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'Panama Papers' Group Strikes Again with 'Paradise Papers' (theguardian.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader Freshly Exhumed tipped us off to a new document leak that's just revealed massive tax havens used by the world's most wealthy and powerful people. An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian:
The material, which has come from two offshore service providers and the company registries of 19 tax havens, was obtained by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with partners including the Guardian, the BBC and the New York Times. The project has been called the Paradise Papers.
It's the same group responsible for the Panama Papers, and the Guardian reports that in these 13.4 million new files, journalists have discovered:
It's the same group responsible for the Panama Papers, and the Guardian reports that in these 13.4 million new files, journalists have discovered:
- "How Twitter and Facebook received hundreds of millions of dollars in investments that can be traced back to Russian state financial institutions."
- "Aggressive tax avoidance by multinational corporations, including Nike and Apple."
- "Extensive offshore dealings by Donald Trump's cabinet members, advisers and donors, including substantial payments from a firm co-owned by Vladimir Putin's son-in-law to the shipping group of the US commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross."
- "The tax-avoiding Cayman Islands trust managed by the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau's chief moneyman."
"The publication of this investigation, for which more than 380 journalists have spent a year combing through data that stretches back 70 years, comes at a time of growing global income inequality," reports the Guardian. "Meanwhile, multinational companies are shifting a growing share of profits offshore -- €600 billion in the last year alone -- the leading economist Gabriel Zucman will reveal in a study to be published later this week. "Tax havens are one of the key engines of the rise in global inequality," he said."
Now that tax avoidance is proven to work we should all do it. It's irresponsible to pay money when you don't have to. You don't send an extra $100 to your cable provider just because, do you?
The Rep control both houses and the white house. But yet I keep reading how the US is supposidely run by leftist liberals and that they somehow keep the right from doing reforms.
Explain how that works.
Well the journalist who uncovered it died when her vehicle blew up. I'm pretty sure she didn't drive a Pinto so I'm a little but suspicious about the whole ordeal, but it was a pretty big result for her.
More seriously though, the problem is that they're all dirty. Republicans, Democrats, everyone. That makes it easy for any side to ignore the misdeeds of their own and sling mud at the other side. That's why nothing really comes of it, because they all know that they're all dirty, so they can't really go after each other in any serious manner.
Even more seriously though, what the fuck did everyone expect. No one wants to pay high taxes. The people that make most of the money realize how much the government sucks at doing most (not all, just most) of things it tries to do, and the people who are wealthy and okay with high taxes because they can accomplish some good would probably be just as well (if not better) off taking their money and doing it themselves. If you want companies to pay taxes, apply market principles to this situation as well and assume that people will shop around for better deals. Lower tax rates to make it less profitable for companies to try to off shore profits and they'll gladly take the path of least resistance.
Just because something isn't illegal doesn't mean you can't do something about it.
Like, for instance, making it illegal.
Gun control will happen when the wealthy fear for their lives.
Judging from the size and scope of Donald Trump & Family's dealings with shady overseas "investors" and "stakeholders", it seems like he may be the real globalist among recent presidents. I mean, he's surrounded himself with people who either straight up lie (Sessions, etc) or have terrible memories (Sessions, etc) when it comes to meetings with oligarchs, Russian con men, pro-Kremlin "lawyers", etc.
Has there been a single member of the Trump cabinet who does NOT have some shady business deal or a history of meetings with Russians? Maybe Betsy DeVos, but her brother is a war criminal who can't set foot in the United States and maybe Rick Perry, who may be the stupidest man ever to set foot in the White House.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You actually think Julian Assange, who is an Australian, living in the U.K., inside the Ecuadorian embassy under Ecuadorian asylum, and has been holed up there without being able to leave for nearly five years, and is a world-famous individual, is a Russian spy?
Literally none of those things indicates either Russian OR spy.
Not to mention the fact that almost everything Wikileaks published is of undisputed authenticity. Even the Clinton e-mails had DKIM signature verification.
Even if Assange were a Russian operative, despite there being literally 0 evidence whatsoever, none of that has anything to do with the fact that the things Wikileaks has published about U.S. politics are real. You want to focus on the messenger to ignore the message.
If you are one of those who praises tax avoidance as a laudable life goal, you are a freeloading, coat-tail riding maladroit.
The biggest value of the data dump is that an otherwise closed doorway into a strange world in which the 1%ers exist is suddenly thrown open to show that monetary enrichment dissolves any and all notions of patriotism and shared values.
Sociopaths will continue to praise their own legal proprietary, and imbeciles will continue to cheer on their beloved sociopaths, but those who try to live and excel while doing their share to make their own lives and the world they live in better get chumped again and again by an evil breed. This data dump helps to see this much clearly.
It is not about some phoney notion that tax avoidance is somehow laudable; it is about exposing corruption.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Leaks indicating that a democratic country that has a government accountable to its public is corrupt and is using the security apparatus to spy on its own citizens or destabilise nominally friendly foreign regimes: News.
Leaks indicating that a corrupt oligarchy run by the former head of the security apparatus who uses intimidation as a tool to keep himself in power is using the security apparatus to spy on its own citizens or destabilise nominally friendly foreign regimes: Not news.
If your defence is 'Russia is as bad as us!' then you're in a pretty depressing place.
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