Making this thread in anticipation that something juicy is exposed, hopefully close to home.

Anyone following this closely? As I understand it a lot more documents are set to be released tomorrow? Should I be excite?

https://www.reddit.com/live/wp1fvdxxwb45/

[Edited on April 3, 2016 at 9:22 PM. Reason : Most of the Twitter shit I've seen is in German, I'm following the Reddit thread now]

4/3/2016 9:21:04 PM

Not surprisingly a lot of money stashed overseas by dictators and strongmen. We might get to find out if Putin really is the richest man on the planet as some have theorized.

I doubt we'll get a lot close to home that is significant. I don't think that Cheney is holding a billion dollars in the Caymans for example.

4/3/2016 9:36:37 PM

What's interesting is some have suggested that the US actually has some tax laws, different from most of the world, and that few in the US would likely be implicated in this type of scheme. Which is the exact opposite of what I would've ever guessed.

I still think there is a chance that people from old money, like Rockefeller, vanderbilts, whatever, and that some big US banks could have their hand in this. I'll be praying for it.

4/3/2016 9:43:33 PM

Well, we are one of I believe only 2 countries that taxes overseas earnings on individuals and corporations, so it makes it a bit harder to structure pay to avoid taxation than in most places. It's also one of the reasons that we are seeing corporate "inversions" and companies refusing to bring money back from overseas.

It's certainly interesting. I think mostly this is going to expose some cronyism in our system and show just how many times some places in the developing world have been fleeced by their leaders. I also bet there are a lot of place in Europe that are fucked that have had some illegal things happening, looking at you Greece, Spain, Portugal.

4/3/2016 10:54:23 PM

^ if you look at the leaked list you'd be surprised to find some names on there from some of our biggest allies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_named_in_the_Panama_Papers

4/4/2016 4:50:21 PM

but who will protect the journalists who leaked this?

4/4/2016 8:55:53 PM

https://panamapapers.icij.org/the_power_players

pretty cool 1-min clip:

https://www.facebook.com/ihre.sz/videos/vb.215982125159841/1007384822686230/?type=2&theater

4/4/2016 10:38:07 PM

Sanders predicted this and voted against the Panama Free Trade Agreement, Clinton supported it

4/5/2016 8:17:02 AM

https://youtu.be/u0mAwRAFC2U
Bernie nailing it 2011.

4/5/2016 8:30:25 AM

Problem from reading a couple articles sifting through this is there are a lot of individuals that could've setup these accounts, but if they followed the rules of their respective country, they're not guilty of any crimes. (I'm confident there are some tax criminals, but for right now it's just one large data dump.) The Guardian newspaper's Scott Trust for example is setup overseas to reduce its tax outlay. It's morally sketchy and very hypocritical considering their editorial viewpoint on such things, but they're not breaking the law.

End effect will be this law firm in Panama will be radioactive, no one will do business with them, and people will find other places. But the publicity will result in some of this money coming home. FT Alphaville have interesting articles looking at the eurodollar nature behind this (banks around the world outside the U.S. paying liabilities in dollars, completely outside the control of the Federal Reserve or any other central bank, making this money largely untraceable).

[Edited on April 5, 2016 at 9:11 AM. Reason : .]

4/5/2016 9:00:37 AM

Iceland's government is dissolving today over this for the most part following their largest protest in history (even larger than when they jailed the bankers and threw out the government following the financial crisis).

4/5/2016 11:59:06 AM

And it was just announced the Iceland PM has resigned.

4/5/2016 12:11:12 PM

what did bernie nail? panama was already a tax shelter haven. it's not like the panama papers wouldn't have happened if there was no free trade agreement.


[Edited on April 5, 2016 at 1:30 PM. Reason : .]

4/5/2016 1:26:25 PM

he explained why the trade agreement with panama was unnecessary and didn't help Americans and how it would increase a problem that already existed, then he voted against it. so in other words, he nailed the issue.

4/5/2016 1:30:05 PM

except that since there are no US citizens named in the papers, the "issue" doesn't apply to what he said back then, does it?

are you saying his speech was altruistic and he was worried about the people of iceland?

[Edited on April 5, 2016 at 1:32 PM. Reason : .]

4/5/2016 1:31:59 PM

no, he absolutely nailed the issue of the panama free trade agreement and clinton was wrong

also, no americans have been named... yet

Edit: I was wrong, already reporting on plenty of americans included in the leak

[Edited on April 5, 2016 at 1:47 PM. Reason : .]

4/5/2016 1:42:08 PM

http://grapevine.is/news/2016/04/05/prime-minister-resigns/

iceland PM resigns.

4/5/2016 1:51:19 PM

there are americans included in the leak, but that's because the leak included documentation outside the scope of shell corporations and tax evasion (for example, people buying property). the ICIJ site doesn't have any info on prominent citizens/politicians involved with the tax evasion at this point.

do you have different information you can reference?

and as the NYT pointed out, we're probably not seeing a lot of this with our own citizens because of how easy it is to set up shell corporations and evade taxes within our borders. no need to go outside.

4/5/2016 1:59:40 PM

Is Sanders going to be against trade with Delaware and Nevada?

4/5/2016 6:54:52 PM

^ I chuckled.

4/5/2016 7:14:21 PM

just checking back to see if you can provide that reporting on americans

[Edited on April 6, 2016 at 2:17 PM. Reason : .]

4/6/2016 2:17:45 PM

Media needs to make sure that they report on the fact that this is much more about government corruption and hiding funds from nefarious activity than it is rich people avoiding taxes.

I hope this doesn't turn into some "look at the evil 1%" bullshit. Way more government officials and former government officials than there are members of the Forbes 500. This is not a coincidence.

4/6/2016 4:24:01 PM

This is a legacy of Noriega, when he came into power and essentially nationalized money laundering for Panama and cozied up to the narcotraficantes.

4/6/2016 6:05:37 PM

^^ rich people run the government bro.

4/6/2016 7:03:13 PM

Right, but the thing is that this isn't mostly rich guys hiding money to avoid taxes. That's a small part of it. Mostly this is people trying to hide this income because it was gotten through illegal or extremely unseemly ways.

Iceland's PM is going to be the exception, not the rule. He doesn't seem to have done anything illegal, but there's a lot of anger over the fact that he has money oversees at all. Most of these guys have much, much shadier shit going on.

This isn't a rich person problem, otherwise you'd see a lot more people on this list who are just rich. This is mostly govt folks who are trying to hide income that they can't legally show. It's not coincidental that there's only like 30 Forbes 500 list people in there to about 150 gov. Officials and former officials.

4/6/2016 7:49:56 PM

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/04/06/panama-papers-americans-with-past-financial-crimes/82704788/

so the americans who are showing up are known criminals?



[Edited on April 7, 2016 at 1:07 PM. Reason : .]

4/7/2016 1:04:05 PM

it's kinda weird that we are not even a week into the story and you are staking your position so hard on no americans being involved

4/7/2016 3:11:23 PM

The most interesting part of this is that it really doesn't look like there's much actual crime involved here. Like it or not tax sheltering is largely legal. Trying to avoid taxes is something everyone and every company does. This isn't an issue legally or morally.

Now, if there are people who have done something illegal they should be punished, but as long as these kind of laws exist no one should be freaking out. If you think there's something morally objectionable about it then work to change the laws. There's probably some illegally received income here, there are probably some illegally structured distributions, etc. but most of this looks like it's probably legal activity.

4/7/2016 4:34:09 PM

^^funny, a week in and you're staking so hard that they will. and you know we're not a week in right? that hundreds of journalists have been examining the papers for over a year and the release is the beginning culmination of that examination?

the Icelandic PM resigned solely because of optics, nothing else.

like I said. go to Nevada or Delaware if you want to find the real criminal tax shelters used by Americans. ain't nobody got time for panama.

[Edited on April 8, 2016 at 3:22 PM. Reason : .]

4/8/2016 3:11:41 PM

Quote :

"funny, a week in and you're staking so hard that they will."

... where?

4/8/2016 3:29:44 PM

Quoth the Libertarians:

Quote :

"Governments are up in arms, not because of the endemic corruption the ill-gotten wealth of the politicians in the Panama Papers represents but because, apparently, they didn't get enough of a cut. And there's little evidence additional tax enforcement authority would be used to catch corrupt politicians instead of merely curbing your freedom to move yourself or your assets across national borders. Today, President Obama addressed the Panama Papers issue not by saying the U.S. would, say, re-examine its foreign aid spending to ensure U.S. dollars aren't fueling corruption abroad, but by using it as an excuse to call on Congress to pass laws to prevent Americans from moving their money out of the country as freely as they can now.[cut] Great Britain, too, has used the Panama Papers leak to push for more taxation authority. The billions in assets held by former government officials overseas represents how lucrative working in government and the power government has to take people's money can be. The use of this example of public corruption to demand government get even more power to confiscate people's assets and corrupt itself is beyond shameless, but, tragically, totally predictable."

http://reason.com/blog/2016/04/05/president-obama-uses-panama-papers-to-co

4/9/2016 4:56:38 PM

Mcclatchy has a story today about Clinton connections

4/17/2016 6:57:37 AM

i appreciate you not linking to it. otherwise, you would wind up with people easily finding this quote

Quote :

"The Clintons themselves do not appear to be in Mossack Fonseca’s database, nor does it appear that their daughter, Chelsea, or her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, who co-founded a hedge fund, are listed. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article72215012.html#storylink=cpy"

i mean get a load of this

Quote :

"One such connection is to Jean-Raymond Boulle, a one-time diamond miner from the volcanic island nation of Mauritius whose company was once based in Bill Clinton’s hometown of Hope, Ark. In the mid 1990s, Boulle was listed as a director of Auk Limited, a British Virgin Islands offshore company, and Gridco Limited, a Bahamas offshore company. After two meetings with Boulle, Bill Clinton, then-governor of Arkansas, signed legislation allowing his company to engage in exploratory mining in the state. Later, Boulle and his wife attended Clinton’s first inauguration. Boulle’s company did not respond to a message."

SCANDALOUS

[Edited on April 18, 2016 at 9:09 AM. Reason : ,]

4/18/2016 9:08:45 AM

sorry, didn't know those people weren't americans

4/18/2016 12:41:04 PM

Here's another gem:

Quote :

"Now, some of this behavior is clearly against the law, and everyone who violates the law anywhere should be held accountable."

4/18/2016 6:54:25 PM

^^ i guess you accidentally misspelled americans "c-l-i-n-t-o-n"

[Edited on April 19, 2016 at 9:23 AM. Reason : .]

4/19/2016 9:23:01 AM

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/10/16/bomb-kills-investigative-journalist-in-malta-who-reported-on-panama-papers/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_malta-bombing-9pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.0156c10ce1a9#comments

10/16/2017 9:54:43 PM

Hello FSB.

10/16/2017 10:24:47 PM

car bombs sound more cartel style than FSB style.

10/16/2017 10:47:19 PM

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ukrainian-officer-killed-car-bomb-was-investigating-russia-2017-6

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Zelimkhan_Yandarbiyev

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1473118/award-winning-journalist-murdered-in-car-bomb-that-could-have-been-meant-for-someone-else/

https://www.hudson.org/research/13757-flurry-of-kiev-assassinations-a-new-russian-front-in-ukraine

https://sofrep.com/59594/prominent-journalist-killed-apparent-car-bomb-assassination/

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/691601/vladimir-putin-Pavel-Sheremet-car-bomb-russia-kremlin

Ultimately, you may be right on this one, though. But Putin and his friends were certainly utterly furious about the Panama Papers leaks.

[Edited on October 16, 2017 at 11:42 PM. Reason : a]

10/16/2017 11:32:17 PM