5 ms·

These "leaks" are annoying. They just give you a page with virtually no information, just a chart showing some connection. Release everything. Don't insult my i

by jayess 9y ago

These "leaks" are annoying. They just give you a page with virtually no information, just a chart showing some connection. Release everything. Don't insult my intelligence by deciding for me what to release.

Iv 9y ago
This is a lesson they learned from the cablegate: releasing a full stash of data is not going to get the public or even the journalists, interested.
sacheendra 9y ago
I partially agree with the parent. Showing these "connections" without any context and detail is just infuriating and leads to click-bait headlines with no actual purpose served. I don't think they are trying to insult anyone's intelligence though. They are just being careful with the data so that their sources are safe. While safety is important, this reminds me of the story of the boy who cried wolf. If they keep doing this multiple times and there is no substantial info., people will stop paying attention when there is some real info. and demagogues will use this as evidence of fake news.
- ellius 9y ago
  The problem is that incorporation documents are frequently only a small part of the story. It does allow you to correlate ownership, but unless you can actually show some kind of money movement into and out of accounts, it is difficult to show evidence of a particular crime.
  - tonfa 9y ago
    Looked at one randomly, looks like some University fund is a shareholder (with over 200 other funds) of a Warburg Pincus fund (a private equity company). I'm not exactly sure how that's a big deal, nothing there implies they avoid taxes or anything. (Maybe the fund they invest in does shady things, but it doesn't look like they have any kind of weird offshore setup)
    - ryacko 9y ago
      It's hard to divert money when you're incorporated as a non-profit.
    - vixen99 9y ago
      Do you mean evade or avoid? Everyone avoids tax. Currently taxes on property transfers in the UK are 5% on property priced at £925,000 and 10% if priced at £925,001. I guess Joe Nonavoider sets the price at the latter figure?
      - zimpenfish 9y ago
        > Everyone avoids tax. No, not everyone. And not everyone evades or optimises tax either.
  - ForHackernews 9y ago
    Most of these offshore tax shelters are not illegal. It's just shady that wealthy individuals and organizations can stash their millions and billions away from public scrutiny and avoid paying taxes on them. It's particularly egregious in the case of ostensibly not-for-profit educational institutions.
    - toyg 9y ago
      Yes and no. These arrangements are often grounds for prosecution once they come to light. Just because moving money from A to B and from B to C is legal, it doesn't mean that going from A to C is still legal. Tax authorities usually struggle to reconstruct the entire chain, so they don't prosecute... until somebody else does the job for them, and then they piggyback.
Jedd 9y ago
They're not really deciding for you what to release, since you have nothing to release. Is your concern that their interpretation of the source material is inaccurate, or that you're being intentionally misled or occluded? The ICIJ has been around for two decades, and their credibility is robust. I don't think they're likely to be making claims like this without access to substantial evidence.
- jayess 9y ago
  It’s not that I distrust them, it’s just that I’m a lawyer, operations, and finance guy. The source documents would be extremely interesting to me. Instead I get a meaningless graph that tells me almost nothing. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in personal experiences with journalists is that they’re just that, journalists. They don’t have expertise in finance, law, or most anything complex. Let the data be open sourced and mined by actual experts.
  - justinjlynn 9y ago
    What was that saying... "trust, but verify"; holds more than ever here.
  - forapurpose 9y ago
    > They don’t have expertise in finance, law, or most anything complex. Do you know that? Also, I certainly wouldn't agree that journalism isn't complex.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      A journalist without domain expertise or the support of a domain expert without an agenda related to the subject-matter of the reporting is crippled in the same way a programmer without domain expertise or support of a domain expert is; journalism may, itself, be a complex domain (as programming is), but expertise in it does not provide relevant domain expertise in the domain that is the subject of reporting. And it's absolutely the case that most journalists covering complex domains don't have an educational background in the domain, and in most domains the market doesn't really reward development of domain expertise (in political reporting, there's some pressure driving reporters to develop some expertise in electoral politics, but that's kind of exceptional, and isn't reflected in other domains, even the policy end of political reporting.)
foota 9y ago
I think part of the reason they do this is because there's massive amounts of unorganized data. This would make it both difficult for individuals to analyze, and would also pose a privacy risk to people and organizations.
barney54 9y ago
If transparency is good, then these reporters should be more transparent with the information they have. That's not too much to ask. Doling it out like this isn't very helpful.
reactor4 9y ago
offshore leaks database: https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/ https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/
asddddd 9y ago
This is the best you get: https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/pages/database https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/pages/database They don't release original documents, but still pretty good.

by jayess 9y ago

Iv 9y ago

This is a lesson they learned from the cablegate: releasing a full stash of data is not going to get the public or even the journalists, interested.

sacheendra 9y ago

I partially agree with the parent. Showing these "connections" without any context and detail is just infuriating and leads to click-bait headlines with no actual purpose served. I don't think they are trying to insult anyone's intelligence though. They are just being careful with the data so that their sources are safe. While safety is important, this reminds me of the story of the boy who cried wolf. If they keep doing this multiple times and there is no substantial info., people will stop paying attention when there is some real info. and demagogues will use this as evidence of fake news.

ellius 9y ago
The problem is that incorporation documents are frequently only a small part of the story. It does allow you to correlate ownership, but unless you can actually show some kind of money movement into and out of accounts, it is difficult to show evidence of a particular crime.
- tonfa 9y ago
  Looked at one randomly, looks like some University fund is a shareholder (with over 200 other funds) of a Warburg Pincus fund (a private equity company). I'm not exactly sure how that's a big deal, nothing there implies they avoid taxes or anything. (Maybe the fund they invest in does shady things, but it doesn't look like they have any kind of weird offshore setup)
  - ryacko 9y ago
    It's hard to divert money when you're incorporated as a non-profit.
  - vixen99 9y ago
    Do you mean evade or avoid? Everyone avoids tax. Currently taxes on property transfers in the UK are 5% on property priced at £925,000 and 10% if priced at £925,001. I guess Joe Nonavoider sets the price at the latter figure?
    - zimpenfish 9y ago
      > Everyone avoids tax. No, not everyone. And not everyone evades or optimises tax either.
- ForHackernews 9y ago
  Most of these offshore tax shelters are not illegal. It's just shady that wealthy individuals and organizations can stash their millions and billions away from public scrutiny and avoid paying taxes on them. It's particularly egregious in the case of ostensibly not-for-profit educational institutions.
  - toyg 9y ago
    Yes and no. These arrangements are often grounds for prosecution once they come to light. Just because moving money from A to B and from B to C is legal, it doesn't mean that going from A to C is still legal. Tax authorities usually struggle to reconstruct the entire chain, so they don't prosecute... until somebody else does the job for them, and then they piggyback.

Jedd 9y ago

They're not really deciding for you what to release, since you have nothing to release. Is your concern that their interpretation of the source material is inaccurate, or that you're being intentionally misled or occluded? The ICIJ has been around for two decades, and their credibility is robust. I don't think they're likely to be making claims like this without access to substantial evidence.

jayess 9y ago
It’s not that I distrust them, it’s just that I’m a lawyer, operations, and finance guy. The source documents would be extremely interesting to me. Instead I get a meaningless graph that tells me almost nothing. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in personal experiences with journalists is that they’re just that, journalists. They don’t have expertise in finance, law, or most anything complex. Let the data be open sourced and mined by actual experts.
- justinjlynn 9y ago
  What was that saying... "trust, but verify"; holds more than ever here.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  > They don’t have expertise in finance, law, or most anything complex. Do you know that? Also, I certainly wouldn't agree that journalism isn't complex.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    A journalist without domain expertise or the support of a domain expert without an agenda related to the subject-matter of the reporting is crippled in the same way a programmer without domain expertise or support of a domain expert is; journalism may, itself, be a complex domain (as programming is), but expertise in it does not provide relevant domain expertise in the domain that is the subject of reporting. And it's absolutely the case that most journalists covering complex domains don't have an educational background in the domain, and in most domains the market doesn't really reward development of domain expertise (in political reporting, there's some pressure driving reporters to develop some expertise in electoral politics, but that's kind of exceptional, and isn't reflected in other domains, even the policy end of political reporting.)

foota 9y ago

I think part of the reason they do this is because there's massive amounts of unorganized data. This would make it both difficult for individuals to analyze, and would also pose a privacy risk to people and organizations.

barney54 9y ago

If transparency is good, then these reporters should be more transparent with the information they have. That's not too much to ask. Doling it out like this isn't very helpful.

reactor4 9y ago

offshore leaks database: https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/ https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/

asddddd 9y ago

This is the best you get: https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/pages/database https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/pages/database They don't release original documents, but still pretty good.