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Panama Papers: Data Leak Exposes Massive Official Corruption (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The hidden wealth of some of the world's most prominent leaders, politicians and celebrities has been revealed by an unprecedented leak of millions of documents that show the myriad ways in which the rich can exploit secretive offshore tax regimes. The Guardian, working with global partners, will set out details from the first tranche of what are being called "the Panama Papers". Journalists from more than 80 countries have been reviewing 11.5m files leaked from the database of Mossack Fonseca, the world's fourth biggest offshore law firm.
Twelve national leaders are among 143 politicians, their families and close associates from around the world known to have been using offshore tax havens. Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Vladimir Putin, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq; Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine; Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypt's former president; and the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davio Gunnlaugsson. The leak is one of the biggest ever - larger than the US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010, and the secret intelligence documents given to journalists by Edward Snowden in 2013. More here. Search the Offshore Leaks Database here.
Twelve national leaders are among 143 politicians, their families and close associates from around the world known to have been using offshore tax havens. Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Vladimir Putin, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq; Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine; Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypt's former president; and the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davio Gunnlaugsson. The leak is one of the biggest ever - larger than the US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010, and the secret intelligence documents given to journalists by Edward Snowden in 2013. More here. Search the Offshore Leaks Database here.
But I am not surprised. Time to do some 1789?
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Remember citizens, 'conspiracy theorists' are just nutjob losers who want to blame the reptilians or whatever for the fact that their lives suck and their tinfoil hats are too tight. The world is, in fact, basically decent and as-described. Carry on.
This is a very good point;it's almost less what's there, than what's been left out.
As i understand the story so far, some southerm german paper gets this leak and enlists a *Washington DC* organisation (ICIJ) to ensure the relevant informatiion is appropriately publicised.
All your ghosts are just false positives.
so as little dirt as possible falls on the U.S. Corruption in global sports organizations, corruption in global oil business, and now this as well, and very little of it falls on the U.S. Very suspicious.
I believe all of these have come to light and under investigation on intentions by the U.S, to wash their hands a bit after the NSA fall-out, and to make the whole world look bad and corrupt, while trying to look like shining white knights themselves.
Is that so? Are you sure?
A story about probable corrupt practices and conspiracy to defraud by thousands of powerful organisations going back to 1970.
And your concerned about the bias in the summary on one of thousands of sites linking to it.... priorities, my friend.
Nobody is starving just because people with money are using legal tax shelters.
Sure they are; government assistance programs are not as funded as they could be.
I can name a nation of people suffering because fucks like David Cameron and George Osbourne are removing welfare that WORKING people need in order to work and be independent, while they and their cronies all benefit from a wage increase.
And now to find out they are probably throwing money through these tax schemes on top?
They will get destroyed if any link is found. Absolutely destruction of their whole party.
I would hardly be surprised if the lying hypocrite fuck is part of it. He lies through his teeth so hard every single day.
These people, just like scummy multinationals, are stealing money from taxpayers in every country they work.
Money owed to the state.
Don't give me your "but capitalism" bullshit, capitalism is at the core of corruption in the financial world and regulation IS needed to keep them in order.
The free market is the worst thing. It should be banned universally.
All it has lead to it regulatory committees being paid off, or being created BY said companies just to appease a government-run agency, despite them doing absolutely nothing to stop the corruption they should be stopping. (hell, then you have groups like the FDA and FCC in the US being paid off all the damn time to turn away and ignore things)
People are literally dying horrible, painful slow deaths because of these companies releasing toxic foods and products that go out for years before 3rd parties catch them.
It matters for naught, as nothing can be done anyway besides "hey, hey guys, stop selling these things okay?", so it is pretty pointless them saying anything!
It needs to stop. NOW.
Yeah.. Unicode issue for stories. It'll be fixed soon-ish
Each has secrets that can destroy the other.
so I hardly see this as news. At worst It's moderately annoying for the people involved. Also the leakers are probably going to die soon (poor bastards).
Remember all those reforms that happened after Snowden's leaks? No? That's because there weren't any. So long as social issues exist to divide the working class into easily manageable groups you're not gonna see squat. Let me know when you figure out how to get people to stop caring about Abortion, Gays and guns long enough to care about economics..
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I can name an idiot whose swallowed Rupert Murdoch's cumload
It's cute that you are smart enough to post on Slashdot, but stupid enough to lap up drivel not backed by objective statistics. You are just another bigoted moron too stupid to realize that people feeding you the crap you parrot are your real enemies.
in contrast, putin's implication is indirect at best, with vague indefinite connections,"The Russian presidentâ(TM)s best friend â" a cellist called Sergei Roldugin - is at the centre of a scheme in which money from Russian state banks is hidden offshore. Some of it ends up in a ski resort where in 2013 Putinâ(TM)s daughter Katerina got married." best friend not described as that before? and location of a wedding reception?
In contrast to what? Putin is a bigger fish than even Cameron much less some MPs. Sure, it's "indirect", but most of the people associated with the Putin story wouldn't have that kind of money without Putin's help (as noted in the article). For example, his alleged "best friend", Sergei Roldugin apparently has at least 100 million USD. But why would he have anything at all, if it weren't for his relationship with Putin? At this point, the only real question is what is Putin's take from these shenanigans?
There have been some wild guesses as to Putin's wealth, going up to 200 billion USD. At least, an inside peek like this will give us a better idea of how much looting is going on.
If it's American documents released, there would've been 50 comments in the first 5 minutes begging for military trials and how these leaks are damaging to the country, how we need to protect our military and their assets. People were crying out for the DoJ to arrest, prosecute, stow away in Guantanamo and even execute the leakers. Now that it's primarily about other countries, I don't see any of that outcry. I don't see any media, mobs or prosecutors demanding for these leakers to go through anything like what Assange, Swartz or Snowden are going through.
I hope they find a Hillary/Obama/Sanders threesome somewhere in there.
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Non sequitur... It does not follow. Literally.
It does not follow that if the government had more money that they'd be spending it on social safety nets. It does not matter the government, it simply does not follow. It is not necessarily true that they'd be more inclined to feed the hungry than they would be to make a down payment on yet-another-expensive-defense-project.
I've been alive for quite a while and that doesn't necessarily make me wise - but it does mean I've had the chance to witness a lot of things. One of the things I've witnessed is that governments, at least the more stable of them, don't actually have an income problem. Not at all. They have a spending problem. We talk about the tax breaks and the tax rates while ignoring the fact that the overall taxation rate on GDP is actually as high was it has ever been.
No, the governments have plenty of money. They just spend it on some really stupid things - like another bomber, fighter, aircraft carrier, or straight up hookers and blow. A trivial, nearly meaningless, sum might actually go/have gone to needy people but that's not even a certainty. Hell, it's not even a high probability. So, that doesn't follow. If the government had more money, there's almost certain more hookers and more blow and those just aren't going to do themselves, you know.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Some journalists are going to publish only part of it, to damage only those that they have interest in hurting. Wikileaks publishes everything, and that's what we need, so that every citizen can go through it and show what's inside.
People who have access to it, please, leak it all.
(I was checking the journalists in ICIJ from my country, they are not from very different media outlets. I can see a lot staying hidden and I imagine it will be the same for other countries)
No, people might not literally starve. But the rest of us will pay more in taxes to cover the costs of running the government while the ultra-weathy exercise legal options to avoid taxes that regular taxpayers can't. Even if you accept that government simply spends too much, what it does spend still comes out of those taxpayers that pay their taxes, whether at full rate or spectacularly discounted through creative legal methods. Sure, we can work to lower the costs and the need for tax revenue in the first place, but it has to come from *somewhere*, and the ultra-weathy have done fine income-wise or in terms of lower tax rates over the last couple of decades.
That's assuming the methods being used are actually legal.
Not so surprisingly, Slashdot is about the only regular site I go to that I've found allowing comments on this leak. Most news sites & others I frequent have them all disabled. Funny that. Journalistic bravery, or self-preservation? :)
Even less surprisingly, top Russian communist leader corrupt...news at 11.
In any case, rather than follow the money, just keep en eye out for Mossack Fonseca's execs who are reported suddenly 'missing', or have 'accidents' in the near future. The shitstorm over this hasn't even begun yet. Popcorn time.
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Anyway, that's not what I came to say. While it is most certainly true that everybody could profit from these tax havens by "filing the paperwork", that is not entirely true. Many require you to create companies and I know as a fact, than in my country that's not cheap. Well, okay, it'll cost you about the price of a small family car. Is that much? Not really if you've got millions or billions. So, that is one barrier of entry.
Also keep in mind that many smaller businesses and private persons, need their income to actually live. So, that 100000$ income you have? You need it. No way you offshore it all, so you can save on taxes. Bigger companies and very rich individuals have the luxury of having a certain fluidity and can do with that "extra money", including making it disappear in shady tax schemes.
Finally, the above problems didn't exist, you have to look at the return of investment. If I'm setting up a complicated, perhaps even borderline illegal, tax scheme to avoid taxes of, let's say 500$ a year, am I investing my time wisely? We're talking 1.37$ saved a day... That's not even the overpriced latte at Starbucks. Drop the caffeine habit, and save more...
So, I'm not really all that sure it's a matter of "too lazy to do the paperwork".
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Everyone who is not doing it, has his own reasons, probably just o lazy to do the paper work or lack of trust in the the lawyers needed in the "destination country".
Half of the world live on less than $2/day, I'm sure there's probably other reasons than not trusting your lawyer...
it'd be fucking moronic to tax a business on income other than its profit
No it wouldn't. It would be moronic to tax a business on income other than its profit at the rates that currently apply to profit, but there is a lot to be said for a low rate of tax on turnover:
David Cameron and George Osbourne are removing welfare that WORKING people need in order to work and be independent
What is wrong with this is not that they are removing it but that working people need welfare in order to work and be independent in the first place. Paying welfare to people who are in work just allows companies to pay lower wages increasing the profits for the fat cats at the top.
Wal-Mart - family of the fattest cats from Arkansas.
Who worked very hard to get there. You think being the fattest cats in america came for free?
Thousands (perhaps millions) of Americans have worked as hard, harder, and much harder than the Wal family over the last 50 years, and have much less to show for it today. Luck in timing, luck in connections, luck in starting from a good place - these are stronger determining factors for Wal level success than "worked very hard" - some hard work is usually also required, but it's not the component most highly correlated with unusual levels of success.