Panama Papers Source Breaks Silence Over 'Scale Of Injustices' (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The whistleblower behind the Panama Papers broke their silence on Friday to explain in detail how the injustices of offshore tax havens drove them to the biggest data leak in history. The source, whose identity and gender remain a secret, denied being a spy. The whistleblower said the leak of 11.5m documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca had triggered a "new, encouraging global debate," thanks to the publication last month of stories by an international consortium of newspapers, including the Guardian. The source gave Suddeutsche Zeitung leaked documents from Mossack Fonseca's internal database in real time installments. The papers included details of the beneficial owners of offshore companies, passport copies, and emails. The source said they decided to act after understanding the "scale of the injustices" the documents described. Mossack Fonseca denies wrongdoing and says its operations in Panama and elsewhere are "beyond reproach." Intriguingly, the source said they originally offered the documents to "several major media outlets." Editors reviewed the Panama Papers but in the end "chose not to cover them," they alleged. It is unclear which media organizations declined the material. The anonymous whistleblower also approached WikiLeaks -- again without success. "Even WikiLeaks didn't answer its tip line repeatedly," the source complained, adding: "The media has failed." The source used the name "John Doe" when they approached Germany's Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

Comments

Pirate party

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's follow the example of the Icelanders, who jailed their corrupt bankers, and who come next election will vote in the Pirate Party. They promote transparancy and government accountability. You can't be corrupt if everything you do is public. Moreover, the big governments tell us, if we don't have anything to hide, we should give up our privacy but how about we turn that argument right around onto them?

Re:Pirate party

[ShanghaiBill]

You can't be corrupt if everything you do is public.

One of the reasons that few Americans were on the Panama Papers list, was because super PACs and the revolving door patronage system make it easy for American politicians to get rich legally, and our regressive taxes make it easy for them to keep it. Transparency helps, but it is obviously not a panacea.

Re:Pirate party

[whoever57]

Also, no need to go abroad to hide assets. Delaware provides all the necessary secrecy.

Re:Pirate party

[PopeRatzo]

Hitler did the same thing.

Hold that thought...

The pendulum must swing back towards nationalism or there will be no turning back

Hitler was nationalism personified. So which is it? Like most binary descriptions of the world, seeing "nationalism" and "globalism" as the only two options, or even two sides of a coin, almost always leads to bad conclusions.

Re:Pirate party

[hey!]

Invading Poland had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Re:Pirate party

[Anonymous Coward]

Delaware is in the United States and provides ZERO secrecy to Federal Investigations and IRS investigations, and zero against TMC celeb website.

Look, there are a bunch of you trying to explain away this bizarre lack of American politicians, businessmen, contractors, lobbyists, celebrities, in the Panama Papers, Occams razor, they've been filtered because the leak comes from an agency with a legal duty to filter out the Americans. Who else would take the trouble? Why else would they take the trouble?

But that means there's an agenda there, and likely its a surveillance agenda.

Re:Pirate party

[SNRatio]

No, Americans aren't on the list because: 1) that law firm specifically avoided marketing to Americans and 2), Americans typically use other countries (or US states with laissez faire incorporation rules) when trying to avoid taxes/maintain anonymity.

Why so many media didn't publish this?

[ffkom]

Probably because while they investigated the issue they found out that their boss or company also evaded taxes using some off-shore letterbox companies.

And while Germany certainly does not have the most whistle-blower friendly legislation, good old "Sozialneid" (envy of social status) usually trumps the traditional negative stance towards whistle blowers ("Der größte Schuft im ganzen Land, das ist und bleibt der Denunziant!").

So Süddeutsche Zeitung certainly was a reasonable address to turn to.

Re:Why so many media didn't publish this?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Also note that there isn't actually any evidence that any crimes were committed by anyone mentioned in any of the documents in question.

Like hell there isn't. The documents themselves do not mention crimes but they certainly are proof of crime. There is no law against setting up anonymous corporations and sticking your money in there, but you still have to declare that money to internal revenue. Hiding your money by using this construction is tax evasion, not avoidance.

Re:Why so many media didn't publish this?

[ultranova]

There are a number of perfectly legal and non tax related reasons for hiding business activity from competitors or parasitic 'investors'.

And there are a number of perfectly legal and non murder related reasons why you might be sneaking behind someone with a knife and a Scream mask.

Prove on a case by case basis that these people were cheating on taxes before trying them in the court of public opinion.

Ah yes, the good old "delay until public's attention is diverted" -tactic. The court of public opinion isn't a criminal court. It's a civil one, and operates on preponderance of evidence.

Re: Why so many media didn't publish this?

[Type44Q]

...and operates on preponderance of evidence.

If only it were that objective and impartial...

Re:Why so many media didn't publish this?

[hene]

Sure there are some things that are not illegal, like one woman acting as company director in over 11000 companies. But there are also things that are clearly illegal, like dead person signing documents as director.

Crusader for taxes?

[ebonum]

Still seems strange. Who's mission in life is it to help all governments collect more taxes? It would make more sense if it was more targeted. Say someone who saw Nigeria's oil money going oversee into official's secret accounts.
The simplest explanation is still: A government agency did this so that they could pass laws giving them more control over the global financial system. Have a problem with China? If you know everything in every bank, you can hurt the children of the rulers. That is leverage.

Re:Crusader for taxes?

[tsotha]

The story here isn't that some people haven't paid taxes. We don't know, after all - just because you have money in a foreign bank account doesn't mean you haven't paid your taxes. The real story is how some of these people managed to accumulate such large sums of money on a relatively small official salary.

Re:Crusader for taxes?

[sittingnut]

"My viewpoint is entirely my own"
but since we don't know him/her/it that statement does not mean anything at all.

given the unknown sources, only way to judge the papers and their intention is to see what they revealed and how they were covered .
1/ with few exceptions, they were mostly against enemies of the western establishment .
2/ coverage of the papers by media like guardian was extremely skewed . for instance guardian started with putin's name and pic in all the stories on 1st day of release, even though his name does not appear anywhere at all in the papers. only connection with putin is through an acquittance(who suddenly became "best friend" in western media), but even that person had given away in charity far more than his tax bill and the money he had in these accounts (russian taxes are relatively low anyway).
where does that fit in " scale of the injustices"?

Re:Crusader for taxes?

[hey!]

Still seems strange. Who's mission in life is it to help all governments collect more taxes?

Do I really have to spell this out for you? When rich people hide their taxable income, it means everyone else has to pick up the slack.

No thinking person should be against taxes. If you don't like government, you should be against spending. Taxes are simply the corollary of spending.

Re:Crusader for taxes?

[rtb61]

The story is those people cheating on the taxes are the same people promoting austerity, actually buying politicians, so services are cut back due to lost tax revenue and citizens suffer and die. So tax havens are basically economic terrorists, attacking other countries economies and harming those citizens in collusion with the corrupt politicians of those countries and the 1% psychopath class as well as transfer of funds from the tax evaders accounts to the corrupt politician accounts (so hiding money has been proven, what has yet to be accounted for is how that hidden money was earned). So it is not just people cheating a little on their taxes, it is organised crime upon a massive scale, bribery and corruption, upon a mass scale. The question is should countries being cheated by tax havens and having their democracies attacked and their economies seriously damaged, declare economic war upon tax havens, real serious, active economic war to destroy those tax havens and put them out of business.

Re:Crusader for taxes?

[hey!]

People *have* been trying to pay as little tax as possible, by both legal and illegal means. And, from your perspective, how well has that been working out?

Re:Wikileaks tip line denial

[110010001000]

Bullshit. Bank Rossiya was exposed in the Papers. And Bank Rossiya==Putin. Another Putin lackey blaming the Americans...

The wealthy benefit heavily from my taxes

[rsilvergun]

I pay about 27% Fed & State alone (single male, no house, decent income). Meanwhile they get subsidies, bail outs and a military that protects their overseas factories and investments.

Here in the States our infrastructure is crumbling. Flint, Mi just poisoned their entire city to save a buck on their Water bill. There've been several bridge collapses and we've got dams all over the place in danger. Our roads are clogged with cars because there aren't enough roads. It's a mess, and the rich just fly jets & helicopters over it or drive in their limos. Meanwhile I pay for the airports their private jets use.

So yeah, screw that noise. They're benefiting from civilization they should bloody well chip in. They're not doing that. I say bully for this guy.

Re: The wealthy benefit heavily from my taxes

[Type44Q]

Have you ever offered a suggestion that was actually practical and not just a pedantic and arbitrary attempt to enjoy the sound of your own voice?

Re:The trouble is jobs

[PopeRatzo]

I miss clean air.

Man, don't even talk about clean air. I'm in New England now and my math professor wife just got a job offer at Rice University in Houston. It's a good position and a great opportunity for her, but I dread going to Huston because it's one of the smoggiest cities in the US and hot as hell on top of that.

Plus, they have Zika mosquitoes, so I'll just end up going down there and dying from some weird tropical disease.

On the plus side, I'll finally be able to wear my Nudie suit on the street.

http://cf.collectorsweekly.com...

Re:Wikileaks tip line denial

[Tom]

How a bank can be identical to a person is something you have to explain. Yes, there is very likely a good contact between the bank leaders and Putin, but they have other clients as well (they are pretty big, actually) and the point the GP made was that in the actual papers there was no evidence whatsoever involving Putin, and still newspapers opened the story with his picture.

That's like opening a story about the drug addiction of some White House secretary with a picture of Obama and calling him a drug lord.

It is simply dishonest journalism. A good journalist does not make up connections, he investigates them and reveals what he finds, not what he thinks maybe (hopefully) is there.