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The Panama Papers - Massive leak of secret documents about offshore companies

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It just shows how shitty the current system is. Sooner everything is digital the better.

From what I understand they get money from criminal activity in those companies through fake sales and such (for example write some invoices you have sold a lot of cars or whatever in Russia or Ukraine where it is impossible to check and the money comes from there). Then move it through some companies registered in different countries. The owners of those companies are unclear, so there is no direct tie to the criminals involved. After that just use it for what you want.

I might be simplifying it a little, but basically these companies don't have a clear owner so the money isn't tied to the people involved, which makes their criminal activity with it hard to proof. And then it can be used for legal things like investments and such and the banks can just look the other way without it being illegal.
 

ty_hot

Member
Independent blogs in Brazil have found earlier this year that the richest family of Brazil, owner of the biggest TV Channel, used Mossack to build and own a house in the middle of a preservation area, close to a beach.

roberto_marinho43_mansao.jpg


What are the chances that brazilian media will trully cover this leak?
 

Dingens

Member
That's not a nice thing to say about Daddy, Dave.

I wish it would end there...
But like 9 out of 10 offshore tax heavens are connected to the UK in some shape or form anyway.
In no specific order: Anguilla, Turks and Caicos Islands, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Niue, Montserrat, Channel Islands, Cayman Islands, Virgin Islands, Isle of Man, Grenada, Gibraltar, Dominica, Cookinseln, Bermudas, Belize, Barbados, Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda.

must be pretty convenient to be able to argue for tax breaks for the rich, while pointing at evil tax heavens where the money is going to flee to if he doesn't get his way
 

Tempy

don't ask me for codes
And this is only the 4th biggest provider of offshore services. There's likely a lot more shady stuff hidden by the bigger providers.
 

Kurdel

Banned
fuck the rich. fucking leeches.

the world needs a reset.

Before VR and news faking tech becomes too good would be easier.

Metal Gear Solid 2 will soon become reality, information control is already proving awesone results in Russia, imagine when Trump tries his hand, or another geoup 10 years down the line.
 

KdylanR92

Member
I'm not convinced that anything major will come of this.

On TV it'll be a witch hunt for couple days and then nothing, on Gaf? 3 to 4 days tops
 

faridmon

Member
Apparently none of the politicians in Norway were part of this, but the biggest bank DnB handled many of the transactions from other other country's politicians.

Nothing is gonna happen which is frustrating.
 

SomTervo

Member
Sources files haven't been (and likely won't be) released in their entirety.

I'd assumed the "source" website would have them - but obviously that's basically offline. If they weren't hosted there like I assumed, then yeah, obviously they're nowhere public!
 
So were there hundreds of journalists working on this for a year without anything leaking?
Or was it just a small group who did all the work and then recently contacted more journalists to publish their work worldwide?
 

LCGeek

formerly sane
There's no conspiracy coprorations are good for captialism.

Bullshit. I so want to talk, but watching everything burn is gonna be so good.
 

cacildo

Member
Independent blogs in Brazil have found earlier this year that the richest family of Brazil, owner of the biggest TV Channel, used Mossack to build and own a house in the middle of a preservation area, close to a beach.

roberto_marinho43_mansao.jpg


What are the chances that brazilian media will trully cover this leak?

Brazilian media? Zero

Brazilian media is Fox News

Imagine a country in which every tv network, every newspaper, every magazine is Fox News

Thats brasil
 

chadskin

Member
I'd assumed the "source" website would have them - but obviously that's basically offline. If they weren't hosted there like I assumed, then yeah, obviously they're nowhere public!

Perhaps try a different browser if https://panamapapers.icij.org/ doesn't work for you. For some reason, Safari refuses to open the site for me as well while Firefox works flawlessly.

So were there hundreds of journalists working on this for a year without anything leaking?
Or was it just a small group who did all the work and then recently contacted more journalists to publish their work worldwide?

There's a book going to be released on Wednesday that'll likely answer this and more questions: http://www.panamapapers.com
 
There's a book going to be released on Wednesday that'll likely answer this and more questions: http://www.panamapapers.com

I also found a little making of.
https://www.facebook.com/ihre.sz/videos/vb.215982125159841/1007387729352606/?type=2&theater

Apparently the whistleblower contacted sueddeutsche in early 2015, they then contacted the ICIJ and other groups of journalists and in July 2015 they split the work up.

Impressive stuff.

They also have planned which stories they will publish when, starting today, so they apparently have new things coming every day.
 
Just heard on bbc
These revelations are just the first of many that will come out over the next few days weeks and months.

They have been looking at these documents for months. This is just the first wave.
 

Ploid 3.0

Member
400 journalists in 80 countries were involved in this leak and spend over a year of research on it. It'll be massive.

It depends on who own the news studios. If parent companies are involved they probably wouldn't talk much about it. Internet websites, tv outside of the US, radio, and newspapers though...
 

Harmen

Member
Yes, this is huge, the coming weeks will be interesting. Given a lot of major news outlets (not just in the UK) seem to cover it frontpage, there is no way this won't have any impact. The journalists have been preparing this one for almost over a year now, they are going to make sure people know.
 
The Editor in Chief of Süddeutsche Zeitung responded to the lack of United States individuals in the documents, saying to "Just wait for what is coming next".

yikes
 

Sulik2

Member
Now this is a real conspiracy of global scale.

Its not a conspiracy this is just modern economics, everyone knew this was happening, its very surprising the who is being revealed though. There are valid reasons for offshoring, its not always illegal or dirty, but this many journalists with this much time should turn up some juicy nuggets. A couple of people will get arrested, it will mostly be ignored and business will return to normal for the wealthy and powerful in a couple of weeks though.
 

Nobility

Banned
This is astounding.

They have to make several movies/documentaries about these papers in the years to come.

The ramifications is too severe to even comprehend at this point.
 

Havel

Member
Here is good summary of what this means from Redditt:

Taxes sure do suck, right? Imagine how much money you could keep if you simply didn't pay them. Generally, for businesses, they only pay taxes on their profits, so what if you could hide some of those profits from the government? After all, they can only tax money they can prove exists. One method for lowering profits, is to increase spending, by re-investing in the company, making higher quality products, maybe even paying your employees more, OR you can "spend" that extra profit buying fake services from a fake company. What has been happening in Panama is a company has been selling these fake businesses, that corporations then use to make massive fake transactions. Officially, the taxman sees money flowing into these fake businesses, but now we all know for a fact that those fake businesses are in fact fake. This accounts for potentially several trillions of dollars worth of money that should have been taxed, but has been illegally hidden.
 

Oynox

Member
according to https://briankilmartin.cartodb.com/viz/54ddb5c0-f80e-11e5-9a9c-0e5db1731f59/embed_map

there's 53 Germans involved. the journalists haven't revealed everything and will be doing so over the coming weeks

Thanks, I am relieved now.

/edit

I see. The list of the ICIJ only contained political people. In Germany there are probably more economical bosses involved.

Curious about the coming weeks, probably months. Thinking about picking up that book since I probably won't have the power of endurance to regularly do recherches...
 
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