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Putin Says Panama Papers Part of US Plot to Weaken Russia (go.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Russia President Vladimir Putin says he has no links to offshore accounts unveiled in the Panama Papers. Moreover, Putin believes that these leaks are part of Western efforts to weaken Russia. As ABC News reports, Putin criticised Western media for involving his name in offshore business even though his name didn't feature in any of the leaked documents. Speaking in St Petersburg, Putin added that it certainly seems like a US-led disinformation campaign waged against Russia. Putin also defended a cellist friend who was named as the alleged owner of an offshore company, noting that his friend is a philanthropist.People in Russia, sadly, don't seem to care much about Panama Papers. As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports, most Russians haven't heard of -- or don't care about -- the Panama Papers. The media house interviewed 30 people on the street, of which it found only
1 person thought it was wrong. (video).
Panama papers leak you!
"People in Russia, sadly, don't seem to care much about Panama Papers. As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports, most Russians haven't heard of -- or don't care about -- the Panama Papers. The media house interviewed 30 people on the street, of which it found only 1 person thought it was wrong. (video)."
Does not follow. You mean to say: only one person was willing to speak out against it. Polls have little to do with what people think. They only tell you what they are willing to admit.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
I live in the US and I barely care about the Panama Papers either.
Actually... the first thing I think of when I see "Panama Papers" is David Lee Roth for some reason...
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
"Legitimate criticism of my wrongdoing, backed up by objectively verifiable facts, is in fact harassment and will not be tolerated."
Just give him some neon hair, a side-shave and some problem glasses and have him write blogposts about how objects in C++ are oppressive toward womxn.
Hell, in the USA you just need to establish a charitable foundation like the Clintons.
The conspiracy theorists are playing right along by saying there are no Americans mentioned in the Panama Papers so it must have been scrubbed, despite (1) hundreds of Americans being named in them, and (2) you don't have to go offshore to hide money. The US works just fine for hiding money.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Don't forget, Panama Papers is just a subset of data that was released. Heavily edited. Conveniently, not a single US politician mentioned in the released data. Also, Putin's name isn't there either, just his "childhood friend". Yet in all the newspapers it was reported that Putin was directly implicated. So, what else would you expect him to claim? Also, he actually wasn't the first to come to the same conclusion:
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/...
My first guess is that the people of Russia have more important things to think about. Based on the past actions of Putin, this probably doesn't even rank in the top 100 things to care about politically/legally.
Also, do we even know if this is illegal under Russian tax code? Even if it were, I'm guessing Russia would follow the legal maxim of rex non potest peccare (the king can do no wrong).
Popisms.com - Connecting pop culture
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers while Putin proposes Panama Papers potentially part of political plot
RFE RL is a 501c 3 corporation that receives U.S. government funding and is supervised by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an agency overseeing all U.S. federal government international broadcasting services. The Russian Federation is subject to sanctions by the US government over the legitimacy of the people of Crimea's vote to declare themselves as a the Russian Autonomous Region of Crimea. Who do you trust, what can you verify with your own eyes, and who has an agenda here?
The purpose of existence is to make money.
People in Russia, sadly, don't seem to care much about Panama Papers.
Yeah, I really don't care. The people of Russia clearly aren't terribly interested in a free press, an uncorrupt government or any semblance of a modern open democratic state. If that's what they want, that's what they get and I'm not going to get too worked up about their choices.
The Russian people don't need the Panama papers to see the obvious corruption and political nepotism. The Olympics should have provided more than enough proof and most people didn't care. If they don't care, I don't care.
New Tzar just like the old Tzar..
Organization? You must be joking..
Evading taxes in the US should be every citizen's duty. And it should be every non-US citizen's duty to mankind to help US citizens evade taxes. The less money the US government gets, the less people in the world will suffer and die.
Why would Americans wanting to hide stuff go off-shore when they can do everything they need to do right in the USA?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The money lost to tax avoidance can give everyone an extra couple of grand a year in their pockets. It's not "free money" - it's returning your money, that was stolen from you because others refused to pay their fair share, from them, making restitution to you.
Think of what that extra money would do for the economy. For yourself.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
And there's the Russian troll. Considering USAID distributes food, medicine and shelter, and helps those countries who want to have some form of democracy, unlike Russia, it is quite clear why you trolls would mention an NGO.
After all, Russia has a long history of paranoia when it comes to groups trying to help people better themselves or understand why oppression, such as is practiced in Russia, is not how countries become strong and independent.
How's the weather in St. Petersburg? Is Uncle Putin still paying you in rubles which decline in value each day? Has your vodka allotment been increased to keep you under control?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I'm not surprised esp. when hearing 83% of Russian approve Putin https://www.washingtonpost.com.... If the citizens feel that the way of life in Russia is good, they're ok with high up people accumulating wealth and hide them. Let them be. They deserve it.
They are Russian. They cannot read or understand English or German, or the Latin alphabet. So how the hell does anyone think that the common Ruskie would know anything about it?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
At least Hillary and Putin agree on the vast right wing conspiracy idea. Tim S.
If Putin is willing to pay then people are free to accept. I don't know about you but bribes are always welcome in my house. Those bills aren't gonna pay themselves!
Support your local school shooter, give them your firearms.
I don't expect a big mess, because as with every other case of fraud and tax evasion the more likely outcome will be silence and no action. There are some high profile American's on the list, and if you look at their associations I'm sure you could implicate many many other people. The Prime Minister of the UK has cried "private matter, don't look" from day one. All of the names of people in the Middle East, including many supported by the US and UK (and their best allies). One politician has left over the matter, from a Government who went through a soft revolt not very long ago. That is actually much more than I would expect, and more than we would have seen 20 years ago.
There are 15,600 companies that exist on paper simply to hide money, with hundreds of people from the largest economies in the world involved. What do we hear about it? "That bad ole Putin, he's so bad."
Hypocrisy comes to mind, as well as disgust...
Wake me up when these people are actually held accountable for their actions.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The Russian people know that caring bout those principles is a joke and complete waste of time. No matter the government they've had, they've been screwed over, be it the Tzar, the commies, the capitalists, and everyone in between. No matter the party, no matter the message, the end result has been a few people at the top stealing whatever they can get their hands on.
When have the rich people of the US, or anywhere, been ethical in their wealth? Not individual people here and there, but the whole lot? When have they not influenced politics, pushed out competition, etc?
When was the last time the super rich haven't tried to hide their wealth from governments/taxation? Because I can guarantee you even our half-human half-monkey ancestors would hide their sharpened stones and sticks or hunted animals from one another.
Yeah, Putin had nothing to do with it — it is perfectly common for a cellist in Russia to have $2 billion in Panama. Right...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I think that just makes you a moron. Defending very wealthy people hiding their cash and making sure the system is gamed so they can is not laudable, and it takes a complete fucking idiot to be making a relatively small annual salary to think what they're doing is some sort of stab at the heart of the Big Bad Government.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Welp...that's the stupidest thing I've read all day.
I'm not exactly a huge fan of a lot of what the United States does, but we've seen time and time again that the rest of the world would be killing each other even more if it wasn't for the U.S. telling them to stop.
"Oh. You won't mind, then, if we seize all these accounts in your, amd your lieutenants', names?"
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Big deal! People in the US, sadly, don't seem to care about the Snowden or Manning "papers", except to denigrate the leakers instead of the revealed acts. And they're not going to care about the Panama Papers during the election either, just like they don't care about the already well known quid pro quo of the Clinton Foundation. Panama was a honeypot set up by the state department. That's why you don't see any important Americans in there. Their money is still in Switzerland.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Yes, and zerohedge has also pointed out that this just eliminates competition for the Rothschilds.
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
And the US government doesn't just spend the money it takes in , it borrows nearly a trillion a year, with no plans to ever pay it back (at least we've heard no such plan from any viable official or candidate.)
The Panama Papers are part of US plot to weaken FIFA
We're just trying to drag the world down to our level. It's the bucket of crabs mentality.
Have gnu, will travel.
No, it's not stolen, and no, it's not someone refusing to pay their "fair share".
It's taking advantage of the law as written, and there is absolutely no written system out there that can always beat people who are trying to game the rules. Take interest deductions - the one with the fewest limitations is the home mortgage interest deduction. Let's say you have a property worth $400k, and you and your spouse earn $200k/year in total. Let's assume you've been quite productive and have managed to pay the principal down to $200k, but the two of you have $100k in student loans. Student loan interest is almost certainly not deductible for you (ends at $160k AGI for couples), but home mortgage is. So if you were to refinance your loans at today's low, low rates, cashing out your equity to pay off the student loans, you would get a new $300k loan - but all the interest is now deductible. You very well might save some money on the interest rate, as well. College students: unless things have changed in the last ten years, if all your student loans are from one bank, you must use that bank for any student loan consolidation, but if you have federally-guaranteed loans from two banks, your choices are wide open - be sure to get at least one semester's loans from a different bank to keep your options open.
When the law is written by bought and paid for politicians, it's theft, same as anything else obtained by fraud and corruption.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
A lot of it is outright fraud.
How fucking ironic that you think not having your money stolen equals theft. What insane mindfuck mental gymnastics.
Take your meds, schizo.
Fraud and corruption in these cases are theft under cover of law. Maybe you should indulge in a few mental gymnastics to exercise your grey matter.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Better to give future stories to the world's media in full. Then every blogger, member of the press, historian, database expert, document expert, linguist, author, NGO with any interest can just work on or search for what they want or are expert in.
No selected press, well funded groups with very regional stories to sell, waiting times.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Jeltsin passed away quite a while ago so he's no longer interested.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Your house — and the local tax on it — may be "much" by your standards. But not by those of the cited billionaires. Their wealth is primarily in stocks and cash — real estates taxes hardly move a needle on their dashboards.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Unfortunately I suspect its our multipolar hero who might be the Control-ee in this operation. The ''friends of Putin'' were the warning to Putin. Throwing Iceland under the bus is the perfect warning to nations so uppity as to actually jail banksters.
Ever country should have its own https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FATCA
Casteism