Panama Papers leak: how financial services firms hide money for the rich and powerful

[Winehole23]

Over a year ago, an anonymous source contacted the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and submitted encrypted internal documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that sells anonymous offshore companies around the world. These shell firms enable their owners to cover up their business dealings, no matter how shady.

In the months that followed, the number of documents continued to grow far beyond the original leak. Ultimately, SZ acquired about 2.6 terabytes of data, making the leak the biggest that journalists had ever worked with. The source wanted neither financial compensation nor anything else in return, apart from a few security measures.


The data provides rare insights into a world that can only exist in the shadows. It proves how a global industry led by major banks, legal firms, and asset management companies secretly manages the estates of the world’s rich and famous: from politicians, Fifa officials, fraudsters and drug smugglers, to celebrities and professional athletes.
A group effortThe Süddeutsche Zeitung decided to analyze the data in cooperation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). ICIJ had already coordinated the research for past projects that SZ was also involved in, among them Offshore Leaks, Lux Leaks, and Swiss Leaks. Panama Papers is the biggest-ever international cooperation of its kind. In the past 12 months, around 400 journalists from more than 100 media organizations in over 80 countries have taken part in researching the documents. These have included teams from the Guardian and the BBC in England, Le Monde in France, and La Nación in Argentina. In Germany, SZ journalists have cooperated with their colleagues from two public broadcasters, NDR and WDR. Journalists from the Swiss Sonntagszeitung and the Austrian weekly Falter have also worked on the project, as have their colleagues at ORF, Austria’s national public broadcaster. The international team initially met in Washington, Munich, Lillehammer and London to map out the research approach.

http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/56febff0a1bb8d3c3495adf4/

[boutons_deux]

Corporate Media Gatekeepers Protect Western 1% From Panama Leak

Whoever leaked the Mossack Fonseca papers appears motivated by a genuine desire to expose the system that enables the ultra wealthy to hide their massive stashes, often corruptly obtained and all involved in tax avoidance. These Panamanian lawyers hide the wealth of a significant proportion of the 1%, and the massive leak of their documents ought to be a wonderful thing.

Unfortunately the leaker has made the dreadful mistake of turning to the western corporate media to publicise the results. In consequence the first major (http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/panama-papers-money-hidden-offshore)story, published today by the Guardian, is all about Vladimir Putin and a cellist on the fiddle. As it happens I believe the story and have no doubt Putin is bent.

But why focus on Russia? Russian wealth is only a tiny minority of the money hidden away with the aid of Mossack Fonseca. In fact, it soon becomes obvious that the selective reporting is going to stink.

The Suddeutsche Zeitung, which received the leak, gives a detailed explanation (http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/56febff0a1bb8d3c3495adf4/)of the methodology the corporate media used to search the files. The main search they have done is for names associated with breaking UN sanctions regimes. The Guardian reports this too (http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/a-world-of-hidden-wealth-why-we-are-shining-a-light-offshore)and helpfully lists those countries as Zimbabwe, North Korea, Russia and Syria. The filtering of this Mossack Fonseca information by the corporate media follows a direct western governmental agenda. There is no mention at all of use of Mossack Fonseca by massive western corporations or western billionaires – the main customers. And the Guardian is quick to reassure that “much of the leaked material will remain private.”

What do you expect? The leak is being managed (https://www.icij.org/index.html)by the grandly but laughably named “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists”, which is funded and organised entirely by the USA’s Center for Public Integrity. Theirfunders include (https://www.publicintegrity.org/about/our-work/supporters)

Ford Foundation
Carnegie Endowment
Rockefeller Family Fund
W K Kellogg Foundation
Open Society Foundation (Soros)

among many others. Do not expect a genuine expose of western capitalism. The dirty secrets of western corporations will remain unpublished.

Expect hits at Russia, Iran and Syria and some tiny “balancing” western country like Iceland. A superannuated UK peer or two will be sacrificed – someone already with dementia.

The corporate media – the Guardian and BBC in the UK – have exclusive access to the database which you and I cannot see.

They are protecting themselves from even seeing western corporations’ sensitive information by only looking at those documents which are brought up by specific searches such as UN sanctions busters. Never forget the Guardian smashed its copies of the Snowden files on the instruction of MI6.

What if they did Mossack Fonseca database searches on the owners of all the corporate media and their companies, and all the editors and senior corporate media journalists? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on all the most senior people at the BBC?

What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on every donor to the Center for Public Integrity and their companies?

What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on every listed company in the western stock exchanges, and on every western millionaire they could trace?

That would be much more interesting. I know Russia and China are corrupt, you don’t have to tell me that. What if you look at things that we might, here in the west, be able to rise up and do something about?

And what if you corporate lapdogs let the people see the actual data?

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/04/corporate-media-gatekeepers-protect-western-1-from-panama-leak/

[Winehole23]

Murray gets rekt in the comments section. you don't ever read past the lede, do you?

[Winehole23]

international corruption has consequences that are felt here:


No corner of the globe is untouched – including the United States.


States such as Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming register thousands of corporations annually, often without identifying the true owners. Some of the billions of dollars splashing through the domestic economy come from anonymous foreigners who inflate real estate prices in places like Miami (http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article69248462.html), buying properties outright in cash.


“We know (of) … upwards to $6 to $10 billion a year laundered through the U.S.,” said Patrick Fallon Jr., head of the FBI’s financial crimes section.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article69729112.html

[boutons_deux]

international corruption has consequences that are felt here:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article69729112.html





But according to WC, we 99% are simply jealous of the hard-gotten gains of the 1%

Hilarious how Putin is the lead story. No top DC politicians like Bishop Gekko or Issa in the Panama files?

[pgardn]

But according to WC, we 99% are simply jealous of the hard-gotten gains of the 1%

Hilarious how Putin is the lead story. No top DC politicians like Bishop Gekko or Issa in the Panama files?

Can you wait?

[boutons_deux]

Can you wait?

I'm sure the US tax evaders haven't watied, sending their army of lawyers all over this, suppressing the incriminating evidence.

name and shame? :lol only if you'r some low-level criminal does your mugshot get published in the daily papers.

[TDMVPDPOY]

if they can bring maddoff to justice, i dont see why the irs cant take a shit on that lists of people?

[boutons_deux]

if they can bring maddoff to justice, i dont see why the irs cant take a shit on that lists of people?

Madoff screwed a bunch wealthy people.

Tax evaders screw governments.

Repugs say it's patriotic to screw govt out of taxes, and 10Ms of American agree, having been LIED to by the VRWC/Repugs/Fox that NOTHING good can come from govt, so fuck it.

[boutons_deux]

if they can bring maddoff to justice, i dont see why the irs cant take a shit on that lists of people?

50K Americans were exposed as tax evaders by a Euro whistle blower. Please link to the IRS website where I can see the list of these 50K tax evaders.

HSBC laundered $100Ms for drug cartels, and still operates in USA, retains its banking license.

No Law Is Above The Man.

[pgardn]

Read the Slomo quote in Club.

I was wondering why people who should know better were hiding money using the same intermediary as drug dealers and desperate/or untouchable despots.

[pgardn]

Slomo:

It's not a leak per se, but German investigators bribing employees to become whistle blowers. They did the same thing a few years back with Liechtenstein, forcing both Switzerland and Liechtenstein to change their banking legislations. I have to admit that Merkel does put her money where her mouth is - she said she was going after tax evaders and she is (apparently with gusto).

Let's be honest what the Germans are doing is neither difficult nor innovative. You just need to mean it as opposed to be in favour of it only in principles. A nice fuck you touch is how the Germans buy the info, follow it up and once they are done share the info with anybody for free.

Of course this will not catch the really big ones, because having this kind of companies, accounts and other assorted arrangements is technically not illegal as long as you have squared off their status with your local tax authorities. So only the semi rich and idiots are going to be caught out, the smart (and super wealthy) have probably made sure that they are right on the edge of the law and will get away with it.

[101A]

But according to WC, we 99% are simply jealous of the hard-gotten gains of the 1%

Hilarious how Putin is the lead story. No top DC politicians like Bishop Gekko or Issa in the Panama files?

1%? 3,500,000 people in this country alone?
That's not that elite.

Most probably can't find Panama on a bet.

Probably closer to .01%, or even .001%; but I do think bankers should pretty much be strung up. Lawyers should be drawn and quartered.

[Pelicans78]

35% income tax is the real crime in this country.

[boutons_deux]

35% income tax is the real crime in this country.

bullshit. the real crime is $1.5T/year to support American Economic/Miliary Empire, when a few $100B could fix all the bridges and roads, and a few $100B more could replace lead piping, lead paint, fix up the leady, crummy water systems.

[Winehole23]

Globalization is supposed to be about the free movement of people, goods, and capital. But in fact, the system is set up to enable that mobility mainly for the rich (or for large corporations). The result is global tax evasion (http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2144112,00.html), the offshoring of labor, and an elite that flies 35,000 feet over the problems of nation states and the tax payers within them.

Where do we go from here? I think we’re heading towards a root to branch re-evaluation of how our market system works–and doesn’t work. The debate over free trade (http://time.com/4277502/after-decades-of-consensus-the-value-of-global-free-trade-is-being-contested-by-the-left-and-the-right-what-every-voter-needs-to-know/) is part of that re-evaluation. The calls for a global campaign against tax evasion (https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/18/united-states-g-8-action-plan-transparency-company-ownership-and-control) are, too. I think there will also be intense scrutiny about the ease with which financial capital can move around the world – we’ve already seen that with the hoopla over tax inversions (http://time.com/3326573/the-artful-dodgers/), but we’ll see a lot more backlash, in new areas.


“I expect that the populist backlash will be intense and will impact everything from high-end real estate to PACs (effectively political shell companies),” says one of my favorite sources, Peter Atwater, a behavioral economist. “Voters are increasingly angry at the seeming transience of the financial/corporate/political elite. The 1% can move anywhere they want—and profit handsomely from the relocation, but the 99% can’t. Worse, the 99% are left with the aftermath—the empty buildings of a deserted Detroit, the toxic waste from chemical plants in West Virginia or the unsustainable tax liabilities of Puerto Rico.”


Fixing all this is a growth issue, and not just for the U.S. and other rich countries. As Global Financial Integrity recently found, developing economies lost $7.8 trillion in cash (http://www.gfintegrity.org/report/illicit-financial-flows-from-developing-countries-2004-2013/) because of maneuvers like those allegedly done by Mossack Fonseca, between 2004 and 2013. What’s more, illicit outflows are increasing at a rate of 6.5 % a year—twice the rate of GDP growth.http://time.com/4280864/panama-papers-capitalism/

[boutons_deux]

"root to branch re-evaluation of how our market system works–and doesn’t work"

Lots of people have done that, years ago, but nobody can do anything about it.

BigCorp/1% (aka capitalists) have rigged the world's financial system, fucked labor, and it's unfuckable, because BigCorp/1% has corrupted the political systems.

[Winehole23]

the first domino falls:


Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson announced (http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/05/europe/panama-papers-iceland-pm/index.html?sr=twCNN040516panama-papers-iceland-pm0357PMStoryLink&linkId=23077830) his resignation on Tuesday amid mounting public anger over evidence that he and his wife owned a secretive offshore company called Wintris, which managed millions of dollars of investments in three Icelandic banks (https://theintercept.com/2016/04/04/panama-papers-leak-sparks-protests-iceland-prime-ministers-secret-ties-banks/) that collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis.http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2016/04/sigmundur-gunnlaugsson-iceland-panama-papers

[hater]

Lol rest of the world shocked at something most Americans do :lol

I myself have various bank accounts in the island banana nations :lol

[pgardn]

Lol rest of the world shocked at something most Americans do :lol

I myself have various bank accounts in the island banana nations :lol

Where do you get your bullshit?

Two lies in two sentences, let's go for three.

[Nbadan]

A firm with ties to senior members of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign registered to lobby on behalf of a major Russian bank just weeks before a massive leak exposed the bank’s role in a web of secret financial dealings that have enriched members of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.

The “Panama Papers” are being called “the Wikileaks of the mega-rich.” Corporate documents leaked from the law firm Mossack Fonseca show how world leaders have used offshore tax havens to hide their involvement in lucrative companies and business deals around the world.

Among those companies is the Russian Sberbank, whose U.S. investment banking branch recently enlisted the services of the Podesta Group. According to its lobbying registration form, the firm will work on banking, trade, and foreign relations issues.

One of the three lobbyists working on the account is Tony Podesta, a bundler for the Clinton campaign and the brother of campaign chairman John Podesta, who co-founded the firm.

http://freebeacon.com/issues/panama-papers-implicate-podesta-client/

ummmpphh...4 years of this...

[pgardn]

http://freebeacon.com/issues/panama-papers-implicate-podesta-client/

ummmpphh...4 years of this...

We have yet to see any really significant US political figures or ultra rich involved compared to the rest of the world. Probably because it's fairly stupid to work with a firm who has primary clients that are drug dealers, despots, oligarchs... In other words one can actually get caught and prosecuted in the US, and there are other ways to hide money that may or may not be illegal here. It's easier to get the straightforward cheaters.

[Nbadan]

That's because the rich in the US have learned to hide behind their company names


On October 12, 2011, Sen. Bernie Sanders opposed the Panama–United States Trade Promotion Agreement on the senate floor. More that didn't make it to CSPAN:

"Mr. President, the trade agreement with Panama would effectively bar the U.S. from cracking down on illegal and abusive offshore tax havens in Panama. In fact, combating tax haven abuse in Panama would be a violation of this free trade agreement, exposing the U.S. to fines from international authorities.

In 2008, the Government Accountability Office said that 17 of the 100 largest American companies were operating a total of 42 subsidiaries in Panama. This free trade agreement would make it easier for the wealthy and large corporations to avoid paying U.S. taxes and it must be defeated. At a time when we have a record-breaking $14.7 trillion national debt and an unsustainable federal deficit, the last thing that we should be doing is making it easier for the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in this country to avoid paying their fair share in taxes by setting-up offshore tax havens in Panama.

Adding insult to injury, Mr. President, the Panama FTA would require the United States to waive Buy America requirements for procurement bids from thousands of foreign firms, including many Chinese firms, incorporated in this major tax haven. That may make sense to China, it does not make sense to me.

Finally, Panama is also listed by the State Department as a major venue for Mexican and Colombian drug cartel money laundering. Should we be rewarding this country with a free trade agreement? I think the answer should be a resounding no."

Source: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senate-speech-by-sen-bernie-sanders-on-unfettered-free-trade

[Nbadan]

The passports of at least 200 Americans show up in this week’s massive leak of secret data on secretive offshore shell companies.


Mossack Fonseca is a leading global player in the incorporation of offshore companies across the globe. It was the subject of the largest-ever financial breach, and 11.5 million of its documents are the subject of a collaborative analysis by McClatchy and about 350 journalists under the umbrella of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. McClatchy was the only U.S. newspaper company involved.

~~~

Determining a precise number of Americans in the data is difficult. There are at least 200 scanned individual U.S. passports. Some appear to be American retirees purchasing real estate in places like Costa Rica and Panama. Also in the database, about 3,500 shareholders of offshore companies who list U.S. addresses. And almost 3,100 companies are tied to offshore professionals based in Miami, New York, and other parts of the United States.

Further complicating matters, some U.S. citizens enjoy dual citizenship and open accounts under foreign passports. Others appeared to be American retirees purchasing real estate in places like Costa Rica and Panama.

Among the cases McClatchy and its partners found:

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article69943337.html#storylink=cpy

[pgardn]

We have yet to see any really significant US political figures or ultra rich involved compared to the rest of the world. Probably because it's fairly stupid to work with a firm who has primary clients that are drug dealers, despots, oligarchs... In other words one can actually get caught and prosecuted in the US, any there are other ways to hide money that may or may not be illegal here. It's easier to get the straightforward cheaters.

[Nbadan]

So how much are the ultra rich hiding?

Super-Rich Hold Up To $32 Trillion In Offshore Havens: Report
07/22/2012 05:00 am ET | Updated Sep 20, 2012


LONDON, July 22 (Reuters) - Rich individuals and their families have as much as $32 trillion of hidden financial assets in offshore tax havens, representing up to $280 billion in lost income tax revenues, according to research published on Sunday.

The study estimating the extent of global private financial wealth held in offshore accounts - excluding non-financial assets such as real estate, gold, yachts and racehorses - puts the sum at between $21 and $32 trillion.

The research was carried out for pressure group Tax Justice Network, which campaigns against tax havens, by James Henry, former chief economist at consultants McKinsey & Co.

He used data from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, United Nations and central banks.

The report also highlights the impact on the balance sheets of 139 developing countries of money held in tax havens by private elites, putting wealth beyond the reach of local tax authorities...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/22/super-rich-offshore-havens_n_1692608.html

[Nbadan]

t’s just the tip of a much bigger iceberg. “The size of the leak is unprecedented, but the tricks Mossack Fonseca has allegedly used for its clients are neither new nor surprising. Anonymous shell companies and the failure of governments to require lawyers, corporate service companies, or banks to collect beneficial ownership information on clients leave the door wide open for dirty money to flow around the globe virtually unhindered,” says Heather Lowe, the Director of Government Affairs for Global Financial Integrity, a Washington DC-based consultancy.

To me, this is one of the key issues at work in the U.S. presidential election. Voters know at a gut level that our system of global capitalism is working mainly for the 1 %, not the 99 %. That’s a large part of why both Sanders and Trump have done well, because they tap into that truth, albeit in different ways. The Panama Papers illuminate a key aspect of why the system isn’t working–because globalization has allowed the capital and assets of the 1 % (be they individuals or corporations) to travel freely, while those of the 99 % cannot. Globalization is supposed to be about the free movement of people, goods, and capital. But in fact, the system is set up to enable that mobility mainly for the rich (or for large corporations). The result is global tax evasion, the offshoring of labor, and an elite that flies 35,000 feet over the problems of nation states and the tax payers within them.

Where do we go from here? I think we’re heading towards a root to branch re-evaluation of how our market system works–and doesn’t work. The debate over free trade is part of that re-evaluation. The calls for a global campaign against tax evasion are, too. I think there will also be intense scrutiny about the ease with which financial capital can move around the world – we’ve already seen that with the hoopla over tax inversions, but we’ll see a lot more backlash, in new areas.


More:
http://time.com/4280864/panama-papers-capitalism/

but yet....the two current leaders in the presidential contest for each party are both solid members and backers of the 1%......

[Nbadan]

Iceland's leader resigns, first casualty of Panama Papers
Source: REUTERS


Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson resigned on Tuesday, becoming the first casualty of leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm which have shone a spotlight on the offshore wealth of politicians and public figures worldwide.

The Panama Papers showed the premier's wife owned an offshore company with big claims on Iceland's banks, a undeclared conflict of interest for Gunnlaugsson, infuriating many who hurled eggs and bananas in street protests calling for him to step down.

The banks collapsed as the global financial crisis hit in 2008 and many Icelanders blame politicians for not reining in their debt-fueled binge and averting a deep recession.

The more than 11.5 million documents, leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, have caused public outrage over how the world's rich and powerful are able to stash their wealth and avoid taxes while many people suffer austerity and hardship.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-panama-tax-idUSKCN0X10C2

Could the use of tax dodges like Panama reverberate? ..Bloomberg News reported in 2014 on the Clintons’ use of a prime tax dodge: They put their Chappaqua home into a “residence trust” in 2010. Such trusts can save hundreds of thousands of dollars in estate taxes. Meanwhile, the Clintons’ family wealth has grown big-time thanks to firms with significant holdings in places like . . . the Caymans. As The Daily Caller notes, Bill Clinton spent years as a partner in his (now-ex-) buddy Ron Burkle’s investment fund Yucaipa Global — registered in the Cayman Islands. In five years, Bill pocketed at least $10 million.

[pgardn]

[/B]

More:
http://time.com/4280864/panama-papers-capitalism/

but yet....the two current leaders in the presidential contest for each party are both solid members and backers of the 1%......

I don't know why people keep beating the 1% line?

1 out of every 100 people in the US or World DO NOT use "offshore" methods.

Its its clearly closer to 0.1% and that might be high. Is 0.1% too low a number too worry about? I don't think so. The 90% of the 1% mentioned also have to make up for cheaters with their own tax money as well.

The 90% of the 1% the Democrats and the media are lumping in with crooks are probably pissed. That's not a high enough number of voters? So burn them at the stake as well? 90 out of every 100 of the 1% fart in your general direction.

[boutons_deux]

"Its its clearly closer to 0.1%"

evidence?

[pgardn]

"Its its clearly closer to 0.1%"

evidence?

By the numbers just mentioned in the Panama papers. It's not even close to 0.1%. It's much lower.

Evidence that 1 out of every 100 people in the world hide their money in offshore shell companies? Since Democrats keep using that number with impunity.

[boutons_deux]

By the numbers just mentioned in the Panama papers. It's not even close to 0.1%.

Evidence that 1 out of every 100 people in the world hide their money in offshore shell companies?

:lol nobody's saying 1% of people, it's the 1% in WEALTH. like a few 100 people have as much wealth as a few 100M people.

[pgardn]

:lol nobody's saying 1% of people, it's the 1% in WEALTH. like a few 100 people have as much wealth as a few 100M people.

The wealth is not distributed that evenly either. Among the wealthiest 1% You are still netting large numbers of people not involved. Especially in the US and Western Europe.

[Winehole23]

While we force foreign financial institutions to give up information on accounts held by U.S. taxpayers through the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2010 (https://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Corporations/Foreign-Account-Tax-Compliance-Act-FATCA), we don’t reciprocate by complying with international disclosure requirements standardized by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) and agreed to by 97 other nations. As a result, the U.S. is becoming one of the world’s foremost tax havens (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-27/the-world-s-favorite-new-tax-haven-is-the-united-states).

Several states – Delaware, Nevada, South Dakota, Wyoming – specialize in incorporating anonymous shell corporations. Delaware earns between one-quarter and one-third of their budget from incorporation fees, according to Clark Gascoigne of the FACT Coalition. The appeal of this revenue has emboldened small states, and now Wyoming bank accounts are the new Swiss bank accounts.http://www.salon.com/2016/04/05/this_is_much_worse_than_the_panama_papers_how_amer ica_became_a_world_leader_in_tax_avoidance/

[Winehole23]

 Gabriel Zucman, author of The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens and assistant professor at UC Berkeley, estimates that $7.6 trillion in individual assets are in tax havens, about 8 percent of the world’s financial wealth. He believes the use of tax havens has grown 25 percent from 2009 to 2015. Zucman estimates (http://equitablegrowth.org/live-gabriel-zucman-presents-the-hidden-wealth-of-nations/) that US citizens have at least $1.2 trillion stashed offshore, costing $200 billion a year worldwide in lost tax revenue from wealthy individuals. US multinational corporations underpay their taxes worldwide by $130 billion by engaging in corporate tax avoidance.http://www.thenation.com/article/panama-papers-expose-the-hidden-wealth-of-the-worlds-super-rich/

[z0sa]

So how much are the ultra rich hiding?

Super-Rich Hold Up To $32 Trillion In Offshore Havens: Report
07/22/2012 05:00 am ET | Updated Sep 20, 2012



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/22/super-rich-offshore-havens_n_1692608.html

32 fucking trillion? And you have fools voting for Hillary and Ted Cruz.

[boutons_deux]

http://www.thenation.com/article/panama-papers-expose-the-hidden-wealth-of-the-worlds-super-rich/

Why Do You Envy Them? -- WC

[Blake]

This all has some illuminati feel to it

[boutons_deux]

This is much worse than the Panama Papers: How America became a world leader in tax avoidance

While several developed countries are already moving to reduce the anonymity behind shell companies, including a public registry of “beneficial ownership” information in the United Kingdom and a directive to collect similar information throughout the European Union, the United States has resisted such transparency.

According to recent research (https://www.griffith.edu.au/business-government/centre-governance-public-policy/research-publications/?a=454625), the United States is the second-easiest country in the world to obtain an anonymous shell corporation account. (The first is Kenya.) You can create one in Delaware for your cat (http://fusion.net/story/287187/delaware-cats-shell-company/).


While we force foreign financial institutions to give up information on accounts held by U.S. taxpayers through the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2010 (https://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Corporations/Foreign-Account-Tax-Compliance-Act-FATCA), we don’t reciprocate by complying with international disclosure requirements standardized by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) and agreed to by 97 other nations. As a result, the U.S. is becoming one of the world’s foremost tax havens (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-27/the-world-s-favorite-new-tax-haven-is-the-united-states).

Several states – Delaware, Nevada, South Dakota, Wyoming – specialize in incorporating anonymous shell corporations. Delaware earns between one-quarter and one-third of their budget from incorporation fees, according to Clark Gascoigne of the FACT Coalition. The appeal of this revenue has emboldened small states, and now Wyoming bank accounts are the new Swiss bank accounts.

America has become a lure, not only for foreign elites looking to seal money away from their own governments, but to launder their money through the purchase of U.S. real estate (http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article69248462.html).

In addition, if the United States really wanted to stop Panama or the Cayman Islands or other offshore tax havens from allowing the wealthy to avoid hundreds of billions in payments, they could do so in about 15 minutes. Our recent free trade deal (https://blogs.state.gov/stories/2011/10/13/passage-colombia-panama-and-south-korea-trade-agreements) with Panama allegedly prevents Americans from creating offshore tax havens there, but in general, such tax information exchanges are insufferably weak (http://www.oecd.org/ctp/administration/preparedremarksofcommissionerofinternalrevenuedoug lashshulmanbeforetheoecdbiac.htm). And the little America does abroad to police tax evasion dwarfs the next to nothing we do at home.

The intertwining of global and political elites makes tax avoidance, whether legal or illegal, a secondary concern for the country, regardless of how it robs the country of resources and promotes the conception of a two-tiered economic and justice system where the upper class need not follow the same rules as the rest of us. Our politicians made a consistent choice (http://www.vox.com/2016/4/3/11356326/panama-papers) that this rampant tax avoidance doesn’t bother them.


“Anonymous shell companies have been used to rip off Medicare,” said Gascoigne. “They’ve been used to evade U.S. sanctions. Arms dealers like Viktor Bout, the so-called Merchant of Death, used U.S. shell companies to launder money.” Indeed, Mossack Fonseca has affiliated offices in Wyoming, Nevada, and Florida. America is up to its eyeballs in this style of corruption.

It’s a fixable situation. The U.S. could sign on to the OECD standards tomorrow. In addition, the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act (https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/4450/text) would require data collection on the beneficial ownership of shell companies and limited liability corporations. But opposition from the states benefiting from foreign tax havens, as well as the National Association of Secretaries of State, has stalled progress. Secretaries of State typically have the authority to register corporations, and they prosper from registration fees. Delaware and its companion states that offer corporate secrecy convinced the Secretaries of State organization to oppose the bill.

http://www.salon.com/2016/04/05/this_is_much_worse_than_the_panama_papers_how_amer ica_became_a_world_leader_in_tax_avoidance/

[pgardn]

Why Do You Envy Them? -- WC

To WC:

No. I just have to pay higher taxes to make up for their cheating you damn fruit bat.

[Nbadan]

Here we go....

A pair of the U.S. banking industry’s biggest Senate critics demanded a Treasury Department investigation into offshore banking revelations contained in leaked documents from a Panama-based law firm.


Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sherrod Brown of Ohio sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Thursday asking the department to investigate whether U.S. banks, companies and individuals had ties to Mossack Fonseca, the law firm whose leaked records have already prompted the resignation of Iceland’s prime minister and reverberated around the globe.

"While we recognize that some of this information may be decades old, we are particularly concerned about whether companies or individuals involved with or utilizing the services of this firm may have facilitated money laundering or terrorist financing with sanctioned persons or entities," they wrote.

They said Treasury, and not just the Justice Department, should investigate, given Treasury’s role in the financial markets. "These disturbing revelations and others reveal activity that may threaten our national security and our financial system by undermining U.S. and international laws promoting financial transparency and combating money laundering and terrorist financing," they wrote.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-04-07/treasury-should-probe-u-s-banks-on-panama-papers-senators-say

God bless Elizabeth Warren...

[Nbadan]

US players are coming in a week or two per Thom Hartmann. Should be interesting..


‘Hello. This is John Doe’: The mysterious message that launched the Panama Papers

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/hello-this-is-john-doe-the-mysterious-message-that-launched-the-panama-papers/2016/04/06/59305838-fc0c-11e5-886f-a037dba38301_story.html?

[Nbadan]

"Panama Papers firm linked to over 1,000 U.S. companies"



The majority of U.S.-based companies linked to Mossack Fonseca were formed in Nevada by M.F. Corporate Services (Nevada) Limited, a one-employee company based out of a low-slung tile-roofed office building 20 miles from the Las Vegas strip. MF Nevada has served as the registered agent for 1,026 business entities since 2001, according to USA TODAY's review of Nevada business documents.

Publicly available information about many of the Nevada corporations is limited to the fact that MF Nevada is the registered agent and a listing of the officers. Many of the officers are businesses themselves — meaning no individuals are listed in corporate records — and typically have addresses in Anguilla, the Seychelles, Panama or another foreign country.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/04/05/panama-papers-firm-linked-1000-plus-us-companies/82670334/

Nearly all of those companies were incorporated in Nevada and Wyoming, two states with permissive corporate secrecy laws.

[boutons_deux]

Need to Hide Some Income? You Don’t Have to Go to Panama


https://cdn1.nyt.com/images/2016/04/08/business/08shell/08shell-articleLarge.jpg
This far-from-flashy site in Wilmington, Del., is the legal address of 285,000 businesses.


For wealthy Americans looking to veil their assets and shield some of their income from taxation, there is no need to go to Panama or any other offshore tax haven. It’s easy to establish a shell corporation right here at home.

“In Wyoming, Nevada and Delaware (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/business/how-delaware-thrives-as-a-corporate-tax-haven.html), it’s possible to create these shell corporations with virtually no questions asked,” said Matthew Gardner, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.

In some places, it can be more difficult to get a fishing license than to register a shell company. And it doesn’t cost much more.

The Panama Papers (https://panamapapers.icij.org/video/) — the cache of leaked documents from a Panama law firm, Mossack Fonseca — have revealed how thousands of the firm’s clients, including an array of powerful figures around the world, stashed billions of dollars in tax havens. So far only a tiny number of American names have surfaced (although that could change as more of the documents are reviewed).

That in no way means that Americans citizens are refraining from such practices, experts emphasized.

“This is just one firm in one place,” said Gabriel Zucman, an economist and the author of “The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens,” (http://gabriel-zucman.eu/hidden-wealth/) “So it cannot be representative of what’s happening as a whole in the world.”

But Mr. Zucman, who estimates that about 8 percent of the world’s financial wealth — more than $7.6 trillion — is hidden in offshore accounts, said another reason was that it is so simple to create anonymous shell companies within the United States.

Wealthy individuals and businesses that want to mask their ownership can conveniently do so in the United States, and then stash those assets abroad.

Yet while the United States demands that financial institutions in other countries share information about Americans with accounts overseas, its reciprocation efforts fall short, critics say.

“You see a ton of wealth in tax havens in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands that is owned by shell companies that are incorporated in Panama or in Delaware,” he said. “The bulk of this wealth does not seem to be duly declared on tax returns.”

A recent report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy called “Delaware: An Onshore Tax Haven” (http://itep.org/itep_reports/2015/12/delaware-an-onshore-tax-haven.php#.VwV0PhIrLKI) noted that the state’s lack of transparency combined with an enticing loophole in its tax code “makes it a magnet for people looking to create anonymous shell companies, which individuals and corporations can use to evade an inestimable amount in federal and foreign taxes.”

Delaware allows companies to shift royalties and similar revenues where they actually do business to holding companies in Delaware, where they are not taxed.

Heather A. Lowe, the legal counsel and director of government affairs for Global Financial Integrity, a research and advocacy group in Washington, warned that the problem was much more widespread than just a handful of states.

“You can create anonymous companies anywhere in the United States,” Ms. Lowe said. “The reason people know about Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming is because these states market themselves internationally.”

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/business/need-to-hide-some-income-you-dont-have-to-go-to-panama.html

[RandomGuy]

1%? 3,500,000 people in this country alone?
That's not that elite.

Most probably can't find Panama on a bet.

Probably closer to .01%, or even .001%; but I do think bankers should pretty much be strung up. Lawyers should be drawn and quartered.

Eek.. I hope accountants get to skate... :D

[TDMVPDPOY]

why is shell companies are allowed to be registered when everybody knows its just a shop front to shift money

you have these countries who have the lowest company rates and practice law that actually protects the operators, yet they go open shell companies and everything is outsource to these shell companies who are registered in tax haven offschores which has no legal system, so in other words, whats the chances of shell companies going welching on a deal...

[140]

why is shell companies are allowed to be registered when everybody knows its just a shop front to shift money

you have these countries who have the lowest company rates and practice law that actually protects the operators, yet they go open shell companies and everything is outsource to these shell companies who are registered in tax haven offschores which has no legal system, so in other words, whats the chances of shell companies going welching on a deal...

I bet POS porker has a shell company on his name. Fukn POS

[101A]

Eek.. I hope accountants get to skate... :D

Might as well. Accountants are weak-minded. Just do what they're told.:toast

[RandomGuy]

Might as well. Accountants are weak-minded. Just do what they're told.:toast

Heh, if it means not getting lined up against the wall...


Somebody does have to make payroll, and who will you get to reconcile the bank accounts when all the bankers are gone?

[boutons_deux]

Federal official says gov't eager to use 'Panama Papers' to nab crooks, but hurdles abound (http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/4/11/1513775/-Federal-official-says-gov-t-eager-to-use-Panama-Papers-to-nab-crooks-But-hurdles-abound)

An unnamed senior federal law enforcement official told (http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/panama-papers/feds-chomping-bit-use-panama-papers-catch-criminals-n553396) NBC News Sunday that prosecutors and agents are “champing at the bit” to go after criminals by using the leaked “Panama Papers” that reveal tax evasion and money-laundering by highly prominent people in several nations. But it won’t be easy. There are legal barriers to simply sifting through those 11.5 million documents—few of which have been publicly released so far—looking for scofflaws and outlaws. Care must be taken in how the documents are used to keep from tainting the cases prosecutors would want to make in court.

Josh Meyer reports (http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/panama-papers/feds-chomping-bit-use-panama-papers-catch-criminals-n553396):

"It is a bonanza," the official said in reference to the cache of 11 million financial documents about shell companies that a Panamanian law firm set up for some of the world's shadiest and most powerful people.

"It will keep a lot of agents very busy for a very long time," the official told NBC News. "They will be following the leads and figuring out who is trying to hide stuff illegally -- money and also illegal activities."


The official said numerous federal agencies—the FBI, the DEA, the IRS and the CIA, for example—hope what’s in the leak will strengthen existing cases and give life to new ones against everything from drug lords and corrupt governments to terrorists.

But there are ethical issues. Attorney-client privilege shields those who hired the law firm of Mossack-Fonseca, the Panamanian company whose documents were provided to journalists. Improperly acquired information, no matter how true, can stop an investigation or prosecution.

If the Mossack-Fonseca documents about forming shell companies and other sketchy (though legal) arrangements were hacked or otherwise illegally obtained—and one or the other seems almost certain—it could make prosecution very difficult.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/04/11/1513775/-Federal-official-says-gov-t-eager-to-use-Panama-Papers-to-nab-crooks-But-hurdles-abound?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos %29

[boutons_deux]

Walker Guevara: We approached the Times twice in the past. The first time was in 2012 and that was the first offshore investigation we did, it was called Offshore Leaks and there were many meetings in New York where [ICIJ director] Gerard Ryle went and pitched the story and then in the end it looked like we were getting nowhere. There were just too many questions, it proved to be too complicated, and we didn't proceed. Then we went back to them again in the Swiss Leaks investigation in 2014 and in that case we were not as insistent. We sent emails but when we didn't hear back we didn't try harder.

For the Panama Papers, we were approached by McClatchy. They have a very good reputation and were eager to work with us.

We also pitched it to CNN. They said yes, but then they said no. They decided to pursue their own investigation rather than join ours. We were a little disappointed, but we understood.

Then we pitched the story to 60 Minutes and this time they said no as well.

In the end we had Univision and Fusion. We had worked with both of them in previous investigations.

They all decided to ignore news along the way.

Walker Guevara: When news on FIFA was breaking, well we had a ton of information on FIFA. But we didn't publish of course.

There was also the huge corruption scandal in Brazil.

We had more than 100 offshore companies linked to the biggest characters in that case and we couldn't publish.

https://www.propublica.org/podcast/item/Meet-the-Panama-Papers-Editor-Who-Handled-376-Reporters-in-80-Countries?utm_campaign=sprout&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=1460412248

Sure looks like MSM is gonna ignore, bury this story, protect the wealthy criminals, whose army of lawyers must be racking 1000s of hours protecting their clients.

[boutons_deux]

The Shared Secret Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Don’t Want You to Know

At 1209 N. Orange Street in Wilmington, Delaware, the Corporation Trust Company (https://corp.delaware.gov/agents/a9000010.shtml) is home to approximately 285,000 registered corporations taking advantage of the state’s loose tax laws. This dwarfs the 18,000 corporations registered at the Cayman Islands’ Ugland House. While states like Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nevada also have reputations as tax havens within the United States, Delaware is the undisputed leader.

Fortune 500 companies have over 19,000 subsidiaries (http://itep.org/itep_reports/2015/12/delaware-an-onshore-tax-haven.php#.Vx4hjDArLIV) registered in Delaware, while Nevada, South Dakota, and Wyoming have only 1,000 between the three of them.

A new investigation by The Guardian revealed that both Hillary and Bill Clinton registered corporations in Delaware (http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/25/delaware-tax-loophole-1209-north-orange-trump-clinton) — the former First Lady registered ZFS Holdings, LLC in 2013, just eight days after the end of her tenure as Secretary of State, while her husband registered WJC, LLC to handle his speaking fees. Both companies are registered at 1209 N. Orange Street in Wilmington. The Guardian reports that Mrs. Clinton’s $16 million in speaking fees were sent through ZFS Holdings, LLC in 2014.

Donald Trump, in the meantime, uses the same address (http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/25/delaware-tax-loophole-1209-north-orange-trump-clinton) for Trump International Management Corporation. Additionally, he has another registered company under the name 40 Wall Street Corporation, and the entity used for the Trump Carousel in Central Park, New York, is also registered at the Corporation Trust Company. The Republican front-runner has a total of 378 corporations registered throughout the tax-friendly state.

By registering its address in Delaware, a corporation can shift earnings in other states to be processed in Delaware, which doesn’t tax income relating to intangible assets. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) estimates this loophole costs other states a combined $9.5 billion (http://itep.org/itep_reports/2015/12/delaware-an-onshore-tax-haven.php#.Vx4hjDArLIV) in lost tax revenue every ten years. By ITEP’s calculations, a company lowers their effective tax rate by anywhere from 15 to 24 percent (http://itep.org/itep_reports/2015/12/delaware-an-onshore-tax-haven.php#.Vx4hjDArLIV) in a given year by registering in Delaware. The average firm saves between $3 million and $4 million annually.

On the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton has promised (http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/25/delaware-tax-loophole-1209-north-orange-trump-clinton) to rein in “outrageous tax havens and loopholes that super-rich people across the world are exploiting in Panama and elsewhere.” A spokesperson for the Clinton campaign maintained innocence: “No federal, state, or local taxes were saved by the Clintons as a result of this structure.”

http://usuncut.com/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-delaware/

[boutons_deux]

Panama Papers: Pieth says officials are in denial as he quits


http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/11CA5/production/_90696827_gettyimages-145281097.jpg

The Swiss anti-corruption expert, Mark Pieth, has told the BBC he resigned from the Panama Papers commission because of government interference.

Mr Pieth said officials told him that they would have final say on whether to publish the panel's findings on the offshore tax evasion scandal.

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist,also resigned (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-36992729).

Mr Stiglitz also told Reuters news agency he was concerned that the panel's final report would not be published.

"We can only infer that the government is facing pressure from those who are making profits from the current non-transparent financial system in Panama," he said.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36997915

[Winehole23]

sunshine on dark money has national security implications for dark money havens?

duh.

[boutons_deux]

One can talk about "neoliberalism", good or bad, etc, etc for years, but in the end, it's total corruption of the 1% and BigCorp that's screwing us all.

[Winehole23]

tricky stuff:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/09/deutsche-bank-and-a-10bn-money-laundering-nightmare-more-context-than-you-can-shake-a-stick-at.html

[Winehole23]

Time for a huge British footnote: let’s revert to Deutsche Bank’s two cataclysmic UK shells, Chadborg Trade LLP and ErgoInvest LLP, for a spot of original analysis.


According to Opencorporates, the Hertfordshire maildrop that hosts Chadborg Trade LLP and ErgoInvest LLP is home to another 1,233 anonymous LLPs formed by IOS, of which 476 were active the last time I looked. The Deutsche Bank precedent (five billion bucks per LLP) implies that those 476 LLPs represent potential aggregate money laundering capacity close to $5 trillion, over a 5-year lifetime, let’s say. A trillion dollars a year seems to be plenty: UK GDP is about $2.5 trillion.


Admittedly, your wannabe money launderer, kitted out with some untraceably purchased LPs or LLPs, still needs to find a dreadful international bank willing to avert its eyes, but that’s not a big ask.

[Winehole23]

This is the context that makes The Panama Papers so very important. With this totally new evidence in hand, we now know that globalization has caused rising inequality in quite another way than the transfer of higher-paying manufacturing jobs and all other such phen*omena – very unfortunate in my view but not shameful or criminal. It is just a matter of numbers: Mossack Fonseca’s 214,000 offshore companies alone (and there are many other such shell companies, formed by many other law firms) handled not millions or billions but trillions of dollars in their totality, thereby wholly subverting the presumptively equalizing effect of taxation. When the less affluent must pay their payroll taxes and income taxes in full, while the more affluent with offshore companies do not pay their own taxes, the total effect of the taxation system is regressive, even without adding the inherently regressive effects of sales and value-added taxes. Once we recognize the sheer magnitude of “offshored” income flows, and once we take into account the strongly regressive effects of supposedly progressive taxation systems, the phenomenon of rising inequality in affluent societies may not need much additional explaining – and it hardly matters if those were tax-avoidance or tax-evasion trillions.http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/hidden-costs/

[Winehole23]

side-effect of globalism:


Globalization’s advocates – and they are very many, including all the varied categories of worthies on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond who preside over almost all respectable academic institutions and elite gatherings – habitually celebrate its transfer of income from higher-income to lower-income countries while disregarding the overwhelming evidence that much of that consists of the transfer of income from lower-income people in higher-income countries to higher-income people in lower-income countries.

[Winehole23]

the straight up crooks are more sympathetic:


As the members of the consortium continued to extract actionable reporting from 2.6 terabytes of data (according to the Foreword by the Guardian’s Luke Harding, who may know better than I what a terabyte really is), they kept turning up the names of the tax avoiders and evaders who form a very large part of the members, attendants, sponsors and speakers of the elite institutions that so earnestly strive to guide all of us towards a better future: Davos of course, the various Aspens, the much-dem*onized but merely geriatric Bilderberg, and others such, which conjointly gather the official and unofficial leaders of advanced countries along with their would-be emulators in the rest of the world.

No wonder that their advocacy of ever-freer across-the board globalization is so relentless and so enthusiastic: I, too, share their enthusiasm when it comes to snorkelling in Polynesia as opposed to the unbalmy waters of Virginia Beach, or hiking in Bhutan as opposed to the overcrowded Appalachian trail; but they are all too often thinking of their darling little companies in Anguilla, the Bahamas, Belize, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman islands, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Malta, the Netherlands, Panama, Samoa, the Seychelles, the Isle of Man, Nevada and Wyoming among many more, which are sturdily safeguarding their money from the evils of taxation.


In a specific way – and I am not being frivolous – it is the outright crooks, drug-traffickers and such, who are more honest fiscally at least, because most would dearly love to pay income taxes on their earnings, if only they could do so without being arrested, thereby acquiring legal wealth they could enjoy and show off, instead of having to launder their banknotes and hide the washed money in offshore companies whose ownership is frustratingly abstract. The outright crooks, moreover, do not pontificate on the benefits of globalization at Davos and all other such jamborees under the benevolent smile of the Clintons and Blairs and Mario Montis of this world.

[boutons_deux]

Panama Papers: Denmark to pay $1.3M-plus for leaked data to probe tax evasion

This [sample] convinced us of the quality of the documents. They are real and they contain information that is very relevant to us. Both of specific individuals, and especially super interesting knowledge about the methods used by advisers and the middlemen they use.
This can give us a breakthrough in the investigation of tax havens.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/panama-papers-denmark-payout-data-tax-evasion-probe/

[Winehole23]

this is the commercial angle. governments pay money for the documents.

[pgardn]

Panama Papers: Denmark to pay $1.3M-plus for leaked data to probe tax evasion

This [sample] convinced us of the quality of the documents. They are real and they contain information that is very relevant to us. Both of specific individuals, and especially super interesting knowledge about the methods used by advisers and the middlemen they use.
This can give us a breakthrough in the investigation of tax havens.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/panama-papers-denmark-payout-data-tax-evasion-probe/




Interesting.

Could be fairly dangerous in the hands of a politicized arm of government. I could see the State of Texas using this to corral whistleblowers and send them to pasture.

[Winehole23]

tax havens have human consequences:


It is not a victimless system. A 2010 report by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a nonprofit research organization in Washington, concluded that the total illicit financial outflows from the African continent were anywhere between $854 billion and $1.8 trillion. Shaxson quotes another study calculating the real capital flight from Africa over a thirty-five-year period to 2004 at $420 billion. He contrasts this with the total debt of these forty countries—“only” $227 million:



So, the authors [of a 2008 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, study] note, Africa is a net creditor to the rest of the world, with its net external assets vastly exceeding its debts. Yet there is a crucial difference between the assets and the liabilities…. “The subcontinent’s private external assets belong to a narrow, relatively wealthy stratum of its population, while public external debts are borne by the people through their governments.”


Shaxson, a former Reuters correspondent based in Angola, is particularly interested in the billions he estimates have disappeared offshore through opaque oil-backed loans channeled outside normal state budgets, many of them routed through two special trusts operating out of London. He adds:



Having watched people die before my eyes in Angola…I am seared by having witnessed some of the ways Africa’s people bear their public debts, in the forms of poverty, war, a hopeless lack of real opportunities and the regular physical and economic violence perpetrated against them by corrupt and predatory offshore-roaming elites… Raymond Baker, director of [Global Financial Integrity], was quite right to call the emergence of the offshore system “the ugliest chapter in global economic affairs since slavery.”



http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/10/27/panama-the-hidden-trillions/

[Winehole23]

only slightly exaggerated:


“The economic system is, basically, that the rich and the powerful exited long ago from the messy business of paying tax,” Harding told an audience of academics and research students. “They don’t pay tax anymore, and they haven’t paid tax for quite a long time. We pay tax, but they don’t pay tax. The burden of taxation has moved inexorably away from multinational companies and rich people to ordinary people.”

[Winehole23]

Panama Papers 2.0


The new documents reveal that Mossack Fonseca couldn’t identify tens of thousands of owners of companies it had registered in opaque, low-tax jurisdictions. Two months after the firm became aware of the records breach, it still couldn’t identify owners of more than 70 percent of 28,500 active companies in the British Virgin Islands, the firm’s busiest offshore hub, and 75 percent of 10,500 active shell companies in Panama, the records show.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article213423514.html

[Winehole23]

Nicolas Shaxson on the finance curse:


A growing body (https://financecurse.net/research/academic-papers-too-much-finance/) of economic research confirms that once a financial sector grows above an optimal size and beyond its useful roles, it begins to harm the country that hosts it. The most obvious source of damage comes in the form of financial crises – including the one we are still recovering from a decade after the fact. But the problem is in fact older, and bigger. Long ago, our oversized financial sector began turning away from supporting the creation of wealth, and towards extracting it from other parts of the economy. To achieve this, it shapes laws, rules, thinktanks and even our culture so that they support it. The outcomes include lower economic growth, steeper inequality, distorted markets, spreading crime, deeper corruption, the hollowing-out of alternative economic sectors and more.


Newly published researchmakes a first attempt to assess the scale of the damage to Britain. According to a new paper (http://speri.dept.shef.ac.uk/2018/10/05/uk-finance-curse-report/) by Andrew Baker of the University of Sheffield, Gerald Epstein of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Juan Montecino of Columbia University, an oversized City of London has inflicted a cumulative £4.5tn hit on the British economy from 1995-2015. That is worth around two-and-a-half years’ economic output, or £170,000 per British household. The City’s claims of jobs and tax benefits are washed away by much, much bigger harms.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/oct/05/the-finance-curse-how-the-outsized-power-of-the-city-of-london-makes-britain-poorer

[boutons_deux]

" our oversized financial sector began turning away from supporting the creation of wealth, and

towards extracting it from other parts of the economy.

To achieve this,

it shapes laws, rules, thinktanks and even our culture so that they support it.

The outcomes include lower economic growth,

steeper inequality,

distorted markets,

spreading crime,

deeper corruption,

the hollowing-out of alternative economic sectors and more."

EXACTLY, the same exists in the USA, the oligarchy's cheap little lying whore K and oligarchy-rigged Federal judiciary gives the oligarchy an absolutely solid SCOTUS 5 to continue extracting wealth and destroying America and Americans.

All of this toxic shit ain't "just happening", ain't inevitable, and

it sure ain't a FUCKING GAME like the stupid, ignorant, DUPED ST rightwingnutjobs play it.

Destruction of the environment, extraction of wealth from the non-oligarchy, World Champion Inequality of the current Golden Age were and are planned by the oligarchy, going back to Lewis Powell's memo 45 years ago.

Dems will not be able to reverse it, at best only pause it, because the oligarchy will block all progress For The People, for The Common Good.

iow, America is fucked and unfuckable.

The inevitable environmental catastrophe has passed a tipping point. And that ain't "just nature", it

Anthropogenic Global Warming FOR PROFIT

The planet is now in a vicious circle of positive feedback worsening EVERY FUCKING PARAMETER towards catastrophe

Thanks, Capitalism.

[Winehole23]

way of the world

1083227033172348928

[boutons_deux]

Massive leak of data reveals new money-hiding secrets of superrich — and this is ‘only the beginning’

A massive trove of documents, data, and recorded phone calls showing how British company Formations House works to hide money for the superrich is being reported on by journalists all over the world, with the first stories dropping at midnight on Wednesday.

The reporting is being done under the name “29 Leaks,” a reference to Formations House’s original address at 29 Harley Street in London.

“Formations House was the perfect example of

a ‘one-stop shop’ for creating legal entities that serve as fronts for fraudulent operations and money laundering,” said Burkhart.

“In only a matter of days,

a client could purchase offshore companies bundled into packages touting
minimal compliance requirements,
tax-free operations, and
anonymity for directors and shareholders.”

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/12/massive-leak-of-data-reveals-new-money-hiding-secrets-of-superrich-and-this-is-only-the-beginning/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3160 (https://www.rawstory.com/2019/12/massive-leak-of-data-reveals-new-money-hiding-secrets-of-superrich-and-this-is-only-the-beginning/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3160)

[Winehole23]

~$2T traced, about .02% of SARs

#Fincen (https://twitter.com/hashtag/Fincen?src=hashtag_click)

1307862401757270022

[Winehole23]

1307862414465986562

[Winehole23]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EiZ08aoU4AEaHCi?format=jpg&name=small

1307862444992159744

[ElNono]

^ It is what it is...

[Winehole23]

background of the FinCen leak: the 2012 DOJ settlement with financial institutions


Even seasoned financial reporters accustomed to seeing soft-touch settlements scratched their heads at some of the deals. In the case of HSBC, the stiffest penalty doled out to any individual for the biggest drug-money-laundering case in history — during which time HSBC had become the “preferred financial institution (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-probe/hsbc-became-bank-to-drug-cartels-pays-big-for-lapses-idUSBRE8BA05M20121212)” of drug traffickers, according to the Justice Department — involved an agreement to “partially defer bonus compensation for its most senior executives.” If bankers can’t get time for washing money for people who put torture videos on the internet (https://hoodsite.com/female-jalisco-new-generation-cartel-dismembered-alive-sinaloa-cartel/), what can they get time for?

When I did a story on the case (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/gangster-bankers-too-big-to-jail-102004/) in early 2013, I found the HSBC settlement was the latest step in a dizzying, decade-plus cycle of offenses and ignored reprimands, involving multiple regulatory bodies. The number of times HSBC had blown off compliance orders seemed too absurd to be real. In one stretch between 2005 and 2006, the bank received (and, apparently, ignored) 30 formal warnings just from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Prosecutors insisted the deferred prosecution settlements slapped on companies like HSBC, Standard Chartered, and JP Morgan Chase were tougher than jail terms. The deals would place banks in a permanent state of quasi-arrest, with regulators granted enormous supervisory power and serious charges pre-filed and hanging over the firms going forward.
As one federal investigator put it to me back then, “This way, we have them by the short ones.”

Fast-forward eight years. On September 20th, a combination of Buzzfeed and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ (https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/)) published the details of a major document leak (https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/mining-sars-data/) highlighting a decade of money-laundering incidents, involving hundreds of billions of dollars and a number of the world’s biggest banks. The leak centered on a cache of over two thousand “suspicious activity reports,” or SARs, filed by those banks to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a regulatory arm of the U.S. Treasury.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/revenge-of-the-money-launderers-b84

[Winehole23]

Deutche Bank related from 2016:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/09/deutsche-bank-and-a-10bn-money-laundering-nightmare-more-context-than-you-can-shake-a-stick-at.htmlThe bolded leapt out at me.


First, there’s a domestic dimension: you won’t be surprised to hear that at least some, and possibly rather a lot, of the Russian/Ukrainian online fraud about which the City of London Police commissioner was moaning last week (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/27/london-police-chief-cybercrime-russia-ukraine-online-fraud-google-microsoft), is facilitated by opaque UK companies, including LPs and LLPs.

Second, there’s an international dimension. Eastern Europe and Eurasia states are being bled white by fraud and corruption; plenty of it, as we see, is facilitated by UK-registered companies. Those Eastern European and Eurasian citizens have smelt a rat; here’s Ben Judah in American Prospect (http://www.the-american-interest.com/2014/05/08/how-offshore-finance-sunk-western-soft-power/) :


The conventional wisdom is that ordinary citizens of these states—feudally ruled, politically pillaged—will become obsessed about corruption. So far, so good: You cannot talk about politics in Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and the rest without talking about corruption. But beyond this, the conventional wisdom—that the middle classes, the young, or the globally connected will then demand a new, Western-style government—breaks down.

The reason this logic doesn’t hold is that East European corruption fighters are discovering that Western countries and their systems of offshore economies have enabled the colossal theft of their countries’ resources. Bubbling up from beneath the surface of both the Russian opposition and the Ukrainian Maidan is a new sense of disdain for the West.

[Winehole23]

HSBC, for instance, continued to take in questionable money through 2012 and beyond, including $30 million from Hong Kong accounts related to a Ponzi scheme called World Capital Market. WCM was suspected of bilking “investors” — most of them ordinary people scraping together five or ten thousand dollars and throwing them at false promises of guaranteed returns — of nearly $80 million.

The leaked records show HSBC flagged the account as suspicious as early as 2013 (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54225572), but continued to take the money from this and a wide variety of other dicey accounts. Although regulators saw all of this information, the Department of Justice not only didn’t take action, it announced in 2017 that HSBC had “lived up to all of its commitments (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/11/hsbc-prosecution-threat-us-money-laundering)” and agreed to file a motion to lift the deferred prosecution deal.

A similar pattern held with JP Morgan Chase, which in 2013 was hit with a cease and desist order over “systemic deficiencies” in its money-laundering controls, yet continued to do business with rogue accounts, including some infamous and obvious ones. To give some sense of the sums involved, JPM made roughly a half-billion dollars just servicing the accounts for con artist Bernie Madoff.

As far back as 2006, JP Morgan Chase knew enough to pull its own money out of investments (https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/business/29madoff.html) in hedge funds tied to Madoff, but never told investors, and continued to manage his accounts for years. The bank ultimately settled with the government over the Madoff episode in 2014 (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-jpmorgan-madoff-deal/decades-long-ties-to-madoff-cost-jpmorgan-2-6-billion-idUSBREA060JL20140107), after the 2013 “cease and desist” order, while continuing to manage money for other malodorous accounts — including, according to the ICIJ, more than $1 billion for Jho Low, the fugitive financier behind Malaysia’s infamous 1MDB fund.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/revenge-of-the-money-launderers-b84

[Winehole23]

In a detail that should infuriate the #Resistance crowd, Jamie Dimon’s bank also continued to do business in huge sums for former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort even after Manafort stepped down in scandal, and even after the bank flagged Manafort’s accounts. From the ICIJ report:



JPMorgan also processed more than $50 million in payments over a decade, the records show, for Paul Manafort (http://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/confidential-clients/#client=Paul-Manafort), the former campaign manager for President Donald Trump. The bank shuttled at least $6.9 million in Manafort transactions in the 14 months after he resigned (https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/paul-manafort-resigns-from-trump-campaign-227197) from the campaign amid a swirl of money laundering and corruption allegations spawning from his work with a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.


https://taibbi.substack.com/p/revenge-of-the-money-launderers-b84

[boutons_deux]

HSBC got caught some years ago laundering $100Ms of cartel cash.

Paid a fine, nobody in jail, nobody lost job, HSBC kept their American banking license.

Crime pays, financial crime pays extremely well.

BigFinance is corrupt top to bottom.

Deutsche Bank caught criming again in the FinCen data

===================

FinCen Files Shine Spotlight on Suspicious Bank Transfers

Over the 18 years between 1999 and 2017,

banks moved $2 trillion in funds that they considered suspicious, generating substantial fees in the process.

Some of the biggest global banks involved included

Deutsche Bank,
JP Morgan Chase,
HSBC,
Barclays Bank, and
Bank of New York Mellon.

Almost half the $2 trillion in suspicious loans were made by Deutsche Bank (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/21/leaked-fincen-files-show-deutsche-bank-tops-list-of-suspicious-transactions.html), :lol Trash's Russian-money bank

a bank that has paid substantial fines for past money laundering activities.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/09/24/fincen-files-shine-spotlight-on-suspicious-bank-transfers/

[Winehole23]

classic sloppy seconds, check the previous page, boutons.

this thread isn't that long.

[Winehole23]

a ver

1331679667028279296

[Winehole23]

I did not see that coming. Devil is in the the details, but this is encouraging.


The most sweeping overhaul of financial crime safeguards in decades is poised to be attached to must-pass defense legislation in the coming weeks — a product of behind-the-scenes negotiations between lawmakers and Trump administration officials who are usually at odds.
The legislation, hammered out by progressive Democrats, conservative Republicans and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, would require millions of business entities to reveal their owners to the federal government in an attempt to deter the use of anonymous shell companies by criminals evading anti-money laundering rules.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/25/lawmakers-fight-shell-companies-440618

[boutons_deux]

I did not see that coming. Devil is in the the details, but this is encouraging.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/25/lawmakers-fight-shell-companies-440618

If it's too good to be true, ...

The Capitalist oligarchy will have final say through their bribed mouthpieces/whores in the Senate.

And often the "final say" is not in the law, but in non-public "details" of the rule-making phase (outside of Congress) where oligarchy's lawyers/lobbyists have "influential ($$$)" input to rule-making.

[Winehole23]

Looks like it'll pass!


Landmark laws to thwart the use of U.S. shell companies by terrorists, human traffickers, arms dealers and kleptocrats are set to be enacted after more than a decade of lobbying and politicking with rare bipartisan support.


The sweeping anti-money laundering reforms hitched a lift in the annual defense spending bill that passed the Senate 84-13 today, and was approved by the House 355-78 earlier this week.


The Corporate Transparency Act requires U.S. companies to report their true owners to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN — largely ending anonymous shell companies in the country.


The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has repeatedly documented how the rich, the powerful and the criminal have used anonymous entities to hide their wealth, including in the 2016 Panama Papers (https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/) and the 2020 FinCEN Files (https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/) investigations.

1339045587438735366

[Winehole23]

It passed!

Potential game changer.

1345095237186809857

[FuzzyLumpkins]

If it's too good to be true, ...

The Capitalist oligarchy will have final say through their bribed mouthpieces/whores in the Senate.

And often the "final say" is not in the law, but in non-public "details" of the rule-making phase (outside of Congress) where oligarchy's lawyers/lobbyists have "influential ($$$)" input to rule-making.





Of all the things to pull out of your ass. . .

You certainly are invested in everything being shitty and always being shitty.

[Winehole23]

Of all the things to pull out of your ass. . .

You certainly are invested in everything being shitty and always being shitty.Cheap cynicism is like the monism of Parmenides. Motion and change are impossible by definition. Illusory.

It turned boutons into Johnny One Note a long time ago.

It's boring af.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Cheap cynicism is like the monism of Parmenides. Motion and change are impossible by definition. Illusory.

It turned boutons into Johnny One Note a long time ago.

It's boring af.

It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't just straight ignorant. I can go with the idea that corporate interests do have a ton of access and influence in lawmaking and in its enforcement.

On the other hand the establishment has no interest in crime taking capital out of the country or out of the economy at large.

I understand not liking something but what I don't understand is this idea that what you don't like never does anything good and is always bad. Ideologies often the same as stupidity.

[Winehole23]

It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't just straight ignorant. I can go with the idea that corporate interests do have a ton of access and influence in lawmaking and in its enforcement.

On the other hand the establishment has no interest in crime taking capital out of the country or out of the economy at large.

I understand not liking something but what I don't understand is this idea that what you don't like never does anything good and is always bad. Ideologies often the same as stupidity.My big problem with the "fucked/unfuckable" bunch is that they miss emergent phenomema and changing conditions that could and do sometimes lead to improvements in people's lives and added difficulty for mfers.

Making it harder for rich folks to hide money has tangible implications for social inequality and mitigating climate change.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

My big problem with the "fucked/unfuckable" bunch is that they miss emergent phenomema and changing conditions that could and do sometimes lead to improvements in people's lives and added difficulty for mfers.

Making it harder for rich folks to hide money has tangible implications for social inequality and mitigating climate change.

I hear you. I also think that if you're fucked and unfuckable then you need to find a way to unfuck yourself and become fuckable not just give up and assume everything is going to fail.

There are a lot of people dissatisfied. Something will give eventually thank God we live in a constitutional democracy.

[Winehole23]

New follow up in the WaPo


The Pandora Papers is an investigation based on more than 11.9 million documents revealing the flows of money, property and other assets concealed in the offshore financial system. The Washington Post and other news organizations exposed the involvement of political leaders, examined the growth of the industry within the United States and demonstrated how secrecy shields assets from governments, creditors and those abused or exploited by the wealthy and powerful. The trove of confidential information, the largest of its kind, was obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which organized the investigation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/03/takeaways-pandora-papers/

[Winehole23]

The trove of more than 11.9 million confidential files shows how presidents, prime ministers, royals, elected officials — and some of their family members and closest associates — stash assets in a covert financial system with the help of firms who establish companies in secrecy jurisdictions. Explore the biggest political names uncovered in the data.https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/power-players/

[boutons_deux]

How 'insanely corrupt' South Dakota became a magnet for the wealth-hoarding megarich

"South Dakota has sheltered billions in wealth linked to wealthy individuals previously accused of serious financial crimes and labor violations."

Drawn by low taxes and some of the nation's most generous trust laws, "shady billionaires from around the world are going to South Dakota,"

the Mount Rushmore State "now rivals Switzerland, Panama, the Cayman Islands, and other famous tax havens as a premier venue for the international rich seeking to protect their assets from local taxes or the authorities,"

Findings suggest that South Dakota has sheltered billions in wealth linked to wealthy individuals previously accused of serious financial crimes and labor violations.

Two examples:

Brazilian orange juice baron Horst Happel was fined $88 million in 2016 for underpaying his workers. In 2017, he moved substantial wealth to a trust in South Dakota.

Carlos Morales Troncoso was the former vice president of the Dominican Republic. He ran a sugar company called Central Romana... that was accused of human rights violations. He set up trusts for his daughters in the Bahamas that were moved, after his death, to South Dakot

Vehicles including

granter-attained annuity trusts (GRATs) and so-called "dynasty trusts" (https://inequality.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Dynasty-Trusts-Brief-June15-2021.pdf)—through which wealth can be sequestered for generations, even centuries—

attract the über-rich to South Dakota by design.

https://www.rawstory.com/how-insanely-corrupt-south-dakota-became-a-magnet-for-the-wealth-hoarding-megarich

A beautiful context for Noem firing the head of the SD realty board for not granting license Noem's unqualified daughter.

[boutons_deux]

https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/J3gqvyDsnvR2mnIP5v8gBkxErpuQZ_I7rnGAomIBd7R_p3-ZwLTCguxgRkAb2smBeHo4q2GECmexufa3u9PFWt1x_PUqwvhs0 w63b1PLAYU_8f57eTo6beM8JTlkjcmBSdaMF_YOBgU5AvoACVz 8279WYbMx14y6k8zws2sqQJM9Pdx_1VsSFZGWXlTp4irwEf3M-DcGddXZkpg1QLsakmalnx9uD8fBAs7aBaNnvqDWWfnDbUHJZjy R3tnGoSy4KfWOFaWde5KgS0yAEaNeIwetGIZXvcCRPu-x6Rx4kNHCazVCvpITlXC9Zb_2Ye1DvbcXiwVYVAFl5giamHyOL ColvNK5He3X99bHDK1yqVMUlFOIx2P6G1gLueFc79X4aO6HG14 v5ATv-EdPWg=s0-d-e1-ft#https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6I mh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNzYzNjg1OC9vcmlnaW4 uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NzY2NjU3Nn0.BplC81HGn srPWXAy1rHvp66GL5ZfG0evnkGHJC7slAs/img.jpg?width=1200&quality=85&coordinates=0%2C0%2C20%2C0&height=800

[Winehole23]

"I hid my taxable earnings at the request of my client. Fiduciary responsibility ftw!"


French financial authorities are investigating former International Monetary Fund chief and politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn over revelations in the Pandora Papers investigation about his Moroccan tax residency and business dealings.

Officials at the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office told Pandora Papers media partner Le Monde that Strauss-Kahn is suspected of laundering the proceeds of tax fraud (https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2022/12/14/pandora-papers-dominique-strauss-kahn-dans-le-viseur-de-la-justice-francaise_6154427_4355770.html). They didn’t elaborate on the allegations which were put to a hearing before the summer.

His lawyer, Jean Veil, told the French daily that the former finance minister is cooperating with authorities. “Documents were sent to the tax authorities, and I am convinced that they were satisfied with them, since nothing has happened at the judicial level”, Veil said.

Confidential records from 2016 and 2017, obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, revealed that Strauss-Kahn (https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/power-players/dominique-strauss-kahn) used a Morocco-based company, Parnasse International Sarlau, to take in millions of dollars in consulting fees from such clients as Rosneft – an oil company partly owned by the Russian state – and the Chinese aviation conglomerate HNA Group. Much of his earnings were tax-free, according to the news site L’Obs.
https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/former-imf-boss-strauss-kahn-mired-in-french-investigation-sparked-by-pandora-papers-revelations/

[Winehole23]

Chile goes after Glencore for $1.5B in unpaid taxes


Skoknic said the data helped to quantify something usually intangible: the societal value of investigative journalism.
To put the $1.5 billion figure in context, ICIJ has calculated that, as of 2021, governments across the world have recovered $1.36 billion from the Panama Papers alone (https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/panama-papers-revenue-recovery-reaches-1-36-billion-as-investigations-continue/).
Chilean authorities expect to recoup more than $1.5B after ICIJ investigations, government data reveals - ICIJ (https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/chilean-authorities-expect-to-recoup-more-than-1-5b-after-icij-investigations-government-data-reveals/)