Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by 82_28 » Wed Apr 06, 2016 10:44 am
by semper occultus » Wed Apr 06, 2016 10:49 am
smiths » 06 Apr 2016 08:56 wrote:Fourthly, 80% of this thread is dominated by a handful of fuckheads that are totally wasting everybody's time and bandwidth – grow the fuck up
by Wombaticus Rex » Wed Apr 06, 2016 10:53 am
You won't necessarily have to rely on a government to haul in the miscreants - if they are exposed as juggling too much to bear, "the markets" will respond.
by coffin_dodger » Wed Apr 06, 2016 12:22 pm
Panama Papers: PM 'won't gain from offshore funds in future' - No 10
BBC News 06 Apr 2014
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35977340
Downing Street has been forced to further clarify David Cameron's financial affairs after questions about his family's tax arrangements.
No 10 said there were "no offshore trusts or funds" that the prime minister or his immediate family would benefit from "in future".
"Mr Cameron, his wife and his children "do not benefit from any offshore trusts"
by Luther Blissett » Wed Apr 06, 2016 12:23 pm
seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 05, 2016 6:35 pm wrote:Panama Papers: Why Aren’t There More American Names?
…There are several reasons why the United States might not have been a major source of clients for the Panamanian law firm, relatively speaking. Perhaps it deliberately avoided having a large presence in the United States, so as not to attract the attention of U.S. authorities. Or perhaps there was too much competition. An article published in The Economist in 2012 pointed out that the business of setting up shell companies in tax havens is competitive and includes a number of well-established firms, such as the Hong Kong-based Offshore Incorporations Ltd., the Isle of Man-based OCRA Worldwide, and Morgan & Morgan, of Panama. In other words, wealthy Americans have many options for structuring their offshore holdings.
…
by Iamwhomiam » Wed Apr 06, 2016 12:45 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 06, 2016 1:48 pm
APRIL 6, 2016
The Panama Papers Problem
by MARGARET KIMBERLEY
The Panama tax haven leaks reveal a lot about the lawlessness of the rich, as well as the ideological bias of the western press. “Vladimir Putin’s name appears nowhere, but the corporate media used his image repeatedly to drum up interest in what is an otherwise newsworthy story.” Americans are conspicuous by their absence from the story. That’s because rich people in the U.S. can avoid taxes “legally in Wyoming, Delaware or Nevada.”
The worst criminals on earth are not the poor who sit behind bars in jails and prisons. The biggest thieves are found among the rich. The 1% can buy legislation, politicians and the media to carry out and hide their dirty work. If they can’t change the laws to benefit themselves in their homelands they simply send their money elsewhere through shell holding companies. This transfer of wealth, much of it diverted from what ought to be tax payments, is an open secret. Panama, the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Luxembourg and Switzerland are known for securing the money and secrets of the rich and the well connected.
The leak of 11.5 million documents from the Panama based Mossack Fonseca law firm brings into the light of day what was long known but passively accepted. Now the facts are in the open but the way in which the revelations are reported is questionable and taints an important story.
The documents now known as the Panama Papers were leaked to the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) who then shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). ICIJ is a non-profit but with its own problematic origins. It is funded in part by the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundation, Kellogg Foundation and the Rockefeller Family Fund. ICIJ then worked with journalists around the world including from the Guardian and the McClatchy newspaper chain. They in turn will decide what will be kept secret and what will be shared with the public. The goal of revealing secrets instead turns into a plan to keep more secrets and to tarnish certain reputations based on bias and mysterious criteria.
The Panama Papers show that the heads of state of Ukraine, Iceland, Argentina, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates all held shell holding company accounts in different tax haven locations. Vladimir Putin’s name appears nowhere but the corporate media used his image repeatedly to drum up interest in what is an otherwise newsworthy story. There are Russians who have used Mossack Fonseca services and three of them have close ties to Putin. Guilt by association and innuendo follow instead of disinterested reporting of pertinent facts.
While the corporate media happily do the work of imperialism, Russia is making good on its promise to kick ISIS out of Syria. The liberation of the ancient Syrian city Palmyra should have garnered Putin as much press attention as the Panama story. But the United States and NATO have still not abandoned their goal of regime change in Syria. They were ready to let ISIS fight Assad and do the job for them. While they pretend to drive ISIS out of Syria the Russians are actually getting the job done. If the corporate media want to cover Putin, that development provides an excellent opportunity for them to do so.
While news outlets ranging from the Guardian to the New York Times do their best to connect Putin to the Mossack Fonseca scandal without evidence, the prime minister of the United Kingdom and the president of Ukraine are directly involved. David Cameron’s late father is among those mentioned in the Mossack Fonseca trove. Simply put, he established an offshore account to hide the family fortune. The goal of the scheme was as simple as it is devious: keep Cameron family money and the prime minister’s inheritance from being taxed.
The president of Ukraine is yet another thief. When Petro Poroshenko came to office after the 2014 anti-Russian coup he promised to cease playing any role in the operations of his confection company. That business made him a wealthy man with an estimated $800 million personal fortune. Instead he opened an offshore account in the British Virgin Islands to avoid paying taxes.
The media already knew that Poroshenko is richer than many of the Russian oligarchs they obsessively cover and they know that Ukraine is a failed state. They know that Ukraine owes Russia $3 billion and they know that the IMF violated its own rules in not making them pay up.
It is a good thing that the corruption of the world’s elites has been revealed. But as Wikileakspoints out, all the documents must be released so that there is transparency available to all and an adherence to journalistic standards.
Hopefully, the proof of worldwide corruption will spur protest and opposition to a system which gives the masses nothing except more inequality. The people of Iceland didn’t wait to be told what to do. Thousands took to the streets and forced their prime minister to resign within three days of the story being published.
It is interesting but not at all mysterious that there are no Americans named in the Mossack Fonseca documents. The reason is simple. U.S. law so clearly favors the rich that they have no need to go offshore to form shell corporations. They can do so legally in Wyoming, Delaware or Nevada. Rich people everywhere know it too. No need to go to Panama or Switzerland. The U.S. is now the best tax haven on the planet. Hopefully the corporate media will decide to cover that story too.
by zangtang » Wed Apr 06, 2016 2:05 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 06, 2016 2:23 pm
by JackRiddler » Wed Apr 06, 2016 2:28 pm
zangtang » Wed Apr 06, 2016 1:05 pm wrote:I have assumed that this is the purpose (on the understanding this was/is an US intel job)
- drive, like a global round-up, all the tax havenly chicanery onshore, into the U.S.
or is that blindingly obvious?
by JackRiddler » Wed Apr 06, 2016 2:29 pm
by Belligerent Savant » Wed Apr 06, 2016 3:45 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 06, 2016 5:15 pm
JackRiddler » Tue Apr 05, 2016 11:39 pm wrote:It really is deja vu all over again. Same stuff being said without corroboration as with the Wikileaks release of the SIPRNET cables back in what, early 2011? Now, ironically, Assange himself is talking the trash, and the fact is the SIPRNET cables only went full-out and searcheable because Nick Davies fucked up and published the password in his fucking book!
All this could be true, sure - "dark forces" says China. Last time if I remember it was Russia claiming "dark forces" behind Assange. No I'm getting it the wrong way around - it was Brzezinski claiming it must be an intel agency, suggesting the Russians as the suspects if I remember.
And this bit about "only a drop in the bucket." It's just like the complaints about how the SIPRNET cables didn't have CIA stuff in them, or the proof of 9/11 as inside job. They were only a drop in the bucket, etc. etc. Never mind that they illuminated how the system actually worked (and undermined it). Never mind that they indicated much more than they show, just as the MF files will if enough of them is brought out.
This is a networked universe and plenty of the biggest and worst players won't just be making use of only one offshore shell-fixing company. If HSBC, UBS and Societe are getting exposed by this, it won't end up being only for whatever they did with MF, that will indeed be only one of several entities they use for managing thousands of shells... let's wait and see! You won't necessarily have to rely on a government to haul in the miscreants - if they are exposed as juggling too much to bear, "the markets" will respond. There is no honor among bankers, people. Only one of these entities has to implode to resume the suspended 2007-09 crash.
You could all be right! Rather than going by faith or pattern recognition, wait until you can show evidence for it, you may be able to. Enjoy the possibility you might be wrong. Look at what stories do or do not come out in the next days.
And why are you looking down your noses at the Iceland thing? Again, I'll say it, If I was an Icelander, I would have been out there with the Pirates and other comrades to bring down the restoration government today. They responded immediately, wasted no time - why do you think that is?! You think it was just the story that generated that kind of opposition, from scratch? Or do you think people were grateful to have this spark?
.
Big Banks Aided Firm At Center Of International Bribery Scandal
Unaoil relied on both banks as it cut deals with corrupt regimes.
04/02/2016 07:37 am ET | Updated 4 days ago
Zach Carter
How much did the banks know or suspect about Unaoil’s shady practices?
No business can operate without bankers — not even the bribery business.
British financial giant HSBC and American bailout kingpin Citibank processed transactions, managed money and vouched for Unaoil, a once-obscure firm that is now at the center of a massive international corruption scandal. Police raided Unaoil’s Monaco offices and interviewed its executives on Thursday, a day after The Huffington Post and Fairfax Media first exposed the company’s practices. Law enforcement agencies in at least four nations are involved in a wide-ranging probe of the company and its partners.
Halliburton, KBR and other corporate conglomerates relied on Unaoil to deliver them lucrative contracts with corrupt regimes in oil-rich nations. But without the help of banks like HSBC and Citibank, none of Unaoil’s operations would have been possible.
Both Citibank and HSBC declined to comment on whether Unaoil or the Ahsani family, who own and operate the firm, remain their clients.
“As a matter of policy, we only maintain relationships with clients who have been vetted through our strict due diligence and compliance checks,” HSBC spokeswoman Sorrel Beynon told HuffPost in a written statement.
by Rory » Wed Apr 06, 2016 5:42 pm
The so-called “Panama Papers” which are presented by the world’s corporate media as some kind of super-mega-uber-Wikileaks are simply the latest US strategic PSYOP. Of course, no hard proof of that will ever materialize, but take a look at this pretty good summary of the leak so far:
The source: an anonymous leaker who has made a “no meeting ever” a condition.
The media support: 400 journalists at 107 media organizations in more than 80 countries
The volume: 2.6 terabytes (million million (1012)) of data or 11.5 million documents including 4,804,618 emails, 3,047,306 database format files, 2,154,264 PDFs, 1,117,026 images, 320,166 text files, and 2,242 files in other formats
and now, the best part,
The people named in these documents:
Current heads of state:
Argentine President Mauricio Macri
Saudi Arabian King Salman
United Arab Emirates President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan
Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko
Former heads of state:
Qatar Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, former Emir of Qatar
Sudan Ahmed al-Mirghani, former President of Sudan
Ukraine Pavlo Lazarenko, former Prime Minister of Ukraine
Moldova Ion Sturza, former Prime Minister of Moldova
Heads of government:
Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson resigned on April 5, 2016
Iceland Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, Prime Minister of Iceland (resigned April 5, 2016)
Former heads of government:
Georgia (country) Bidzina Ivanishvili, former Prime Minister of Georgia
Iraq Ayad Allawi, former Acting Prime Minister of Iraq
Jordan Ali Abu al-Ragheb, former Prime Minister of Jordan
Qatar Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, former Prime Minister of Qatar
Other government officials: for full list please see here
Relatives and associates of government officials: for a full list please see here
Notice something?
Look who is MISSING from this list!
Not a single American citizen, not one. The best I found was “Tina Turner, American-born Swiss singer“. Now maybe US Americans are just angelic and pristinely honest, or maybe they simple don’t want to use the Panamanian corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca. But maybe, just maybe, whoever leaked these documents does not want to be at the receiving end of a lawsuit for violation of the CIA’s prohibition of spying on US nationals.
By the way, the NYT claims that there are 200 US passports mentioned somewhere in the documents. Maybe. But if that is true, they are low-level enough not to be mentioned in the flood or articles about these “Panama Papers” and that, in turn, tells me that the individuals named are either indirectly involved or unable to sue. The NYT had to conclude that “So far, the documents have connected no American politicians or other influential people to Mossack Fonseca“. The NYT even provides a credible (and truthful) explanation of why so few Americans are listed in these papers:
One reason there may be relatively few Americans named in the documents is that it is fairly easy to form shell companies in the United States. James Henry, an economist and senior adviser to the Tax Justice Network, told Fusion that Americans “really don’t need to go to Panama.” “Basically, we have an onshore haven industry in the U.S. that is as secretive as anywhere,” he said.
More about that later.
Right now let’s the a look at the rest of the list. What is striking is that it contains a few more or less irrelevant names, at least form the point of view of the AngloZionist world policy, a few ex-leaders and minor politicians, again – from the point of view of the AngloZionist Empire, a few “disobedient leaders” which the Empire is only too happy to compromise, and only wholly indirect references to big leaders like Putin or Xi Jinping. Even worse, the category “Relatives and Associates” is a clear case of guilt by association. But that did not stop the Ziomedia from presenting it like this:
So now we know how Putin hid a billion dollars. Or do we? Where is the evidence that Putin hid anything at all? Nowhere. But who cares about any such niceties as the presumption of evidence or even fair reporting?! 2016 will be an election year, and the Russian 5th column needs all the help it can get. And Uncle Shmuel is only happy to provide it, of course.
To use a KGB expression the CIA’s “ears are clearly sticking out” in this strategic PSYOP who point is very obvious: to jump on the Wikileaks bandwagon and create a little “imperial wikileaks” in the hope to be taken as seriously as the real thing.
It is hard to say who exactly in the USA is behind that. As far as I know the Pentagon’s strategy PSYOP are normally directed at military conflict areas. A good guess might that this could be the work of the Political Action Group (PAG) division inside the CIA’s Directorate of Operations (DO). But my gut feeling tells me that there is a special and still secret agency in the US government in charge of large-scale “covert propaganda” operations. But, at the end of the day, this really does not matter: the US government’s fingerprints are all over these pseudo-leaks and that is what matters.
Some might wonder if those documents are true and, if yes, how the CIA, or some OGA, could have come across these very “sensitive” files? Simple.
For many years already the US government has been using its influence to get all the main financial centers of the world under its control. Some countries, such as Switzerland, have simply bullied in giving up their traditionally secretive banking practices, while banks were infiltrated by US agents and spies. The grand plan is simple: to take control of all the money flow worldwide. You want to bank “safe”? You better do it in the USA or else…
Now look at the James Henry quote reported by the NYT above: “we have an onshore haven industry in the U.S. that is as secretive as anywhere”. Get that? What this means is this: “If you want to hide money, that’s fine with us, but only as long as you hide it with us“. It’s that simple. And, of course, if you want your money safe, you better not disobey Uncle Shmuel because he can take it anytime he wants. Elegant, simple, effective. Beautiful, really.
The truth is that while the US intelligence community is rather incompetent, especially in HUMINT, the US control of the financial movements worldwide is nothing short of superb, especially in region of the world already controlled by the USA (such as Panama) or with banks with a long history of corruption and shady activities (Deutsche Bank, HSBC).
The other surefire sign pointing at a US role is a fundamental cultural misrepresentation. While people living in the West might think that Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping might want to “hide billions abroad” the truth is that the very notion that these leaders might “need money” in a traditional sense of the word is absurd. Why? Simple:
First, they both know that any money kept in US-controlled jurisdictions is extremely unsafe for them. Not only can it be seized, it can also make them the target of blackmail. Does anybody seriously believe that an ex-KGB lieutenant-colonel like Putin would not understand that?
Second, money is power and power is money. That means that when you have a lot of power, you also have a lot of money or, more accurately, you don’t need money. The truth is that with the power Xi or Putin have, they don’t need to use any paper or electronic money at all, their power is way above any dollar denominated price tag.
Third, neither Putin nor Xi are clueless, ignorant 3rd world leader à la Bokassa or Idi Amin. They have the full use of advanced intelligence services which would immediately tell them that the “regular” offshoring is just a trap which will, sooner or later, ensnare you. In fact, Putin specifically warned Russian businessmen against using such services – does anybody believe that he warns them and then does exactly what he warned against?
Now, let us assume the worst: Putin and Xi are corrupt to the bone they want to keep their money in the West. Why in the world would they do that through some well-known and easily tracked “friends of the family” when they could use the services of their national intelligence agencies or, just to make the tale even more sexy, to use the contact Russian and Chinese security services (really) do have with the Russian Mafia and the Chinese Triads? The truth is that both of these men could very easily and safely use such contacts (neither the Russian nor the Chinese Mafia would *ever* pass the opportunity to be of use to the Top Leader) to hide any amount of money. This being said, rather than using such exotic “spy novel” schemes, a much simpler option for them would be to simply take control of a highly profitable company or resource *inside* Russia/China. If you were a putatively totally corrupt Putin or Xi, would you rather keep your money in a US controlled jurisdiction or simply take control of, say, a nickel or molybdenum mining corporation?
In many cases, these documents probably *do* reveal real corruption, especially in the upper-middle level of government. That is typically were corruption would happen and the folks on that level really might want to hide some money abroad for the “rainy day”, especially if they risk lose power and if losing power means the immediate need to emigrate.
So what we have here is a typical mix or true and false information, carefully tailored to embarrass mostly irrelevant or anti-US leaders, with a few not so subtle hints are Putin and Xi with the (misguided) hope to weaken them on their internal front. I would rate this entire effort as rather clumsy and it if it was not for unconditional and uncritical support of “400 journalists at 107 media organizations in more than 80 countries” so would many others.
The Saker
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 53 guests
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group
Site design by Likely Arts based on "Deluxe" by Artodia.
