The proof is in the Putin: thread for Panama Papers/Mossack Fonseca leaks.

the scale of the leak would make it really difficult to process without purpose-built tools though

I figure a searchable database of some of the files will totally be a thing by the end of this week

https://panamapapers.icij.org/the_power_players/

for a start

Huge tracts of prime UK real estate have been sold to offshore dummy companies - tracing some of those back to world leaders would be fun.

― On a Raqqa tip (ShariVari), Monday, April 4, 2016 5:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The week-long NYT series on who owns condos in the Time-Warner Building went way in-depth about how U.S. real estate was becoming one of the more effective ways to hide money, related directly to what's going on here. Most of the condos in that building, and the new needle thin NYC skyscrapers, are owned by nearly untraceable shell companies.

Planet Money had a pretty good thing on offshore companies a few weeks ago, and toward the end of it they concluded that it was actually easier to set up, and easier to hide your identity in, a Nevada LLC than in an offshore company. Although there are plenty of other "advantages" to an offshore company relating to taxes.

The ICIJ has confirmed that they are not planning to release the full dataset, which is likely to raise eyebrows in some sectors. It's arguably a good move as a fairly high proportion of the businesses could be entirely 'legal' and it would compromise the privacy of a lot of individuals but it's going to fuel some of the scepticism about the motivations and chain of evidence behind the leak.

ICIJ, iirc, gets a lot of its funding from Soros and USAID and there have already been moves in Russia and elsewhere to discredit them based on that. Partly on what they have released, partly on what they haven't. There hasn't really been any major news involving US institutions afaict - that might be because the details were not given to US newspapers but there's a competing theory that they are being selective in what they highlight. It would probably be fairly difficult to get any of the outlets it was shared with to go along with it, though.

USA today is the only paper brave enough to go against this conspiracy

time to invade Panama again imho

maybe it would reinvigorate oliver stone's career

after they all get copies of the docs, then game very well be on

I figure a searchable database of some of the files will totally be a thing by the end of this week

― other people systems as applicable (El Tomboto), Tuesday, April 5, 2016 1:33 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah they talk about that here - http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/why-no-big-splash-for-panama-papers/

(the fact that they had to wait for copies of the docs)

https://45.media.tumblr.com/8bd325d7a2ecfeab1a037276ccb42984/tumblr_nxu28ii2AU1uewx7xo1_400.gif

Huge tracts of prime UK real estate have been sold to offshore dummy companies - tracing some of those back to world leaders would be fun.

― On a Raqqa tip (ShariVari), Monday, April 4, 2016 5:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Private Eye have a searchable database (and Excel file for download) of properties owned by offshore companies here, if anyone's interested:

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/registry

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article69248462.html

Bizarrely Cameron has decided to make his first public appearance since the Panama Papers leak at Price Waterhouse Coopers.

Icelandic PM has gone. Hopefully not the first political casualty.

"Last", surely?

doesnt stuff like this make the proposed 'bipartisan' tax amnesty look like a giveaway to these fucking crooks? I'd like to think maybe the timing of this story isn't a coincidence.

lol, last, indeed (xp)

The basic story, that the rich are hiding massive amounts of their wealth and screwing everyone, is extremely simple to grasp. The details in those 11,000,000 documents are so vast that it will be a year at least before most of the stones that the lizards are currently hiding under are turned over and they scuttle out into the daylight.

The mouthpieces for the rich will assure us repeatedly that 'none of this was illegal', as if that were the essential point.

just to put the investigation/publication timeline into perspective, the ICIJ has been working on this for a year already.

xp setting up the companies itself isn't illegal, it's what they did with them that may have been.

WikiLeaks was 1.7gb of data, this is 2600gb.

i was so busy riding the trump train that i missed this completely til a colleague sends us this horrible abc piece:

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/panama-rejects-money-launder-label-documents-leak-38153237

i love how there still exists tonnes of US residents who believe the US propaganda that says "look! panama! bad country! latin america! bad! bad! bad!"

It took all of five minutes for the new FIFA President to become implicated in corruption.

It took all of five minutes for the new FIFA President to become implicated in corruption.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrn_Hqc2-Q4

(and yes, that is mary byker .. )

Run, Fat Boy, Run

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/7ea6c0013ece9a5b95a37d0fe855fa3ade2ed434/0_68_1572_942/master/1572.jpg

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d698947150ae4ad7e3e5d4cc6ef8d196f4be4068/0_64_1530_918/master/1530.jpg?w=780&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=5cfbc18b2854633f7163c8da0b30dfdf

It's been interesting to see the way Cameron is portrayed visually: when he's under the cosh, his neck disappears in the accompanying photos; when he's seen to have some kind of 'win', the picture is of Atkins Diet Dave.

So Downing Street say he won't benefit from daddy's little legacy in the future, oh that clears all that up then.

Pretty sure he's going to come out of this scot free tbh. Other Tories are going to be in the firing line though. And MPs from other parties, I expect.

It is good system that, if everyone is a criminal then no-one is guilty!

As discussed upthread:

One of the surprises about the Panama Papers – the largest leak from an offshore tax adviser in history – is how few Americans have so far been exposed. The reason? It may be because creating a shell company in the US is easier than obtaining a library card.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/06/panama-papers-us-tax-havens-delaware?CMP=share_btn_tw

Cameron should be fine, though it will be interesting seeing him trying to phrase his denials so carefully under a proper grilling.

Part of me wonders if there's an Osborne revelation still to come.

Steve Reed ‏@SteveReedMP 2h2 hours ago

Now BBC reporting Osborne fails to answer whether he benefits from an offshore fund - he terminated interview when pressed

he terminated interview when pressed

Bit of spin there tbh.

incredible to look at this http://www.private-eye.co.uk/registry pan across london in particular but the whole of the country and get an idea of the land and buildings owned by companies registered in these places transparently for dodgy tax reasons

Swiss police has carried out a raid on UEFA headquarters.

Isn't another possible explanation for there not being a lot of Americans just that there are a bunch of other firms that do this kind of work and maybe this one just didn't have a lot of American clients?

Yes. And Suddeutsch Zeitung has implied the leak with all the Americans in it is still to come, I swear I read that somewhere.

http://www.vocativ.com/305557/the-most-bonkers-panama-papers-conspiracy-theories/

Wasn't here but the quote is referenced; also, lol

This is interesting:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/monicamark/the-panama-papers-may-help-unravel-the-corruption-deal-of-th?utm_term=.vuej1BB1o3#.irO3OllOgx

Strong echoes of the Russian 'cash for shares' scandals of the 90s where state assets were given away for nothing (accompanied by huge bribes) to be sold for billions further down the track.

The dramatic change in ownership was pushed through just a few days before former dictator Lansana Conté died at age 74 in December 2008. BSGR didn’t actually pay for the mine, but instead pledged to invest $165 million into exploring and upgrading it. Two years later, they sold 51% of their stake to another company — this time for $2.5 billion.

Put another way, BSGR netted a profit of some $2.2 billion — then worth twice the entire GDP of Guinea — in return for investing just $165 million. That prompted Mo Ibrahim, the Sudanese billionaire whose foundation promotes good governance in Africa, to ask whether “the Guineans who did that deal” were “idiots, or criminals, or both.”

interesting that not a single guardian article that refers to the panama papers has an open comments thread.

but also a blessed relief

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/how-an-obscure-nonprofit-in-washington-protects-tax-havens-for-the-rich/2016/06/09/ab03e70a-2908-11e6-ae4a-3cdd5fe74204_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_panama-1020a-top%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

In the eight-page fundraising document discovered by The Post, the Center for Freedom and Prosperity in Alexandria, Va., said that it had already persuaded the Bush administration to thwart an international effort to require more transparency from tax havens. Now the center was promising to derail similar reforms in legislation before Congress.

Among those it planned to contact: lawmakers, key figures in the Bush White House, the Treasury Department, the State Department and the Office of Management and Budget.

...

In emails and documents sent to Mossack Fonseca between 2001 and 2012, the center said it had parlayed its access into action with the support of former House majority leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), high-ranking Treasury Department officials in the Bush administration, and members of key congressional committees that regulate U.S. tax and spending policy.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-bomb-kills-panama-papers-journalist?CMP=twt_gu

Shit man

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/18/guardian-bbc-legal-action-paradise-papers

Guardian getting sued by Appleby for publishing what they say were confidential, stolen documents.

ICIJ publishes West Africa Leaks and the results are as expected. Resource extraction continues, only faster and worse:
https://www.icij.org/investigations/west-africa-leaks/

Actress Isabelle Adjani, who was named in the Panama Papers, to be tried for tax evasion

French actress Isabelle Adjani is facing tax fraud and money laundering charges partly tied to Panama Papers revelations.

The star, who reportedly denies any wrongdoing, will be tried in Paris in October. She has been called to appear on Oct. 19. Judicial sources told French media that Adjani, 68, is accused of separate financial crimes.

In the first instance, she is alleged to have received a donation of two million euros from a Senegalese businessman, Mamadou Diagna Ndiaye, “under the guise of a loan.” This is said to have enabled Ndiaye, who is also an Olympic official, to evade transfer duties.

In the second, she is accused of passing 119,000 euros to an unknown beneficiary via an offshore company in 2014.

Adjani was revealed to be a shareholder of the offshore company, Deckert Investments Limited, by the 2016 Panama Papers investigation.

Based on that information, France’s National Financial Prosecutor’s Office reportedly opened its investigation into her at the end of 2016.