[The Nation] A just-released "Panama Papers on steroids" show how the US has become a major tax haven and destination for illicit wealth.
The Pandora Papers, a massive leak of secret data about the illicit financial activities of the super-wealthy, will be supplying revelations for weeks and probably months to come.
The Pandora Papers undertaking involved 600 journalists from 117 countries and was coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in what they describe as the "largest-ever journalistic collaborative." (You can follow rolling releases at The Washington Post, the US partner in the collaboration, and The Guardian, the UK partner.)
Five and a half years ago, the ICIJ released the Panama Papers, which focused on a leak from a single Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca. According to Gerald Ryle, director of the ICIJ, the Pandora Papers are "the Panama Papers on steroids."
The Pandora leaks come from confidential records at 14 different offshore wealth service firms in Switzerland, Singapore, Cyprus, Samoa, Vietnam, and Hong Kong, as well as wealth managers in well-known tax havens such as Belize, Seychelles, The Bahamas, and the British Virgin Islands. These firms help wealthy individuals and corporations to form trusts and foundations, incorporate companies, and establish other entities in low- or no-tax jurisdictions.
The Pandora team analyzed almost 12 million files from these firms, including leaked e-mails, memos, tax declarations, bank statements, passport scans, diagrams of corporate structures, secret spreadsheets, and clandestine real estate contracts. Some reveal the real owners of opaque shell companies for the first time.
In the coming weeks, we will learn more about the 130 global billionaires with ownership entities in secrecy jurisdictions (100 with total assets worth more than $600 billion in 2021). US citizens are so far underrepresented in these leaks, largely because of where the wealth service providers were located. No US wealth-advisory firms were part of the leaks. Nonetheless, more than 700 companies revealed in the Pandora Papers have ties to real human owners in the US.
The big news for rest of the world is how the United States has become a major tax haven and global destination for illicit wealth. Earlier leaks, such as the Panama and Paradise papers, reinforced the misperception that most of these financial shell games take place "offshore," in secrecy jurisdictions and tax havens in small countries with weak banking laws.
#3
US citizens are so far underrepresented in these leaks, largely because of where the wealth service providers were located.
Translation: We just can't find any dirt on Trump.
Posted by: Matt ||
10/06/2021 11:33 Comments ||
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#4
All the dirt on the Biden Crime Family is on display, no secret documents or exposes needed. All there in that f--ker's laptop and their CEO Tony Bobulinski's affidavit and public interviews.
#5
What makes the wealth "illicit"? As far as I can see, they're using it (incorrectly) as a synonym for "confidential" and trying to make it all sound corrupt.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
10/06/2021 13:39 Comments ||
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#6
The use of the term "illicit" begs the question.
Posted by: Bubba Lover of the Faeries8843 ||
10/06/2021 14:18 Comments ||
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Sage Steele has taken a break from TV after she made controversial comments about race, sexism and coronavirus protocols during interview with Jay Cutler
Steele called ESPN's vaccine mandate 'sick,' commented on Obama'a blackness and accused female journalists of welcoming harassment
She was placed on a break and will not take part in the network's espnW summit, which focuses on women in sports
Her break was attributed to her controversial comments, however a source familiar with the situation also claims Steele tested positive for COVID
She is expected to return to full duty at ESPN next week
[RealClearPolitics] Victor Davis Hanson, author of "The Dying Citizen," speaks with FNC's Tucker Carlson about why he no longer writes for the National Review.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: I didn't know much about Donald Trump, I wasn't a supporter of his in the primaries, but I knew he was going to win. I just knew it, because he was saying things I could not believe. And, you know, we're going to redo Youngstown, Ohio.
And then he came to California, I talked to a bunch of farmers and asked if he had come here, and did he have the straw in the mouth and the Caterpillar cap.
No, he had this black suit, it was 105 degrees, he had a Queens accent. So I said, in other words, he wasn't Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, "put you all in chains." He didn't change his act. I said he is authentic and he's representing the middle class, so I thought he had a very good chance.
As far as your other question, yeah, I lost all those friends.
TUCKER CARLSON: Really?
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: I left the National Review this year after 20 years and I think they were happy to see me leave too.
TUCKER CARLSON: Why did you leave National Review?
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Because there were certain issues that would pop up occasionally, and I could predict what the answer was going to be. The Covington kids. I just sensed that before we knew anything, people would come and condemn them. Or the Access Hollywood tape--
TUCKER CARLSON: People at National Review condemned the Covington kids?
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: I think there were certain people in the Republican movement, or establishment, who felt it is their duty to internally police their own, and that's kind of a virtue signal to the left.
We are just part of your class, we share the same values as you do, and we keep our crazies. And they are not empirical.
You saw it on January 6. We all condemn that baffoonish riot. But within two weeks, I said to myself Ashli Babbitt was shot unarmed and we don't know anything about the policeman, we don't know anything about the report. When a policeman shoots somebody unarmed, there are pictures everywhere.
TUCKER CARLSON: No warning, by the way.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: They're having Officer Sicknik lie in state, but I want to know where is the evidence is that he was killed? He wasn't killed, he died of a stroke -- See the rest of the transcript at the link
Russian military journalist Boris Rozhn discusses the latest in Syria.
[ColonelCassad] 1. On the eve of the talks between Putin and Erdogan in Sochi, the Russian Aerospace Forces intensified airstrikes in Idlib and northeastern Latakia (killing several dozen militants). Turkey responded by increasing its contingent in Idlib, deploying several mechanized companies to reinforce strongholds reinforcing the front line south of the M-4 highway (Jabal al-Zawiya area) and to the front along the M-5 highway.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
