The Panama Papers thread

OrbitalDawn said:
Yeah, Putin is very Zuma-esque.
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Yip, they can both go toe-to-toe with any superpower in the world militarily or politically and they both are very comfortable and articulate on live television and command vast amounts of respect from their citizens ... oh, wait :D
 
on the topic of tax avoidance using offshore accounts though, Oxfam didn't want the Panama Papers leak to hog the limelight forever it seems: http://time.com/4293728/us-companies-tax-evasion-oxfam/
Oxfam released its new report, “Broken at the Top,” ahead of Tax Day in the U.S. and shortly after of the Panama Papers leak to show the extent to which major corporations such as Pfizer, Walmart, Goldman Sachs, Alphabet, Disney and Coca-Cola keep money in offshore funds. The use of over 1,600 subsidiaries lowered their global tax rate on $4 trillion of profit to an average of 26.5%, compared to the statutory minimum of 35%, according to Oxfam.
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NarrowBandFtw said:
Yip, they can both go toe-to-toe with any superpower in the world militarily or politically and they both are very comfortable and articulate on live television and command vast amounts of respect from their citizens ... oh, wait :D
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Both though are corrupt to the core. Both also don't give a ****.
 
Source: Inside Panama Papers: Multiple Clinton connections
Hillary Clinton recently blasted the hidden financial dealings exposed in the Panama Papers, but she and her husband have multiple connections with people who have used the besieged law firm Mossack Fonseca to establish offshore entities.

Among them are Gabrielle Fialkoff, finance director for Hillary Clinton’s first campaign for the U.S. Senate; Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining magnate who has traveled the globe with Bill Clinton; the Chagoury family, which pledged $1 billion in projects to the Clinton Global Initiative; and Chinese billionaire Ng Lap Seng, who was at the center of a Democratic fund-raising scandal when Bill Clinton was president. Also using the Panamanian law firm was the company founded by the late billionaire investor Marc Rich, an international fugitive when Bill Clinton pardoned him in the final hours of his presidency.
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Panama Papers Source Offers Documents To Governments, Hints At More To Come

The Revolution Will Be Digitized

John Doe

Income inequality is one of the defining issues of our time. It affects all of us, the world over. The debate over its sudden acceleration has raged for years, with politicians, academics and activists alike helpless to stop its steady growth despite countless speeches, statistical analyses, a few meagre protests, and the occasional documentary. Still, questions remain: why? And why now?

The Panama Papers provide a compelling answer to these questions: massive, pervasive corruption. And it’s not a coincidence that the answer comes from a law firm. More than just a cog in the machine of “wealth management,” Mossack Fonseca used its influence to write and bend laws worldwide to favour the interests of criminals over a period of decades. In the case of the island of Niue, the firm essentially ran a tax haven from start to finish. Ramón Fonseca and Jürgen Mossack would have us believe that their firm’s shell companies, sometimes called “special purpose vehicles,” are just like cars. But used car salesmen don’t write laws. And the only “special purpose” of the vehicles they produced was too often fraud, on a grand scale.

Shell companies are often associated with the crime of tax evasion, but the Panama Papers show beyond a shadow of a doubt that although shell companies are not illegal by definition, they are used to carry out a wide array of serious crimes that go beyond evading taxes. I decided to expose Mossack Fonseca because I thought its founders, employees and clients should have to answer for their roles in these crimes, only some of which have come to light thus far. It will take years, possibly decades, for the full extent of the firm’s sordid acts to become known.

In the meantime, a new global debate has started, which is encouraging. Unlike the polite rhetoric of yesteryear that carefully omitted any suggestion of wrongdoing by the elite, this debate focuses directly on what matters.

In that regard, I have a few thoughts.

For the record, I do not work for any government or intelligence agency, directly or as a contractor, and I never have. My viewpoint is entirely my own, as was my decision to share the documents with Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), not for any specific political purpose, but simply because I understood enough about their contents to realize the scale of the injustices they described.

Rest of letter at source: ICIJ.org - https://panamapapers.icij.org/20160506-john-doe-statement.html
 
SA law firm linked over 400 times in Panama Papers

Phatshoane Henney Attorneys, a Bloemfontein based law firm, has been linked to more than 400 entities in the Panama Papers.

A searchable database of the leaked documents, which is hosted by The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), showed that Phatshoane Henney Attorneys has acted as an intermediary for 436 entities.

The firm told News24 in an e-mailed statement that all of their clients' investments in foreign companies "are in accordance with the applicable exchange control regulations which also require tax clearance certificates".

"Taxes are therefore paid, both in SA and abroad, as and when applicable in terms of the relevant tax legislation," said CEO, Jan Berry.

"We have always and are still advising clients investing significant amounts abroad, not to do so in their personal names in order to avoid various onerous administrative and cost consequences, especially in the event of death," he said.

He said Phatshoane Henney Attorneys are a "leading firm in the field of estate planning and administration and it is therefore expected that we will also have a sizeable number of clients investing abroad".

Phatshoane Henney Attorneys also defended its relationship with Mossack Fonseca, the firm that the 11.5 million confidential documents were leaked from. The leaked documents purport to show how clients hid billions in tax havens.

Monitoring investigations

In April, Iceland's prime minister, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, was named in the papers and he resigned amid mounting public outrage that his family had sheltered money offshore.

"While we fully support transparency in the financial industry worldwide, and although the relevant allegations against Mossack Fonseca (if they transpire to be correct), would be regrettable, we have always experienced the firm as professional, regulatory compliant and cost effective," Berry said.

"The firm was engaged in an administrative capacity after their credentials and reputation were verified with and confirmed by various major financial institutions using them as one of the largest providers of company incorporation services both offshore and onshore, including jurisdictions such as the UK and US. We will monitor the ongoing investigations to evaluate the continued use of the services of this firm."

Berry said the ICIJ database appeared to be "fraught with inaccuracies which make it questionable".

"It is concerning that law abiding and transparent clients have been placed in a situation where their privacy has been breached."

Shareholdings registered

He said the shareholdings of the firm's clients in companies "formed on our instructions" were recorded in the shareholders’ registers, were transparent and should correspond with the clients’ records with SA Revenue Service (SARS).

"Full and complete FICA records are maintained in accordance with the Financial Intelligence Centre Act."

Berry said South African exchange control regulations allowed local residents to invest, or to do so through a non-resident company, but did not allow South African trusts to invest abroad.

"Since exchange control regulations further prohibit the pooling of foreign investments, a non-resident company within which each family member can hold his/her own shares is in our view the best suitable vehicle to serve as the family’s multi generation estate planning platform," Berry said.

"The choice of jurisdiction is essentially based on the existence of a strong legal system under English law and cost effectiveness."
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Panama Papers law firm to take legal action over leak

The law firm at the center of the Panama Papers scandal says it is filing suit against the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) for the leak of information it says is false.

The public gained its first access to the Panama Papers records of over 200,000 secret offshore companies when the ICIJ put a searchable database online earlier Monday.

The database, built on just a portion of the 11.5 million documents leaked from Panama’s Mossack Fonseca law firm, reveals more than 360,000 names of individuals and companies behind the anonymous shell firms, the ICIJ said.
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More at:http://www.france24.com/en/20160511-panama-papers-law-firm-take-legal-action-against-journalists
 
IT worker at Panama Papers firm detained in Geneva, Le Temps reports

A computer technician at the Geneva office of the law firm at the center of the Panama Papers leak was detained several days ago on suspicion of recently removing large amounts of data, Swiss newspaper Le Temps reported on Wednesday, citing a source close to the case.

A spokesman for the Geneva prosecutor's office confirmed to Reuters that it had opened an investigation following a criminal complaint by the law firm, Mossack Fonseca, but declined to comment further.

Panama-based Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in setting up offshore companies, has denied wrongdoing and said it was the victim of a data hack.

In a statement late on Wednesday, Mossack Fonseca said it had filed complaints in several places against people who might have been involved with breaching its data.
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More at: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-panama-tax-geneva-idUSKCN0Z11KR
 
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