7 ms·

Secret Files Expose Offshore’s Global Impact

110 points by kitsune_ 14y ago

drucken 14y ago
I wonder where they got this information trove from? Also, I highly recommend the book Treasure Islands by Nicholas Shaxson (http://www.amazon.com/Treasure-Islands-Uncovering-Offshore-Banking/dp/0230105017/ http://www.amazon.com/Treasure-Islands-Uncovering-Offshore-B...) to understand the enormity of the problem and its historical context (yes, the growth in activity is easily traced).
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/04/offshore-secrets-data-emails-icij http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/04/offshore-secrets-da... A related article at The Guardian provides more details. Specifically: "The ICIJ's exploration of offshore secrets began when a computer hard drive packed with corporate data arrived in the post. Gerard Ryle, ICIJ's director, obtained the small black box as a result of his three-year investigation of Australia's Firepower scandal, a case involving offshore havens and corporate fraud." As for the Firepower Scandal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firepower_International http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firepower_International "Firepower International was advertised as a Hong Kong-based company owned and operated by Global Fuel Technologies Ltd, specializing in technology purporting to reduce the fuel consumption and environmental impact of petrol-operated vehicles.[1] There were other offices in Sydney, China, Rhodes, Athens and Papua New Guinea, according to the now-defunct official company website. But "in reality it was a handful of people in an industrial estate in Perth", who were conducting a complex of fraudulent operations.[2] The original entity—Firepower Operations Pty Ltd—was a $1 company, first registered in December 2004, owned by Firepower Holdings Group Ltd, a company with an address in the British Virgin Islands.[3]" Oh what a wicked web we weave ...
xradionut 14y ago
Currently the ICIJ web site is buckling from the traffic, but the article and the various summaries elsewhere make for interesting reads. I can't say I'm not surprised about these revelations, there have been other leaks, articles and essays discussing the problem, but not with the specific details. I'd love to get the full set of documents and run it against specific individuals/corporations in my area, but it would probably confirm what I already suspect.
dredmorbius 14y ago
Coral cache may be helpful: http://www.icij.org.nyud.net/offshore/secret-files-expose-offshores-global-impact http://www.icij.org.nyud.net/offshore/secret-files-expose-of... This is really huge. Offshore accounts are thought to total up to $32 trillion. The Guardian / ICIJ archive accounts for only a portion of this, though I suspect the BVI are attractive to many for their stability (association with Britain provides its advantages). On the technical side, I'd be interested in what tools are being used to analyze the archive. A related Guardian article notes: "Unlike the smaller cache of US cables and war logs passed in 2010 to WikiLeaks, the offshore data was not structured or clean, but an unsorted collation of internal memos and instructions, official documents, emails, large and small databases and spreadsheets, scanned passports and accounting ledgers. "Analysing the immense quantity of information required "free text retrieval" software, which can work with huge volumes of unsorted data. Such high-end systems have been sold for more than a decade to intelligence agencies, law firms and commercial corporations. Journalism is just catching up." http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/04/offshore-secrets-data-emails-icij http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/04/offshore-secrets-da... Anyone have any specifics on this "free text retrieval" software, its capabilities, and how it compares with, say, standard Linux/Unix text search and processing tools?
- revelation 14y ago
  Re "free text retrieval": This reminds me of a discussion on the POPCNT or sideways add instruction of early processors: http://cryptome.org/jya/sadd.htm http://cryptome.org/jya/sadd.htm POPCNT has recently landed as part of SSE4.2 in Intel processors.
- kleinmatic 14y ago
  They provide good detail about the software they used. "The major software tools used for the Offshore Project were NUIX of Sydney, Australia, and dtSearch of Bethesda, Md. NUIX Pty Ltd provided ICIJ with a limited number of licenses to use its fully featured high-end e-discovery software, free of charge. The listed cost for the NUIX software was higher than a non-profit organization like the ICIJ could afford, if the software had not been donated." Securiing their communications proved more difficult than free-text search, however: "The project team’s attempts to use encrypted e-mail systems such as PGP (“Pretty Good Privacy”) were abandoned because of complexity and unreliability that slowed down information sharing."
nateabele 14y ago
I love how the article spins it such that offshoring is only for sinister, evil people. The reality is that most people use offshoring as a hedge against insolvent governments, and depending on their industry, the very real threat of criminal prosecution for benign activity.[0] The moral question isn't 'how can this be prevented?', but 'how can it be made more accessible for the average person?'. I see huge startup opportunities right now around helping people cheaply and easily diversify internationally. [0] http://maxkeiser.com/2013/01/17/a-broken-justice-system-most-americans-commit-about-three-felonies-a-day/ http://maxkeiser.com/2013/01/17/a-broken-justice-system-most...
- pekk 14y ago
  Most people don't use offshoring at all, and for those who do, it is not extremely likely that it is a hedge against the insolvency of (say) the US government, or fear of being busted for marijuana (for example, large companies like Google move money around mostly just to save on taxes). Your linked article draws the comparison between regulating unpasteurized milk and Nazi Germany, which seems not completely even-handed.
- arethuza 14y ago
  So how would offshoring help someone in the US sell marijuana or raw milk?
  - ajays 14y ago
    For marijuana: you deliver the physical product here, and have the money deposited in your offshore account.
- riffraff 14y ago
  > The reality is that most people use offshoring as a hedge against insolvent governments [citation needed] And what does this actually mean? How do you define insolvent governments? If you are thinking of one-off cuts when the state is actually going bankrupt (latest cyprus thingie, italy's cut in '92 etc) these don't seem to offer a different security from keeping money in a foreign non-offshore bank. And these events don't seem so common to me. Or are you considering governments insolvent in the sense that they just waste money and taxing is stealing etc ? I am unsure how the situation is in these specific cases, but way way way often offshore accounts get found out in my country (italy) related to _massively illegal_ activities. This is not a case of avoiding messing up a tax form, it's accounts used to pay bribes for falsified trial witnesses with money laundered from drug smuggling.
drinchev 14y ago
Why they haven't released that data for public download on the Internet?
- gyardley 14y ago
  I don't know about your location, but where I live having an offshore account isn't illegal in and of itself. Perhaps I'm concerned about the quality of my country's management. If for that or any other reason, I decide to put some money into foreign currency and place it with another country's banking system, while continuing to comply with my own country's tax laws, what right do you have to steal the information and publish it on the internet?
- kitcar 14y ago
  Because they are private banking records - some of the account info released is from private citizens doing nothing illegal (offshore banking is explicitly legal in many countries) One way to look at it is: how would you like it if it was discovered that a drug lord was using the same bank as you to launder money, and therefore your bank account balances and recent transfers were released to the public, even though you had nothing to do with the drug lord other than storing your money at the same bank?
  - trust-me 14y ago
    I see no problem at all with my bank account balances being published on the Internet. In Norway everybody's total balance is published by the government. I really find irrational some ordinary people desire to keep stuff like net worth, salary, etc. secret.
    - kelvin0 14y ago
      This is not an irrational fear, nor a cultural one. It's mostly tied with local laws and rules. For example, the US being such a hotbed for class actions and frivolous law suits, I can imagine that some wealthy individuals would rather keep their balance from lawsuit 'trolls' ... But that is just my opinion
r4vik 14y ago
Nice try Guardian: http://order-order.com/2013/04/04/a-tip-off-for-the-guardian-investigations-team/ http://order-order.com/2013/04/04/a-tip-off-for-the-guardian...
- tomwalker 14y ago
  The hypocrisy is so common. I just read on that site that the French politician leading the tax avoidance crack down resigned as he had 600,000 euros in an off short account!
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
cryofan 14y ago
tall tree and a long rope?
manishsharan 14y ago
Is this scoop an unintentional advertisement for Swiss banking ? I did a text search for India , Sharad Pawar , Gandhi and Yadav --- nothing showed up. But the rich in India always favor Swiss banking for their illicit wealth.
- ajays 14y ago
  They also like Mauritius.
drucken 14y ago
ICIJ have a nice and useful (cough) "Interactive: Stash Your Cash" too (http://www.icij.org/offshore/interactive-stash-your-cash http://www.icij.org/offshore/interactive-stash-your-cash)
- leot 14y ago
  Wow. Phoney lawsuit: brilliant. (not condoning this behavior in any way)
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

110 points by kitsune_ 14y ago

I wonder where they got this information trove from? Also, I highly recommend the book Treasure Islands by Nicholas Shaxson (http://www.amazon.com/Treasure-Islands-Uncovering-Offshore-Banking/dp/0230105017/ http://www.amazon.com/Treasure-Islands-Uncovering-Offshore-B...) to understand the enormity of the problem and its historical context (yes, the growth in activity is easily traced).

dredmorbius 14y ago
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/04/offshore-secrets-data-emails-icij http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/04/offshore-secrets-da... A related article at The Guardian provides more details. Specifically: "The ICIJ's exploration of offshore secrets began when a computer hard drive packed with corporate data arrived in the post. Gerard Ryle, ICIJ's director, obtained the small black box as a result of his three-year investigation of Australia's Firepower scandal, a case involving offshore havens and corporate fraud." As for the Firepower Scandal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firepower_International http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firepower_International "Firepower International was advertised as a Hong Kong-based company owned and operated by Global Fuel Technologies Ltd, specializing in technology purporting to reduce the fuel consumption and environmental impact of petrol-operated vehicles.[1] There were other offices in Sydney, China, Rhodes, Athens and Papua New Guinea, according to the now-defunct official company website. But "in reality it was a handful of people in an industrial estate in Perth", who were conducting a complex of fraudulent operations.[2] The original entity—Firepower Operations Pty Ltd—was a $1 company, first registered in December 2004, owned by Firepower Holdings Group Ltd, a company with an address in the British Virgin Islands.[3]" Oh what a wicked web we weave ...

xradionut 14y ago

Currently the ICIJ web site is buckling from the traffic, but the article and the various summaries elsewhere make for interesting reads. I can't say I'm not surprised about these revelations, there have been other leaks, articles and essays discussing the problem, but not with the specific details. I'd love to get the full set of documents and run it against specific individuals/corporations in my area, but it would probably confirm what I already suspect.

dredmorbius 14y ago

Coral cache may be helpful: http://www.icij.org.nyud.net/offshore/secret-files-expose-offshores-global-impact http://www.icij.org.nyud.net/offshore/secret-files-expose-of... This is really huge. Offshore accounts are thought to total up to $32 trillion. The Guardian / ICIJ archive accounts for only a portion of this, though I suspect the BVI are attractive to many for their stability (association with Britain provides its advantages). On the technical side, I'd be interested in what tools are being used to analyze the archive. A related Guardian article notes: "Unlike the smaller cache of US cables and war logs passed in 2010 to WikiLeaks, the offshore data was not structured or clean, but an unsorted collation of internal memos and instructions, official documents, emails, large and small databases and spreadsheets, scanned passports and accounting ledgers. "Analysing the immense quantity of information required "free text retrieval" software, which can work with huge volumes of unsorted data. Such high-end systems have been sold for more than a decade to intelligence agencies, law firms and commercial corporations. Journalism is just catching up." http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/04/offshore-secrets-data-emails-icij http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/04/offshore-secrets-da... Anyone have any specifics on this "free text retrieval" software, its capabilities, and how it compares with, say, standard Linux/Unix text search and processing tools?

revelation 14y ago
Re "free text retrieval": This reminds me of a discussion on the POPCNT or sideways add instruction of early processors: http://cryptome.org/jya/sadd.htm http://cryptome.org/jya/sadd.htm POPCNT has recently landed as part of SSE4.2 in Intel processors.
kleinmatic 14y ago
They provide good detail about the software they used. "The major software tools used for the Offshore Project were NUIX of Sydney, Australia, and dtSearch of Bethesda, Md. NUIX Pty Ltd provided ICIJ with a limited number of licenses to use its fully featured high-end e-discovery software, free of charge. The listed cost for the NUIX software was higher than a non-profit organization like the ICIJ could afford, if the software had not been donated." Securiing their communications proved more difficult than free-text search, however: "The project team’s attempts to use encrypted e-mail systems such as PGP (“Pretty Good Privacy”) were abandoned because of complexity and unreliability that slowed down information sharing."

nateabele 14y ago

I love how the article spins it such that offshoring is only for sinister, evil people. The reality is that most people use offshoring as a hedge against insolvent governments, and depending on their industry, the very real threat of criminal prosecution for benign activity.[0] The moral question isn't 'how can this be prevented?', but 'how can it be made more accessible for the average person?'. I see huge startup opportunities right now around helping people cheaply and easily diversify internationally. [0] http://maxkeiser.com/2013/01/17/a-broken-justice-system-most-americans-commit-about-three-felonies-a-day/ http://maxkeiser.com/2013/01/17/a-broken-justice-system-most...

pekk 14y ago
Most people don't use offshoring at all, and for those who do, it is not extremely likely that it is a hedge against the insolvency of (say) the US government, or fear of being busted for marijuana (for example, large companies like Google move money around mostly just to save on taxes). Your linked article draws the comparison between regulating unpasteurized milk and Nazi Germany, which seems not completely even-handed.
arethuza 14y ago
So how would offshoring help someone in the US sell marijuana or raw milk?
- ajays 14y ago
  For marijuana: you deliver the physical product here, and have the money deposited in your offshore account.
riffraff 14y ago
> The reality is that most people use offshoring as a hedge against insolvent governments [citation needed] And what does this actually mean? How do you define insolvent governments? If you are thinking of one-off cuts when the state is actually going bankrupt (latest cyprus thingie, italy's cut in '92 etc) these don't seem to offer a different security from keeping money in a foreign non-offshore bank. And these events don't seem so common to me. Or are you considering governments insolvent in the sense that they just waste money and taxing is stealing etc ? I am unsure how the situation is in these specific cases, but way way way often offshore accounts get found out in my country (italy) related to _massively illegal_ activities. This is not a case of avoiding messing up a tax form, it's accounts used to pay bribes for falsified trial witnesses with money laundered from drug smuggling.

drinchev 14y ago

Why they haven't released that data for public download on the Internet?

gyardley 14y ago
I don't know about your location, but where I live having an offshore account isn't illegal in and of itself. Perhaps I'm concerned about the quality of my country's management. If for that or any other reason, I decide to put some money into foreign currency and place it with another country's banking system, while continuing to comply with my own country's tax laws, what right do you have to steal the information and publish it on the internet?
kitcar 14y ago
Because they are private banking records - some of the account info released is from private citizens doing nothing illegal (offshore banking is explicitly legal in many countries) One way to look at it is: how would you like it if it was discovered that a drug lord was using the same bank as you to launder money, and therefore your bank account balances and recent transfers were released to the public, even though you had nothing to do with the drug lord other than storing your money at the same bank?
- trust-me 14y ago
  I see no problem at all with my bank account balances being published on the Internet. In Norway everybody's total balance is published by the government. I really find irrational some ordinary people desire to keep stuff like net worth, salary, etc. secret.
  - kelvin0 14y ago
    This is not an irrational fear, nor a cultural one. It's mostly tied with local laws and rules. For example, the US being such a hotbed for class actions and frivolous law suits, I can imagine that some wealthy individuals would rather keep their balance from lawsuit 'trolls' ... But that is just my opinion

r4vik 14y ago

Nice try Guardian: http://order-order.com/2013/04/04/a-tip-off-for-the-guardian-investigations-team/ http://order-order.com/2013/04/04/a-tip-off-for-the-guardian...

tomwalker 14y ago
The hypocrisy is so common. I just read on that site that the French politician leading the tax avoidance crack down resigned as he had 600,000 euros in an off short account!

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

cryofan 14y ago

tall tree and a long rope?

manishsharan 14y ago

Is this scoop an unintentional advertisement for Swiss banking ? I did a text search for India , Sharad Pawar , Gandhi and Yadav --- nothing showed up. But the rich in India always favor Swiss banking for their illicit wealth.

ajays 14y ago
They also like Mauritius.

drucken 14y ago

ICIJ have a nice and useful (cough) "Interactive: Stash Your Cash" too (http://www.icij.org/offshore/interactive-stash-your-cash http://www.icij.org/offshore/interactive-stash-your-cash)

leot 14y ago
Wow. Phoney lawsuit: brilliant. (not condoning this behavior in any way)

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]