Panama Papers

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Re: Panama Papers

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 01, 2017 9:25 pm

THE PANAMA PAPERS – FIRST STRIKE AGAINST PUTIN’S CORRUPTION
ERIC GARLAND AUGUST 1, 2017
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If you didn’t know much about international finance, you probably didn’t see the journalistic project known as The Panama Papers as a retaliatory move against Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Wikileaks did immediately. Although the tweet was since deleted, the political warfare operation took to Russia Today to complain that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists wasn’t being ethical about their leaks, which made Vladimir Putin look corrupt. Somewhere between Rossiya Bank, Cyprus, and Panama, Putin had around $2 billion dollars stashed away.

Courtesy of The Guardian, this handy graph depicts the flow of what investor Bill Browder recently testified to be money stolen from the Russian people themselves.
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panama papers putin cyprus

Based on hacking that exfiltratrated 2.6 terabytes of financial data, the Panama Papers was the largest leak in a string of such “journalistic” endeavors kicked off by the Russian military intelligence front Wikileaks.
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Panama Papers leak file size

When the Panama Papers hit the news in April 2016, it wasn’t well understood that Vladimir Putin may have been the main target. Sure, the cast of Harry Potter had some money flowing through as well, but that was more light scandal than strategic strike. The New York Times published an article that explained which entities had been most exposed by the leaks:

Among others, the documents named close associates of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the father of Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and relatives of President Xi Jinping of China and members of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee. Articles published by news organizations in cooperation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists also named King Salman of Saudi Arabia; Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, who resigned as prime minister of Icelandafter the revelations; President Mauricio Macri of Argentina; and the soccer star Lionel Messi, one of the world’s wealthiest athletes.

Other soccer players; officials from FIFA, the sport’s world governing body; and UEFA, the governing body of European soccer, were also tied to firms incorporated offshore through the Panamanian firm.

A couple of names stick out: Vladimir Putin, and officials from FIFA, an organization whose Mr. Chuck Blazer used to reside in Trump Tower.

The New York Times also made clear who was conspicuously absent from the Panama Papers:

It is not clear how many United States citizens may have been involved. So far, the documents cited in news reports have not connected any prominent American politicians or other influential Americans to Mossack Fonseca.

It’s not that Americans do not avail themselves of offshore banking regimes. As I explored in The Atlantic back when Mitt Romney’s financial disclosures were in the news, the Cayman Islands are a popular place for American financiers to reduce taxation. Each section of the world has their favorites: England tends toward its Channel Islands, everybody loves Switzerland, Hong Kong and Singapore are Asia’s go-to financial hubs.

But this round of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism focused on a favorite of Russia’s.

The Panama Papers reporting team began work in early 2015. Members of the team published and broadcast their first stories in April 2016 and continued producing stories throughout 2016. They pored over millions of confidential emails and corporate documents written in French, English, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin and Arabic and used shoe-leather reporting to track down additional documents and verify facts on six continents.

One thing remains opaque about the work begun in early 2015 – who obtained the hacked data in the first place? The Infosec Institute speculated in detail about the how, but the who remained still shrouded in mystery – as it does to this day.

Though we might take an educated guess about who would have the motivation…

WERE THE PANAMA PAPERS A WARNING SHOT AIMED AT PUTIN?

There are a lot of moving parts here, but let us take two issues: the relationship between Russia and West, and cyberwarfare that dramatically intensified after Edward Snowden exfiltrated data from the National Security Agency and gave it to Russia. In 2014, Russia launched an attack on the information systems of the U.S. Department of State. In 2015, Russia nearly crippled the information systems of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. America is now in a long state of emergency as it deals with a “political Pearl Harbor” assault on the 2016 elections, attacks aimed at every possible aspect of its political system.

We might now better understand why, in the middle of 2016, stories begin emerging from 2015 hacks that exposed, among other things, how Putin used Cyprus and Panama to traffic billions of ill-gotten gains. It also showed how Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort used Panamanian offshore banking to funnel payments from Ukraine back to the United States.

Conspiratorial minds might notice that the Panama Papers were published less than one week after Paul Manafort was named chairman of Donald Trump’s campaign.

Current reports tell us that the United States and its allies became aware of Putin’s plans to hack America’s elections as early as 2015. And true to their forecasts, the political Pearl Harbor arrived on our shores. The story may seem disconnected, but the Panama Papers perhaps show that the U.S. Government planned to expose these covert attacks, and the root of all this evil: Russian money and its flow around the world.

More surprises will come the deeper we go into this story. Though Russia’s attacks on America’s elections will receive the scrutiny and condemnation they deserve, the world may learn more than it expected about the flows of power and money beneath the surface of our public institutions. Russia will surely not be the only country implicated. This will probably result in a mix of reform and crisis.

Then again, it is usually crisis that produces the opportunity for reform.
http://www.ericgarland.co/2017/08/01/pa ... orruption/
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby Rory » Tue Aug 01, 2017 9:40 pm

You have to admire the intersectionality of a grifter's soul, melded to the brain of a chronic bullshit artist, all fueled by copious amounts of cocaine. Take a bow, Eric Garland.
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 02, 2017 9:53 am

Rory » Tue Aug 01, 2017 8:40 pm wrote:You have to admire the intersectionality of a grifter's soul, melded to the brain of a chronic bullshit artist, all fueled by copious amounts of cocaine. Take a bow, Eric Garland.



you really need to put down your reading material..... get out more :P
and stop watching Fox News ....Hannity will has rotted your brain ..it's a joke sir....just a joke :lol:

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Panama Papers: Germany 'pays millions' for leaked data
5 July 2017
From the section Latin America & Caribbean Share this with Facebook Share this with Twitter Share this with Messenger Share this with Email Share
The German Sueddeutsche Zeitung revealed the Panama Papers leak on 4 April 2016

The repercussions of the gigantic leak of data - which dwarfs the Wikileaks leak of 2010 - are still reverberating
Panama Papers

Huge leak reveals elite's tax havens
Q&A: Panama Papers
Panama leaks spur global investigations
How assets are hidden and taxes dodged

Germany has paid millions of euros for the so-called Panama Papers revealing offshore tax evasion, reports say.
The Federal Crime Office (BKA) said it would put the multi-million-file inventory into electronic form to allow for detailed evaluation.
It did not confirm the sum, but government sources told German media 5m euros (£4.4m; $5.7m) had been paid.
The documents leaked last year exposed rich and powerful people, who had used tax havens to hide their wealth.
The leaks put heads of state, businessmen and celebrities under pressure, with some resigning over the revelations.
Months of investigation
Some of the approximately 11.5m documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca were leaked initially to Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung and then to other news organisations in co-operation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
Süddeutsche said it had refused to pass on the documents to protect its sources and reported that a team of federal police and prosecutors had travelled to Panama City last week to meet local officials. Police said that reviewing the data was likely to take several months.
While paying large sums for unlawfully obtained data has been ruled legal by Germany's constitutional court, it remains controversial.
When Denmark paid a smaller sum to buy data allegedly implicating up to 600 Danish citizens last September, opposition parties attacked the decision as "deeply reprehensible".
The Panama Papers leak was the biggest in history. Some of the documents have been published by various media organisations but many remain unpublished.
Q&A: Panama Papers
Iceland PM resigns over tax leaks
Panama Papers: Full coverage
How tax evasion works
Germany, France and the UK are all believed to have paid for data on bank customers in the past in an attempt to crack down on tax evasion.
"These data are being looked into and evaluated with Hesse state's tax authorities to pursue criminal and fiscal offences," the BKA said in a joint statement (in German) with Hesse's finance ministry and the public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt.
As well as tax fraud, investigators will also be looking for evidence of arms trafficking and organised crime.
Panama Papers - tax havens of the rich and powerful exposed

Media captionA huge leak of confidential documents has revealed how the rich and powerful use tax havens to hide their wealth
BBC Panorama and UK newspaper The Guardian were among 107 media organisations in 76 countries which analysed the documents. The BBC does not know the identity of the source
The documents show how the company helped clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax
Mossack Fonseca says it has operated beyond reproach for 40 years and never been accused or charged with criminal wrongdoing
Read more: How assets are hidden and taxes evaded
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40505300


Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Is Toppled by Corruption Case
By SALMAN MASOODJULY 28, 2017

Supporters of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during rally to condemn his dismissal in Lahore, Pakistan, on Friday. Credit K.M. Chaudary/Associated Press
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Nawaz Sharif, the tycoon and party leader who helped define a turbulent era of Pakistani politics, stepped down as prime minister on Friday after the Supreme Court ruled that corruption allegations had disqualified him.

Coming with less than a year to go in his term, his ouster adds to a grim and long list of civilian governments cut short in Pakistan — including two of his own previous terms as prime minister. And it will further roil the country’s tumultuous political balance, as his rivals vie to exploit his fall.

When Mr. Sharif returned to office in 2013, it was as a widely popular party leader with a deep grudge against the country’s powerful military establishment. He moved quickly to try to establish civilian authority in areas that had long been dominated by generals, especially foreign policy.

But Mr. Sharif, 67, is exiting with none of those ambitions realized.

The Pakistani military has seldom been able to wield as potent a mix of policy control and popular acclaim as it does now. The fragile democratic system in this nuclear-armed nation of almost 200 million people again appears to be on shaky ground. And Mr. Sharif’s own political legacy stands further tarnished.

The governing political party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, must now choose an interim prime minister to replace Mr. Sharif until the next general election, which is scheduled for mid-2018.


Opinion Op-Ed Contributor
Pakistan’s Court Sets a Dangerous Precedent JULY 28, 2017

How the Panama Papers Changed Pakistani Politics JULY 28, 2017

Pakistani Opposition Hopes for Leader’s Removal Over Corruption Case JULY 15, 2017

Pakistan Court Keeps Nawaz Sharif in Power but Orders Inquiry of Family APRIL 20, 2017

Pakistani Police Clash With Backers of Opposition Leader Imran Khan OCT. 31, 2016

A corrupt leader gets punished for undeclared properties. The parliament can choose new Prime Minister without any delay to democratic...

Announced by the five-member Supreme Court, the verdict on Friday caps more than a year of high political drama, breathless court proceedings and a piercing investigation into the finances of the Sharif family.

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Opponents of Mr. Sharif leaving the Supreme Court in Islamabad on Friday. Credit Caren Firouz/Reuters
The charges against Mr. Sharif and three of his children — two sons and a daughter — stemmed from disclosures last year in the Panama Papers leak. Those documents revealed that the children owned expensive residential property in London through offshore companies.

The justices, drawing on a constitutional article that allows the courts to disqualify a member of Parliament who is found to be dishonest, said that they were acting because Mr. Sharif had tried to conceal his assets. And they ordered the opening of a criminal investigation into the Sharif family.

Watching the courtroom drama was the country’s powerful military, which has traditionally decided the fate of civilian governments. There had been hushed speculation that the court, in coming to its decision, had the tacit, if not overt, backing of powerful generals.

Now, Imran Khan, the opposition politician who has been spearheading the campaign against Mr. Sharif since he took power in 2013, stands to gain the most politically from the prime minister’s removal. Mr. Khan has doggedly and almost obsessively led the charge against Mr. Sharif and rallied much of the public against him through a mix of street agitation and court petitions.

The Supreme Court had asked the members of the Sharif family to provide a paper trail of the money they used to buy their London apartments. Investigators found that they were “living beyond their means.”

Despite repeated court exhortations, Mr. Sharif’s family and its lawyers failed to provide satisfactory documentation, the justices said. Several of the documents they produced were declared fake or insufficient.

IN AND OUT OF POWER IN PAKISTAN

Nawaz Sharif served as prime minister an unprecedented three times. All his terms were cut short. Here’s how they played out.

First termIn 1990, Mr. Sharif was ushered into power as head of the Pakistan Muslim League. As his business grew, suspicions of corruption surfaced. He was dismissed by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan in 1993. The Supreme Court eventually deemed his dismissal unconstitutional, but Mr. Sharif resigned under pressure from Pakistan’s powerful military.
Second termMr. Sharif was elected again in 1997. Two years later, a military coup ended his term after he fired the army chief, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and then, according to reports, kept the general’s return flight to Pakistan from landing. Troops loyal to Gen. Musharraf seized the Karachi airport and overthrew the prime minister. Mr. Sharif was tried and found guilty of hijacking and terrorism and sentenced to life in prison.
Third term After spending seven years in exile in a deal brokered by the Saudi royal family, Mr. Sharif returned to Pakistan in 2007. He was cleared of criminal charges and deemed eligible to run for office. Mr. Sharif was again elected prime minister in 2013, but he was met with opposition and faced large protests in 2014. He was tried on corruption charges after the 2016 Panama Papers revealed that his children owned expensive homes in London through a string of offshore companies.
A representative of the governing party said that although Mr. Sharif was stepping down, the party had “strong reservations” about the verdict and was contemplating “all legal and constitutional means” to challenge it.

Mr. Sharif has called the inquiry into his family’s finances a conspiracy and has asserted that in his three terms as prime minister he had not been tarred by a major corruption scandal.

The ruling, while expected, leaves undecided the long-term fate of the man who has been a dominating force in Pakistani politics for the better part of three decades.

“I did not expect Nawaz Sharif to go scot-free,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a prominent political analyst who is based in Lahore.

“If he has a long-term vision, he will sit back and guide his political party,” Mr. Rizvi added. “He and his supporters will portray the court verdict as victimization and a grave conspiracy involving international powers.”

Mr. Sharif’s removal from office throws his political succession plans into disarray. His daughter Maryam Nawaz Sharif, 43, who was being groomed as his political heir, was also implicated in the case.

Security outside the Supreme Court and Parliament in Islamabad on the day of the ruling. Credit B.K. Bangash/Associated Press
Political insiders say there are several possible contenders to replace Mr. Sharif as prime minister in the immediate interim. Names being discussed as include Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, the speaker of the national assembly; Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, the minister of petroleum; Khurram Dastgir Khan, the commerce minister; and Khawaja Muhammad Asif, the defense minister.

“Whoever they bring will be a weak prime minister, as Nawaz Sharif would want to have someone who is more or less in line with his thinking,” Mr. Rizvi said.

For a long-term replacement, though, speculation is focusing on Mr. Sharif’s brother Shehbaz, 65, who is the chief minister of Punjab Province and a prominent and divisive political figure in his own right. He would first have to take his brother’s Parliament seat in a spot election.

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Political analysts say the verdict hands Mr. Khan an undeniable political and moral victory, because it was his pressure on the court to take up the Panama Papers case and then render a quick verdict that forced some of the action.

“Imran Khan will be strengthened, but it remains to be seen how he capitalizes in Punjab Province, which is critical to winning the general elections,” Mr. Rizvi said. Punjab, the most populous and prosperous of the country’s four provinces, has been a stronghold of Mr. Sharif’s for decades.

Mr. Sharif presided over a period of relative economic stability and was able to complete a few large infrastructure projects while reducing the crippling power outages that have long afflicted Pakistan.

Photo

Mr. Sharif in February. The charges against him stemmed from disclosures in the Panama Papers, including his family’s residential property holdings in London. Credit Caren Firouz/Reuters
But the stubborn scandal over the London real estate holdings sullied the reputation of his family.

Mr. Sharif’s political party nonetheless hopes that his achievements can bring it another electoral success next year even if Mr. Sharif cannot run for office.

“We will make a comeback,” Khawaja Saad Rafique, a party leader, said Friday afternoon at a news conference flanked by other senior figures. He said Mr. Sharif’s “crime was that he stood for civilian supremacy.”

He urged party workers to remain peaceful and said that the party respects the country’s institutions. “There will be no chaos,’’ he said. “We will move forward with wisdom and not emotion.”

During his most recent tenure, Mr. Sharif had an uneven relationship with the military. His overtures of more openness toward India, Pakistan’s longtime foe, backfired as generals spurned his efforts.

More recently, relations with the military took a darker turn after news reports detailed how civilian officials confronted the military over what they called a failure to act against Islamist groups. Mr. Sharif had to fire his information minister and two top aides to placate the army.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party, said the Panama Papers ruling was “a real test of our system.”

Some predicted a politically volatile time ahead.

“Until the elections, this will lead to a period of political instability,” Amber Rahim Shamsi, a prominent journalist who hosts a show on Dawn TV, said of the verdict.

“The Sharif political dynasty has somehow managed to survive Pakistan’s rough and bloody politics for over three and a half decades through wheeling and dealing,” Ms. Shamsi said. “It is hard to imagine all the family falling like a pack of cards. Nawaz Sharif has a following and could cash in on political martyrdom to stage a comeback.”


Half a Billion Recovered due to Panama Papers
BY ANNE ELISE RIORDAN BUSINESS July 17, 2017 10:48
Money
Photo: Geir Ólafsson.

The Directorate of Internal Revenue has demanded almost half a billion krónur [USD 4.9 million, EUR 4.2 million] in outstanding taxes from 16 individuals, based on information in the Panama Papers, reports RÚV. The amount may rise and the tax authorities expect to recover the entire outstanding amounts.

The Panama Papers, leaked documents from law firm Mossack Fonseca containing information on individuals and companies around the globe with assets in offshore accounts, came to the attention of the public in 2016, a year after they were leaked, when a global team of journalists simultaneously broke the story after extensive examination of the documents.

The Icelandic government had already been approached with an offer to buy leaked documents pertaining to Icelanders’ assets in tax havens in April 2015, and had decided to pay ISK 37 million [USD 355,000, EUR 310,000] to obtain the information. The seller’s identity has never been revealed, but the documents appeared to be from the law firm, Mossack Fonseca, headquartered in Panama. The documents contained the names of 349 Icelandic individuals and 61 offshore companies with Icelandic ID numbers, totaling 410 Icelandic taxpayers.

After The Directorate of Tax Investigations in Iceland received the data, it decided to specially investigate 34 of those named on suspicion of criminal offenses. Some of these cases were subsequently referred to the District Prosecutor, some were dropped and others are still under review. The names of the 376 individuals and entities that The Directorate of Tax Investigations did not investigate were sent to the Directorate of Internal Revenue.

In response to an inquiry from RÚV’s news division, the Directorate of Internal Revenue stated that this has now led to a redetermination of tax liability for five individuals, up to ISK 147 million [USD 1.4 million EUR 1.2 million]. In addition to this, significant progress has been made in the cases of three other individuals, and the Directorate estimates that the redetermination amount will total ISK 140 million [USD 1.34 million, EUR 1.17 million], although this figure could still change.

Twelve people also requested a reassessment of their tax returns themselves after they received letters of inquiry from the tax authorities about their foreign assets. A total of eight such cases have been concluded and netted around ISK 200 million [USD 1.92 million, EUR 1.68 million].

In total, there are about ISK 487 million [USD 4.68 million, EUR 4.08 million] in outstanding taxes, which for the most part involved a wealth tax that was in effect between 2011 and 2015. The wealth tax amounted to up to two percent of assets in excess of ISK 75 million [USD 720,000, EUR 629,000] for individuals and in excess of 100 million [USD 961,000, EUR 839,000] for married couples. It is clear, therefore, that the taxable base behind this ISK 487 million runs into the billions.

Twenty additional offshore account cases related to the purchased data are in progress and likely to produce outcomes, according to the Directorate of Internal Revenue, although it is difficult to say at this point how much this could add to the state treasury.
http://icelandreview.com/news/2017/07/1 ... ama-papers
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Sep 05, 2017 9:15 pm

Putin saw the Panama Papers as a personal attack and may have wanted revenge, Russian authors say
By Adam Taylor August 28

Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik/Pool/European Pressphoto Agency)
Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan first published “The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries” in 2015. In that book, the pair used investigative reporting and sharp analysis to show how the Kremlin was using the Internet to its advantage.

Two years later, Russia's alleged use of covert online operations became a topic of discussion all around world. And so Soldatov and Borogan began investigating again.

Now they have released a new version of their book that includes an additional chapter on the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The new chapter provides important context about Russian President's Vladimir Putin's possible motivations — as well as evidence of apparent links between WikiLeaks and the Kremlin, and details of the ongoing fallout in Russia.

WorldViews conducted an interview about this new chapter with Soldatov and Borogan over email. The new edition of the book came out last week in the United States.

Q: When you published the first edition of your book, could you have envisaged having to add a chapter on Russia allegedly trying influence the U.S. election?

Andrew Soldatov (Courtesy of author) Irina Borogan (Courtesy of author)
A: No, our assumption was that the Kremlin was losing the battle for control of the Internet, sticking to old, conventional methods of control. But it proved correct for the situation inside of Russia. Outside, the Kremlin used a completely different toolkit dealing with things online.

Q: What do you think is the strongest public evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin was involved in attempts to disrupt the U.S. election himself?

A: The Kremlin has been for years using outsourcing and contractors as the tactics to lower the costs for sensitive operations abroad; that's why it was so tricky to prove Putin himself was involved. The most telling part for us, as the people who saw the crisis unfolded from inside of Russia, is what happened in the fall and winter 2016.

While publicly Putin has always denied Russian government involvement, all the top-level Russian gatekeepers between the Russian cyber agencies and the West were either sent to jail or quietly dismissed, for the obvious reason to prevent them from leaking.

We also believe that the meeting of the Russian Security Council on April 8, when Putin urgently gathered only the most trusted officials — most of them with secret services background — could be the meeting when a very sensitive matter was discussed, such as the need for a retaliatory response to the Panama Papers exposés.

Washington weighs in on President Trump's visit to theGroup of 20 summit in Hamburg, and whether he believes that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)
Q: Your book suggests that Russia’s alleged interference in the U.S. might be a response to the Panama Papers, the enormous 2016 leak of documents from an offshore banking network. Why do you think that leak of financial data angered the Kremlin so much?

A: It was seen as an attack on personal friends of Putin, his immediate circle. It's a line you cannot cross with Putin, and the Russian media learned that in a hard way. When a small Moscow publication reported in 2008 that Putin divorced and was going to marry a famous gymnast, the publication was immediately shut. When the RBC media holding published stories about Putin's daughter in 2015, the media holding's owner corporation was raided by police, and the media holding soon changed hands.

Worse, Putin believed the Panama Papers attack was sponsored by Hillary Clinton's people — this, in a way, provided him with a “justification” for a retaliatory operation.

Q: Could you describe some of what you uncovered about WikiLeaks’ alleged links to the Russian government?

A: It is a very sad story for us personally, as we believed back in 2010 in the mission of WikiLeaks — we've been writing about the Russian secret services since 2000, and we run our website Agentura.ru as a security services watchdog, thus transparency and holding power in check are important words for us. We also have friends who are investigative journalists who cooperated with WikiLeaks in the past.

The most horrible thing we found out that in the spring and summer of 2016 WikiLeaks suddenly compromised the very principles [founder Julian] Assange proclaimed, and didn't stop from attacking the very journalists the group had been working with. And he knew full well the danger these journalists faced exposing the offshore schemes of Putin's personal friends. For us, it's a story of betrayal, both principles and people.

Q: What has the fallout over the alleged U.S. election interference been in Russia’s cybersecurity world?

A: Since December, the Kremlin and the FSB [Russia's Federal Security Service, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB] have been trying to shut all doors to the West for the Russian cybersecurity professionals, strongly discouraging them from communicating with their colleagues in other countries.

It's a sad story in itself, as the world of cyber investigations is global by definition, and the Russian experts have been always widely respected and proud, quite rightly, of their international reputation. And look, you just cannot hunt down Russian hackers only in Russia— it's not how this works — they tend to live and operate in many countries!

Q: Do you think that the Russian government would be likely to try something like this again?

A: The problem is that the U.S. response may have been fine for the United States, but it won't help other countries to resist. As Russians, we obviously know nothing about the secret part of the sanctions, but one thing is clear — the open part of the response could hardly set an example the other countries could follow. You cannot expect the Baltic countries, say, to expel dozens of Russian diplomats. That could provoke the adventurous people in the Kremlin to try their hand elsewhere, as the costs seem to be not very high.

Worse still, it's not only about Russia — lots of cyber experts told us that even a country with very basic level of technology needs only five years to come to the level sufficient for launching a cyberattack.

Q: Have you faced any repercussions for your reporting on this book?

A: It was very hard to get people talking, especially after the December arrests of FSB people. We also got some death threats by email, which is, unfortunately, a very common thing for journalists in Russia.

But the important thing to say is that there are many of our colleagues, especially in the regions, who keep reporting bravely, sometimes for very small publications, which makes things very dangerous to them. And these are people we admire.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wor ... 2c33e5f959


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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRKPh4RqtA4

https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B ... nel=system

seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 01, 2017 8:25 pm wrote:
THE PANAMA PAPERS – FIRST STRIKE AGAINST PUTIN’S CORRUPTION
ERIC GARLAND AUGUST 1, 2017
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If you didn’t know much about international finance, you probably didn’t see the journalistic project known as The Panama Papers as a retaliatory move against Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Wikileaks did immediately. Although the tweet was since deleted, the political warfare operation took to Russia Today to complain that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists wasn’t being ethical about their leaks, which made Vladimir Putin look corrupt. Somewhere between Rossiya Bank, Cyprus, and Panama, Putin had around $2 billion dollars stashed away.

Courtesy of The Guardian, this handy graph depicts the flow of what investor Bill Browder recently testified to be money stolen from the Russian people themselves.
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panama papers putin cyprus

Based on hacking that exfiltratrated 2.6 terabytes of financial data, the Panama Papers was the largest leak in a string of such “journalistic” endeavors kicked off by the Russian military intelligence front Wikileaks.
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Panama Papers leak file size

When the Panama Papers hit the news in April 2016, it wasn’t well understood that Vladimir Putin may have been the main target. Sure, the cast of Harry Potter had some money flowing through as well, but that was more light scandal than strategic strike. The New York Times published an article that explained which entities had been most exposed by the leaks:

Among others, the documents named close associates of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the father of Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and relatives of President Xi Jinping of China and members of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee. Articles published by news organizations in cooperation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists also named King Salman of Saudi Arabia; Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, who resigned as prime minister of Icelandafter the revelations; President Mauricio Macri of Argentina; and the soccer star Lionel Messi, one of the world’s wealthiest athletes.

Other soccer players; officials from FIFA, the sport’s world governing body; and UEFA, the governing body of European soccer, were also tied to firms incorporated offshore through the Panamanian firm.

A couple of names stick out: Vladimir Putin, and officials from FIFA, an organization whose Mr. Chuck Blazer used to reside in Trump Tower.

The New York Times also made clear who was conspicuously absent from the Panama Papers:

It is not clear how many United States citizens may have been involved. So far, the documents cited in news reports have not connected any prominent American politicians or other influential Americans to Mossack Fonseca.

It’s not that Americans do not avail themselves of offshore banking regimes. As I explored in The Atlantic back when Mitt Romney’s financial disclosures were in the news, the Cayman Islands are a popular place for American financiers to reduce taxation. Each section of the world has their favorites: England tends toward its Channel Islands, everybody loves Switzerland, Hong Kong and Singapore are Asia’s go-to financial hubs.

But this round of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism focused on a favorite of Russia’s.

The Panama Papers reporting team began work in early 2015. Members of the team published and broadcast their first stories in April 2016 and continued producing stories throughout 2016. They pored over millions of confidential emails and corporate documents written in French, English, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin and Arabic and used shoe-leather reporting to track down additional documents and verify facts on six continents.

One thing remains opaque about the work begun in early 2015 – who obtained the hacked data in the first place? The Infosec Institute speculated in detail about the how, but the who remained still shrouded in mystery – as it does to this day.

Though we might take an educated guess about who would have the motivation…

WERE THE PANAMA PAPERS A WARNING SHOT AIMED AT PUTIN?

There are a lot of moving parts here, but let us take two issues: the relationship between Russia and West, and cyberwarfare that dramatically intensified after Edward Snowden exfiltrated data from the National Security Agency and gave it to Russia. In 2014, Russia launched an attack on the information systems of the U.S. Department of State. In 2015, Russia nearly crippled the information systems of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. America is now in a long state of emergency as it deals with a “political Pearl Harbor” assault on the 2016 elections, attacks aimed at every possible aspect of its political system.

We might now better understand why, in the middle of 2016, stories begin emerging from 2015 hacks that exposed, among other things, how Putin used Cyprus and Panama to traffic billions of ill-gotten gains. It also showed how Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort used Panamanian offshore banking to funnel payments from Ukraine back to the United States.

Conspiratorial minds might notice that the Panama Papers were published less than one week after Paul Manafort was named chairman of Donald Trump’s campaign.

Current reports tell us that the United States and its allies became aware of Putin’s plans to hack America’s elections as early as 2015. And true to their forecasts, the political Pearl Harbor arrived on our shores. The story may seem disconnected, but the Panama Papers perhaps show that the U.S. Government planned to expose these covert attacks, and the root of all this evil: Russian money and its flow around the world.

More surprises will come the deeper we go into this story. Though Russia’s attacks on America’s elections will receive the scrutiny and condemnation they deserve, the world may learn more than it expected about the flows of power and money beneath the surface of our public institutions. Russia will surely not be the only country implicated. This will probably result in a mix of reform and crisis.

Then again, it is usually crisis that produces the opportunity for reform.
http://www.ericgarland.co/2017/08/01/pa ... orruption/
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 06, 2017 11:13 am

Journalists successfully used secure computing to expose Panama Papers, researchers say
August 17, 2017
A team of researchers from Clemson University, Columbia University and the University of Washington has discovered a security success in an unlikely place: the "Panama Papers."
"Success stories in computer security are rare," said Franzi Roesner, assistant professor at the University of Washington and one of the principal investigators on this project. "But we discovered that the journalists involved in the Panama Papers project seem to have achieved their security goals."
The Panama Papers project was a year-long collaborative investigation of leaked documents detailing the uses of offshore funds by clients of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. During this project, a large, diverse group of globally distributed journalists collaborated remotely via the internet while achieving their security goals.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Panama Papers investigation exposed offshore companies linked to more than 140 politicians in more than 50 countries—including 14 current or former world leaders, according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). It also uncovered offshore hideaways tied to mega-banks, corporate bribery scandals, drug kingpins, Syria's air war on its own citizens and a network of people close to Russian President Vladimir Putin that shuffled as much as $2 billion around the world, ICIJ said.
"We found that the tools developed for the project were highly useful and usable, which motivated journalists to use the secure communication platforms provided by the ICIJ," said Susan McGregor, assistant professor at Columbia University and one of the principal investigators on this project who presented the work Wednesday at the USENIX security conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She presented the group's paper, "When the Weakest Link is Strong: Secure Collaboration in the Case of the Panama Papers."
"This project is an example of the power of multi-disciplinary research," said Kelly Caine, director of the Humans and Technology Lab at Clemson and one of the principal investigators on the project. "We couldn't have made these important discoveries without the expertise of everyone on the team."


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-journalis ... s.html#jCp


Panama Papers: PANA Committee ‘impeded massively’ in investigation - Giegold
Wednesday, 6 September 2017, 10:32Last update: about 6 hours ago

MEP Sven Giegold, Coordinator of the Greens/EFA group in the PANA committee, said that the PANA committee was “impeded massively” in its investigation on the Panama Papers.

In comments posted by Alternattiva Demokratika chairman Arnold Cassola on Facebook, Giegold said this is so mostly because politicians refrained from attending meetings specifically held for the committee to gather information.

Among them was OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri, who refused to accept at least two requests by the committee, one when it was in Malta in February and later rejected an invitation to meet in Strasbourg.

Cassola said that today was the closing date for presentation of amendments to the EP Panama Papers Committee report.

MEP Sven Giegold, Coordinator of the Greens/EFA group in the PANA committee commented:

"Ensuring tax justice, fair competition and effective prosecution of financial criminality is crucial to foster the credibility of the European Union. When it comes to money laundering and tax avoidance, many Member States only stand and watch. The Maltese government is even
itself involved in business with letterbox companies and does not draw any serious consequence. The Member States concerned must now clean up at home and agree to an EU-wide public transparency register of the beneficial owners of companies and trusts. To end the Member States' ominous race to the bottom, we need a common minimum corporation tax rate in the EU. The Commission must further increase the number of staff to combat financial crime and to monitor Member States more effectively. If the Member States continue to delay measures against tax avoidance, the EU Commission must submit their proposals under the majority voting procedure (Article 116 TFEU).

"Unfortunately, the work of the PANA Committee has been impeded massively. Numerous responsible firms and politicians refused to attend hearings in the Parliament. The Council and the Commission kept decisive documents under wraps. The insights from most of the transmitted documents cannot be made public by the Investigation Committee. The final report including our own amendments therefore only display half of the truth. Thereby, Council and Commission deprive the public of a large part of the insights gained by the PANA Committee. We demand a permanent Investigation Committee in the European Parliament comparable to the one of the US Senate, in order to effectively oppose infringements of Union law."
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/ ... 6736178681
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Mon Oct 16, 2017 3:09 pm

Malta car bomb kills Panama Papers journalist

Daphne Caruana Galizia, a blogger whose investigations focused on corruption, was described as a ‘one-woman WikiLeaks’

Image
Forensic experts walk in a field after a powerful bomb blew up a car killing investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Photograph: Darrin Zammit Lupi/Reuters

Juliette Garside

Monday 16 October 2017 13.33 EDT

The journalist who led the Panama Papers investigation into corruption in Malta was killed on Monday in a car bomb near her home.

Daphne Caruana Galizia died on Monday afternoon when her car, a Peugeot 108, was destroyed by a powerful explosive device which blew the car into several pieces and threw the debris into a nearby field.

A blogger whose posts often attracted more readers than the combined circulation of the country’s newspapers, Galizia was recently described by the Politico website as a “one-woman WikiLeaks”. Her blogs were a thorn in the side of both the establishment and underworld figures that hold sway in Europe’s smallest member state.

Her most recent revelations pointed the finger at Malta’s prime minister, Joseph Muscat, and two of his closest aides, connecting offshore companies linked to the three men with the sale of Maltese passports and payments from the government of Azerbaijan.

No group or individual has come forward to claim responsibility for the attack.

Malta’s president, Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, called for calm. “In these moments, when the country is shocked by such a vicious attack, I call on everyone to measure their words, to not pass judgment and to show solidarity,” she said.

After a fraught general election this summer, political commentators had been fearing a return to the political violence that scarred Malta during the 1980s.

In a statement, Muscat condemned the “barbaric attack”, saying he had asked police to reach out to other countries’ security services for help identifying the perpetrators.

“Everyone knows Ms Caruana Galizia was a harsh critic of mine,” Muscat at a hastily convened press conference, “both politically and personally, but nobody can justify this barbaric act in any way”.

The Nationalist party leader, Adrian Delia – himself the subject of negative stories by Galizia – claimed the killing was linked to her reporting. “A political murder took place today,” Delia said in a statement. “What happened today is not an ordinary killing. It is a consequence of the total collapse of the rule of law which has been going on for the past four years.”

According to local media reports, Galizia filed a police report 15 days ago to say that she had been receiving death threats.

The journalist posted her final blog on her Running Commentary website at 2:35pm on Monday, and the explosion, which occurred near her home, was reported to police just after 3pm. Officers said her body had not yet been identified. According to sources, one of her sons heard the blast from their home and rushed out to the scene.

Galizia, who claimed to have no political affiliations, set her sights on a wide range of targets, from banks facilitating money laundering to links between Malta’s online gaming industry and the Mafia.

Over the last two years, her reporting had largely focused on revelations from the Panama Papers, a cache of 11.5m documents leaked from the internal database of the world’s fourth largest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca.

The data was obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with media partners around the world, including the Guardian, by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in Washington.

Galizia’s son, Matthew Caruana Galizia, is a journalist and programmer who works for the ICIJ.

Earlier this year, during Malta’s presidency of the European Union, her revelations caused major concern in Brussels.

MEPs openly called for Muscat’s departure amid a growing scandal involving his wife, a Panamanian shell company and alleged payments from the president of Azerbaijan’s daughter.

Muscat, who has been premier since 2013, went to the polls a year early after his wife was implicated in the scandal. He has always denied any wrongdoing and promised to quit if any evidence emerges of his family having secret offshore bank accounts used to stash kickbacks – as Caruana Galizia had alleged.

Responding to news of the attack, the German MEP Sven Giegold, a leading figure in the parliament’s Panama Papers inquiry, said he was “shocked and saddened”.

“It is too early to know the cause of the explosion but we expect to see a thorough investigation,” said Giegold. “Such incidents bring to mind Putin’s Russia, not the European Union. There can be absolutely no tolerance for violence against the press and violations of the freedom of expression in the European Union.”

Opposition politicians claim there has been a collapse in the rule of law in Malta since Muscat returned Malta’s Labour party to power in 2013 following a long period in opposition. Four police commissioners have resigned under his leadership. The fifth, Lawrence Cutajar, took up his post in August 2016.

There have been several car bomb killings in Malta during recent years. While the perpetrators have not been identified, the violence is thought to have been linked to disputes between criminal gangs. None are thought to have been politically motivated.

Galizia was 53 and leaves a husband and three sons.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Dec 25, 2017 8:31 pm

Seth Abramson

Verified account
6h6 hours ago

8/ To sum up: Galizia worked at ICIJ before she was assassinated; ICIJ received proof Ivanka's Panama business partner Alexandre Nogueira was a fraud; that proof is what led to Reuters connecting Ivanka to the Russian mafia; the FBI is now investigating.




FBI to help investigate car bomb that killed Panama Papers journalist

By JULIA JACOBO Oct 18, 2017, 11:15 AM ET
Rene Rossignaud/AP
WATCH Thousands More 'Panama Papers' Documents to Be Made Public

The FBI is helping authorities in Malta investigate a car bomb that killed a journalist who exposed the nation's ties to offshore tax havens through the leaked Panama Papers.

Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, 53, was killed Monday as she drove away from her home in the town of Mosta, on Malta's main island, said Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, according to The Associated Press.

U.S. Department of State spokesperson Heather Nauert condemned Galizia's death as "appalling violence in the strongest terms possible" in a press briefing Tuesday.

Nauert called for a "thorough, transparent" investigation, saying that the FBI is providing "specific assistance as needed" at the request of Maltese authorities.

PHOTO: Investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. The Malta Independent via AP
Investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Muscat described Galizia's death as a "barbaric attack" and a "political murder," as well as an assault on freedom of expression.

Galizia was "was one of my harshest critics, on a political and personal level," Muscat said. Galizia wrote that Muscat's wife, along with the country's energy minister and the government's chief of staff, had offshore holdings in Panama to receive money from Azerbaijan, according to the AP. Muscat and his wife denied that they had companies in Panama.

PHOTO: Thousands of people gather for a candlelight vigil in Sliema, Oct. 16, 2017, in tribute to late journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who was killed by a car bomb close to her home in Bidnija, Malta.Matthew Mirabelli/AFP/Getty Images
Thousands of people gather for a candlelight vigil in Sliema, Oct. 16, 2017, in tribute to late journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who was killed by a car bomb close to her home in Bidnija, Malta.more +
Thousands of people gathered in Sliema Monday night for a candlelight vigil in tribute to Galizia.

Herman Grech, the online editor of the Times of Malta, called her a "dedicated" journalist, adding "no one could stop her."

"She had this uncompromising state of mind. I didn't always agree with her methods. She got this niche of fighting corruption and I don't know any journalist in Malta who will be able to take back her investigations," Grech told ABC News.

The slain journalist had been a columnist for The Malta Independent for more than 20 years and also wrote a blog called the "Running Commentary." She is survived by her husband and three sons.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/fbi ... d=50541078
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Sep 10, 2018 10:45 am

smiths » Sun May 08, 2016 8:57 am wrote:
tick, tock ...

still waiting, for even 1 genuine scandal and shitstorm from the so-called biggest leak ever



Second Panama Papers Leak: Findings From Around The World

Leaked Mossack Fonseca documents exposed the millionaire offspring of European and African officials, illicit campaign funding in Latin America, and more.

From the millionaire offspring of European and African officials to illicit campaign funding in Latin America, a second leak of documents from Mossack Fonseca this year exposed more details about the world’s rich, famous and nefarious.

The 1.2 million new emails, passport copies and bank statements, most of which are dated after the first Panama Papers investigation of April 2016, provided new chapters in known cases of bribery, corruption, tax avoidance and secretive deals.

In addition, hundreds of journalists around the world exposed previously unreported transactions and companies secretly tied to politicians, high-level government officials and members of their families.

Here are some of our partners’ top findings from the new material:

Latvia

In Latvia, the nonprofit investigative news organization Re:Baltica revealed details of a $10 million trust owned by the daughter of an influential Latvian politician.

Liga Lemberga is the daughter of Aivars Lembergs, one of Latvia’s wealthiest men and mayor of a seaside town that has long been a major European transit route for Russian oil.

Her father has been indicted on corruption and financial crimes charges, and the court case is underway, Re:Baltica reported. Lembergs denies wrongdoing.

Cerise Trust Savings, one of the offshore vehicles owned by Lemberga and revealed in the newly-leaked Panama Papers documents, is briefly mentioned in the criminal case against Lembergs, Re:Baltica reported.

Neither Lemberga nor Lembergs responded before publication to Re:Baltica’s questions about how she came to control a $10 million trust.

Lembergs emailed Re:Baltica after publication that his children live independently and are now in their 40s. He did not respond to Re:Baltica’s questions about the trust, which was established in 1992, and whether the trust’s assets were linked to Lembergs’ work in government.

Latvian police at the Economic Crimes Prevention Office have since opened an inquiry into the companies and transactions.

Algeria

Daraj reported on the son of the state’s oil company chief.
Daraj's Panama Papers story
The additional documents from inside Mossack Fonseca also revealed the offshore activities of the son of Algeria’s state oil company chief.

Nacim Ould Kaddour, son of Sonatrach CEO Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour, set up companies to transfer millions of dollars through offshore companies in the Seychelles, ICIJ member Lyas Hallas reported.

The younger Kaddour was a little-known entrepreneur until his father took control of Algeria’s vast oil wealth in 2017. Certain pro-government media now portray the son as an oil industry titan, Hallas reported.

In documents from the Panama Papers, the younger Kaddour is copied on dozens of emails from lawyers in Beirut to Mossack Fonseca that discuss companies in the Seychelles and bank accounts in Lebanon.

One of the companies cited in the emails was Synergex Group S.A., created in 2012. Synergex Group was a “consultant” dealing with Algerian and Chinese oil, according to emails.

A second company connected to Synergex through the same Lebanese law firm was Farahead Equipment Energy Ltd. In one document sent to Mossack Fonseca, the company reported that it would receive $12 million to $15 million each year from oil sales.

For a time, the law firm told the offshore company that it would have trouble finding a bank account willing to take its “sensitive” business, in part because “Algeria as the major location of…business is also a high risk country.”

Although the company’s documentation for its multimillion-dollar activity said it primarily worked in Algeria, Hallas found no trace of the company in Algeria’s company registry.

Nacim Ould Kaddour did not respond to Hallas’ questions.

Colombia

Colombian news organization Connectas reported on the mechanics behind a Panama company that helped pay for election campaign advertising for Colombian president Manuel Santos.

Previous news reports disclosed that the owner of the Panama company Impressa Group Corp., former vice-minister of tourism and entrepreneur María Fernanda Valencia, was summoned to appear before government investigators in 2017 to explain a $400,000 payment made to Santos’ 2010 presidential bid.

The payment, made through Impressa Group Corp. by the Brazilian multinational Odebrecht, was probed as part of a wide-ranging investigation into bribes paid by the company to politicians and government officials across Latin America. Valencia denied the payment to her Panama company was a bribe.

Santos’ former campaign manager, Roberto Prieto, later admitted that the campaign never recorded the $400,000 that it used to buy two million campaign posters, Connectas reported. The former campaign manager has since been charged with corruption.

The new Panama Papers files revealed that Impressa Group Corp., was created in 2010 just 12 days before the second and final round of Colombia’s presidential election that saw Santos elected to power. The request to create the company was “urgent,” according to emails sent to Mossack Fonseca.

Connectas reported that the Panama Papers documents show that once the company was set up and the posters paid for, the relationship with Mossack Fonseca, the law firm that created it, turned sour. “We have called more than 10 times, we have left messages, we have sent mails and he does not take us seriously,” a Mossack Fonseca employee complained in an email about the intermediary acting for the Impressa Group Corp.

Botswana

Botswana’s INK Centre for Investigative Journalism reported that the deputy head of the country’s foreign investment agency directed a company that helped wealthy Africans move money offshore.

Christopher Garland was the director of a company established in the Seychelles, INK reported.
Botswana's Center for Investigative Journalism INK Panama Papers story
Christopher Garland was the director of a company established in the Seychelles, Dölberg Wealth International Ltd., according to documents, as well as deputy director for the Botswana Investment and Trade Centre (BITC).

The leaked records show how BITC intervened when Mossack Fonseca considered closing Dölberg Wealth International Ltd after learning that Garland worked at a government agency.

The Botswana foreign investment agency argued that Garland should not be considered as connected to politics because BITC was solely formed for promoting investment and exports, according to a letter written by BITC’s board secretary that was uncovered in the Panama Papers.

INK reported that Garland’s company Dölberg helped set up another company in the tax haven Seychelles. The company would be owned by layers of trusts and would hold money made from imports and exports to and from South Africa, according to documents.

“Ironically, Garland’s interest in companies that assist wealthy people to invest in offshore tax havens may have undermined the principles for which BITC was formed, which is to attract much-needed foreign investment,” INK reported.

Garland told INK that he did not have direct ties with Mossack Fonseca and that BITC always knew about his relationship with Dölberg.

Do you have a story about corruption, fraud, or abuse of power?

ICIJ accepts information about wrongdoing by corporate, government or public services around the world. We do our utmost to guarantee the confidentiality of our sources.

Leak to ICIJ!
Luxembourg

In the first collaboration between ICIJ and a Luxembourg media organization, the newspaper Woxx revealed that an offshore company is owned by Luxembourg member of parliament Roy Reding.

Reding is a high-profile lawyer and has sat in Luxembourg’s parliament since 2013.

The Panama Papers show that Reding asked Mossack Fonseca in 2012 to create a company for him in the Seychelles.

In a January 2012 email, Reding told Mossack Fonseca that his preferences for offshore company names included Chuck Morrison, Church-hill and Melusina, the name of a water sprite from Luxembourg folklore. Reding settled on Chuck Morrison Ltd.

In response to questions, Reding told Woxx that the company was used to do auditing work. The documents from the Panama Papers show that the company’s purpose was also to hold shares in other entities, Woxx reported.

Reding told Woxx that he used Chuck Morrison Ltd. until 2015 when he closed it due to the Seychelles’ increasingly negative reputation as a tax haven. This made work “impossible” with a Seychelles company, Reding told Woxx.
https://www.icij.org/investigations/pan ... the-world/


Algeria launches money laundering probe on back of Panama Papers


IMPACT

The government of Algeria has launched a money-laundering investigation based on information revealed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists Panama Papers investigation.

The investigation, which involves the abuse of a government-run milk powder subsidy program and laundering the proceeds from the scheme, was revealed in a decision by Switzerland’s Federal Court. The fraud’s alleged masterminds had bank accounts in Switzerland.

In reaching its decision, the Swiss Federal Court cited reporting by Algerian journalist and ICIJ member Lyas Hallas who worked on the Panama Papers. The story was published by Le Monde Afrique.

Algerian entrepreneur Zoubir Bererhi, the brother of a former government minister, inflated the price of milk powder imported under a government-run subsidy program, Hallas reported.

Bererhi made millions of dollars in inflated profits from the scheme look legitimate using Swiss bank accounts and offshore companies, Hallas reported using Panama Papers documents.

“Their offshore company, which they claimed not to own, bought the milk powder at the global market price and sold it to their own dairy company sometimes for as much as twice the price,” Hallas reported.

Milk is an important staple in Algeria and benefited from significant government subsidies at the time of the scheme in 2009, Hallas reported. The country has since ended the subsidy program.

Algerian judge Sidi M’hamed contacted Switzerland in April 2017 as part of an investigation into “money laundering within the framework of a criminal organization,” the Swiss court said.

In response, Switzerland ordered local financial institutions to provide copies of financial assets and bank accounts in addition to documents that Bererhi and his family used to open such accounts. Today, ICIJ is also publishing two new documents relating to Berehi.

Page 1 of Dairy Food Ingredients Ltd
According to Swiss legal custom, the names of the parties are not reported. Swiss media first reported that Bererhi was the subject of the judgement alongside his son and brother-in-law.

A spokesman for one of the banks involved, Credit Suisse, said it operated in “strict compliance” with the law and does not comment on client relationships “as a matter of principle”.

The news of the Algerian investigation is the latest in a series of probes, convictions and resignations that followed publication of ICIJ’s Panama Papers investigation more than two years ago.

Fraud, money laundering and corruption investigations “take enormous lengths of time and are incredibly complex,” said Ross Delston, a Washington D.C.-based attorney and anti-money laundering specialist.

Government investigators can choose not to release information about ongoing probes out of “fear the individuals will take flight and that the money could disappear in nanoseconds,” he said.

“All of that results in a perception that nothing is going on when, in fact, there could be quite a bit going on that is unseen by the public,” Delston said.

Earlier this year, Switzerland announced a set of anti-money laundering proposals that it claimed would make it harder for would-be criminals to misuse companies, trusts and bank accounts.

https://www.icij.org/blog/2018/09/alger ... ma-papers/



First tax recovery made under Panama Papers investigation

Mubarak Zeb Khan

Names of 259 Pakistanis with links to offshore companies surfaced in Panama Papers — one of the world’s biggest ever data leaks made public by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in 2016.

ISLAMABAD: Exactly two years after starting the exercise, the tax authorities have reported their first recoveries under the investigations into assets held by individuals named in the Panama and Paradise papers.

Data from the Federal Board of Revenue, obtained by Dawn, shows that the Karachi and Islamabad LTU have made the first recovery of tax since the start of the exercise.

The FBR has recovered a total amount of Rs6.2 billion out of total demand created in 15 cases. The recovery of the remaining amount of Rs4.64bn remains under process.

The break up shows that in six cases notices were issued to members of a single leading business family by the Islamabad LTU. The tax demand raised from the family was about Rs4.6bn out of which only Rs15m has been recovered from them.

Article continues after ad

The single largest tax demand of Rs3.164bn was raised from a Karachi based individual, which has been recovered in full by the Karachi LTU.

The second largest recovery of Rs2.691bn was made from another Karachi-based individual where the tax demand was also recovered in full, followed by another amount of Rs350m from a third individual also based in Karachi.

In Sept 2016, the FBR Intelligence Directorate issued 444 notices to owners of the offshore companies mentioned in the Panama Papers.

Documents seen by Dawn show that notices could not be delivered to as many as 151 Pakistani individuals categorised in 73 cases as “untraceable.” The only reasons mentioned for non-delivery is incorrect or incomplete address.

Moreover, another bulk of 78 cases was bracketed undelivered due to non-availability of sufficient particulars of these Pakistani individuals. Seventeen cases were unregistered so far due to other reasons.

Consequently, the proceedings were initiated only in 276 cases in which notices were issued to the individuals, who confirmed owning offshore companies. The only updates available with the FBR is that notices are being issued to these individuals and in most of the cases returns of income and wealth statements have been enforced.

The tax authorities plead that the leaks only identify the names of people who have investments in tax havens, but the challenge for the tax authority was to obtain details of the assets accumulated by those individuals, which were not shared in such leaks.

It was mentioned in the report that wealth declarations were filed regularly by the people named in the leaks, but no offshore asset was shown. In some cases, taxpayers have denied having any offshore asset and there is no source of verification available with the FBR.

In certain cases, individuals are not traceable specifically being non-resident.

Under the Paradise Leaks, a total of 38 individuals were identified who have purchased properties abroad. The FBR has issued notices to all those individuals who are traceable so far.

As per latest updates, proceedings were initiated and finalised only in two of these cases only so far by creating tax demands of Rs283.5m. However, no recovery has been made so far.

The third leak, the Bahamas Leaks named 150 Pakistanis. However, the whereabouts and identities were established only in 108 cases. But FBR has not issued a single notice to people named in Bahamas Leaks. “We have not issued a single notice”, a senior official confirmed to Dawn.

Published in Dawn, September 9th, 2018
https://www.dawn.com/news/1431813



New Panama Papers Leak Includes Offshore Links To Lionel Messi, Cartier, Argentine Leader

June 21, 2018Ryan Chittum and Will Fitzgibbon
Argentine president, Mauricio Macri and Lionel Messi

Two years after the Panama Papers rocked the offshore financial system, a fresh document leak from the law firm Mossack Fonseca reveals new offshore details about an array of global elites, including soccer superstar Lionel Messi, the Argentine president’s family and a former senior Kuwaiti official convicted of looting his country’s social security system.

The documents also show Mossack Fonseca scrambling to contain the fallout from the leak and identify its own clients.

The 1.2 million documents date from a few months before April 2016, when the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and more than 100 media partners published the initial Panama Papers stories, and continue through December 2017. The documents were leaked to Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung, which shared them with ICIJ.

Mossack Fonseca’s founders, Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca, issued a press release in June that said the law firm, its employees and its founders were “never involved in unlawful acts.” They did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

In the coming days, ICIJ partners in dozens of countries will publish stories based on the new batch of Panama Papers files. Those stories will shed new light on the financial dealings of people from the first investigation and connect other influential and politically-connected people to the firm.

Here, in brief, are some of the findings:

Soccer star Lionel Messi’s offshore tax mess

Lionel Messi, a star soccer player for Barcelona, was already under investigation in Spain on charges that he and his father, Jorge Horacio Messi, used offshore companies in Belize and Uruguay to avoid paying millions of dollars in taxes when the Panama Papers revealed they owned yet another offshore company: Mega Star Enterprises, based in Panama.

When asked about the company in April 2016, the Messis told ICIJ and partners that Mega Star was “totally inactive.” Internal emails from the newly-leaked Mossack Fonseca records call that claim into question.

The “Uruguay office tells me that the client is using the company,” a law firm employee wrote in May 2016, a month later. Mossack Fonseca resigned as the registered agent for Mega Star Enterprises in July 2016, the documents show — the same month the Messis were convicted by a Spanish court of tax fraud. Lionel was given a 21-month suspended sentence and fined $2.2 million.

A lawyer for Messi told Spanish newspaper El Confidencial, an ICIJ partner, that Mega Star Enterprises was an old issue and was part of the former corporate scheme that had already been adjudicated. The company is not being activity used, the lawyer said.

‘Very risky’ plans linked to Argentina’s Mauricio Macri

Emails between Mossack Fonseca’s head office in Panama and its Uruguay branch in September and October 2016 show employees discussing a plan to backdate documents to conceal the fact that the firm did not know that a company it had set up in the Bahamas, Fleg Trading Co., was controlled by the family of Argentine president Mauricio Macri.

Macri and other family members were directors of Fleg Trading, the original Panama Papers investigation revealed. His father was the owner. Anti-money-laundering laws required Mossack Fonseca to know such information.

Mossack Fonseca employees discussed having Macri’s accountant produce a handwritten document in 2016, but dated years earlier, that would confirm the company’s owner, according to emails. The accountant dismissed the idea as “very risky” since the letter “could be refuted easily by an expert calligrapher,” who would pick up that the document was written more recently than the purported earlier date, according to Mossack Fonseca’s internal emails.

The client did not want to “gamble,” the emails said, “since there is the President of Argentina and his family involved.”

Email about Argentina president Macri and Family
The new files also show that Mossack Fonseca didn’t know of the Macri’s family connections to BF Corporation, another shell company. BF Corporation was owned by Macri’s brothers, Mariano and Gianfranco, according to Argentine press reports. Those reports have noted that German prosecutors alerted Argentine authorities in 2016 about suspicious transactions involving BF Corporation based, in part, on revelations from the Panama Papers investigation. The transactions occurred days before the October 2015 first round voting that led to Mauricio Macri’s election the following month.

A spokesman for the Macri family’s company, Socma, told ICIJ media partner La Nación that the president’s father declared his ownership of Fleg Trading, which was confirmed by a judge in Argentina. The spokesman said he had no information or comment on the discussions between Mossack Fonseca and the Uruguayan accountant.

Politicians linked to missing millions in Malaysia, Kuwait, Russia

The new documents also reveal details of swollen bank accounts and offshore assets of political figures accused of statewide looting.

In March 2017, Mossack Fonseca discovered that a company it had registered in the British Virgin Islands was owned by Mohamed Nizam bin Abdul Razak, the brother of Malaysia’s former prime minister, Najib Razak. The company, Everbright Universal Holdings Ltd., owned property in the United States, according to the files.

Najib Razak, who fell from power after his party lost parliamentary elections in May, is now under scrutiny as part of a probe into billions of dollars found missing from the country’s state-owned investment fund during his tenure. A focal point of the investigation has been $10.6 million that was transferred into a bank account owned by the former prime minister. Najib Razak denies wrongdoing.

ICIJ revealed in the original Panama Papers two offshore companies owned by Najib Razak’s son, Mohd Nazifuddin bin Mohd Najib. Calls to Abdul Razak’s phone number went unanswered, and his Credit Suisse banker did not respond to ICIJ’s emails.

The new files also reveal a company registered by Mossack Fonseca was owned by Fahad al-Rajaan, the former head of the agency that oversees Kuwait’s social security system. Al-Rajaan was convicted in absentia in 2016 of embezzling up to $390 million. He has denied the accusations and called them politically-motivated, according to reports. The files show he owned Tawny Real Estates Ltd., which in turn owned a Macau apartment and a Swiss bank account. Al-Rajaan was arrested in Britain in April 2017, but Mossack Fonseca was still the registered agent as of November 2017, despite learning of the allegations against him in March 2016.

Also named in the new files: Vitaly Malkin, a Russian oligarch who resigned a seat in Russia’s senate in 2013 after reports that he had undeclared assets overseas. Malkin appears as the owner of two British Virgin Islands companies, Audrey Holdings Group Ltd. and Top Matrix Holdings Ltd. Audrey Holdings Group held Swiss bank accounts worth $200 million, according to Malkin’s source of wealth file compiled by Mossack Fonseca. Malkin did not respond to a letter delivered to his Luxembourg address.

Cartier among Mossack Fonseca’s glitzy clients

The newly-leaked files reveal a bevy of other celebrities, politicians and alleged criminals whose links to Mossack Fonseca have not been reported — and, often, that the firm itself didn’t know it represented.

In July 2017, Mossack Fonseca learned that Panama shell companies it had set up were controlled by heirs of iconic French jeweler Pierre Cartier. The companies owned a Canadian forest and Swiss bank accounts, according to the new documents.

Members of the Cartier family did not respond to requests for comment. The heirs’ financial adviser declined to answer questions from ICIJ media partner Le Monde.

Source of funds/wealth declaration form
Reporters also discovered that Dariga Nazarbayeva, the daughter of Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev, was the sole shareholder of a British Virgin Islands company, information not previously reported.

Dariga Nazarbayeva, a former deputy prime minister, is a senator who heads the Kazakh Senate’s Committee of International Relations. Her political rise is viewed by some Central Asian politics watchers as an indication she may one day replace her father.

In October 2007, Nazarbayev became a shareholder of Asterry Holdings Ltd., which held a stake in sugar factories in Kazakhstan, via a chain of other companies, according to ICIJ media partner OCCRP.

Nazarbayeva did not respond to requests for comment.

Another company set up and managed by Mossack Fonseca was owned through a trust by Israel Perry, the new papers show. Perry, who died in 2015, was an Israeli attorney convicted of defrauding other Israelis, most of whom were Holocaust survivors. The firm only learned of Perry’s ownership of the company, called Mallett Ford Inc., through a lawsuit brought against it, according to the documents.

None of the Mossack Fonseca correspondence found in the new leak mentions that Perry was a convicted criminal, and it is not clear whether the firm knew.
https://www.premiumtimesng.com/panama-p ... eader.html
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Dec 05, 2018 9:53 am

‘This may be just the beginning.’ U.S. unveils first criminal charges over Panama Papers

By Kevin G. Hall And Nicholas Nehamas khall@mcclatchydc.com nnehamas@miamiherald.com
Washington


The Panama Papers: Victims of offshore

Behind the email chains, invoices and documents that make up the Panama Papers are often unseen victims of wrongdoing enabled by the shadowy offshore industry.
By McClatchy
Nearly three years after the publication of a massive leak of secret offshore shell-company documents known as the Panama Papers, U.S. prosecutors announced criminal charges Tuesday against four people, including a former top lawyer for Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian firm that helped dictators, drug lords and the ultra-wealthy hide their cash.

Prosecutors in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York late Tuesday accused Ramses Owens, a longtime lawyer for Mossack Fonseca, of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit tax evasion and money laundering.

Owens’ name appears in 96,696 files in the massive database of leaked files maintained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which pulled together reporters across the globe for the undertaking. He left the firm after the April 2016 publication of the Panama Papers by a journalistic partnership that included the Miami Herald and the Washington bureau of its parent, McClatchy.

Also charged in the alleged conspiracy are German citizen Dirk Brauer, an investment adviser for Mossfon Asset Management, which worked closely with the parent law firm to invest and manage client money; Richard Gaffey, an American accountant based outside Boston; and Harald Joachim von der Goltz, a German citizen who formerly lived in the United States and paid taxes there.

Owens, Brauer and Gaffey are alleged to have helped Mossack Fonseca clients, including von der Goltz, to evade U.S. taxes starting in 2000.

In a news release, the U.S. Department of Justice said the four men “defrauded the U.S. government through a large scale, intercontinental money-laundering and wire-fraud scheme.” The indictment revealed that federal investigators used undercover agents and that one cooperating Mossack Fonseca client wore a wire.

“These defendants went to extraordinary lengths to circumvent U.S. tax laws in order to maintain their wealth and the wealth of their clients,” said U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman. “For decades, the defendants, employees and a client of global law firm Mossack Fonseca, allegedly shuffled millions of dollars through offshore accounts and created shell companies to hide fortunes.”

Brauer, Gaffey and von der Goltz have all been arrested, authorities said. Owens remains at large. It was not immediately clear if the men had retained attorneys.

IMG_panama_2_1_CQ7PU0D8_L212261138.JPG
The Panama City offices of Mossack Fonseca were closed earlier this year. More than 11.5 million documents from the firm were exposed in the Panama Papers.
Arnulfo Franco AP
The action, more than 30 months after the initial publication of the Panama Papers, was viewed as overdue by anti-corruption advocates. Countries across the globe pushed out politicians, jailed tax evaders and changed their laws. The United States had been a laggard.

“This may be just the beginning,” said Shruti Shah, president and CEO of the Coalition for Integrity, a nonprofit that advocates for financial transparency. “Intermediaries who help people engage in illicit activities like setting up shell companies to hide their assets should really think hard about what they are doing. The U.S. is going after the enablers, not just the people who evade taxes.”

Authorities worldwide are continuing to mine the leak for evidence, Shah said.

Last week, for instance, German police raided Deutsche Bank offices in the financial capital of Frankfurt in connection with the Panama Papers.

“People should remember that these major financial investigations take a long time,” she said. “If you have engaged in wrongdoing, you should not feel complacent that nothing is going to happen.”

In the aftermath of the Panama Papers, Wyoming and Nevada tightened their laws to require verifiable contacts associated with secretive limited liability companies. And the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, has ramped up reporting requirements for cash buyers of expensive homes in South Florida, Manhattan and other cities attractive to foreign nationals. The leaked documents are also believed to have been helpful to U.S. authorities prosecuting Venezuelans in South Florida accused of corruption.

Clark Gascoigne, deputy director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition, said Congress needs to increase disclosures for corporate owners.

“This is a welcome indictment, but we shouldn’t have to rely on leaks like this to enforce our anti-money-laundering laws,” Gascoigne said. “The Panama Papers exposed how anonymous shell companies enable corrupt actors and criminals to launder their proceeds with impunity. It’s time for lawmakers to advance bipartisan legislation to end the incorporation of anonymous companies in the United States.”

Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has pushed a bill that would require corporations to disclose their true owners to law enforcement.

1459873514429
Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca
In total, the indictment lists five separate Mossack Fonseca clients who were targeted by the Justice Department investigation.

One of them is von der Goltz, described as German-born but raised in Guatemala and residing in the United States since about 1984. Prosecutors allege he skirted paying U.S. taxes by routing money through shell companies in the name of his 102-year-old mother, a non-U.S. taxpayer who lived in Guatemala.

Among the other allegations in the indictment are that the Mossack Fonseca employees helped clients avoid filing to the IRS what’s known as a Foreign Financial and Bank Account reporting form.

The complex indictment also charges that the Mossack Fonseca employees used sham charitable foundations — a product that grew in popularity as offshore locales required more reporting about ownership — to help disguise transfers of money into the United States. In one example, the sham foundation helped disguise the money as proceeds from the sale of a business. Owens worked closely with the Delray Beach-based Sovereign Society in promoting “wealth protection” programs.

The indictment reveals that the Justice Department used undercover agents and that at least one unnamed customer — known as Client 3 — wore a wire when discussing with Brauer ways to evade taxes. Client 3 and his son, Client 4, are described as Florida residents who allegedly worked with Owens to move money through companies abroad designed to mirror U.S. companies. Client 1 is described as a New York-based U.S. citizen. Client 5 is said to be a U.S. citizen residing in London. Client 2 is von der Goltz.

Gaffey is a partner in the Massachusetts-based accounting firm of Elder, Gaffey & Paine. He is charged with helping a Mossack Fonseca client repatriate money from a Hong Kong bank account without disclosing it to the IRS.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... 28225.html
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 14, 2019 4:06 pm

Glencore loses ‘Paradise Papers’ court case in Australia

Tax authorities cleared to use leaked documents in probe of mining group

If the Australian Taxation Office finds that Glencore engaged in tax avoidance, the miner could face a backdated tax bill © Bloomberg

Jamie Smyth in Sydney AUGUST 14, 2019 Print this page

Glencore has lost a legal bid to bar the Australian tax office from using information stolen from law firm Appleby during the “Paradise Papers” data leak to help authorities’ investigation of the mining group’s tax affairs.
Australia’s High Court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that Glencore could not claim legal privilege over materials linked to a major corporate restructuring of its Australian operations, code-named Project Everest, which was disclosed by the data leak.
The decision enables the Australian Taxation Office to retain and use emails, board briefing notes and legal advice relating to the miner’s 2014 restructuring, which were stolen from the Bermuda office of Appleby. Glencore said it undertook the revamp to simplify its corporate structure, but the ATO is looking into whether it was a vehicle for tax avoidance.
If the ATO finds Glencore did engage in tax avoidance, the miner could face a backdated tax bill. The tax authorities have aggressively pursued tax avoidance cases against multinationals and recently hit Glencore rivals BHP and Rio Tinto with additional tax bills.
Jeremy Hirschhorn, ATO second commissioner, said the ruling was a win for the Australian community, who expected authorities to use all information at their disposal to ensure that large corporations and those who seek to hide money overseas are paying the required tax.
An offshore law firm is not a cloak of invisibility to hide offshore arrangements
Jeremy Hirschhorn, ATO second commissioner
“Once we have the information we can’t just ignore it — we are obliged to use all relevant information that we have . . . An offshore law firm is not a cloak of invisibility to hide offshore arrangements,” he said.
Mr Hirschhorn warned Australians with offshore money that they too were only one data leak away from their entire affairs being exposed.
The Glencore-ATO case is linked to revelations in the Paradise Papers, a trove of 13.4m documents obtained by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung after the computer servers at several Appleby offices were hacked. The documents relate to offshore investments and tax structures used by major corporations, politicians and even the Queen of the United Kingdom.
Legal experts said the Australian High Court ruling would set a precedent in future cases involving legal privilege.
“It means that a taxpayer is unable to claim legal professional privilege to restrain the use or return of material the ATO has obtained by other means,” said Melinda Peters, partner at McCullough Robertson, a Brisbane-based law firm.
A Glencore spokesman said on Wednesday that the company would respect the High Court decision.

In written submissions to the court, Glencore had argued that legal privilege was a fundamental common-law right and there was no rationale that it be destroyed by “eavesdroppers and thieves”. It requested the return of the documents and a commitment they would not be used by the ATO.
Glencore has faced criticism from charities in the past over its tax policies, most notably with regard to a Zambian subsidiary, Mopani Copper Mines.
In 2015 Glencore said it would stop funnelling sales from its Australian coal operations through Singapore, in response to concerns in Canberra over tax avoidance.
Legal bodies, including the Law Council of Australia, said they were concerned at the impact the ruling could have on legal privilege, noting the dissemination of privileged material without a client’s permission may become an increasing problem amid threats to cyber security.
http://archive.is/1tPvI#selection-1765.0-2103.278
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby JackRiddler » Tue Sep 24, 2019 9:29 am

10 arrested, three charged.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 95166.html


Daphne Caruana Galizia murder: Three charged over killing of Maltese journalist who exposed Panama Papers corruption

Police have also released dramatic footage of an arrest operation

Jon Stone
Europe Correspondent
@joncstone
Wednesday 6 December 2017 14:45


Three people have been charged in relation to the murder of a Maltese journalist who shone a spotlight on alleged corruption on the island nation.

Malta’s security services have also released a dramatic video of part of the police operation in which 10 people were arrested in dawn raids in connection with the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The charged men are George Degiorgio, 55, Alfred Degiorgio, 53, and Vincent Muscat, 55 – all of whom are from towns on the outskirts of the capital, Valletta, on the east of the island.

They were charged with murder, the criminal use of explosives, criminal conspiracy, and being involved in organised crime.

The security services’ footage shows a heavily armed special operations unit arriving at a waterfront warehouse by speedboat and unmarked vans on Monday. Authorities said operations were conducted simultaneously in the towns of Marsa, Zebbug, St Paul’s Bay, Msida and Mosta.

Other than the three charged men, seven of the other people arrested during the operation, which was carried out at 4am, have been released on bail.

he arrests and charges came just days after a European Parliament delegation visited the island on a fact-finding mission and said they were worried about the authorities’ ability to investigate powerful people on the island.

A spokesperson for the Maltese police said: “The FBI, Europol and the National Investigations Bureau of Finland provided important assistance, which led to the arrests and arraignments by the Police. The police force thanks the foreign services for the important assistance offered.”

Fifty-three-year-old Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered in an apparently targeted bomb attack on her car on 16 October. Her popular blog had relentlessly highlighted cases of alleged high-level corruption targeting politicians from across party lines, including around the Panama Papers tax scandal.

Her killing has sparked protests on the island, with thousands marching against what some called the “mafia state”.

Her family made it known that they did not want the country’s Prime Minister or President – targets of her journalism – to attend her funeral.

And they alleged that the home affairs minister, Michael Farrugia, had divulged confidential information that could hamper the investigation into her death. The minister has dismissed the allegation.

Last week, a cross-party delegation of MEPs travelled to Malta to assess whether the country’s law enforcement system had been “compromised”. The European Parliament had previously backed a motion expressing concern about the country’s legal and justice system.

Green MEP Sven Giegold said the group had come away from the meetings “even more concerned over the rule of law now than before the visit, and we must follow up on what we found”.

But the delegation was criticised by the Maltese Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat, who said it chose to meet with a disproportionate number of government critics and that its conclusions were “misguided”.

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Re: Panama Papers

Postby Elvis » Tue Sep 24, 2019 4:57 pm

JackRiddler wrote:Daphne Caruana Galizia murder: Three charged over killing of Maltese journalist who exposed Panama Papers corruption


Yes!! Hopefully the guilty parties.
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Oct 17, 2019 6:25 am

Panama Papers law firm founders ‘investigated by the FBI’
Image
Jurgen Mossack (left) is played by Gary Oldman, and Ramón Fonseca (right) is played by Antonio Banderas in The Laundromat.
U.S. prosecutors are investigating the founders of offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca, it’s claimed in court documents freshly filed in a bid to prevent Netflix from releasing its star-studded film The Laundromat this week.

Panama-based lawyers Ramón Fonseca and Jürgen Mossack are the subjects of a probe in New York involving the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to an affidavit by a private investigator working to help the duo.

The pair, partners in the offshore law firm whose confidential files were exposed in the Panama Papers, are suing Netflix for defamation over the film, in which they are played respectively by Antonio Banderas and Gary Oldman.

Private investigator Arthur Ventura Jr states in an affidavit to the Connecticut District Court that “in his opinion” Mossack and Fonseca “are not only targets of a federal investigation” but are also subject to U.S. prosecutors’ positions “that both men serve a sentence of incarceration.”

“If Netflix’s movie and the false innuendo expressed therein is permitted into the viewing home of millions of its subscribers, the plaintiffs would be severely hindered in any attempt at a comeback,” Ventura Jr says. Separately, an attorney for Mossack and Fonseca wrote that releasing the film may make it difficult for the pair to obtain a fair trial in the United States.

In reply, Netflix asked the court on Tuesday to dismiss the claim, including on the grounds that the film has little to no connection to Connecticut. Officials at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York declined to comment.

The Laundromat is inspired by the 2016 Panama Papers investigation and based on reporter Jake Bernstein’s book of the same name (previously known as Secrecy World). The film, which also stars Meryl Streep, premiered at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year.

Filed on Tuesday, the court action came just days before Netflix is scheduled to stream The Laundromat on Friday. Mossack and Fonseca have asked a Connecticut judge to stop Netflix from showing the film in cinemas or releasing it to subscribers without a disclaimer that the duo have never been convicted of a crime and without approval to use the former law firm’s logo.

They allege that Netflix’s 2019 film “defames and portrays” them “as ruthless, uncaring lawyers who are involved in money laundering, tax evasion, bribery and/or other criminal conduct.”

The filings also allege that closeups from the film’s trailer of Oldman and Banderas “easily attribute criminal and negative innuendo.” (Watch the trailer here. )

The complaint also alleges that Mossack, Fonseca and the law firm are portrayed as having a connection to crimes committed by a Latin American drug cartel, a Russian gangster and a wealthy African mogul.

“The implications and innuendo converge to cast Plaintiffs in light of mastermind criminals whose crimes include, but are not limited to, murder, bribery, money laundering and/or corruption,” according to the claim.

The 2016 Panama Papers investigation centered on 11.5 million records leaked from Mossack Fonseca that revealed how politicians, business leaders, celebrities and criminals operated through hard-to-trace shell companies in tax havens.

The investigation, a collaboration of almost 400 journalists from 80 countries, led to the resignation of prime ministers, criminal charges in Latin America and Europe and to governments from Australia to Iceland recovering more than $1.2 billion in unpaid taxes and penalties.

Mossack and Fonseca deny wrongdoing. The law firm closed in 2018.

In the United States, prosecutors have charged two former Mossack Fonseca employees, a U.S.-based accountant and a former U.S. taxpayer with financial crimes as a result of the investigation. In Panama, Mossack and Fonseca are fighting at least two charges brought by the country’s prosecutor.

Mossack and Fonseca fear that U.S. prosecutors could hit the duo with additional charges “for each new crime imputed to them in the movie,” according to the new filings. “The false ‘Big Screen’ portrayal of their involvement in money laundering and/or other financial crimes poses an immediate threat and harm” to their right to a fair trial, wrote the duo’s lawyer.
https://www.icij.org/investigations/pan ... y-the-fbi/
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Re: Panama Papers

Postby chump » Mon Nov 25, 2019 1:55 pm

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