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Panama Papers Affair Widens As Database Goes Online (bbc.com)
In late April, it was reported there would be a huge new 'Panama Papers' data dump on May 9th. The report did not disappoint as today the Panama Papers affair has widened, with a huge database of documents relating to more than 200,000 offshore accounts posted online. The database can be accessed at offshoreleaks.icij.org. The papers were leaked by a source known as "Jony Doe," and the papers belonged to the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) decided to make the database public despite a "cease and desist" order issued by the law firm.
Not much.
I haven't followed this leak closely, so it's very possible I've missed something, but as I understand it, the vast majority of the offshore accounts being publicized are completely legal. Embarrassing to their owners, perhaps, but not illegal in themselves.
Rather, the release of such private details is likely illegal, so any prosecution or criticism has to admit that it also benefited from illegal activities, effectively shooting itself in the foot.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I had heard a panel of "journalists" was selectively editing out elements of the database to remove some records.
With the presidential race chock full of candidates who ALL may well be present in the data and thus possibly scrubbed by zealots, do we know if this is all of the data obtained?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If I am not mistaken, the fact that these accounts are legal is a significant contributor to the public outrage (fabricated or otherwise) concerning this media event.
EG, if there were no laws against poisoning pigeons in the park, then a group of kids showing up with cans of bugspray and hosing down birds to watch them flop around until dead would not be illegal. That does not mean that the behavior is socially acceptable-- just not illegal in this contrived example. (Yes, I am well aware that it is indeed illegal to poison pigeons in most western countries. This is just an analogy; tortured and not ideal perhaps, but just an analogy.)
The real world example of the panama papers reveals a substantive effort by many power elite to obfuscate holdings, financial connections with industries they may be regulating as elite power brokers, and dealings with agencies or groups of less reputable character, as well as run of the mill tax avoidance, and sheltering of assets from unsteady local economies.
The practices are not "illegal", but they are socially unacceptable, which is why there is a scandal. The fact that "such things are actually legal" throws gasoline on the fire, not water.
Another tortured analogy might go something like this:
In many European countries, prostitution is perfectly legal. A conservative political figure publicly decries the practice of prostitution, but uses obfuscated holdings such as these to pay for such services on a very regular basis. No laws are violated-- the money was his to spend, and the service he obtained with it is legal. That does not make the circumstances stop being scandalous-- That of his blatant hipocracy, and abuse of client privilege to hide it to continue to snooker his electorate.
So, the fact that these accounts are not illegal does not remove the controversy, it is what causes it.
Can we move past that line of reasoning now?
It's nice to know when, say, a CEO lets his/her employees go because there's not enough money (and yet there's many millions in offshore accounts).
Companies employ people when the employees add value and contribute to profit. They don't employ people because they can afford the spend the money.
So, what you are saying is:
It is perfectly legal for a wealthy person (Let's say a Greek politician) from Cyprus to have heard, through whatever means, that the banks were going to seize private deposits, and to have taken extraordinary measures to create offshore shell accounts and transfer their fortune there to protect it while everyone else that lacked the connections to create this labyrinth of obfuscation had their accounts siezed in the forced austerity plan.
Because it was perfectly legal, there is no controversy?
I fully expect that very situation to be there at least one time in this data dump.
That's the problem with conflict of interest-- you cannot prove that they did the transfer with knowledge of the impending crash that the public did not have, and further, there might not have even been laws like the US's insider trading rules concerning such action to begin with. That does not change the percieved injustice of a wealthy politicians continuing to be wealthy, after crashing the bank and loan infrastructure, and financially emperiling everyone else around them-- which is exactly what these kinds of services are essentially for.
There is a reason I used the poisoned pigeons analogy earlier. Something can be perfectly legal, and yet be very repugnant at the same time. Claiming "But it is not a crime to poison pigeons!" does not in any way reduce the repugnance of poisoning the pigeons for sadistic pleasure.
Privatizing gains and socializing losses is repugnant. Obfuscated foriegn accounts exist for this very purpose.
True, but it is also becoming more and more popular for companies in the US to tell their employees that the company simply cannot afford to give them a cost-of-living raise, even though the company is raking in record profits.
Companies give raises, or not, based on what they think they need to pay to retain employees, and attract new employees. They don't give raises "because they can afford it". Employees chose to stay, or not, based on what they think they are worth, and what they can earn elsewhere.
Whether there is "hidden money" or not, is irrelevant. Plenty of highly profitable companies layoff workers that they consider unproductive, as they should. No "affordability" justification is needed.
(shakes head)
The controversy *IS* "Why is this legal?!"
That is what people are outraged about-- that these kinds of things happen all the time, and are considered "normal" in the world of international high finance.
I thought I pointed that out? The people of the western world are collectively asking that question because of the disparity in how the system operates in this regard.
That is why the argument "But it is perfectly legal!!" is assinine. The fact that it is legal is what is being taken exception to. People want it to not be legal!
I can fully understand why they would want to make it illegal--
Not only does it allow the wealthy to shift the burden of maintaining an orderly society onto the more scrupulous (because, pshaw, they could set up offshore accounts too, if they werent so dumb and poor minded!-- or whatever) by allowing them to "avoid" taxes on their wealth, It allows their financial fortunes to rise with the tide of everyone else during the good times, but fail to sink like the others when that tide goes out.
Simply because you CAN do something, does not mean you should.
By your reasoning, if an online game has a technical issue that can be exploited to your advantage, it is "Totally not cheating" to use that exploit, because the game lets you do it--even if that exploit basically makes it so you cannot lose.
And further, "If you have an issue with it, you should take it up with the game's developers."
Newsflash-- it is still cheating.
In this case, the cheaters have a hand in developing the game, and have a vested interest in keeping the exploits-- and other people dont really have a choice to not play against them.
The ethics of the action are indepedent of the legality of the action. A cheater seeks an unfair means of getting ahead of the competition. Most offshore account providers have prohibitive minimum deposit values to make use of them, making them effectively unusuable by nearly everyone but the already wealthy. This makes them unfair, even though, should some outrageous circumstance drop shitloads of cash on a random joe, he is technically "able" to open one himself, if he knows about them.
A technical exploit in an online game is likewise available to anyone who knows about it and has the tenacity to exploit it-- everyone has the same binary user application after all, and play on the same servers. the rules apply to everyone. Theoretically, anyone can do it!
But doing such an exploit will get you just as banned. :)
Why? because it is cheating.
Thinking that everyone should cheat, and that by not cheating you are just dumb or something, is so unethically minded I dont even know where to begin.
The same applies to global finance. The system lets you do it. That does not make it stop being an unfair and abusive practice against less powerful market actors, and thus unethical to even consider.
Do you really not see the ethical problem?
When everyone evades taxes, no taxes are collected. When no taxes are collected, no vital services that maintain the society can be provided. The society ceases to function, and everyone suffers.
When some evade taxes, (to maintain their wealth, naturally!), but others do not, the ones evading the taxes privatize their gain (an orderly society with working essential services), while socializing the loss (All those other people have to pay for it.)
Sickeningly, those best able to shift that burden onto others, ar the least liklely to have serious, like changing consequences of having to pay, and the ones forced into the situation, are the ones most harmed by being forced into it.
Sheltering your wealth is NOT victimless, because no action is without consequence, and the ideal you have stated (everyone evades paying) harms everyone the most.
That's just taxes. There are numerous other ethical problems with simply sheltering fortunes against sagging economies through exploiting the world monetary system.
Really, you cannot see these?
Isn't that a little discriminatory? The tldr of your post is basically if you are not a good salesman of yourself you deserve your lower pay. This implying every human is supposed to be good at making contracts? I am not sure life is "the wolf of wall street "...