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Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens
- kuschku 11y agoAlso read here [http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/en/ http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/en/] to find an overview of several other relevant articles about these papers. The research was done by “teams from the Guardian and the BBC in England, Le Monde in France, and La Nación in Argentina. In Germany, SZ journalists have cooperated with their colleagues from two public broadcasters, NDR and WDR. Journalists from the Swiss Sonntagszeitung and the Austrian weekly Falter have also worked on the project, as have their colleagues at ORF, Austria’s national public broadcaster. The international team initially met in Washington, Munich, Lillehammer and London to map out the research approach.”
- dang 11y agoWe changed the URL from http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/56febff0a1bb8d3c3495adf4/ http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/56febff0a1bb8d3..., despite HN's strong preference for original sources, because that page begins with an obnoxiously theatrical video that there seems to be no way to turn off. I'm pretty sure HN prefers its news articles without movie trailers.
- arthurcolle 11y agoKeep fighting the good fight, dang.
- kuschku 11y agoThat is missing almost half of the content accessible on the other page. Even just copying the content, or using Google Webcache, or using Archive.org/Archive.is would be preferable. Also, right-click pause turns off the video.
- dang 11y agoIndeed, but it's a fair intro and the deeper content is linked to in the comments here. Not changing it would have led to more off-topic objections than changing it. We see more of these articles than just about anybody, and what this one did is far down the long tail of obnoxiousness, especially for an otherwise credible source.
- andy_ppp 11y agoYes please, the first thing I did was go into Chrome dev tools and delete that video element... Also, scrolling past videos in the page pauses them, so irritating!
- raverbashing 11y agoGood, I was going to complain about the video, the BBC source seems better
- anc84 11y agoJust use http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/en/ http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/en/
- G5ANDY 11y agoIt was a tough call, for me too, thx.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- tech-no-logical 11y agowhile I agree the video is obnoxious, I can simply right click and select pause. or mute.
- kaivi 11y agoThere are 11.5m documents and 2.6 terabytes of information drawn from Mossack Fonseca’s internal database. Is there a torrent for this or an online catalog?
- lepouet 11y agoNo it's not being released, only the papers have it.
- erglkjahlkh 11y agoThat kind of makes sense. The internet sleuths would analyze it in minutes further than the reporters ever could. They like their jobs so they insist on keeping that data to themselves. Edit: Ahh, hackernews, the tumblr sister site where inconvenient truth means downvotes :D
- halotrope 11y agoActually its: Hacker News - The little island that is not corrupted by sarcasm and sensationalism.
- erglkjahlkh 11y agoWell, it is actually pretty interesting how the information has been managed in case. The press wants their own piece after they lost the previous major leaks completely. It's actually pretty relevant discussion about the future of an industry that has been in slow decline for the last decades. In case someone interprets that as sarcasm or sensationalism that is probably an attitude problem, or perhaps an issue with low media interpretation skills. I have found Hackernews as one of the islands that really acts still like penguins. Strong engineering culture, and just like penguins people just love guarding their rocks and throwing poo at others, just in certain style that is very typical to technical communities. Sarcasm should be the last of issues when compared to that.
- 11y ago
- Ueland 11y agoHoly moly, something tells me this will blow up. Any torrent available?
- M2Ys4U 11y agoThis was leaked to journalists, not dumped on the web (similar to the Snowden leaks) so no, almost certainly not.
- venomsnake 11y agoLets hope for a proper leak from some whistleblower inside the media.
- pier25 11y agoleakception
- troc 11y agoexactly, not so much as a leak as a release. The presumption that the press (even 100 odd institutions) need to be gatekeepers for this inforamation is offensive. Especially since the mostly sham of an excuse of the snowden documents does not hold in this case.
- kuschku 11y agoSure, let’s leak passports, bank account data, etc of all shareholders of 214'000 companies... That would get the media immediately closed.
- SandB0x 11y agoWhat would be the economic impact of a country recovering tens or hundreds of billions of dollars? It couldn't immediately actual economic productivity. Would it simply work out to reducing a country's debt obligations? Would it cause inflation? In what form is this wealth stored? This is beyond my understanding of economics, would love to get any insights.
- akamaka 11y agoOne article claims there is $20 trillion hidden in tax havens.[1] That sounds like a lot, but considering that this is money that has accumulated over the course of decades (say 30 years), and only a portion of it would be taxable (say 20%), that would give an annual revenue stream of $133 billion per year. If that all went to the US, that would be about 7 times more than is collected by the estate tax, which is less than 1% of government revenues, but still only about half of what is collected through corporate taxes. (That $20tn estimate is actually global, though, but no breakdown by country is given) My guess is that it would noticably benefit a country to stop tax havens, but not to the point of any drastic difference. [1] http://www.bbc.com/news/business-18944097 http://www.bbc.com/news/business-18944097
- xbryanx 11y agoPlanet Money did a pretty enjoyable show about setting up shell companies, that might provide some interesting context for this news: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/27/157499893/episode-390-we-set-up-an-offshore-company-in-a-tax-haven http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/27/157499893/episo... and http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/03/30/472452808/episode-403-what-can-we-do-with-our-shell-companies http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/03/30/472452808/episo...
- tdaltonc 11y agoI wonder if they knew this was coming.
- icebraining 11y agoI doubt it, since the episodes are from 2012.
- klunger 11y agoWell, they could not have known in 2012. But, they did just re-air those episodes in the last few weeks as re-runs. So, that was either a big coincidence, or they knew it was coming.
- DrNuke 11y agoOriginal here: https://panamapapers.icij.org https://panamapapers.icij.org
- cm3 11y agoOnce tax havens and double dutch schemes are unavailable to legally operating businesses, we can be very hopeful that instead of accumulating digits in a bank account, companies like Apple and Google will be forced to spend like the rest of the economy does. Spending is what's keeping the lights on generally speaking, so allowing some wealthy companies to just sit and mountains of wealth benefits nobody. Of course they need a war chest but nowhere near what they have now. Remember recent news about people being scared Apple would become a bank. And I'm only speaking of company wealth in digital numbers. Private wealth and immovables etc. should be exempt. The best is to give incentives to spend. Apple and Google could be incentivized to spend it on projects that benefit them and the public, but without exclusivity contracts of 20 years, maybe more like 5 years if needed.
- lumberjack 11y ago>companies like Apple and Google will be forced to spend like the rest of the economy does Spending on what? I think one big problem here is that the capital is possessed by entities that were nurtured in very specific markets. Take Apple. They are really nothing more than a "shiny gadgets/personal computing" company. They have a ton of potential to invest in other markets but they do not have the expertise to do so. What are their options: 1) start acquiring and undoubtedly mismanaging companies that are outside of their market domain 2) setup a wealth management unit that invests passively in equity markets and such. I think this could easily be elaborated into an argument against the orthodox liberal economics claim that says that markets allocate capital to the most able entities; the implication being that those same entities will make best use of said capital. I think here it is clearly not the case. Sorry, but I don't really trust Apple to come up with a decent EV solution (I know they are trying). I don't even trust them to invest in the correct EV startups. What do they know? It's not their market domain.
- justincormack 11y agoReturn the money to shareholders who can spend or invest it.
- 11y ago
- lstamour 11y agoFYI, for those looking for more data, stay tuned: > ICIJ media partners been allowed to select profiles they believe are of interest to their audiences which may result in similar interactives with fewer profiles. The information in the interactive is current as of April 3, 2016 and the offshore data up to December 2015. ICIJ will release the full list of companies and people in the Panama Paper files in early May. From https://panamapapers.icij.org/the_power_players/ https://panamapapers.icij.org/the_power_players/
- iheartmemcache 11y agoSome of the data is available here[0] For those of you who are wondering. ICIJ is funded by the CPI, one of the more "liberal" (e.g. if you consider the NYT 'liberal') think tanks. In my mind it's a very respectable institution, but check out their supporters[1] to see what sort of 'slant' they might have. Maybe read their take on the Citizens United decision[2] too. [0] http://offshoreleaks.icij.org/about/download http://offshoreleaks.icij.org/about/download Not too much though.. [1] https://www.publicintegrity.org/about/our-work/supporters https://www.publicintegrity.org/about/our-work/supporters [2] https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/03/11/19418/citizens-united-explained https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/03/11/19418/citizens-un...
- vesinisa 11y agoThey seem to be funded by Microsoft among others, so certainly evil beyond imagination.</s>
- wyck 11y agoPanama just passed compliance with FATF (February 2016) and it's a message that their political leader/law firm owner/world's largest money launderer (his name is in the OP's title) is no longer open for business after decades of being the go-to place for hidden $$$. http://www.fatf-gafi.org/countries/#Panama http://www.fatf-gafi.org/countries/#Panama "The FATF recognised that Algeria, Angola and Panama have made significant progress in improving their regimes to combat money laundering and terrorist financing and will therefore no longer be subject to the FATF’s monitoring process." Also let's not forgot about the CIA's asset Noriega and decades of money laundering which started all this, including recently trying to wipe cloud data off a Nevada company logs. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article69729322.html http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/articl... tl;dr - This is a multi-state G20 planned leak and not the work of some moral insider or hacker, the money laundering world is becoming a difficult place for outsiders. Real leaks don't have fancy websites with responsive vectorized portraits and a full on content /social media structure.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- raverbashing 11y ago> This is a multi-state G20 planned leak and not the work of some moral insider or hacker, the money laundering world is becoming a difficult place and for good reason. I agree And of course those in the know are moving to hide their assets somewhere else
- wyck 11y agoThe heads up was given a long time ago, you won't find their names in the leak, it's kinda funny Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson is being outed, I guess he didn't get the memo on account of his recent actions.
- sievebrain 11y agoThe leak is of historical documents dating back decades, not a snapshot of current setups. So I don't see why that'd affect anything. I really doubt this is some sort of official leak though. Governments hate leaks of all kinds.
- Apocryphon 11y agoPaging David Brin to this. http://earthbydavidbrin.pbworks.com/w/page/15607661/SecrecyUprising http://earthbydavidbrin.pbworks.com/w/page/15607661/SecrecyU...
- randomname2 11y agoSelected quote: "The ICIJ findings include evidence that: - Offshore companies linked to the family of China's top leader, Xi Jinping, as well as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has positioned himself as a reformer in a country shaken by corruption scandals - 29 billionaires featured in Forbes Magazine's list of the world's 500 richest people - Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and his wife secretly owned an offshore firm that held millions of dollars in Icelandic bank bonds during the country's financial crisis - Associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow companies - New details of offshore dealings by the late father of British Prime Minister David Cameron, a leader in the push for tax-haven reform - Offshore companies controlled by the Prime Minister of Pakistan, the King of Saudi Arabia and the children of the President of Azerbaijan - 33 people and companies blacklisted by the US Government because of evidence that they have done business with Mexican drug lords, terrorist organisations like Hezbollah or rogue nations like North Korea - Customers including Ponzi schemers, drug kingpins, tax evaders and at least one jailed sex offender - Movie star Jackie Chan, who had at least six companies managed through the law firm"
- nextos 11y agoLeo Messi too, who had already been caught on another scandal by Spanish Tax Office.
- usaphp 11y agoNot Leo messi, but the company who operates his money. The recent case that Spanish tax office opened against him was in regards to a payment that has happened when he was 17 year old...I doubt that messi at 17 yo was the one who was dealing with his taxes
- kgwgk 11y agoHe was not 17 when he set up another shell company in Panama: Mega Star Enterprises, the offshore company owned by Messi and his father at least as far back as 2013, is not mentioned in the Spanish government’s 2014 and 2015 indictments against the pair. The leaked records show Messi signed at least one document reflecting his ownership of Mega Star http://indianexpress.com/article/sports/football/panama-papers-leak-includes-lionel-messi-michel-platini-and-officials-charged-in-fifa-scandal/ http://indianexpress.com/article/sports/football/panama-pape...
- Grue3 11y agoLooks like Putin's offshore assets are being exposed. About damn time.
- mladenkovacevic 11y agoHilarious that BBC, a broadcaster paid for by British tax payers, has a subheading in that article titled "Russian connection" describing various dealings of Russian characters who are "close associates" of Putin and an equally sordid "Iceland connection" but not even a mention of David Cameron's father's tax evading schemes listed in the documents which the people of Great Britain should be vastly more interested in. Not to mention direct implications of various other western puppets (Saudi King, Ukrainian PM, Iraqi former PM) and other dubious "connections".
- riazrizvi 11y agoI look at articles like this and ask myself is this journalism or is it a shake down?
- rwmj 11y agoSee also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
- MIKarlsen 11y agoDisagree. This way they can perhaps force anyone involved to comment, while blowing everything wide open in public would perhaps make the case revolve around a single case, and not the actual political aspects of the case. Or am I just making stuff up here? In my world this is a great tactic. Danish television will be covering this for a week. If politicians are involved it's probably best to let them comment and do their job first, instead of putting them in the spotlight where they will avoid commenting on the case.
- Jerry2 11y agoBoth the British and (especially) German [0] media are virulently anti-Russian. They blame Russians for all of their ills. Societal problems? Blame Russians. Anything that happens in their countries, they manage to find an angle to blame it on Russians somehow. Norway [1] & Sweden are also under a constant paranoia that Russians are just days away from invading them. But nothing compares to German media when it comes to paranoia about Russians. They're truly in the league of their own. They have tabloids like BILD that devote several pages of every issue on "evil russians". They even print special issues about evil Russians and new Hitler aka Putin. When I visited Germany last year, I felt like they're in a second Cold War or something. In the US, we managed to stop being paranoid after 1990s but Germans are still paranoid about Russians. It was explained to me by a german friend of mine that this is because their biggest publisher, Axel Springer, was started with CIA money and that every journalist who works for any of the Axel Springer properties has to sign a contract that says that they have to foster the relationship with the US. Unsaid rule is that they have to disparage Russians. And sure enough, if you search for some of this stuff, you can find things like [2] and [3] [0]: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-28/top-german-journalist-admits-mainstream-media-completely-fake-we-all-lie-cia http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-28/top-german-journali... [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4192998/reference http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4192998/reference [2] http://i.imgur.com/ufKQh49.png http://i.imgur.com/ufKQh49.png [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Springer_SE#Corporate_principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Springer_SE#Corporate_pri... Edit : After some googling, I came across this interesting article by Rüdiger Göbel... it sums up things nicely. http://russia-insider.com/en/groundhog-day-german-msm-keeps-repeating-anti-putin-propoganda/ri12042 http://russia-insider.com/en/groundhog-day-german-msm-keeps-... Edit #2 : I see my comment is controversial and is being heavily down/upvoted with downvotes winning. Anyway, to add even more evidence to what I'm saying, see the Twitter feed [4] of Julian Röpcke, who's a 'political editor at BILD'. Go take a look for yourself and start scrolling. Everything that happens in the world, Russians are somehow behind it according to him. Millions of refugees from Syria in Europe? That's because of Russians and Putin (never mind the fact that millions arrived way before Russians started their deployment in Syria). I guess he cannot mention that unrest started after US implemented a policy of destabilizing Assad and funding of various islamic terror organization... because that would be against his pro-US "jounalistic" contract that he signed. [4] https://twitter.com/julianroepcke https://twitter.com/julianroepcke
- usaphp 11y ago> as well as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has positioned himself as a reformer in a country shaken by corruption scandals I wonder how Ukrainians ,who fight for him and his "freedom" ideas, will react to this
- gorodetsky 11y agoAs a Ukrainian, I'm livid. Our media mentioned Putin's offshores but obviously forgot about Poroshenko's. Same shit, different day.
- amq 11y agoOne of the biggest Ukrainian news sites wrote about Poroshenko at 22:17 of local time: http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2016/04/3/7104295/ http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2016/04/3/7104295/
- r721 11y agoThis guy made a table: https://twitter.com/vorobyov/status/716731020880568320 https://twitter.com/vorobyov/status/716731020880568320
- 75dvtwin 11y agoI suspect, they will react in the same way, as Russians when learning their 'corruption fighting' Путин (Putin) [1] is involved through a proxy. I suspect, the reaction will be: "If not [$enter-corrupt-leader-name], then who else should lead our nation? " or "Yes, [$enter-corrupt-leader-name], however we had much worse. And this is the least evil of all the other options" In other words, the population in large in these places are simply brain-washed to be complacent. I would also suggests, that the fan's of former secretary of UN Kofi Anan [2] -- will not react any differently I would be interested, however to see, how far complacent the British had become. And, specifically, how far, the British media will go to mute the 'small imperfections' of leaders of 'so-called free world' and UN, vs the despicable money laundering 'by the others'. [1] https://rbth.com/news/2016/04/01/putin-confirms-national-anti-corruption-plan_581073 https://rbth.com/news/2016/04/01/putin-confirms-national-ant... [2] http://fusion.net/story/287227/famous-presidents-shell-companies-trove/ http://fusion.net/story/287227/famous-presidents-shell-compa...
- tevlon 11y agodamnit... somebody already took : https://github.com/PanamaPapers https://github.com/PanamaPapers
- Ito_l 11y agoI'd like to take a moment to appreciate the good work the NSA has done in respecting the privacy of tax evaders.
- tomp 11y ago> While much of the leaked material will remain private, there are compelling reasons for publishing some of the data. How convenient. > the papers simply reveal the vast number of people who use offshore to protect their wealth. There is nothing unlawful about doing this. It is not illegal to be a director, shareholder or beneficial owner – the real owner, even though their name may not appear on the shareholder register – of an offshore company. Then why hide it? This smells funny. Millions of papers leaked, and Putin is the biggest fish they caught. I don't doubt he's knees-deep in illegal activity, but I just can't see how $2B is in any way comparable with the billions hidden by westerners; after all, it was them who set up and keep protecting tax havens, and they've had 100 years to learn to conceal their activity, compared to just 2 decades for the Russians. I'll remain hopeful, though, for further leaks of some western influential figures.
- kuschku 11y agoOn TV some of the journalists involved just said that they wouldn’t know "any western bank or government not involved in this". You should watch the TV debate, btw.
- klunger 11y ago> Then why hide it? There are a lot of legitimate reasons to use these kinds of services. Releasing all the data is a huge privacy violation for all the customers who have done nothing wrong. Would you like much of your perfectly legal business and/or personal finance dealings suddenly made public?
- tomp 11y ago
- nsns 11y agoStrange, nothing about it on NYT.
- tinbad 11y agoEveryone in Russia knows government officials siphon off billions govt money to offshore accounts. Same happens in much of the developing world. Corruption is evreywhere but the scale and depth of it in these places is unprecedented. It baffles me how the west has allowed this to happen for many decades and now we're shocked corrupt Russians own half of London.
- sireat 11y agoIs there a way to grep for a specific country related information? This is an important leak, but I'd like to see come crowd-sourcing in this. That is we have 100 newspapers with access, but that might not be enough. We only get the condensed version deemed relevant to a particular subset of population. By combining these 100 subsets we are not going to get a full set. In other words, UK paper might report on Russian connections, Russian paper(if any got access that is) might report on UK connections, but how do I find out if an obscure mid sized town city boss from Eastern Europe is on the list?
- meeper16 11y agoThis will blow over. Every person that has wealth has done this. Journalists don't have wealth and have recently watched the movie 'Spotlight'
- payne92 11y agoDoesn't look like that's happening.
- jonesb6 11y agoApparently there are no American politicians or businessmen listed. And no coverage on NYTimes, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CNN, USAtoday, LA Times, etc. That seems strange to me.
- derekja 11y agoUS I can kind of understand since offshore banks often refuse to deal with US persons for fear of running afoul of burdensome IRS reporting requirements. The lack of Canadians in the list is surprising, though.
- ivan_gammel 11y agoI bet we'll get the coverage soon. It has to be delivered in the right time - by Monday morning, just like in Europe.
- BenoitP 11y agoCoverage will come, the leaks started later in the day in the US. As for no American politicians or businessmen, it can be explained by sample size: The USA might have their own internal money dirty money path. Or maybe the tax haven of choice is another country for the US. Maybe the IRS has specific rules for Panama? That this one company has skew/bias in the origin of its clients does not surprise me at all. If we had variety of leaks from different money fixers from different countries; say from the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Guernsey, Singapore, UAE, Monaco, Lebanon, Puerto Rico, Belize; and no US scandal, I would be very surprised.
- seanmcdirmid 11y agoIt is completely possible that the schemes provided in Panama wouldn't work very well for US citizens, and also the close relationship between the USA and Panama might make US citizens looking for such schemes look elsewhere. As for the fall out not being reported in US news, it is Sunday night, and if they weren't involved, then they wouldn't have a leg up on this. Wait until Monday to pass judgement.
- Mikeb85 11y ago> Apparently there are no American politicians or businessmen listed. Apparently the US has some sort of treaty with Panama to prevent its use as an offshore tax haven for Americans.
- PascalsMugger 11y agoIt's interesting how this leak just seems completely devoid of US involvement. No US news media talking about it or involved. No US people mentioned in the leak.
- sickbeard 11y agofrankly when I saw it I thought, corruption in iceland? good luck making the US news.
- raus22 11y agoFor more background on the leak and who the leaker contacted: http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/en/ http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/en/ About the Panama Papers: http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/56febff0a1bb8d3c3495adf4/ http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/56febff0a1bb8d3...
- defen 11y agoAny US presidential candidates implicated? Particularly Trump or Clinton? Or is this primarily used by non-US money launderers / tax-evaders?
- viraptor 11y agoRandom thought: most of the candidates are in the documents - journalists are still trying to figure out how to deal with that. There's more information to come...
- hendler 11y agoOriginal http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/56febff0a1bb8d3c3495adf4/ http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/56febff0a1bb8d3... Discussion on reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4d75i7/26_terabyte_leak_of_panamanian_shell_company_data/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4d75i7/26_teraby...
- archildress 11y agoGreat read from Vice in 2014 on this exact law firm: http://www.vice.com/read/evil-llc-0000524-v21n12 http://www.vice.com/read/evil-llc-0000524-v21n12
- zekevermillion 11y agoMost people hire lawyers via a referral. What I want to know is, do all these prime ministers and robber barons go to the same crazy parties? I'd love to see the annual client dinner invite list.
- cmrdporcupine 11y agoThere have been many previous times in history when naked obvious extreme inequality and disparity of power combined with drought/war/disease/poverty to ignite a tinderbox of revolution and civil war that led to armies of the poor taking the assets of the super rich by force. Just sayin' .. perhaps the super rich would do well to look after their own long term interests better by at least _pretending_ to contribute to the societies they dwell in?
- dbcooper 11y agoAny links to the 1MDB scandal?
- clydethefrog 11y agoThe son of Najib is connected to the scandals, but no direct connection to 1MDB (yet).
- smegel 11y agoWhen the first three leaders named are the top 3 enemies/adversaries of the US/Britain - Putin, Xi and Assad - my own little conspiracy canary started chirping. And the Icelandic PM? The one who really annoyed Britain by defaulting on their debts? Makes me wonder who orchestrated the leak.
- fweespee_ch 11y agohttps://panamapapers.icij.org/20160403-panama-papers-global-overview.html https://panamapapers.icij.org/20160403-panama-papers-global-... > In 2013, U.K. leader David Cameron urged his country’s overseas territories — including the British Virgin Islands — to work with him to “get our own houses in order” and join the fight against tax evasion and offshore secrecy. > He could have looked no further than his late father to see how challenging that would be. > Ian Cameron, a stockbroker and multimillionaire, was a Mossack Fonseca client who used the law firm to shield his investment fund, Blairmore Holdings, Inc., from U.K. taxes. I doubt it was anyone related to David Cameron if that is what you are thinking. ;)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- akhatri_aus 11y agoThe USG have wanted tax reform for ages now. There's also no American mentioned (yet) which is very conspiracy-ey.
- fweespee_ch 11y agoThey are largely US based and want to verify rather than risk being sued for livel. Give it a month.
- corin_ 11y agoThe information about Cameron's father pretty much came out already 4 years ago (already after his father was dead), so not like this personal link hurts Cameron a lot more with the current list of names.
- mindcrime 11y agoWe could solve this "problem" by simply eliminating taxation, and moving to a stateless society[1] and an across the board model of self-government[2]. [1]: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Order_without_the_state/Order_Without_the_State.htm http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Order_without_the_sta... [2]: https://www.theadvocates.org/ https://www.theadvocates.org/
- krapp 11y agoOf course, there is the minor issue of "simply" convincing everyone to embrace anarchy, or "simply" disposing of everyone who doesn't.
- mindcrime 11y agosimple != easy I didn't say it would be easy. But we ought to at least have a target to aim for, yes?
- krapp 11y agoIt's a target the vast majority of people in the world don't want to aim for. But I guess it is a target. Like a lot of utopian ideals, anarchy only works as long as everyone agrees to be an anarchist. Unfortunately for anarchists, people find states, laws and the monopoly on violence to be useful.
- microcolonel 11y agoI'm sick of this nonsense; if it's illegal it's illegal, and if it's not it's not. If you think it's wrong, convince people that it should be illegal.
- whbk 11y agoEditor of Süddeutsche Zeitung responded to the lack of U.S. individuals in the documents, saying "Just wait for what is coming next" https://twitter.com/mathewi/status/716771686482202625 https://twitter.com/mathewi/status/716771686482202625 My money is on a current presidential candidate being connected to this, though I'm not 100% on which one.
- hendersoon 11y agoNot to imply that any future revelations must necessarily be less impactful than the Iceland story, but I feel like that would have come up on day 1 alongside Putin, rather than the Iceland PM. It would have made front page news in the entire western world rather than being largely ignored late on a Sunday night.
- johnymontana 11y agoI wonder what kind of software / tools the journalists used to analyze the leaked data. Anyone have any info on this?
- lokahi2k 11y agoI read that it's unlikely that U.S. citizens would use this Panamanian firm for offshore dealings because of the tax reporting laws between Panama & the U.S. They would use a different firm. Is this correct, and can anyone elaborate or point me to sources on this?
- rosege 11y agoquite the season for leaks - first the mega Unaoil one now this
- Tossrock 11y agoMan, I'm not one to judge on appearance, but Jürgen Mossack has got to be the most stereotypical "I-am-an-evil-Nazi" face I've ever seen. I feel comfortable saying this given that his father was in the Waffen-SS. "Mossack’s holdings, according to the files obtained by ICIJ, include a teak plantation and other real estate, an executive helicopter, a yacht named Rex Maris and a collection of gold coins." Any bets on where those gold coins came from?
- asd 11y agoHere are some great visualizations of the data: https://panamapapers.icij.org/graphs/ https://panamapapers.icij.org/graphs/
- mmaunder 11y agoHigh likelihood it's an inside job due to the size of data (over 2TB) and that it was well structured on delivery.
- akhatri_aus 11y agoNo mention of any Americans (yet), which is really weird for a leak like this.
- actuallyalys 11y agoThey haven't published all the details yet — it's likely that Americans will be implicated in the next wave of revelations.
- cft 11y agoI like this quote: [1] Fonseca was born 14 on July 1952 in Panama,and studied law and political science at the University of Panama and the London School of Economics. As a young man, "he hoped to save the world". 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramón_Fonseca_Mora https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramón_Fonseca_Mora
- foota 11y agoWhen it comes out it might be interesting to cross reference this against the released Hillary emails.
- ta_04032016 11y agoMany of the family members of current and former Chinese Politburo officials are exposed in the file leak. China has implemented a complete censorship about this topic and any sources/comments that mention the involvement of Chinese leaders/princelings have been deleted.
- ttflee 11y agoLittle fresh information is exposed in this leak so far. It merely reconfirms the reports made by journalists from Bloomberg and Washington Post a few years ago.
- emmelaich 11y agoAnother story here is how did it leak? It's interesting to observe that Mossack Fonseca's client portal login uses @#&@!&*! wordpress. I have no knowledge of how it leaked but it's amazing to me that a firm responsible for trillions of dollars uses wordpress on its client login site.
- cm2187 11y agoI am surprised given the audience oh HN that no one seems to consider the technical aspect of this leak. This is yet another failure to protect corporate data. It is obvious that this law firm worked with criminals, but I am sure they also had legitimate clients whose private information is now exposed. Of all the companies, a law firm contains secret that are protected by law (attorney-client privilege) and for very good reasons. The number and magnitude of data leaks is ever increasing and now reached alarming rates. Irrespective of tax dodging considerations, I do not think that IT professionals as an industry should cheer at this type of leak. The trust from businesses in IT to do its job is at rock bottom, and where it is not, it should be.
- chmike 11y agoI wouldn't call it a bad leak. Something like Snowden leak. I guess price of art artifacts will raise in the following years. No risk of leaks.
- tremon 11y agoI did consider it, in the sense that I think we should be very lucky that corporate digital rights management still isn't ubiquitous.
- p0nce 11y agoAnd this is but _one_ company in _one_ tax heaven.
- w_t_payne 11y agoDoes anybody have any evidence of how much effort the UK government puts in to increasing transparency in its' overseas tax havens? How much ministerial attention does it get? How much urgency is given to these issues?
- miralabs 11y agothere was a very informative episode on Planet Money with regards to setting up shell companies. A lot of info here with regards to how names are hidden etc...it is worth a listen. The hosts setup their own shell companies: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/03/30/472452808/episode-403-what-can-we-do-with-our-shell-companies http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/03/30/472452808/episo...
- austerity 11y agoHow did this become about taxes when it's actually about corruption? New evidence is uncovered of people at the top systematically abusing their power and disregarding the very laws they instill upon everyone else. Yet HN commenters are telling me the problem is that I am not giving these bastards a large enough share of my income.
- touristtam 11y agoit's about corruption where the laws are being bent backward to allow seemingly legal tax evasion on a grand scale. It's isn't about you personally, unless you are one of those individual whose moral tells them to evade the tax office at all cost.
- 2ifrgtmypss 11y agofucking a