Panama Papers

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Re: Panama Papers

Postby 82_28 » Mon May 09, 2016 3:33 pm

Oh OK, thanks actually. :thumbsup

Just wondering if Ubuntu had jumped to the dark side and if I had not heard of such yet. I dumped SuSE which I used "religiously" when MSFT bought Novell. I don't get how business shit works. I suppose I do, but I hate it.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon May 09, 2016 3:36 pm

Panama Papers: From the Guatemalan Drug Queen to the ‘most dangerous mobster in the world’
Mossack Fonseca’s malefactors revealed in latest data leak

Ryan Chittum, Jake Bernstein and Michael Hudson



In November 2005, customs officials at the Dutch port of Rotterdam got a tip: a shipment of asparagus from Peru might contain something besides vegetables.
About a week later, 60 pallets of tinned white asparagus came into port inside three shipping containers. Eighty per cent of the cans contained asparagus. The rest contained cocaine – more than one and a half tons of it (1,360kg).
Dutch and Peruvian authorities said a man known in Peru as The Dutchman – Ment Dijkhuizen Cáceres – was behind the industrial-scale drug trafficking. Investigators found that he and his attorney, Eduardo Gallardo Arciniega, used a series of offshore shell companies to launder the money.
Dijkhuizen and Gallardo registered at least four of those front companies at Mossack Fonseca, the Panama-based law firm that has become known worldwide for creating hard-to-trace offshore companies by politicians, wealthy investors and, in many cases, notorious criminals.
Dijkhuizen is one of Mossack Fonseca’s malefactors – convicted felons and alleged wrongdoers – who have benefited from services provided by the law firm at the center of the Panama Papers scandal.
They come from the US, the UK, Spain and many other lands. They include mobsters, drug traffickers, arms smugglers, Ponzi schemers and other criminal figures, a review of the law firm’s internal files by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media partners, including The Irish Times, has found.
Mossack Fonseca’s internal files include companies tied to at least 36 Americans who have been accused or convicted of fraud or other serious financial misconduct. The law firm’s files also include at least 33 people and companies blacklisted by the US Treasury Department because of evidence that they’d been involved in wrongdoing, such as doing business with Mexican drug lords or terrorist organizations like Hezbollah.
Mossack Fonseca has told ICIJ and other media partners that it “does not foster or promote unlawful acts.”
It said it relies on middlemen that it refers to as its “clients” – bankers, lawyers and other operatives that feed it business – to make sure that people who get offshore companies through the law firm aren’t involved in criminal activity. The law firm said it also has its own screening procedures designed to identify suspect customers “to the extent it is reasonably possible”.
In cases when companies formed by Mossack Fonseca ended up in the hands of criminals, a spokesman said, the firm has “strongly condemned that situation” and taken actions to deal with the problem.
The firm declined to answer questions about offshore companies linked to Dijkhuizen and five other notorious figures whose case histories are explored in this report –- including a drug boss known as “Queen of the South”, an American con man who set up a fake charity in the name of a Catholic saint and an alleged mobster known as the Russian underworld’s “Boss of Bosses”.
Fine and Educated Ways
Name: Ment Floor Dijkhuizen Cáceres
Nationality: Peruvian
Claim to Fame: Drug trafficker
Locale: Peru and the Netherlands
AKA: El Holandés (The Dutchman)
Panama Papers - Ment Floor Dijkhuizen Cáceres
Ment Dijkhuizen’s cocaine ring had been under scrutiny for years, long before his arrest. Sandra Barrios Villacorta, secretary to a key figure of Dijkhuizen’s organisation who had been arrested, was murdered while walking her daughter to school. Police suspected she “knew too much,” according to La Republica newspaper.
After learning in 2006 that Dijkhuizen had been the target of a massive drug bust, Jürgen Mossack, Mossack Fonseca’s co-founder, expressed surprise that his law firm had taken on such a man as a customer. “There are bank accounts?” Mossack wrote. “We are signatories? . . . I’m wondering what kind of due diligence is made in Peru on customers?”
Monica Ycaza, Mossack Fonseca’s Peru representative, wrote back that there was no way she could have known.
Dijkhuizen’s lawyer, Eduardo Gallardo Arciniega, who arranged for the companies to be created, was “a person of fine and educated ways, which gave us no cause to doubt him”, Ycaza said.
The Drug Queen
Name: Marllory Dadiana Chacón Rossell
Nationality: Guatemalan
Claim to Fame: Drug trafficker, money launderer
Locales: Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Mexico, US
AKA: Queen of the South
Panama papers - Marllory Dadiana Chacón Rossell
In January 2012, US authorities identified Marllory Dadiana Chacón Rossell as “one of the most prolific narcotics traffickers in Central America.” US Treasury officials accused her of sending thousands of kilos of cocaine through Guatemala to the US and laundering tens of millions of dollars each month.
It’s rare enough for a woman to obtain drug lord status that the Guatemalan press dubbed her, “Queen of the South”.
At the height of Chacón Rossell’s reign, she and her family lived opulently in Guatemala City, mixing with politicians and high society and vacationing in Europe. By the time she was in her late 30s, she was the mother of five and the ruler of a business empire that included hotels, a national lottery, a construction firm and a high-end clothing store. US officials identified 24 business entities connected to her.
Mossack Fonseca played a role in her kingdom, the law firm’s internal records show.
In 2008, the law firm helped establish Brodway Commerce Inc. Chacón Rossell was listed as director and president. Mossack Fonseca also helped the company create accounts with Panama’s Banvivienda Bank and Guatemala’s Banco Reformador. By October 2009, the Banco Reformador account held $12 million, the records show.
In 2015, Chacón Rossell cut a deal with the US justice department, winning a reduced sentence in exchange for her co-operation with American authorities. Her actual punishment has been kept secret and a judge ordered the case sealed for five years.
Operation White Whale
Name: Fernando del Valle
Nationality: Chilean
Claim to fame: Money launderer
Locale: Spain
Panama Papers - Fernando del Valle
In 2005, Spanish authorities arrested 50 people in Operation White Whale, an investigation of what was called the largest money-laundering ring in Spain’s history. At the centre of the alleged $300 million laundering operation, prosecutors said, was a Chilean lawyer named Fernando del Valle, who set up shell companies that helped drug dealers, mafiosos, arms traffickers and pimps plow dirty money into real estate.
In 2007, two years after he was arrested in the White Whale case, del Valle got Mossack Fonseca to reactivate a company he had formed in 1979 called Nitel Values SA.
Mossack Fonseca did not learn of del Valle’s arrest until 2009, when he asked to create a new company for a German client. About a month later, Mossack Fonseca resigned as registered agent of Nitel Values.
In 2011 a Spanish court sentenced del Valle to more than six years in prison for money laundering and tax fraud.
To-Do List
Name: Martin Frankel
Nationality: American
Claim to Fame: Fraudster
Locale: United States
In February 2000, US authorities approached Mossack Fonseca through the attorney general of the British Virgin Islands, demanding information on two offshore companies owned by colourful financial criminal Martin Frankel.
He had been a longtime customer of the law firm, even while embezzling more than $200 million from insurance companies in five states and then taking some of the money on the lam once discovered.
Frankel also set up a sham charitable foundation named after a Catholic saint that promised to raise money for the poor but instead bankrolled his lavish lifestyle, which included mansions, luxury cars, bodyguards and a bevy of girlfriends.
When Frankel fled the US in 1999, authorities said, he left behind an astrological chart drawn up to answer the question “Will I go to prison?” and a to-do list that included “launder money”. When authorities finally caught up with Frankel in Hamburg, Germany, they found 547 diamonds and nine fake passports.
Mossack Fonseca took several months to respond to the official request for documents in 2000. During the interim, it worked to shut down companies linked to Frankel and disengage from its association with him. In 2002, Frankel pleaded guilty to 20 counts of wire fraud as well as counts of securities fraud and racketeering conspiracy.
Guns and Money
Name: John Knight
Nationality: British
Claim to Fame: Arms trafficker
Locale: UK
In November 2004, John Knight admitted that he had negotiated with Sudan to supply it with tanks, rocket launchers, artillery guns, and Soviet airplanes-while it was engaged in genocide in Darfur.
Knight was already known in Britain. In 1991, a reporter from the Daily Mirror had gone undercover and arranged a deal to buy Kalashnikovs from him. When The Scotsman newspaper asked Knight in 2004 why he would sell weapons to the Sudanese regime, Knight pointed to Adolf Hitler, saying “people were supplying him with stuff. He was the biggest tyrant of the lot”.
Through an intermediary in Cyprus, Knight bought a British Virgin Islands shell company called Endeavour Resources Limited from Mossack Fonseca in 2005. He used that company to traffic arms in the Middle East, according to the British government.
In 2007, British customs authorities raided Knight’s $3 million house outside London in search of evidence he had been trading weapons with Iran. They found shredded documents, which, when pieced together later, showed Knight created a false trail to cover up his plan to buy 130 automatic weapons from Iran and sell them to Kuwait via Endeavour Resources. He was sentenced to four years in prison for the scheme.
Mossack Fonseca resigned as registered agent for Endeavour Resources, but it remains the agent for Business Systems Consultant Ltd, a Bahamian company that was listed as Endeavour Resources’ director.
Boss of Bosses
Name: Semion Mogilevich
Nationality: Ukrainian
Claim to Fame: Dubbed “the most dangerous mobster in the world”
Locale: Moscow
AKA: the Boss of Bosses; the Brainy Don; Mr. Bigski; Seva
Panama Papers - Semion Mogilevich
In 2009, the FBI named Semion Mogilevich to its Top Ten Most Wanted fugitives list, calling him a “global con artist and ruthless criminal” who was “involved in weapons trafficking, contract murders, extortion, drug trafficking, and prostitution on an international scale”. Known as the Boss of Bosses, the chain-smoking, portly Ukrainian’s signature method of neutralising an enemy was the car bomb, the Guardian reported.
Mogilevich got his start in organized crime fleecing fellow Soviet Jews immigrating to Israel, according to the Independent. He eventually set up operations in Hungary and in Israel.
An indictment secured by US authorities in 2003 charged Mogilevich with being behind the fraud at YBM Magnex International, a publicly traded Pennsylvania company that bilked investors out of $150 million.
Mogilevich had several close connections to shell companies registered by Mossack Fonseca, though none appear to have been in his name. In 2001, the attorney general’s office of the Bahamas wrote to Mossack Fonseca requesting information about Rosebud Consultants Inc, a company registered by the law firm in Nassau.
Bahamian officials were acting in response to request from US authorities who were investigating what they alleged were payments made to Mogilevich through Rosebud and his attorney, Adrian Churchward, in connection with the YBM Magnex scandal.
Mossack Fonseca’s own files do not show any links between Churchward and Rosebud, but the investigative request said US prosecutors believed Churchward was “associated” with Rosebud and that the company was funneling $20,000 a month in “consulting fees” to Mogilevich.
Churchward was also director of Trinity Films Inc along with Galina V Grigoryeva, who was married to Mogilevich and later to Churchward. Mossack Fonseca registered that company in March 1996 in the Bahamas.
Churchward now writes thrillers, including “Moscow Bound,” about the estranged wife of a Russian oligarch and a lawyer on the run for a crime they didn’t commit. After the release of the initial Panama Papers stories, Churchward was heavily critical of the offshore industry, saying on Twitter that the rich and powerful have “a tight grip on their corruption.”
“Nothing will change,” he added. “The ‘Global elite’ and their political servants aren’t turkeys who are about to vote for Christmas.”
Asked for comment on his connection to companies at Mossack Fonseca, Churchward said in a email: “My lawyers have advised me that if Mr Moguilevitch goes to trial I may be called by either the prosecution or defence to give testimony as a witness and, as such, I should not comment on any aspects of any alleged relationship with Mr Moguilevitch, business or otherwise.”
Another Mogilevich connection in the Panama Papers is Igor Fisherman, a Ukrainian-born American charged alongside Mogilevich by the US in the YBM Magnex scam. Fisherman’s wife Olga Zhunzhurova held power of attorney over Hastan Finance SA, a company purchased in the Seychelles, an offshore haven in the Indian Ocean, through an intermediary in Switzerland.
The FBI said in 2009 that Mogilevich was living in Moscow. In 2015, the agency took him off its “Ten Most Wanted” list, noting that “the extensive national and international publicity afforded him has not generated information which would assist in his apprehension.”
Mogilevich could not be reached for comment for this story. In a 1999 article, the New York Times quoted him as saying: “I am not a leader or an active participant of any criminal group.” When the BBC asked him about the YBM Magnex case in 1999, he said: “Well, if they found old-fashioned hanky-panky, it’s up to them to prove it.”
Frankel, Knight and Dijkhuizen also could not be reached for this story. In an email, Del Valle said he could not comment. Chacón Rossell’s attorney said her client declined comment
.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby identity » Mon May 09, 2016 5:38 pm

Panama Papers reveal Canada's top offshore middleman, Fred Sharp of Vancouver, linked to fraudster
Sharp says Panama data is 'stolen' private information that should not be published


Natalie Clancy • Yvette Brend • CBC News
May 9, 2016


fred-sharp-part-time-actor.jpg


Fred Sharp helped register 1,167 offshore entities from his Vancouver office, according to documents in a massive leak from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

A Vancouver company led by former lawyer Fred Sharp created more Canadian-linked offshore companies using Mossack Fonseca than any other Canadian middleman, and stood up for a convicted fraudster, according to a joint CBC News/Toronto Star investigation based on the Panama Papers.

The leak has shone a spotlight on the "enablers" of the offshore banking world.

International protocols expect that those who create offshore companies will screen their clients to weed out tax evaders, fraudsters and terrorists.

'You are receivers of stolen information. If you publish stories using this stolen information, you are stating that you have no respect for the rule of law,' Fred Sharp told CBC News and the Toronto Star.

Sharp's company, Corporate House, which operates overseas using a company called Bond and Co., is known as the go-to investment firm for wealthy Canadians who want to keep assets private and use offshore tax havens to minimize their tax burden, according to sources in the wealth management industry.

Sharp would later register an offshore company that would be used by the same prolific fraudster who cost him his legal career.

Sharp helped register 1,167 offshore entities from his Vancouver office, according to documents in a massive leak from the law firm Mossack Fonseca, obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and shared with the CBC and the Toronto Star.

Tax avoidance is not necessarily illegal, and many offshore entities are set up for legitimate businesses. Sharp became Mossack Fonseca's Canadian representative in 1994.

"Referrals of Canadian [clients] must be made to Corporate House" (Sharp's company) say internal instructions for the Panamanian lawyers.

The documents also show that measures were taken to minimize a paper trail to Canada, as staff at Mossack Fonseca were also forbidden from sending certain financial records to Vancouver.

"Do not sent [sic] any annual invoice nor statement of account to the client by email, neither by fax, nor air mail," it instructs.

"Printed invoices or statement of accts should be destroyed," the documents say.

"For me that's a red flag. They do not want any paper trail coming back to them," said Kim Marsh, a former RCMP fraud investigator who now works in risk management.

The leak also contains a 2006 receipt showing Sharp's company paid Mossack Fonseca $15,000 to buy and host a server in rented office space at their Panama office.

Destroying records and an offshore server are 'red flags,' says Kim Marsh, a financial crime expert with IPSA International.
Marsh says that makes executing a warrant difficult.

"By the time you get there, information disappears. It buys time," Marsh said.

Law society suspension linked to fraudster

Mossack Fonseca has repeatedly said it does not do business with criminals, and that it expects the middlemen they deal with to notify the company if any of their clients are convicted or listed by a sanctioning body.

However, details in the Panama Papers lead to the discovery of links between one of the offshore companies Sharp registered, and a prolific fraudster.

Sharp was suspended from practising law in B.C. in 1995 after he admitted to professional misconduct for "knowingly taking instructions" from a director disqualified "because of a criminal record for fraud."

Mike Mitton, a former client of Sharp's who had dozens of fraud convictions by then, used Sharp to steal nearly half a million dollars from a company Mitton had illegally taken control of.

After a one-year suspension, Sharp never rejoined the B.C. Law Society.
But it seems Sharp's connection to Mitton did not end with his suspension from the law society.
Sharp registered a company called Great Northwest Capital Corporation for two men who say it was Mitton who brought them to Sharp's Vancouver office to sign documents.

"He had us as nominees for him but us not realizing what he was doing or what it was for," says Charles Wiebe.

Vancouver lawyer Barry Holmes recalls the meeting, where Mitton directed Sharp on the creation of the company.

'Taking actions of undue secrecy is certainly a red flag,' says Dan Zitting of ACL.
Holmes says it is standard practice for lawyers to have their names on their clients' corporate records.

"What the client does with [the company] once the incorporation part is over, who knows?"

A year after Great Northwest was created, a memo alerted Mossack Fonseca that the RCMP were asking questions, alleging Mitton "used Great Northwest Capital Corporation to perpetrate a $2.1 million fraud" against a brokerage firm in the Isle of Man.

That prompted a call to Sharp. At this point, if Sharp didn't see red flags before, police were now alleging fraud.

Notes in Spanish of the conversation say Sharp advised Mossack Fonseca that "in his mind there is no existence of fraud," and this was a civil matter.

Four years later, Mitton pleaded guilty to six counts of fraud, totalling $2.4 million, involving brokers in Canada, U.S. and the Isle of Man.

The judge declared him a "professional swindler" and sentenced him to four years in prison.
Mitton now has more than 110 convictions and was recently arrested in Quebec.
If someone like Mitton can get an overseas account, more oversight is needed, say experts.

"That sort of activity screams red flag and screams investigation necessary," said Dan Zitting, a former auditor who now works with ACL, a Vancouver tech company that helps banks and governments catch fraud.
"If that's the case, it certainly looks really bad` he said.

Reached by phone on April 28, Sharp declined an interview request.
By May 3 the phone number at Corporate House was disconnected.

"This was decided last year when it [Corporate House] stopped maintaining an office, a decision unconnected with your activities," said Sharp in an email to CBC News and the Toronto Star.

"I cannot speak accurately to your various queries as you have provided no evidence regarding events that may or may not have occurred 20 years ago," wrote Sharp.

"Tax planning is a global reality that results from international competition and inefficient governmental regulation … and is legal," said Sharp, who pointed out that stealing a law firm's private files is not.

"When will the thief be revealed?" said Sharp.

A visit to his Melville Street office tower shows the sign on the door now says Lake House Group.
When asked if this was Corporate House, a man said, "Yes, we just changed our name a while ago because Fred would rather be at the lake."
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby Laodicean » Tue May 10, 2016 7:31 pm

Image

Emma Watson named in Panama Papers database
Spokesperson says the actress does not use offshore company for tax or monetary purposes

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/peopl ... 23126.html
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby cptmarginal » Wed May 11, 2016 10:01 am

I am having fun looking through this database, using the website's "filter by country" and "filter by jurisdiction" features and Googling names of officers and entities. I do not doubt that this is but a tiny drop in a black ocean, and am aware of just how significant that context really is. But it is always easy for me to set my reservations and suspicions aside, like with Wikileaks, and actually begin to pore through some of the data. Primarily because it's fun to do but also for the same reasons that, while I remain undecided about Assange and Snowden and a few other things besides, at the same time I always assiduously keep up with all of the actual leaked data and also utilize the Cablegate archive whenever researching American foreign policy history.
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri May 13, 2016 9:56 am

The Real Target of the Panama Papers
By Pepe Escobar

May 13, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - "teleSur " - So this is the way the Panama Papers end. Not with a bang—as in “Putin hiding US$2 billion”; you all remember the original headlines. But with a whimper; everyone lining up to duly access a prosaic database and find out the names of nearly 320,000 entities/offshore companies/trusts/foundations engaged in beautifying the finances of the rich and powerful.

The Soros-financed International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has not exactly fulfilled its mandate of heaping dirt on selected BRICS nations and the odd enemy of imperial interests/values—based on a NSA-style hack of Mossack Fonseca.

So what’s left is for everyone to freely peruse names and addresses of companies in 21 jurisdictions—including Hong Kong and Nevada in the U.S. Yet don't expect to see bank account numbers, phone numbers or compromising emails.

Panama—where no one can flush a toilet without the U.S. government knowing about it—is for suckers; the real elite, connected (or profiting) even indirectly from the real Masters of the Universe and the liquid modernity enablers of top of the line turbo-capitalism use hack-proof Luxembourg, Virgin Islands or Cayman Islands connections – not to mention secure, Empire-based Delaware and Nevada loopholes.

Fictional scenarios, anyway, will continue to prosper, such as the myth the Panama Papers leak came from one John Doe—an “anonymous” whistleblower who allegedly contacted the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and the ICIJ with a mini-manifesto titled “The revolution will be digitized”.

John Doe justified his alleged leak by arguing that tax evasion was one of the great issues of our time, and governments must do more to prevent it. Thus his pledge—"I want to make these crimes public"—as he unloaded 11.5 million files (2.6 terabytes of data), which took over a year to be perused by ICIJ hacks, in absolute secrecy, with no leaks whatsoever.

John Doe is no Daniel Ellsberg or Edward Snowden. Apart from the resignation of Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, prime minister of Iceland, and the offshore trust set up by David Cameron’s Dad, the Panama Papers did not yield anything really groundbreaking, as much as the bombastic headlines in the first four days insisted to demonize powerful players in Russia and China, especially Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Everyone familiar with the inner mechanisms of turbo-capitalism knows how wealthy tax-evading players across the spectrum—in this case helped by Mossack Fonseca—go legally offshore. Of course, this carries the possibility of countless open roads for fraud and/or illicit money laundering.

The G20 has already agreed that the government of each member nation should know who are the real owners of legally registered offshore companies. But implementation, so far, has been negligible. Turbo-finance always trumps parliamentary politics.

Mossack Fonseca insists the whole Panama Papers saga is “based on the theft of confidential information." The ICIJ for its part insists the disclosure is “in the public interest” as “a careful release of basic corporate information,” and not a “data dump.”

Nonsense. It is a data dump. As for the “basic corporate information”, in does not prove anything; the ICIJ itself—in the preface to the latest release—observes that the appearance of particular names and companies on the list does not imply wrongdoing.

ICIJ hacks used Nuix—an Australian computer forensics and IT investigation software—to sift through the data. But, crucially, the decisions by mainstream media organs on what to publish first, and how to edit the information, were purely political.

Public opinion in the global South immediately noted the absence of Americans. Of course; Americans in the know use the Caymans and the Virgin Islands, as well as Delaware and Nevada, not Panama. Still, the ICIJ now has to resort to lame excuses, such as “Mossack Fonseca’s working relationships with dozens of Americans tied to financial misconduct raises questions about how well the firm keeps its commitment to following international standards for preventing money laundering and keeping offshore companies out of the hands of criminal elements.”

This has absolutely nothing to do with “international standards for preventing money laundering." If you know how to it—ask HSBC—or if you have the right connections, you get away with it.

What this is all about is one more chapter in an intra-system hardcore financial war. To have the ICIJ remote-controlled by Soros, the Ford Foundation, the CIA itself, is a beauty. And obfuscation—as in informative selectiveness—works wonders; remember the initial emphasis on “axis of evil” characters, old—as in connected to former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—and new (Putin, relatives of Xi Jinping).

The heart of the matter is that the Panama Papers disclosure didn’t disturb the global financial casino one bit, because the (transnational) system badly needs fiscal paradises to evade national laws. What the Panama Papers may succeed in is to eliminate competition. From now on, your fiscal paradise of choice must be in U.S., U.K. and Dutch jurisdictions. We control every global financial flow—legal or otherwise. Defy us—or else.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby Elihu » Wed Jun 01, 2016 12:31 pm

Any of those plucky local DA'S taken down a whale yet? Bwaaaaaa

"We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it"

Maybe nex time yall
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby Nordic » Wed Jun 01, 2016 12:53 pm

I think it was literally an advertisement to launder and hide your money in the US. Seems pretty clear.
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Aug 05, 2016 11:00 pm

Panama Papers: Joseph Stiglitz quits as government adviser

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has quit an advisory panel to Panama’s government set up after the Panama Papers scandal.

Some 11.5m documents, leaked from Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, revealed huge offshore tax evasion.



But Mr Stiglitz and and Swiss anti-corruption expert Mark Pieth, who also quit, said government interference in their work amounted to “censorship”.

The seven-person panel also included Panamanian experts.

“I thought the government was more committed, but obviously they’re not,” Mr Stiglitz told Reuters news agency. “It’s amazing how they tried to undermine us.”



http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36992729
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby RocketMan » Sat Aug 06, 2016 12:43 pm

seemslikeadream » Sat Aug 06, 2016 6:00 am wrote:Panama Papers: Joseph Stiglitz quits as government adviser

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has quit an advisory panel to Panama’s government set up after the Panama Papers scandal.

Some 11.5m documents, leaked from Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, revealed huge offshore tax evasion.



But Mr Stiglitz and and Swiss anti-corruption expert Mark Pieth, who also quit, said government interference in their work amounted to “censorship”.

The seven-person panel also included Panamanian experts.

“I thought the government was more committed, but obviously they’re not,” Mr Stiglitz told Reuters news agency. “It’s amazing how they tried to undermine us.”



http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36992729


The Guardian has this little additional tidbit from another committee member:

“I have had a close look at the so called Panama Papers and I must admit that, even as an expert on economic and organised crime, I was amazed to see so much of what we talk about in theory was confirmed in practice,” Pieth said.

In the paper he said he found evidence of crimes such as money laundering for child prostitution rings.

Stiglitz said the remaining five members of the committee may stop work on the probe as well, and that it is now up to the international community to pressure Panama to improve transparency.

“We’re being asked to do this as a courtesy for them and we’re paraded in front of the world media first,” said Pieth, a criminal law professor at Basel University. “Then we’re told to shut up when they don’t like it.”


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... -of-report
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby backtoiam » Sat Aug 06, 2016 4:24 pm

So i'm assuming this is a huge extortion shakedown from the usual global mafia or what? I have not followed it that close.
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby JackRiddler » Sat Aug 06, 2016 4:33 pm

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN10G24Z
Fri Aug 5, 2016 | 8:01 PM EDT
Exclusive: Stiglitz quits Panama Papers probe, cites lack of transparency

By Hugh Bronstein and Gram Slattery | BUENOS AIRES
(Reuters) - The committee set up to investigate lack of transparency in Panama's financial system itself lacks transparency, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz told Reuters on Friday after resigning from the "Panama Papers" commission.

The leak in April of more than 11.5 million documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, dubbed the "Panama Papers," detailed financial information from offshore accounts and potential tax evasion by the rich and powerful.

Stiglitz and Swiss anti-corruption expert Mark Pieth joined a seven-member commission tasked with probing Panama's notoriously opaque financial system, but they say they found the government unwilling to back an open investigation.

Both quit the group on Friday after they say Panama refused to guarantee the committee's report would be made public.

"I thought the government was more committed, but obviously they're not," Stiglitz said. "It's amazing how they tried to undermine us."

The Panamanian government defended the committee's "autonomous" management in a statement issued later on Friday, and while it said it regretted the resignations of Stiglitz and Pieth, it chalked them up to unspecified "internal differences."

Panama's President Juan Carlos Varela said in April that the independent commission would review the country's financial and legal practices.

In its first full meeting of the investigative committee in New York on June 4-5, there was consensus that the government of Panama needed to commit to making the final report public, whatever its findings, Stiglitz and Pieth said.

But they said they got a letter from the government last week backing off from its commitment to making the committee's finding public.

"We can only infer that the government is facing pressure from those who are making profits from the current non-transparent financial system in Panama," Stiglitz said.

Commission member Alberto Aleman, former administrator of the Panama Canal, rejected assertions that the committee lacked transparency, and said the five remaining members, four of which are Panamanian, would continue their work.

"The report has to be delivered to the president of Panama, and then the president of Panama will decide when and how it will be made public," he said.

The Panama Papers cover a period of almost 40 years, from 1977 until December 2015, and show that some companies set up in tax havens with the help of Mossack Fonseca may have been used for money laundering, arms and drug deals as well as tax evasion.

In addition to embarrassing leaders worldwide who had interests tied to secretive business concerns, the leak heaped pressure on Panama, well-known for its lax financial laws, to clean up its act.

"I have had a close look at the so called Panama Papers, and I must admit that even as an expert on economic and organized crime, I was amazed to see so much of what we talk about in theory was confirmed in practice," Pieth said in a telephone interview.

In the papers he said he found evidence of crimes such as money laundering for child prostitution rings.

"We're being asked to do this as a courtesy for them and we're paraded in front of the world media first, and then we're told to shut up when they don't like it," Pieth, a criminal law professor at Basel University, said.

(Additional reporting by Elida Moreno in Panama City and Rosalba O'Brien in Santiago; Editing by Bernard Orr)
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 10, 2016 5:21 pm

Panama Papers: the role of Western secrecy jurisdictions in looting Africa
NOVEMBER 10, 2016
This blog comes from Johannesburg, South Africa, where investigative journalists from 28 countries are sharing their work at the African Investigative Journalism Conference. One session looked at stories dug out from the Panama Papers leak from offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca and investigations which have revealed a colourful mix of characters involved in looting

The stories uncovered include a mafia lawyer linked to the film The French Connection, an absentee landowning Russian oligarch, plus, of course, a former politician, and a “millionaire receptionist” who denies knowledge of having owned nine offshore companies registered in the British Virgin Islands.
The common factor in all these stories is the role of offshore secrecy jurisdictions populated by western banks, western lawyers, western accounting firms, and protected by leading western nations like the United Kingdom, which even as I write is vigorously trying to protect its Crown Dependencies from attempts to crack down on offshore secrecy.
Unsurprisingly the British Virgin Islands – a British overseas territory – feature heavily, as does Switzerland.
The story of the “millionaire receptionist” Letitia Diergaardt, covered by The Namibian newspaper, provides fascinating insights into the duplicity of offshore secrecy. Diergaardt works as a receptionist/clerk in Windhoek, Namibia. Yet according to The Namibian she technically owns or owned nine offshore companies registered in the British Virgin Islands. However, as The Namibian reports, she denies all knowledge of owning these companies, which were registered in the BVI between 13th and 25th April 2007.
Apparently unknown to her, Diergaardt’s identity was used to provide a nominee shareholder for all nine companies. As The Namibian dryly notes: “on face value, the use of her name in these companies is to represent hidden owners . . “
Secretive shell companies are a core part of the secrecy jurisdiction offer. They provide immunity from criminal investigation and prosecution. They are the ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card for crooks and their enablers. Secretive shell companies allow nominee owners to front for those known as the ‘ultimate beneficial owners’, as The Namibian comments:
“The secretive offshore industry relies on a network of individuals whose names are used on official records as directors, company secretaries and shareholders. Often, the real owners who call the shots remain invisible, hiding behind dummy directors, who are only owners of these companies on paper.”
Yet despite all the evidence of abuse of offshore companies registered in Road Town, the British Virgin Islands government persists in blocking moves to make a registry of ultimate beneficial ownership available to public scrutiny. In Jersey, another British tax haven, the authorities refuse to make company ownership information available to investigative journalists by claiming that a public registry would “lead to fraud and cybercrime.”
Let’s be frank. For all their pious words about wanting to crack down on corrupt practices, western governments remain deeply implicated in facilitating the looting of Africa.
As Shinovene Immanuel from The Namibian told this blogger earlier today:
“The West must help Africa by locking the doors through which the money flows, and the West must also pull up their socks to make these offshore companies more transparent. If Western countries want to help developing countries, they must stop standing in the way of investigating corrupt business practices.”
http://www.taxjustice.net/2016/11/10/pa ... ng-africa/
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Dec 03, 2016 1:18 pm

Panama Papers have had historic global effects — and the impacts keep coming
The investigation has produced an almost daily drumbeat of regulatory moves, follow-up stories and calls by politicians and activists for more action to combat offshore financial secrecy

By Will Fitzgibbon 5:00 am, December 1, 2016 Updated: 5:01 am, December 1, 2016

Police raided Mossack Fonseca's El Salvador offices in April. Víctor Peña / El Faro

On April 7, 14 large blue letters quietly disappeared from the outer walls of an office building in an exclusive neighborhood in northern San Salvador.

One by one, the letters came down from the blue and beige stucco walls, leaving behind faint traces of the name of the law firm that had been working there just days before:

M-O-S-S-A-C-K-F-O-N-S-E-C-A.

Employees of the El Salvador branch of Mossack Fonseca, the Panama-headquartered law firm whose leaked files have formed the basis of thousands of news reports exposing the secrets of the offshore financial industry, claimed it was a scheduled relocation.

Salvadoran authorities suspected something else was going on.

Just the day before, they had announced an investigation into citizens who had done business with the law firm. They worried that evidence might be destroyed. So the afternoon after the signage vanished, policemen — some hooded in black balaclavas, wearing soccer jerseys and with handguns holstered at their waists — swept through Mossack Fonseca’s workplace.

Salvadoran police and the country’s General Prosecutor seized 20 computers. Authorities live-tweeted the action as officers invaded the law office.

The raid of Mossack Fonseca’s El Salvador office was one of hundreds of official reactions to Panama Papers — a mix of investigations, fines, high-profile resignations, police raids, arrests, national legal reforms and international conclaves.

Government officials and activists expect the developments to continue for years to come as outrage fueled by Panama Papers revelations drives politicians and citizens alike to bring light to a shadow financial system that, for decades, has resisted reform.

Since the Panama Papers broke in early April, hundreds of journalists from dozens of countries who collaborated on the investigation have published more than 4,700 news stories based on Mossack Fonseca, the globe-spanning law firm that has created hard-to-trace shell companies for corporations, politicians and fraudsters.

The responses to the Panama Papers revelations began immediately after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other media partners began releasing their first stories at 2:00 p.m. U.S. Eastern Daylight Time April 3. #PanamaPapers became the No. 1 topic on Twitter. Thousands of protestors marched in streets in every continent except Antarctica. Throngs threw cultured yogurt in Iceland and rocks in Pakistan.

As a result, more than one-third of all nations — at least 79 so far — have announced 150 inquiries, audits or investigations by police, customs, financial crime and mafia prosecutors, judges and courts, tax authorities, parliaments and corporate reviews, according to global media reports and official statements. Thousands of taxpayers and companies are under investigation. Legislatures from Ireland to Mongolia to Panama have rushed through laws to strengthen weaknesses pinpointed by the media partnership’s reporting. Governments have already reported recouping tens of millions of dollars in taxes on previously undeclared funds.

Across four continents, police have raided warehouses, offices and homes. Government officials in three countries have resigned, including a prime minister and an energy and industry minister. Business executives and attorneys are behind bars awaiting criminal trials in the Middle East, Europe and Latin America. In El Salvador, where authorities raided Mossack Fonseca’s office, no criminal charges have been filed, but investigations continue.

The reaction hasn’t ended since the initial wave of responses in April. Panama Papers has produced an almost daily drumbeat of regulatory or legislative moves, follow-up news stories and calls by politicians and activists for more investigation and more action.

In May, the U.S. Treasury and Justice departments proposed a series of new laws and rules that would make it easier for law enforcement authorities and financial regulators to track dirty money inside and outside the United States.

Treasury officials, for example, proposed creating a national corporate ownership registry that could be used by investigators to pull back the veil of secrecy in Delaware, Nevada and other states that allow shell companies created within their borders to hide their owners’ identities and activities. Justice officials’ proposals include measures that would make it easier for prosecutors to force foreign banks to turn over records of their account holders and to use classified information in “kleptocracy” investigations involving high-ranking foreign officials.

A fact sheet from the White House said Panama Papers “has brought the issues of illicit financial activity and tax evasion into the spotlight. The Panama Papers underscore the importance of the efforts the United States has taken domestically, and the efforts we have undertaken with our international partners, to address these shared challenges.”

In October, Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon and ranking member of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, wrote to the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service to demand information on what, if anything, the agencies had gathered from the Panama Papers database that had been made public by ICIJ and its media partners.

“News reports surrounding the release of the ‘Panama Papers’ highlighted the opaque dealings of anonymous shell companies around the world,” Wyden wrote, noting his concern about the use of offshore companies “as vehicles for tax evasion or possible money laundering.”

In November, Europol, Europe’s law enforcement agency, revealed that it had found 3,469 probable matches to organized crime, tax fraud and other criminality from the Panama Papers database to information in its own files. Out of those matches, 116 related to Europol’s project on Islamic terrorism, codenamed Hydra.

“The main point here is that we can link companies from the Panama Papers leak not only with economic crimes like money laundering,” said Europol’s head of financial intelligence, Simon Riondet, “but also with terrorism, Russian OCGs [Organized Crime Groups], drug trafficking, human trafficking, illegal immigration, [and] cybercrime.”

Two world leaders, in Argentina and Pakistan, remain ensnared in public scandals and ongoing probes related to the Panama Papers. In Argentina, a federal prosecutor is examining President Mauricio Macri’s directorship of a Bahamian company that he had failed to include in public financial disclosures when he was mayor of Buenos Aires. Pakistan’s Supreme Court is currently hearing a petition brought by the political opposition against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose children owned real estate in London through companies created by Mossack Fonseca, documents in the Panama Papers show. The opposition has accused the prime minister of failing to disclose the family’s offshore connections and of laundering money abroad to pay for the properties. Sharif and his family deny any wrongdoing.

“Panama Papers certainly rocked the transparency world,” said Porter McConnell, director of the Washington D.C.-based Financial Transparency Coalition. “The sheer size of the investigation, coupled with the number of high-profile individuals implicated, helped keep the issue of hidden company ownership on the agenda. No government wants to be the next Panama.”

Financial hits: ‘Enormous’ impact

Over the past eight months, governments have reported using Panama Papers to help recoup or seize tens of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes or other assets, including more than $80 million in Colombia, $1 million in Slovenia and 375 pounds of silver bullion in Australia. Billions more are being traced for potential tax evasion.

Household-name corporations also have suffered due to the fallout from the media partnership’s reporting. The Panama Papers wiped out $135 billion of the value of nearly 400 publicly traded companies with direct exposure to the Panama Papers, academics found. “The impact is enormous,” said Hannes Wagner, associate professor of finance at Milan’s Bocconi University and one of the study’s authors.

According to Wagner, the financial hits to the companies in the wake of Panama Papers represent the largest loss in history following big data leaks or corporate scandals, greater than the combined market cap losses produced by the scandals that hit Enron and Volkswagen.

Companies with links to the Panama Papers suffered bigger losses after the project’s release than companies without links to the Panama Papers. While the study does not identify the companies, an ICIJ review of share price movements of randomly-selected corporations with ties to the Panama Papers reveal that the Swiss commodities giant Glencore and Britain’s HSBC Holdings Plc experienced drops in share price following the release of Panama Papers and the accompanying database. Glencore International AG appears as a client of Mossack Fonseca. HSBC affiliates were among the most active banks to request offshore companies for clients from the law firm.

According to the academics, the drop in value suggests that investors believe companies will have a harder time avoiding taxes in the future or may be hit by fines for tax evasion.

Nordea, Scandinavia’s biggest lending bank, admitted that it fell “clearly below” its own standards in many instances of identifying risky customers and potential crimes such as money laundering following an internal audit prompted by Panama Papers. The bank blocked 68 suspicious accounts but claimed to find no evidence it actively helped tax evasion.

Some of the world’s largest financial institutions have formed Panama Papers response teams, according to a survey by consultancy firm KPMG. Several have set up full-time taskforces with ten employees or more, the survey found.

National responses: Legislation and investigations

From micro nations such as the Cook Islands, whose entire population is smaller than that of Ferguson, Missouri, to India, the world’s second most populous country, individual governments are responding aggressively to the Panama Papers.

The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York launched criminal inquires relating to the Panama Papers. The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. prosecutors were digging into whether Mossack Fonseca employees “knowingly helped its clients launder money or evade taxes.” The Journal reported that sources familiar with the investigation said prosecutors were considering criminal charges that could include conspiracies to launder money, dodge taxes, and cover up bribes to foreign officials.

Mossack Fonseca has denied any misconduct and says the firm “has never been accused or charged in connection with criminal wrongdoing.”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew wrote to Congress in May to say that “we must ensure that the United States can live up to its end of the bargain” in the fight against global tax evasion. Among the new rules his agency announced was a requirement that it said would strengthen the obligations of banks, securities dealers and other firms to verify the identities of the real owners of financial accounts.

Taiwan’s legislative assembly used the Panama Papers to adopt new tax avoidance rules. In July the assembly introduced restrictions on benefits enjoyed by Taiwanese companies that keep profits offshore. New Zealand’s government launched an inquiry into the country’s foreign trust rules after revelations the country’s clean reputation was being used as cover for selling tax avoidance vehicles. In July, the government accepted the inquiry’s recommendations and announced new legislation.

In October, following revelations from the Panama Papers that some former and current government officials held offshore companies, Mongolia’s Parliament debated a bill to penalize politicians and public servants who do not declare offshore financial interests.

“The issue you launched has set the public agenda and is officially becoming a law. Congratulations!” Enkhbayar Battumur, Mongolia’s deputy justice minister, tweeted to MongolTV, one of the partners in the Panama Papers, after the Mongolian cabinet met to discuss the proposed law.

The same month, Panama’s Parliament passed laws to toughen bookkeeping requirements for offshore companies and to allow Panama to share tax information with other countries — a win for foreign governments that have pressed the Central American nation for years to disclose what their citizens are holding offshore. Lebanon, another offshore financial center, also passed legislation in October to ease the exchange of tax information with other countries in an effort to avoid international blacklisting in the post-Panama Papers world.

Also in October, Ireland’s finance minister cited the Panama Papers in proposing a new criminal law addressing tax evasion. In November, Germany’s finance minister introduced legislation — nicknamed “the Panama Law” — that would increase penalties for tax evasion and enforce disclosure of Germans’ business relationships with shell companies.

Tax probes: Thousands under scrutiny

Officials in many countries are also taking direct action against citizens suspected of having used offshore entities to reduce their tax bills.

Governments are investigating more than 6,500 taxpayers and companies, according to ICIJ and dozens of its media partners who assembled responses from government agencies and public statements.

In November alone, governments in Iceland, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, India and Pakistan announced probes of nearly 1,300 taxpayers for potential tax evasion.

In Iceland, more than 100 tax cases are under review and 46 cases of potential tax evasion have been referred to prosecutors, according to media reports. Authorities have conducted more than a dozen raids. British authorities revealed that 22 people are under civil and criminal investigations for tax evasion and that the offshore dealings of 43 other wealthy Britons are under review. Companies and properties in the United Kingdom are also being scrutinized as part of an unspecified financial sanctions inquiry, the government announced. Canada’s Revenue Authority announced 85 Canadians linked to Panama Papers were under investigation for tax evasion.

France’s Ministry of Finance announced it was auditing 560 taxpayers. India’s special Panama Papers taskforce said it was probing the offshore affairs of 415 Indians, making it the country’s largest-ever tax inquiry, The Indian Express reported. In neighboring Pakistan, The News reported that 20 Pakistanis have been identified by the Federal Board of Revenue as not filing tax returns during the same period they appear linked to companies set up by Mossack Fonseca.

Resignations: Officials and executives

Top officials had varied reactions to the news they’d been tied to the Panama Papers through their own offshore holdings or holdings linked to their families and associates. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman dismissed revelations about the offshore financial maneuvers by people and companies tied to Putin as a distorted “information attack” against Russia.

Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson had the bad luck of having his first reaction caught on video by a TV crew. “I’m starting to feel a bit strange about these questions because it’s like you are accusing me of something,” he said, before walking out of the interview.

Video of his fumbling response to questions about an offshore company he and his wife had owned was replayed millions of times around the world.

Within 48 hours, angry protests and political pressure had forced Gunnlaugsson step down as prime minister.

Other government and corporate officials soon followed his example.

Mihran Poghosyan, Armenia’s top bailiff, known as the chief compulsory enforcement officer, resigned after initially rejecting revelations that he held shares in three companies set up by Mossack Fonseca. A criminal investigation continues.

José Manuel Soria, Spain’s minister for industry, energy and tourism, held on for five days before he, too, left his post. Soria initially denied any offshore connection but later acknowledged his family’s role in a company in the United Kingdom. In resigning, Soria denied wrongdoing but cited “a succession of errors” in his response to the issue.

The head of a state-owned bank in Austria, Hypo Landesbank Voralberg, resigned after the bank was cited in reports about the Panama Papers. In the Netherlands, a member of the supervisory board of the country’s third-largest bank, ABN Amro, resigned after Dutch journalists reported his ties to an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands.

Juan Pedro Damiani, Uruguayan lawyer and member of FIFA’s ethics committee, resigned from the panel in the wake of reports that he had business dealings with three men who have been indicted in the world soccer body’s corruption scandal. A Finnish company fired its sales manager in response to revelations he may have helped launder Russian money through a Panamanian shell company.

A firm under fire: Authorities target Mossack Fonseca

On Oct. 5, Ramón Fonseca, one of the founders of the law firm at the heart of the Panama Papers affair, visited Momi, a bakery in Panama City known for its empanadas and cupcakes. Fonseca, a lawyer, award-winning novelist and former advisor to Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela, wanted to mark a special occasion.

“Bought a cake to celebrate six months since the hacking of my firm without even one case in the world brought against us,” Fonseca tweeted.

Despite his good cheer on that day, his 40-year-old law firm, Mossack Fonseca, has not emerged unscathed amid the scrutiny of its clients and its practices.

Panamanian officials have defended their country by deflecting attention back on Fonseca’s firm, telling journalists that the Panama Papers aren’t about Panama; they’re about Mossack Fonseca.

In October, speaking in Munich to reporters at Süddeutsche Zeitung, President Varela said Fonseca, his former advisor, “will have to take responsibility for his actions — and ultimately face the judge.”​

Panama’s banking regulators and securities commission are conducting audits and Panama Attorney General Kenia Porcell is investigating whether Mossack Fonseca facilitated or promoted illegal activities. Her office raided Mossack Fonseca’s headquarters twice in April, on one occasion carrying away trash bags filled with shredded paper. In September, a Panamanian judge rejected Mossack Fonseca’s claim that the raids directed by the country’s special prosecutor for organized crime, Javier Caraballo, were unlawful.

Porcell’s office says authorities have made 16 on-site visits and more than 500 requests to financial institutions and law firms as part of its investigation.

Panama has fielded and sent 21 requests for help and legal assistance relating to the Panama Papers from a dozen countries since April, including Mexico, Guatemala, Switzerland, Ukraine, Senegal and Germany. Panamanian officials have met with prosecutors and diplomats from nine countries since April to assist with investigations, including a meeting with U.S. officials in September.

As the pressure has grown, Mossack Fonseca’s offices around the world have also come under fire.

Nine Mossack Fonseca offices, in the British dependencies of Jersey, Isle of Man and Gibraltar, Peru, São Paolo in Brazil, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Lugano, Switzerland, and Nevada, have shuttered, according to media reports and corporate registries.

In Nevada, officials fined the law firm’s Las Vegas branch $10,000 for failing to maintain adequate paperwork. In Wyoming, state officials fined Mossack Fonseca’s branch in Cheyenne $9,600, charging that the office had shown an “obvious disregard for the law” and “completely failed to perform” its duty to keep records on the people behind any of the Wyoming companies that it represented.

Authorities in the British Virgin Islands hit Mossack Fonseca with a $31,500 fine in April and then another $440,000 penalty in November for 14 violations that faulted weak anti-money laundering and terrorist financing controls. It is the largest fine in the BVI’s history for a registered agent.

Arrests: From Venezuela to Israel

One former Mossack Fonseca representative, Venezuelan attorney Jeannette Almeida, is being held inside a military prison in the capital, Caracas, awaiting trial on charges of violating banking laws.

Her family maintains that she is being scapegoated, telling Venezuelan news website La Patilla that she was just the lawyer who created offshore companies for clients, but not the owner of them. Almeida is detained, the family’s lawyer said in an interview, while “the real people connected with the case” have gone unpunished.

Venezuelan police also arrested the mother and brother of Adrián Velásquez, a former bodyguard of former president Hugo Chávez. Velásquez became the director of an offshore company created by Mossack Fonseca four days after the election of the current president, Nicolás Maduro.

Venezuela’s Public Ministry announced that authorities arrested Velasquez’s relatives at an airport and had seized cars, motorcycles and empty jewelry boxes. Velásquez and his wife, a former head of the national treasury office and a nurse who tended to the cancer-stricken Chávez before he died in March 2013, live in the Dominican Republic. Velásquez’s mother and brother have since been released.

In Uruguay, authorities arrested 11 people in April in the wake of reports linking the brother of one of Mexico’s richest drug lords to two offshore companies set up by Mossack Fonseca. In Israel, two investment and foreign exchange executives were arrested on suspicion of not declaring hundreds of thousands of dollars held offshore. The arrests are the first from the tax authority’s investigations into the Panama Papers.

In November, British crime agencies arrested three employees of major banks in what U.K. media reported to be the country’s largest-ever insider-trading scandal. Authorities have not commented on the news, although the arrests came days after the government disclosed that the Panama Papers were being used to investigate a “major insider-trading operation.”

Cross-border actions: ‘Get on this’

Two days after the first Panama Papers reports made news, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an inter-governmental body that leads the global tax debate, called an emergency meeting in Paris.

Mark Konza, Australia’s deputy commissioner of taxation, chaired the gathering of tax officials from 35 countries.

Konza says that the after the Panama Papers broke, his boss told him simply: “Mark, you need to get on this.”

“The next night I was on a plane to Paris for 24 hours, and I pretty much walked straight into the conference room,” Konza recalls. The room was packed with 80 people. One by one, representatives gave status reports on what they knew or didn’t know about Panama Papers.

“The main impression I got was that everyone was under pressure from political circles to do something and reassure the community that these matters would be dealt with,” Konza said.

Since then, many governments across the world have taken action.

The European Parliament agreed in June to set up a 65-member committee to investigate potential money laundering and tax cheating.

“The Panama revelations have shown that it is too easy to hide behind such complex structures,” European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said in proposing a European blacklist of tax havens to be released in 2017.

Also in June, the United Kingdom delivered on its 2013 promise to create a public register of the owners of companies. At a global anti-corruption summit the month before in London, in which the Panama Papers featured prominently, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Afghanistan committed to do the same and join a growing list, according to a tally by the Financial Transparency Coalition.

The way forward: ‘Readiness to act’

As the after-affects from the Panama Papers continue, governments and advocates warn that progress isn’t assured – and that it will take a long battle to bring lasting change.

Some governments have taken reform off the table entirely. Seven of the 10 countries in which current or former heads of state were named in Panama Papers, have remained silent or refused to open inquiries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Ukraine, where the parliament rejected a proposal to create a commission of inquiry.

“Some governments have made welcome new commitments to transparency, while others have shrugged it off,” the Financial Transparency Coalition’s McConnell said. “Until basic financial transparency measures become the norm worldwide, I worry that we’ll be in a perpetual cycle of making policy via leaks.”

Still, advocates hope that public pressure, stoked by Panama Papers, will force governments to fight for a global solution to the problems posed by offshore secrecy.

“For decades, everyone has known about tax havens and our elected officials have tolerated it,” said Alfred de Zayas, a United Nations human rights expert who recently released a report about the impacts of tax avoidance and financial secrecy on human rights. Now, in the wake of the Panama Papers, the governments and international organizations are taking the issue more seriously, de Zayas believes.

“I am optimistic,” he said. “For the first time, I do sense there’s a certain readiness to act.”
https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/12 ... 7b244fa990
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Feb 11, 2017 5:29 pm

Panama arrests partners in Mossack-Fonseca firm
Prosecutors in Panama say they've formally arrested the partners of a law firm involved in last year's "Panama Papers" scandal, in which thousands of pages of documents related to offshore accounts were leaked

Feb. 11, 2017, at 3:45 p.m.

Panama arrests partners in Mossack-Fonseca firm

The Associated Press
Prosecutors in Panama said on Saturday, Feb. 11, 2017 they’ve formally arrested the two partners of the Mossack-Fonseca law firm involved in last year’s "Panama Papers" scandal, in which thousands of pages of documents related to offshore accounts were leaked. The arrests are for money laundering related to another scandal involving bribes paid by the Brazilian company Odebrecht.


Prosecutors in Panama say they've formally arrested the partners of a law firm involved in last year's "Panama Papers" scandal, in which thousands of pages of documents related to offshore accounts were leaked.

The arrests announced Saturday are related to another scandal involving bribes paid by the Brazilian company Odebrecht.

Ramon Fonseca Mora and Jurgen Mossack are partners at the Mossack-Fonseca firm. Officials pulled them in for questioning on Thursday and formally detained them following two days of interrogations.

The Attorney General's Office has searched the firm's offices, accusing them of setting up offshore accounts that allowed a Brazilian construction company to funnel bribes to various countries.

The two face charges of money laundering.

Odebrecht has acknowledged paying $800 million in bribes across Latin America.
http://www.usnews.com/news/business/art ... nseca-firm
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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