panama Papers thang involves exactly ONE law office. A few others offering similar services probably exist, ja? I've read of a guy over by Reno who'll setup a blind Nevada account for US$175 or a complete ID package for US$1k. The cheap and easy way path to cash laundering, ja?

There are many tax havens around the world, including in some US States. The Panama Papers are the very small tip of the enormous iceberg.

Switzerland, Luxemburg, the British Virgin Islands, Gibraltar, Monaco, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, Hong Kong... I could go on and on with a list of places that offer significant tax advantages depending on where you live and what taxes you are trying to avoid.

Most are perfectly legitimate, but some will accept proceeds of crime.

 

[JackLuis]

China steps up Panama Papers censorship after leaders' relatives named

Chinese censors have stepped up their censorship of websites, ordering all content related to the Panama Papers to be scrubbed as new revelations emerged of how relatives of some of the country’s top leaders had used secretive offshore companies to store their wealth.

Documents from the leaked Mossack Fonseca database showed the relations of three of the seven members of the Communist party’s elite ruling council, the politburo standing committee, had companies that were clients of the offshore law firm. They included relatives of Chinese president Xi Jinping.

A Communist party censorship directive instructed news organisations to purge all reports, blogs, bulletin boards and comments relating to this week’s highly sensitive revelations.

“Please self-inspect and delete all content related to the ‘Panama Papers’ leak,” the order said according to China Digital Times, a website run by the University of California, Berkeley.

“These are methods of storing assets and money that are really for the super, super rich. From that perspective I think there is a fear and a sensitivity among Communist party leaders that this exposes the degree to which the political and economic elite are so closely intertwined and so far above your average citizen in terms of wealth,” she said.

Xi Jinping has launched a high-profile crackdown on corruption since taking power, cautioning party members that the continued pillaging of public funds could topple the party. “Many worms will disintegrate wood,” Xi warned in a 2013 speech.

The Chinese president has also ordered party officials to avoid public demonstrations of wealth in an attempt to improve the party’s image.
“This kind of blows a big hole in that effort because it exposes how the top political leaders and their families are, at the very least, super, super rich – even if this money had been obtained legally, which of course is a big question mark as well,” said Cook.

 

[hashtag45]

Wow all these revelations….
All these things that came out and we wouldn't have known about but for technology. (internet leaks and sharing of knowledge, video recordings on cellphones and so on)

I wonder if the internet & technology will be the key to ending or at least changing a bit this cycle of "Elites versus the rest of us" that's been going on for centuries… Or the reverse.

 

[Hypoxia]

Wow all these revelations….
All these things that came out and we wouldn't have known about but for technology. (internet leaks and sharing of knowledge, video recordings on cellphones and so on)

I wonder if the internet & technology will be the key to ending or at least changing a bit this cycle of "Elites versus the rest of us" that's been going on for centuries… Or the reverse.

Long ago I was tapped to moderate sites dealing with UFO-paranormal-conspiracy stuff. (I was the designated "voice of reason". Ha.) I learned the basis of disinformation: build an onion. The onion is skin after skin of conspiracies and half-truths. Peel away a layer to see what's underneath. Peel away enough layers and we reach the truth at its center -- except it's empty. Layer after layer of deceit, concealing... nothing. Truth is somewhere else.

If, like good little conspiratologists, we assume these media leaks (Wikileaks, Snowden, Panama, etc) revealing massive wrongdoing are managed and manipulated to distract us from what's REALLY happening, it all makes sense. In the past, new technologies provided pols and propagandists with new tools to mislead the public. Modern digital technologies allow anyone with the chops to create their own bubble of (dis)information, create public terror by hacking personal financial accounts, and otherwise discombobulate reality. The REALLY powerful sit on the sidelines laughing and tweaking their little marionettes. Consider who these leaks hurt, and benefit. Follow the money.