Panama Papers

[seemslikeadream]

‘Corruption’ as a Propaganda Weapon
April 4, 2016

Exclusive: Mainstream U.S. journalism and propaganda are getting hard to tell apart, as with the flurry of “corruption” stories aimed at Russia’s Putin and other demonized foreign leaders, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Sadly, some important duties of journalism, such as applying evenhanded standards on human rights abuses and financial corruption, have been so corrupted by the demands of government propaganda – and the careerism of too many writers – that I now become suspicious whenever the mainstream media trumpets some sensational story aimed at some “designated villain.”

Far too often, this sort of “journalism” is just a forerunner to the next “regime change” scheme, dirtying up or delegitimizing a foreign leader before the inevitable advent of a “color revolution” organized by “democracy-promoting” NGOs often with money from the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy or some neoliberal financier like George Soros.

We are now seeing what looks like a new preparatory phase for the next round of “regime changes” with corruption allegations aimed at former Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The new anti-Putin allegations – ballyhooed by the UK Guardian and other outlets – are particularly noteworthy because the so-called “Panama Papers” that supposedly implicate him in offshore financial dealings never mention his name.

Or as the Guardian writes: “Though the president’s name does not appear in any of the records, the data reveals a pattern – his friends have earned millions from deals that seemingly could not have been secured without his patronage. The documents suggest Putin’s family has benefited from this money – his friends’ fortunes appear his to spend.”

Note, if you will, the lack of specificity and the reliance on speculation: “a pattern”; “seemingly”; “suggest”; “appear.” Indeed, if Putin were not already a demonized figure in the Western media, such phrasing would never pass an editor’s computer screen. Indeed, the only point made in declarative phrasing is that “the president’s name does not appear in any of the records.”

A British media-watch publication, the Off-Guardian, which criticizes much of the work done at The Guardian, headlined its article on the Putin piece as “the Panama Papers cause Guardian to collapse into self-parody.”

But whatever the truth about Putin’s “corruption” or Lula’s, the journalistic point is that the notion of objectivity has long since been cast aside in favor of what’s useful as propaganda for Western interests.

Some of those Western interests now are worried about the growth of the BRICS economic system – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – as a competitor to the West’s G-7 and the International Monetary Fund. After all, control of the global financial system has been central to American power in the post-World War II world – and rivals to the West’s monopoly are not welcome.

What the built-in bias against these and other “unfriendly” governments means, in practical terms, is that one standard applies to a Russia or a Brazil, while a more forgiving measure is applied to the corruption of a U.S. or European leader.

Take, for instance, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s millions of dollars in payments in speaking fees from wealthy special interests that knew she was a good bet to become the next U.S. president. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Clinton Stalls on Goldman-Sachs Speeches.”]

Or, similarly, the millions upon millions of dollars invested in super-PACS for Clinton, Sen. Ted Cruz and other presidential hopefuls. That might look like corruption from an objective standard but is treated as just a distasteful aspect of the U.S. political process.

But imagine for a minute if Putin had been paid millions of dollars for brief speeches before powerful corporations, banks and interest groups doing business with the Kremlin. That would be held up as de facto proof of his illicit greed and corruption.

Losing Perspective

Also, when it’s a demonized foreign leader, any “corruption” will do, however minor. For example, in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s denounced Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega for his choice of eyewear: “The dictator in designer glasses,” declared Reagan, even as Nancy Reagan was accepting free designer gowns and free renovations of the White House funded by oil and gas interests.

Or, the “corruption” for a demonized leader can be a modest luxury, such as Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s “sauna” in his personal residence, a topic that got front-page treatment in The New York Times and other Western publications seeking to justify the violent coup that drove Yanukovych from office in February 2014.

Incidentally, both Ortega and Yanukovych had been popularly elected but were still targeted by the U.S. government and its operatives with violent destabilization campaigns. In the 1980s, the CIA-organized Nicaraguan Contra war killed some 30,000 people, while the U.S.-orchestrated “regime change” in Ukraine sparked a civil war that has left some 10,000 people dead. Of course, in both cases, Official Washington blamed Moscow for all the trouble.

In both cases, too, the politicians and operatives who gained power as a result of the conflicts were arguably more corrupt than the Nicaraguan Sandinistas or Yanukovych’s government. The Nicaraguan Contras, whose violence helped pave the way for the 1990 election of U.S.-backed candidate Violeta Chamorro, were deeply implicated in cocaine trafficking. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Sordid Contra-Cocaine Saga.”]

Today, the U.S.-supported Ukrainian government is wallowing in corruption so deep that it has provoked a new political crisis.[See Consortiumnews’com’s “Reality Peeks Through in Ukraine.”]

Ironically, one of the politicians actually named in the Panama Papers for having established a shadowy offshore account is the U.S.-backed Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, although he got decidedly second-billing to the unnamed Putin. (Poroshenko denied there was anything improper in his offshore financial arrangements.)

Double Standards

Mainstream Western journalism no longer even tries to apply common standards to questions about corruption. If you’re a favored government, there might be lamentations about the need for more “reform” – which often means slashing pensions for the elderly and cutting social programs for the poor – but if you’re a demonized leader, then the only permissible answer is criminal indictment and/or “regime change.”

One stark example of these double standards is the see-no-evil attitude toward the corruption of Ukraine’s Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, who is touted endlessly in the Western media as the paragon of Ukrainian good governance and reform. The documented reality, however, is that Jaresko enriched herself through her control of a U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund that was supposed to help the people of Ukraine build their economy.

According to the terms of the $150 million investment fund created by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Jaresko’s compensation was supposed to be capped at $150,000 a year, a pay package that many Americans would envy. But it was not enough for Jaresko, who first simply exceeded the limit by hundreds of thousands of dollars and then moved her compensation off-books as she amassed total annual pay of $2 million or more.

The documentation of this scheming is clear. I have published multiple stories citing the evidence of both her excessive compensation and her legal strategies for covering up evidence of alleged wrongdoing. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “How Ukraine’s Finance Minister Got Rich” and “Carpetbagging Crony Capitalism in Ukraine.”]

Despite the evidence, not a single mainstream Western news outlet has followed up on this information even as Jaresko is hailed as a “reform” candidate for Ukrainian prime minister.

This disinterest is similar to the blinders that The New York Times and other major Western newspapers put on when they were assessing whether Ukrainian President Yanukovych was ousted in a coup in February 2014 or just wandered off and forgot to return.

In a major “investigative” piece, the Times concluded there was no coup in Ukraine while ignoring the evidence of a coup, such as the intercepted phone call between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who they would put into power. “Yats is the guy,” said Nuland – and surprise, surprise, Arseniy Yatsenyuk ended up as prime minister.

The Times also ignored the observation of George Friedman, president of the global intelligence firm Stratfor, who noted that the Ukraine coup was “the most blatant coup in history.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine.”]

The Propaganda Weapon

The other advantage of “corruption” as a propaganda weapon to discredit certain leaders is that we all assume that there is plenty of corruption in governments as well as in the private sector all around the world. Alleging corruption is like shooting large fish crowded into a small barrel. Granted, some barrels might be more crowded than others but the real decision is whose barrel you choose.

That’s part of the reason why the U.S. government has spread around hundreds of millions of dollars to finance “journalism” organizations, train political activists and support “non-governmental organizations” that promote U.S. policy goals inside targeted countries. For instance, before the Feb. 22, 2014 coup in Ukraine, there were scores of such operations in the country financed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), whose budget from Congress exceeds $100 million a year.

But NED, which has been run by neocon Carl Gershman since its founding in 1983, is only part of the picture. You have other propaganda fronts operating under the umbrella of the State Department and USAID. Last year, USAID issued a fact sheet summarizing its work financing friendly journalists around the globe, including “journalism education, media business development, capacity building for supportive institutions, and strengthening legal-regulatory environments for free media.”

USAID estimated its budget for “media strengthening programs in over 30 countries” at $40 million annually, including aiding “independent media organizations and bloggers in over a dozen countries,” In Ukraine before the coup, USAID offered training in “mobile phone and website security,” which sounds a bit like an operation to thwart the local government’s intelligence gathering, an ironic position for the U.S. with its surveillance obsession, including prosecuting whistleblowers based on evidence that they talked to journalists.

USAID, working with billionaire George Soros’s Open Society, also funds the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which engages in “investigative journalism” that usually goes after governments that have fallen into disfavor with the United States and then are singled out for accusations of corruption. The USAID-funded OCCRP also collaborates with Bellingcat, an online investigative website founded by blogger Eliot Higgins.

Higgins has spread misinformation on the Internet, including discredited claims implicating the Syrian government in the sarin attack in 2013 and directing an Australian TV news crew to what looked to be the wrong location for a video of a BUK anti-aircraft battery as it supposedly made its getaway to Russia after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014.

Despite his dubious record of accuracy, Higgins has gained mainstream acclaim, in part, because his “findings” always match up with the propaganda theme that the U.S. government and its Western allies are peddling. Though most genuinely independent bloggers are ignored by the mainstream media, Higgins has found his work touted by both The New York Times and The Washington Post.

In other words, the U.S. government has a robust strategy for deploying direct and indirect agents of influence. Indeed, during the first Cold War, the CIA and the old U.S. Information Agency refined the art of “information warfare,” including pioneering some of its current features like having ostensibly “independent” entities and cut-outs present U.S. propaganda to a cynical public that would reject much of what it hears from government but may trust “citizen journalists” and “bloggers.”

But the larger danger from this perversion of journalism is that it sets the stage for “regime changes” that destabilize whole countries, thwart real democracy (i.e., the will of the people), and engender civil warfare. Today’s neoconservative dream of mounting a “regime change” in Moscow is particularly dangerous to the future of both Russia and the world.

Regardless of what you think about President Putin, he is a rational political leader whose legendary sangfroid makes him someone who is not prone to emotional decisions. His leadership style also appeals to the Russian people who overwhelmingly favor him, according to public opinion polls.

While the American neocons may fantasize that they can generate enough economic pain and political dissension inside Russia to achieve Putin’s removal, their expectation that he will be followed by a pliable leader like the late President Boris Yeltsin, who will let U.S. operatives back in to resume plundering Russia’s riches, is almost certainly a fantasy.

The far more likely possibility is that – if a “regime change” could somehow be arranged – Putin would be replaced by a hard-line nationalist who might think seriously about unleashing Russia’s nuclear arsenal if the West again tries to defile Mother Russia. For me, it’s not Putin who’s the worry; it’s the guy after Putin.

So, while legitimate questions about Putin’s “corruption” – or that of any other political leader – should be pursued, the standards of evidence should not be lowered just because he or anyone else is a demonized figure in the West. There should be single not double standards.

Western media outrage about “corruption” should be expressed as loudly against political and business leaders in the U.S. or other G-7 countries as it is toward those in the BRICS.

[justdrew]

FBI Says a Mysterious Hacking Group Has Had Access to US Govt Files for Years

this is a shitty story made up of short quotes from questionable sources, yet here it is.

[Sounder]

Well, fancy that, here is that 'imaginary construct impervious to detection'; by people that fall for the NLP and those that simply refuse to look.

USAID, working with billionaire George Soros’s Open Society, also funds the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which engages in “investigative journalism” that usually goes after governments that have fallen into disfavor with the United States and then are singled out for accusations of corruption. The USAID-funded OCCRP also collaborates with Bellingcat, an online investigative website founded by blogger Eliot Higgins.

Higgins has spread misinformation on the Internet, including discredited claims implicating the Syrian government in the sarin attack in 2013 and directing an Australian TV news crew to what looked to be the wrong location for a video of a BUK anti-aircraft battery as it supposedly made its getaway to Russia after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014.

People that think that the best defense is the best offense, do that because they canna play da defense.

All the disbursed imaginary millions are only (not) there to fuel spontaneous imagination, as only imaginary constructs can do.

[JackRiddler]

It's radically imaginary when the mere existence of Soros funding something else by unspecified millions becomes for you the issue of the "Panama Papers" (and this can be so for pretty much anything you like) although you can't tie the one to the other. Show the actual connections. Parry's method of connection by innuendo (sad to see) is as spongy-weaselly or worse than the Guardian's in their attempts to always lead any old shit back to Putin. His general argument about accusations of "corruption" as a tool in regime changes can hold while this aspect of it is still POOMA.

[JackRiddler]

By the way, Koch brothers pay millions (or a total so far of billions) to manipulate media and politicians for their own agenda, so by the same logic they must be behind the Panama Papers leak. (But why am I even bothering with this elementary point with people who aren't interested in it and just want to say Soros-Soros-Soros no matter what happens?)

Now, in contrast to bringing up your usual single-man explanation for everything -- which Assange himself did, foolishly -- this is the right response.

Panama Papers: WikiLeaks' Kristinn Hrafnsson calls for data leak to be released in full
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/ ... 01909.html

Very nice contextual summary of the issues in that article.

[seemslikeadream]

THURSDAY, APR 7, 2016 12:18 PM CDT
The looming mystery behind the Panama Papers: How did the largest document leak in history even happen?
After similar coups by WikiLeaks and others, we had an idea of who pulled the trigger, and why. Not this time
MARCY WHEELER

The looming mystery behind the Panama Papers: How did the largest document leak in history even happen?
“Hello. This is John Doe. Interested in data?” That line — apparently written in English and using an American cultural reference — is much of what we know about the source, possibly a hacker, behind the Panama Papers, a massive trove of documents on which four hundred journalists have been collaborating for up to a year, detailing how a Panamanian law firm called Mossack Fonseca has helped some of the world’s most powerful people set up shell companies capable of concealing vast amounts of wealth. The source reached out to Bastian Obermayer, a reporter for Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, over a year ago, explaining, “I want to make these crimes public.”

Beyond that, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the group with which Sueddeutsche Zeitung shared the documents in order to expand the investigation, has explained only that, “The source wanted neither financial compensation nor anything else in return, apart from a few security measures.”

Indeed, Obermayer has claimed, in an interview with Wired, that he doesn’t know who the source actually is. “I don’t know the name of the person or the identity of the person,” though he says he has had extensive conversations with the person.

So four hundred journalists are writing — and have been reporting on, many of them, for a good part of a year — about documents that they can’t explain the provenance of.

Contrast that with what we know about several of the previous big leaks. Before the bulk of the documents Chelsea Manning leaked to WikiLeaks were published, she had reached out to several people, including hacker Adrian Lamo. In chats that Wired published in June 2010 (again, before the bulk of the documents were leaked), Manning told Lamo that she was “an army intelligence analyst, deployed to eastern [B]aghdad, pending discharge for ‘adjustment disorder’.” (The full chats, published in 2011, would make it clearer she was talking about being transgender.) She admitted sending files to Assange, and hoped they would elicit “worldwide discussion, debates, and reform.”

Likewise, within days of the first Edward Snowden leak, he appeared on a video admitting he was the source. “My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them,” he explained. That video and an accompanying story reviewed a great deal of his biography, providing some details on how he could have access to the NSA’s crown jewels. Those details have led to an incessant debate about whether Snowden accurately described his motives — or whether he had outside help from a foreign intelligence service like Russia. While that debate often deviates pretty wildly from known facts, at least some details are out there to debate.

Likewise, Hervé Falciani was already a publicly known fugitive, sharing data with authorities for years before the public got its first glimpse at the records of HSBC clients hiding their money, which he took when he worked as a computer engineer for the bank. As with Snowden, various commentators have described Falciani alternately as a crook and a whistleblower, but they’ve done so based on a knowledge of his stated motives and actions.

Even for mega-leaks sourced to external hacks — like the Ashley Madison and Sony hacks — the presumed identity of the hacker is known. In the former case, a group calling itself the Impact Team threatened Ashley Madison in an apparent (and unsuccessful) attempt to get it to pull down two sites for which AM had falsely promised to delete accounts upon request and payment. The ostensible purpose of the hack was to destroy the company for making false promises about secrecy. In Sony’s case, U.S. government officials have claimed hackers working for North Korea, calling themselves the Guardians of Peace, infiltrated and then brought down the Sony Pictures website in retaliation for the unflattering picture of North Korea’s Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, in Sony’s movie, “The Interview.”

That’s in no way to say that Panama Papers should expose their source. As the incarceration or exile of these other leakers make clear, there’s good reason to avoid revealing anything that might expose the source. But it does mean there are key questions about this leak we can’t answer.

Readers of Panama Papers have just that one opening line — “I want to make these crimes public” — to explain the source’s motive, although as Sueddeutsche Zeitung and other outlets reporting on the story are required to explain, some uses for offshore accounts are perfectly legal; and, as many outlets have noted, Mossack Fonseca is just one cog in a giant industry supporting tax havens, key parts of which are in the United States.

Mossack Fonseca would like readers to believe this came from an email hack. The company informed its customers (in a message posted to WikiLeaks suggesting not all of them had been compromised) that its email server had been compromised. “We rule out an inside job. This is not a leak. This is a hack,” one of the founders of the firm, Ramon Fonseca, told Reuters. “We have a theory and we are following it.” The firm also reported a crime to authorities.

However, there are good reasons to doubt that this was just an email server hack. While Mossack Fonseca’s emails appear not to have been encrypted, there is far more to the leak than emails. It includes scanned passports and some database excerpts, suggesting that, however the files were obtained, it went beyond what got sent via email. Moreover, multiple outlets have identified outdated code and other configuration problems in Mossack Fonseca’s public website. So it seems probable that the firm’s trove of customer data has been exposed far more than MF wants to admit.

Which then raises the question: Do security vulnerabilities on Mossack Fonseca’s systems explain why it, and not another of the even bigger law firms serving tax haven customers, got exposed in this hack? Or is there another explanation? Did the hacker — if that is where these documents came from — single out Mossack Fonseca because it had already been exposed as a firm serving dubious clients, or did the source just target an easy mark, given MF’s security problems?

To be sure, none of these questions diminish the importance of the Panama Papers project, which has already led to the resignation of some key figures exposed by the stories. Even if there were less noble motives behind this leak, there would still be tremendous value in exposing the problems and pervasiveness of tax havens. But these questions should be part of the discussion about what we’re seeing.

We’ve been given a giant snapshot of one really important part of a really damaging part of global finance. The snapshot is important and the reporting on it is crucial. But we might want to ask, why are we getting this particular snapshot?

[Luther Blissett]

More from The Guardian, so take it with whatever kind of grain of salt you wish, but the subject matter is interesting.

To millennials caught in the rent trap, the Panama Papers matter

[Harvey]

And yet that's the world Guardian is getting into bed with for all kinds of understandable reasons. Haven't we learned that being able to say anything to anyone in pursuit of one's goals works best when you are a compartmentalised organisation, i.e. virtually any organisation; within which every voice caters to a different 'market' and feels genuine because each of the cells actually believe it's instruction set?

Instead of imagining global conspiracy, imagine instead what it would take for you to be involved. What beliefs you'd need as your working assumptions, what you imagine your job is contributing to, who you imagine you work for. Next, how would you begin to realise that you are actually on the wrong side yourself? Who pays your social security or your medical insurance, who pays for your car, the food you eat, who made the affordable clothes you wear?

Choice, no choice, bad guy, good guy, it's all in how you wear it.

[slimmouse]

Choice, no choice, bad guy, good guy, it's all in how you wear it.

I think the cognitive dissonance card is a real factor in all of this. Its long past time for smart people to start growing a pair. looking at the world we live in, and facing up to some very fundamental truths.

[0_0]

Here is the central question I would prefer people focus on:

Why in the fuck would Icelandic voters return these imbeciles to power? How on earth can human behavior be modified so that we stop electing sociopaths, virtually knowingly. It's as though a large part of the population, globally, is conditioned to follow such people almost mindlessly. It's probably a built in human instinct of some sort.

Among a troop of savanna baboons in Kenya, a terrible outbreak of tuberculosis 20 years ago selectively killed off the biggest, nastiest and most despotic males, setting the stage for a social and behavioral transformation unlike any seen in this notoriously truculent primate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/scien ... .html?_r=0

[Burnt Hill]

1. All I will say about Fitzmas is that I was one of the originators of that word

Totally different context, but as far as the word, I've got you and 82 beat by a longshot!
Third grade, Brooklyn NY, ps 249. I was getting in fights, skipping school, walking the streets, in trouble- headed for more.
My step Dad got in a near deadly car accident, recovering at home. It was too much and my Mom sent me upstate to live with her girlfriends family, the Fitzsimmons. Started school there, thought I was coming home for Christmas. Couldn't work out the logistics and the bus ticket. Ended up having a very special Christmas with the Fitzsimmons, in fact I refused to go back to the city to live after that.
My family and I have always referred to that time as my first Fitzmas, it was a real turning point in my life!

[Harvey]

Here is the central question I would prefer people focus on:

Why in the fuck would Icelandic voters return these imbeciles to power? How on earth can human behavior be modified so that we stop electing sociopaths, virtually knowingly. It's as though a large part of the population, globally, is conditioned to follow such people almost mindlessly. It's probably a built in human instinct of some sort.

Among a troop of savanna baboons in Kenya, a terrible outbreak of tuberculosis 20 years ago selectively killed off the biggest, nastiest and most despotic males, setting the stage for a social and behavioral transformation unlike any seen in this notoriously truculent primate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/scien ... .html?_r=0

On the evidence provided: ''And if baboons can do it,'' he said, ''why not us? The bad news is that you might have to first knock out all the most aggressive males to get there.''

As occurred in the example from this evidence, and yet:

"I confess I'm rooting for the troop to stay like this forever, but I worry about how vulnerable they may be,'' he said. ''All it would take is two or three jerky adolescent males entering at the same time to tilt the balance and destroy the culture.''

Such is life.

[Elihu]

i don't think voters put anyone in power

[seemslikeadream]

NATIONAL
APRIL 5, 2016 1:55 PM
Spies and shadowy allies lurk in secret, thanks to firm’s bag of tricks

Panama Papers reveal how spies and CIA gun-runners use offshore companies to stay hidden

Offshore world blurs the line between legitimate business and the world of espionage

‘You can’t exactly walk around saying that you’re a spy’

Offshore corporations have one main purpose - to create anonymity. Recently leaked documents reveal that some of these shell companies, cloaked in secrecy, provide cover for dictators, politicians and tax evaders. Sohail Al-Jamea and Ali Rizvi / McClatchy
BY WILL FITZGIBBON
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

One day during his presidential re-election campaign in September 1996, Bill Clinton walked into a room in Westin Crown Center hotel in Kansas City, Mo. At stake was a quarter-million dollars in campaign fundraising. Clinton turned to his generous host, Farhad Azima, and led the guests in song.

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you....”

Azima, an Iranian-born American charter airline executive, had long donated to both Democratic and Republican administrations. He visited the Clinton White House 10 times between October 1995 and December 1996, including private afternoon coffees with the president. Years later, as Hillary Clinton stood for election to the Senate in December 1999, Azima hosted her and 40 guests for a private dinner that raised $2,500 a head.

Azima’s Democratic fundraising activities provided an interesting twist in the career of a man who has found himself in a media storm of one of America’s major political scandals, the Iran-Contra affair, during the Republican Reagan Administration.

In the mid-1980s, senior Reagan administration officials secretly arranged to sell weapons to Iran to help free seven American hostages then use the sale proceeds to fund right-wing Nicaraguan rebels known as the Contras. On a mission to Tehran in 1985, one of Azima’s Boeing 707 cargo planes delivered 23 tons of military equipment, The New York Times reported. Azima has always claimed to know nothing about the flight or even if it happened.

“I’ve had nothing to do with Iran-Contra,” Azima told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). “I was investigated by every known agency in the U.S. and they decided there was absolutely nothing there,” said Azima. “It was a wild goose chase. The law enforcement and regulators fell for it.”

Now, records obtained by ICIJ, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and other media partners, including McClatchy, reveal new details about one of America’s most colorful political donors. The records also disclose offshore deals made by another Iran-Contra figure, the Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi.

The more than 11 million documents – which stretch from 1977 to December 2015 – show the inner workings of Mossack Fonseca & Co., a Panamanian law firm that specializes in building labyrinthine corporate structures that sometimes blur the line between legitimate business and the cloak-and-dagger world of international espionage.


Offshore corporations - The secret shell game
Offshore corporations have one main purpose - to create anonymity. Recently leaked documents reveal that some of these shell companies, cloaked in secrecy, provide cover for dictators, politicians and tax evaders.
Sohail Al-Jamea and Ali Rizvi / McClatchy

Spies’ offshore dealings

The documents also pull back the curtain on hundreds of details about how former CIA gun-runners and contractors use offshore companies for personal and private gain. Further, they illuminate the workings of a host of other characters who used offshore companies during or after their work as spy chiefs, secret agents or operatives for the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

“You can’t exactly walk around saying that you’re a spy,” Loch K. Johnson, a professor at the University of Georgia, says in explaining the cover that offshore firms offer. Johnson, a former aide to a U.S. Senate committee’s intelligence inquiries, has spent decades studying CIA “front” companies.

Millionaire businessman and confidant of Saudi kings, Kamal Adham is pictured in 1991. He is also the founder of Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency. // Ali Mahmoud / AP
Ali Mahmoud / AP
Millionaire businessman and confidant of Saudi kings, Kamal Adham is pictured in 1991. He is also the founder of Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency.
According to the Panama Papers, Mossack Fonseca’s clients included Sheikh Kamal Adham, Saudi Arabia’s first intelligence chief who was later named by a U.S. Senate committee as the CIA’s “principal liaison for the entire the Middle East from the mid-1960s through 1979,” and who controlled offshore companies later involved in a U.S. banking scandal; retired Maj. Gen. Ricardo Rubianogroot, Colombia’s former chief of air intelligence, who was a shareholder of an aviation and logistics company; and Brig. Gen. Emmanuel Ndahiro, doctor turned spy chief to Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame.

Adham died in 1999. Ndahiro did not respond to requests for comment. Rubianogroot confirmed to ICIJ partner and Colombian investigative journalism organization, Consejo de Redacción, that he was a small shareholder in West Tech Panama, which was created to buy an American avionics company. The company is in liquidation.

“We conduct thorough due diligence on all new and prospective clients that often exceeds in stringency the existing rules and standards to which we and others are bound,” said Mossack Fonseca in a statement. “Many of our clients come through established and reputable law firms and financial institutions across the world, including the major correspondent banks…If a new client/entity is not willing and/or able to provide to us the appropriate documentation indicating who they are, and (when applicable) from where their funds are derived, we will not work with that client/entity.”

Even wannabe spooks can be found.

“’I’ll suggest a name like ‘World Insurance Services Limited’ or maybe ‘Universal Exports’ after the company used in the early James Bond stories but I don’t know if we’d get away with that!” wrote one financier to Mossack Fonseca in 2010 on behalf of a client creating a front company in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). Universal Exports was a fictional company used by the British Secret Service in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.

The files further show that Mossack Fonseca also incorporated companies named Goldfinger, SkyFall, GoldenEye, Moonraker, Spectre and Blofeld after James Bond movie titles and villains and was asked to do the same for Octopussy. There is correspondence from a man named Austin Powers, apparently his real name and not the movie character, and Jack Bauer, whom a Mossack Fonseca employee entered into the firm’s database as a client and not the television character after the employee “met him at a pub.”

But Mossack Fonseca’s connection to espionage is more often fact, not fiction.

Men in their flying machines

The secret documents show that Farhad Azima incorporated his first offshore company with Mossack Fonseca in the BVI in 2000. The company was called ALG (Asia & Pacific) Limited, a branch of his airline Aviation Leasing Group, a U.S.-based private company with a fleet of more than 60 aircraft.

It was not until 2013 when the firm ran a routine background search on the shareholders of a new company that Mossack Fonseca discovered media articles on Azima’s alleged ties to the CIA. Among the allegations found in online articles shared by Mossack Fonseca employees were that he “supplied air and logistical support” to a company owned by former CIA agents who shipped arms to Libya. Another article quoted an FBI official who said he had been warned by the CIA that Azima was “off limits.”

The firm asked Azima’s representatives to confirm his identity. But it appears that Mossack Fonseca never received a reply. The files indicate that he remained a client and that internal surprises continued.

In 2014, one year after discovering online reports of his connections to the CIA, Hosshang Hosseinpour, was cited by the U.S. Treasury Department as helping companies move tens of millions of dollars for companies in Iran, which at the time was subject to economic sanctions.

The files show that Azima and Hosseinpour appeared on corporate documents of a company that planned to buy a hotel in the nation of Georgia in 2011. That was the same year Treasury officials asserted that Hosseinpour, who co-founded the private airline FlyGeorgia, and two others first began to send millions of dollars into Iran, which led to sanctions being taken against him three years later.

The documents show that Hosseinpour briefly held shares in the company from November 2011. However, in February 2012 company administrators told Mossack Fonseca that he was not part of the company and his shares had been issued in an “administrative error.” The company, Eurasia Hotel Holdings Limited, changed its name to Eurasia Aviation Holdings and bought a Hawker Beechcraft 400XP corporate jet in 2012 for $1.625 million, files show.

Azima told ICIJ that the company was only used to buy an aircraft and that Hosseinpour had never been involved in the company.

The plane was not going to be used in the U.S., Azima said, so couldn’t be registered in the U.S. and the choice of the BVI was not for tax purposes. “I’ve filed every tax known to mankind,” Azima told ICIJ.

Hosseinpour could not be reached for comment. In 2013, before the sanctions came into force, he told The Wall Street Journal that he had no connections to Iran and “nothing to do with evading sanctions."

Another colorful connection to the CIA in the Mossack Fonseca files is Loftur Johannesson, now a wealthy, silver-haired 85-year-old from Rekyavik, also known as “The Icelander.” Johannesson is widely reported in books and newspaper articles to have worked with the CIA in the 1970s and 1980s, supplying guns to anti-communist guerrillas in Afghanistan. With his CIA paychecks, The Icelander reportedly bought a home in Barbados and a vineyard in France.

Johannesson himself emerges in Mossack Fonseca’s files in September 2002, long after his retirement from secret service. He was connected to at least four offshore companies in the BVI and Panama linked to homes in high-priced locales, including one located behind London’s Westminster Cathedral and another in a beachfront Barbados complex where a similar home is now selling for $35 million. As recently as January 2015, Johannesson paid thousands of dollars to Mossack Fonseca for its services.

“Mr. Johannesson has been an international businessman, mainly in aviation-related activities, and he completely rejects your suggestions that he may have worked for any secret intelligence agencies,” a spokesman told ICIJ.

Agent Rocco and 008: license to incorporate

Another connection to the Iran-Contra scandal is Adnan Khashoggi. The Saudi billionaire, once thought to be the world’s most extravagant spender, negotiated billions of dollars in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in the 1970s and played “a central role for the U.S. government” with CIA operatives in selling guns to Iran, according to a 1992 U.S. Senate report co-written by then-Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is now the U.S. secretary of state.

Khashoggi appears in the Mossack Fonseca files as early as 1978, when he became president of the Panamanian company ISIS Overseas S.A. Most of his business with Mossack Fonseca appears to have taken place between the 1980s and the 2000s through at least four other companies.

Mossack Fonseca’s files do not reveal the purpose of all Khashoggi’s companies. However, two of them, Tropicterrain S.A., Panama, and Beachview Inc., were involved in mortgages for homes in Spain and the Grand Canaries islands.

President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos, with wife Imelda, gestures from the balcony of Malacanang Palace, Feb. 25, 1986, after taking the oath of office. Hours later, Marcos resigned and fled to the U.S. Air Force's Clark Air Base, 50 miles northwest of Manila, as he prepared to accept an American offer to fly him out of the Philippines. // Alberto Marquez / AP
Alberto Marquez / AP
President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos, with wife Imelda, gestures from the balcony of Malacanang Palace, Feb. 25, 1986, after taking the oath of office. Hours later, Marcos resigned and fled to the U.S. Air Force's Clark Air Base, 50 miles northwest of Manila, as he prepared to accept an American offer to fly him out of the Philippines.
There is no indication that Mossack Fonseca investigated Khashoggi’s past even though the firm processed payments from the Adnan Khashoggi Group in the same year that he made global news when the U.S. charged him with helping Ferdinand Marcos, president of the Philippines, loot millions. Khashoggi was later cleared. Mossack Fonseca’s files show the firm ceased business with Khashoggi around 2003.

The Mossack Fonseca files indicated the company did not discriminate between Cold War foes.

Another customer was Sokratis Kokkalis, now a 76-year-old Greek billionaire once accused of spying for the East German Stasi under the alias “Agent Rocco.” A German parliamentary investigation found that in the early 1960s Kokkalis regularly informed on acquaintances and contacts during his time living in Germany and Russia. Until 2010, Kokkalis owned the Greek soccer club Olympiakos, and he now owns Greece’s largest telecommunications company.

Mossack Fonseca discovered Kokkalis’s connections to espionage in February 2015 as part of routine background checks of one of his companies, Upton International Group. Kokkalis “was accused by East German officials of espionage, fraud, and money laundering in the early sixties, but the case was acquitted,” an employee wrote colleagues after an Internet search. Mossack Fonseca’s files reveal that Kokkalis’ agent did not respond to the firm’s requests for details about Kokkalis and his company, including its purpose.

Khashoggi could not be reached for comment. Kokkalis, who did not respond to requests for comment, has previously denied charges and accused “political personalities” and newspapers of a “war” against him.

In 2005, Mossack Fonseca employees learned with some alarm that someone on their books went by the name of Francisco P. Sánchez, who Mossack Fonseca employees assumed to be Francisco Paesa Sánchez, one of Spain’s most infamous secret agents. “The story… was really scary,” wrote the person who first discovered Paesa’s background. Mossack Fonseca had incorporated seven companies of which P. Sanchez was a director.

Born in Madrid before the outbreak of World War II, Paesa amassed a fortune hunting down separatists and a corrupt police chief before fleeing Spain with millions of dollars. In 1998, Paesa faked his own death; his family issued a death certificate that testified to a heart attack in Thailand. But in 2004, investigators tracked him down in Luxembourg. Paesa himself later explained that reports of his death had been a “misunderstanding.” In December 2005, a Spanish magazine reported on what it called Paesa’s “business network” that built and owned hotels, casinos and a golf course in Morocco. Without mentioning Mossack Fonseca, the article listed the same seven companies incorporated in the BVI.

In October 2005, Mossack Fonseca had decided to distance itself from the companies of which P. Sanchez was a director. “We are concern [sic] of the impact it may have in Mossfon’s image if any scandal arises,” the firm wrote an administrator to explain its decision to cut ties with P. Sanchez’s companies.

“We believe in principle that when a client is not up front with us about any facts that are relevant for his or her dealings with us, especially their true identity and background, that this is sufficient reason to terminate our relationship with them,” wrote a senior employee.

Paesa could not be reached for comment.

Werner Mauss and his wife, from Germany, are presented to the media in Medellin, Colombia, after their arrest at Medellin's airport on Nov. 17 1996, in this image taken from TV. The German's are accused of paying off rebels and trying to smuggle their kidnap victim out of the country. The kidnap victim Brigitte Schoene was abducted on Aug. 16 1996, by guerillas who demanded a million dollar ransom. // AP
AP
Werner Mauss and his wife, from Germany, are presented to the media in Medellin, Colombia, after their arrest at Medellin's airport on Nov. 17 1996, in this image taken from TV. The German's are accused of paying off rebels and trying to smuggle their kidnap victim out of the country. The kidnap victim Brigitte Schoene was abducted on Aug. 16 1996, by guerillas who demanded a million dollar ransom.
Two names, nine fingers

Another Internet search, this time in March 2015, alerted the firm that another of its clients – a “Claus Mollner” – had been a customer for nearly 30 years. Among unrelated results from Facebook, a family tree or two and an academic linguistic review, there was one article from the University of Delaware.

“Claus Möllner (the name that Werner Mauss always used to identify himself),” said the article.

Mollner or Mauss, also known as Agent 008 and “The Man of Nine Fingers,” thanks to the lost tip of an index finger, claims to be “Germany’s first undercover agent.” Now retired, Mauss’s website boasts of his role in “smashing 100 criminal groups.”

Colombian authorities briefly held Mauss in 1996 on charges, later dropped, that he conspired with guerillas to kidnap a woman and keep part of the ransom payment. Mauss claims the hostage takers were not rebels, that he never received ransom money and that “all operations carried out worldwide. . . have always been effected with the cooperation of German governmental agencies and authorities.”

While Mauss’s real name never appears in Mossack Fonseca’s files, hundreds of documents detail his network of companies in Panama. At least two companies held real estate in Germany.

Mauss did not personally own any offshore companies, Mauss’s lawyer told ICIJ partners Suddeutsche Zeitung and NDR public television. All companies and foundations connected to him were to “secure the personal financial interests of the Mauss family,” Mauss’s lawyer said, were disclosed and paid applicable taxes.

Mauss’s lawyer confirmed that some companies that appear in Mossack Fonseca’s files were used for “humanitarian operations” in peace and hostage negotiations “for forwarding of humanitarian goods such as hospitals, surgical instruments, large amounts of antibiotics etc.,” in order to “neutralize” extortion.

In the files it appears that in March 2015, a Mossack Fonseca employee clicked on the Google search result that linked Mollner to Mauss. Yet there is no other suggestion that Mossack Fonseca discovered his true identity. His companies continued to be on Mossack Fonseca’s books into 2015.

It probably suited Mollner – or Mauss – just fine.

As a journalist who interviewed him in 1998 observed, “The secret of his real identity was always Werner Mauss’s capital.”

[smiths]

'John Doe' is an American term,

I think it highly unlikely that anyone but an American would take this name for themselves as a code name ... Possible, but unlikely

Of course, that name could have been used for precisely that reason, to point

But then, that would prove that the leak was state fix rather than a genuine case of 'I really want the people to know all this stuff'

Also, I agree with many others who have argued that,
The whole line that ' there are genuine legal honest reasons to have an offshore account set up' is bullshit