Senate Panama Papers: A World-Spanning Financial Scandal

On the plus side, it's unlikely to include many US people -- as this was specifically primarily designed around avoiding foreign tax laws.
On the down side, I think my bank's already in like 2 of the top-5 spots.

 

Come on Jackie Chan
Uh uh uh uh uh oh

 

This is shocking news. I am floored.

 

Count me in Guy's "wow, no ----" club.

 

I bet a bunch of high-ranking bank executives will go to jail.

 

Money wants to be transparent. It wants to be able to move efficiently to wherever it is that it can increase the fastest. But there are so many rules. And there are so many people who are trying to prevent money from doing what it's best at. And money is very trusting. It has a hard time telling the difference between someone who means it well and someone who wants to do terrible, secretive and perverse things to it. If money is walking down the street and a man in a business suit offers it a ride in car, the money always hops right in. It has no fear of strangers.

 

I think there might be fairly high order of probability that that will happen. The Panama Papers comprise something like ten million documents.

 

You are so money, and you don't even know it.

 

Possibly not. There are a lot of legitimate reasons to have an offshore account, and so long as the bank issued the proper documentation and reporting back to the firm in Panama there may be nothing to do.

 

You haven't even been paying attention since you left the womb, have you? Was your last conscious thought "mommy so warm"? When not posting on this forum, do you communicate primarily through burbles and vomit?

 

I'm, not completely naieve. I am sure there are people named in the Panama Papers who should go to jail and probably won't, but having said that yes, I think some people are going to jail as a result of this.

 

I think it's more likely the politicians, especially in places like Iceland, rather than bankers though -- if any.

 

You're safe!

 

If there were any remote possibility that bankers were going to jail, dp4m wouldnt be posting about it.

he would have scuttled underneath a fridge somewhere by now

 

This definitely goes beyond the normal rich people hiding from taxes thing, though. According to BBC, some of the clients also include entities from companies in countries subject to international sanctions. This includes a group funding the Syrian air force and, most astonishingly, a company with ties to funding North Korea's nuclear program.

 

I'd be safe in any case. If you look at the list, it's mostly Private Banks (and, incidentally, can be likely corroborated with the already-leaked Swiss PB leak). But no one is stupid enough to offshore their money in the US as that's... well, insane.

If you do that, you do it in solid assets, not liquid. Real estate, safe deposit boxes of jewels and the like, etc.

 

Yeah, the dump comprised over 40 years worth of documents. I think a lot of people are about to get to some potentially really icky ****.

 

Yes! Finally, the banksters will be brought to justice….right?

Hello?

*crickets*

 

rich people hide money? and some of them do it illegally? especially when bribes are a part of doing business in so many other countries and i'd bet a lot of people from there wouldn't even think they're really doing anything wrong? wow. shocker. -_-

 

Has anyone read the Panama Papers or, are we just jumping to conclusions.

The law firm itself noted that most of the implied clients that they held documents for did not pass an enhanced customer due diligence test, and therefore were not onboarded as clients.

From what I've seen so far, what MF do is broadly compliant with a number of international standards and broadly, US/EU laws. However, in context, it appears to be the case that whilst they would say that stealing from a cash register is illegal and they strongly advise you against stealing from a cash register, if they went out back and changed the security tape in the machine there would be a window where, if one were to steal from a the register, nobody would know it was them.

It is worth noting that 11.5m documents from 1970 to the present were leaked and as investigations have only been conducted since journalists were given access in August 2015 that we cannot and will not know the full extent of the schemes set up by Mossack Fonesca, and whether they are legal, legal but obviously fronts for tax avoidance, or legal to front for illegal holdings.

So far the investigations have worked on collating names of clients and prospective clients; and high profile individuals like heads of state (among others). Hence why the Guardian yesterday (AEST) ran a piece on Putin's $2bn in assets - he was not named but his best friends were.

In short, there is probably going to be ongoing revelations, scandals, resignations* and yes - jail time - for individuals. I know a few Australians are named and that we have the Part IV A anti-avoidance rule for a reason, for example. What we do not know, though, is precisely and what MF did for clients that is not ordinary.

(* Iceland's PM Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson did not disclose his interests in Wintris Inc before entering parliament; generally parliamentarians must disclose their pecuniary interests prior to assuming office to avoid conflicts of interest)

So instead of instant OUTRAGE!!1!, that most addictive of drugs, I would instead caution cynicism. There is a reason this data was leaked, and that reason may be genuine whistleblower concerns - without turning to Google I would not imagine Panama has especially robust whistleblower protections in place - or simply designed to hurt the firm's reputation. We do not know the full extent of any possible wrong doing and it would be, in the age of AML/CTF legislation, suicidal for a firm to try to muddy the movement of funds so carelessly.

Let's get the facts before forming a decision, yeah?

 

It seems to be a lot more than that though. If it was just Donald Trump-types dumping their money in a numbered account the Cayman Islands as a tax dodge, that's not that surprising and in and of itself not necessarily illegal. Those sort of activities may be in there as well, but the activities that are already attracting the interest of the authorities are the ones that are definitely illegal, like money laundering, bribery, sanctions violations and gun running.