The Panama Papers exposes the offshore accounts of national leaders

[Stirnerian]

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/275033-massive-document-leak-exposes-offshore-accounts


investigation of the files, known as the Panama Papers, was published Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

ADVERTISEMENT

The investigation "exposes a cast of characters who use offshore companies to facilitate bribery, arms deals, tax evasion, financial fraud and drug trafficking," according to the website.
"Behind the email chains, invoices and documents that make up the Panama Papers are often unseen victims of wrongdoing enabled by this shadowy industry."

The report exposes hidden information about how banks and lawyers hide dealings with people such as prime ministers, plutocrats and criminals.

The documents have information about Russian President Vladimir Putin, details about England's gold heist in 1983 and information about bribery allegations regarding soccer's governing body, FIFA.

The files include nearly 40 years of records and information about more than 210,000 companies in 21 offshore jurisdictions.

Edward Snowden tweeted about the news on Sunday.

"Biggest leak in the history of data journalism just went live, and it's about corruption," he tweeted with a link to the Panama Papers.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/the-panama-papers-how-the-worlds-rich-and-famous-hide-their-money-offshore


The Panama Papers reveal:

* Twelve national leaders are among 143 politicians, their families and close associates from around the world known to have been using offshore tax havens.

* A $2bn trail leads all the way to Vladimir Putin. The Russian president’s best friend – a cellist called Sergei Roldugin - is at the centre of a scheme in which money from Russian state banks is hidden offshore. Some of it ends up in a ski resort where in 2013 Putin’s daughter Katerina got married.

* Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq; Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine; Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypt’s former president; and the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson.

* Six members of the House of Lords, three former Conservative MPs and dozens of donors to UK political parties have had offshore assets.

* The families of at least eight current and former members of China’s supreme ruling body, the politburo, have been found to have hidden wealth offshore.

* Twenty-three individuals who have had sanctions imposed on them for supporting the regimes in North Korea, Zimbabwe, Russia, Iran and Syria have been clients of Mossack Fonseca. Their companies were harboured by the Seychelles, the British Virgin Islands, Panama and other jurisdictions.

* A key member of Fifa’s powerful ethics committee, which is supposed to be spearheading reform at world football’s scandal-hit governing body, acted as a lawyer for individuals and companies recently charged with bribery and corruption.

One leaked memorandum from a partner of Mossack Fonseca said: “Ninety-five per cent of our work coincidentally consists in selling vehicles to avoid taxes.”

Here's a direct link to the site. It's currently down.

https://panamapapers.icij.org/video/

[LionofTepelenë]

Wow, that is incredible the size and frequency of this. Just shows the horrible condition our world is in, but I am not surprised and neither should anyone in this forum be.

[Stirnerian]

Capital is truly global. The international worker's movement at the height of its power never remotely approached the pure internationalism of modern capital.

These people find themselves in the precarious position of representing institutions (the ethno-national State) that the development of capital has outstripped and rendered superfluous.


EDIT: No American politicians have been implicated in the Panama Papers. Evidently, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (https://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Corporations/Foreign-Account-Tax-Compliance-Act-FATCA) is why.

[SpaceGhost]

I find it's interesting that people are just now coming to realize this. I fell like we all knew, It seems that the only way to get information out anymore is via the bandwagon effect.

[Stirnerian]

Of greatest interest to us in particular, I think, it this:


* The families of at least eight current and former members of China’s supreme ruling body, the politburo, have been found to have hidden wealth offshore.

Hopefully that'll encourage whatever Maoist tankies remain to think through the China problem.

And Icelandic Prime Minister Gunnlaugsson is a "socialist", a fact I've already seen used on YouTube and elsewhere to propagandize for the Right - "see? these people are all heads of state, Chicoms and socialists among them, so let the free market rule."

That's our fault for letting ourselves be publicly perceived as defenders of Statism. Somehow we're always left carrying water for reformists.

[khad]

One thing I would point out is that in some of these cases these fraudulent shells provided liquidity to embargoed individuals/states who would otherwise have difficulty accessing funds. Iran is a good example of this, where it has 100 billion dollars impounded in the west and could not actually move money through legitimate channels.

I suppose now I understand why every once in a while you'd hear reports of Iran "backing" or "allying with" the cartels. They don't have any real common interest apart from the financial vehicles they all used.

The cost to actually start a fraudulent shell with Mossack Fonseca is only $1000, which is absurdly low. This makes me suspect that many of the clients were mid-level organized crime types in addition to all those foreign tax evaders.

[Stirnerian]

A comment on Reddit I thought worth posting.


This comment is originally by U/INFOWARS Sorry everyone, it looks like we've lost yet again. "Oh my God. It was too good to be true. The leak is being managed by the grandly but laughably named “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists”, which is funded and organised entirely by the USA’s Center for Public Integrity. Their funders include

Ford Foundation
Carnegie Endowment
Rockefeller Family Fund
W K Kellogg Foundation
Open Society Foundation (Soros)

among many others. Do not expect a genuine expose of western capitalism. The dirty secrets of western corporations will remain unpublished. Expect hits at Russia, Iran and Syria and some tiny “balancing” western country like Iceland. A superannuated UK peer or two will be sacrificed – someone already with dementia.

The corporate media – the Guardian and BBC in the UK – have exclusive access to the database which you and I cannot see. They are protecting themselves from even seeing western corporations’ sensitive information by only looking at those documents which are brought up by specific searches such as UN sanctions busters.

Never forget the Guardian smashed its copies of the Snowden files on the instruction of MI6. What if they did Mossack Fonseca database searches on the owners of all the corporate media and their companies, and all the editors and senior corporate media journalists? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on all the most senior people at the BBC? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on every donor to the Center for Public Integrity and their companies? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on every listed company in the western stock exchanges, and on every western millionaire they could trace? That would be much more interesting.

I know Russia and China are corrupt, you don’t have to tell me that. What if you look at things that we might, here in the west, be able to rise up and do something about? And what if you corporate lapdogs let the people see the actual data?"

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/04/corporate-media-gatekeepers-protect-western-1-from-panama-leak/[1] https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/716741824921137152[2]

19384
19385

[khad]

The funny thing about all this is seeing how 80% of the articles out there put Putin out there as the first and most important case .... when he's actually never actually mentioned in the files. His childhood friends are, but not the man himself. Neither is Xi Jinping, for that matter - it's his brother-in-law.

The leaders who stuck their own fingers in this pie are all from Western Europe and the Middle East. Oh, and King Chocolate in Ukraine.

https://panamapapers.icij.org/the_power_players/

[Antiochus]

The funny thing about all this is seeing how 80% of the articles out there put Putin out there as the first and most important case .... when he's actually never actually mentioned in the files. His childhood friends are, but not the man himself. Neither is Xi Jinping, for that matter - it's his brother-in-law.

The leaders who stuck their own fingers in this pie are all from Western Europe and the Middle East. Oh, and King Chocolate in Ukraine.

https://panamapapers.icij.org/the_power_players/


Yeah, childhood friends and brother-in-laws, I suppose not all criminals are as stupid as the pair that used permanent sharpies to color their face in the hope of fooling authorities xD Obviously these are fronts for Putin and Xi respectively. But yes, its a bit comical how the corporate media in the U.S is brushing this off as some sort of '3rd world' scandal which the U.S is 'above'.

[Recuperation]

Mossack Fonseca is just one of the top 10 firms in their field. So the lack of clients from the US in this case just means that American politicians are using a classier firm with better information security. Lots of leaks so far this year, hopefully the trend continues.

[blake 3:17]

Editor’s note: What the Star reveals in unprecedented Panama Papers leak and whyThe Panama Papers, a leaked database of more than 11.5 million documents from the law firm Mossack Fonseca, reveals details on rich, famous and powerful people who use offshore tax havens.Monday morning, the Toronto Star will begin publishing a week of investigative journalism based on what we believe to be the largest ever leak of documents.

The stories are Canadian and global in scope.

We’re calling the series The Panama Papers (http://www.thestar.com/news/panama-papers-tax-evasion).

The Star has partnered with more than 100 newspapers and TV news organizations in 76 countries, with 376 journalists working in 25 languages under the directing umbrella of the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Why the Panama Papers? Because the leaked documents are the secret internal records of Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that specializes in hiding money in tax havens such as Costa Rica, the British Virgin Islands and the Seychelles.

The documents show how rich people divert money from government tax coffers to offshore tax havens. This is costing the rest of us hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

The documents — and there are millions of them — were given to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. They contain the passport details of 350 Canadians, 12 current or former leaders of countries, 128 current and former politicians and public officials, and never-before-seen details about 214,000 companies. The personal information, emails and lawyers’ letters contained in the leak reveal details about individuals, lawsuits and corporations, all of which have so far checked out with public records and independent reporting by the Star.

There is a wide variety of discoveries. Some examples:

•A Canadian art research firm is deeply involved in fighting for possession of a $35 million Modigliani painting allegedly looted by the Nazis.

•The prime minister of Iceland, an island nation devastated economically by its failing banks in 2008, is linked in the leaked database to offshore companies.

•Indicted FIFA officials, as well as soccer stars such as Lionel Messi, have used the offshore system.

•The families of top Chinese leaders have used clever and sophisticated ways to disguise their wealth offshore.

•Associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin secretly moved close to $2 billion through banks and shadow companies.

The Star and our partners, including France’s Le Monde, Britain’s Guardian and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, are publishing this material not because we believe something illegal is happening, but because we think Canadians should know about how the elite hide and shelter so much money. The rich get to play by different rules than the rest of us. We should all know about this unfairness.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/04/03/editors-note-what-the-star-reveals-in-unprecedented-leak-and-why.html

[logfish111]

Yes and it's important to note that Mossack Fonesca is only the fourth largest firm of its type. Their is a much bigger picture to this, which of course everyone with a brain already realised was happening.

[VCrakeV]

Nothing shocking here. Hopefully this will open up the eyes of the typical person, and get them to see just how much money the rich has. I mean, I don't understand why people are so unaware of the scale and details of these things.

[ckaihatsu]

Btw:


Popular Videos - Space Ghost Coast to Coast

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHRKZ-RMYWNYz63lWOtTXZbKz1Wzs-JPT





I find it's interesting that people are just now coming to realize this. I fell like we all knew, It seems that the only way to get information out anymore is via the bandwagon effect.





Yes and it's important to note that Mossack Fonesca is only the fourth largest firm of its type. Their is a much bigger picture to this, which of course everyone with a brain already realised was happening.





Nothing shocking here. Hopefully this will open up the eyes of the typical person, and get them to see just how much money the rich has. I mean, I don't understand why people are so unaware of the scale and details of these things.


I'll admit to feeling *conflicted* about any and all of these 'whistleblower' leak events -- on the one hand the information itself is important, and all journalists need to be defended around it, but on the other hand it seems like everyone *should know by now* that this is the world, and this is how the world works. How many 'events' like this do people need to finally draw the general conclusion that the system of capitalism yields an entrenched plutocracy, and that we, the larger world, need to get rid of *all* of it, and not try to tinker-around with it, with reformism.

[Homo Songun]

Maoist tankies

Learn to trainspot bro...

Anybody care to take a wager on how long til the Clinton accounts surface? :lol:

[ckaihatsu]

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1245.php


Socialist Project - home
The B u l l e t

Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 1245
April 12, 2016

search Socialist Project website
Make payments with PayPal

Neoliberalism’s World of Corruption

Phil Hearse

The Panama Papers’ revelations about the rich and powerful hiding untold billions in ‘offshore’ tax havens may be shocking, but it's hardly a surprise to anyone who knows the first thing about the way that big business works. We are living through a blitzstorm of allegations and controversy about corruption. In the few years alone we've had:

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/b1245.jpg
Demonstrators called for David Cameron's resignation outside Downing Street, London.

The revelations in the Panama Papers that hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals, including 72(!) present or former heads of state, hid their fortunes offshore. The names so far revealed include associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin and numerous members of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.

The ‘Lux leaks’ revelations about the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg conspiring with big business to launder profits through tax-minimal Luxemburg and how major companies like Amazon and Starbucks shift their British profits to Luxemburg and pay little or no tax.

Revelations that bankers in Britain conspired to fix the ‘Libor’ rate – the inter-bank lending rate – so their banks could profit from trades by giving the impression they were worth more than they actually were.

Repeated allegations of corruption in sport – including athletics, tennis and cricket – either in terms of result-fixing or unfairly influencing results through drug use.

Accusations that prominent politicians, including South African President Jacob Zuma and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, used vast amounts of public money to build huge residences.

British bank HSBC was discovered in 2012 to have received at least $880-billion in investments from the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel.

A lot more could be added to this list. The world seems to be awash with corruption. So what is it really all about?

The highly sanitized versions on the BBC would give you the impression that there's a few bad apples out there who are giving the international business and finance communities a bad name. Nothing could be further from the truth. Corruption is endemic in neoliberal capitalism. It is fundamental to the whole way the system works, and it is the method by which trillions are stolen from the poor and given to the rich. Here's why and how.

Effects of Neoliberalism: Kleptocracy

Corruption has always existed in capitalism. But neoliberalism, the ‘free market’ system that started in the 1980s, promoted it on a vast scale for two reasons:

Neoliberal deregulation and privatization promoted the dominance of financial capital at the expense of industry and the state. Financialization and low capital gains taxes turned big companies and utilities into virtual banks with huge wealth that seek to maximize the interest on their money and minimize their tax. Finance capital is, after all, basically about swindling. In the middle ages they called it 'usury'.

The shift to the right crashed ‘socialist’ command economies and undermined nationalist governments in the third world, replacing both with corrupt and usually highly authoritarian neoliberal regimes. Getting hold of the state apparatus has become a royal road to mega-wealth for dozens of dictators and their cronies through simple theft.

The core of it is the banking system. European and American banks receive (read: launder) billions of dollars every year from international mafias, and in particular from drug dealers. Sometimes by accident some of this comes to light. In 2006, Mexican soldiers intercepted a drug shipment in Ciudad del Carmen and found a cache of documents showing the Sinaloa drug cartel had made payments of $378-billion to the American bank Wachovia, a subsidiary of the financial giant Welles Fargo.

Roberto Saviano, the author of the best-selling Gomorrah which exposed the workings of the Neapolitan crime organization Camorra, claims that London is the centre of money laundering for Latin American drug money. Even the British National Crime Agency says:

“We assess that hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars of criminal money almost certainly continue to be laundered through UK banks, including their subsidiaries, each year.”

Saviano says that Mexico is the ‘heart’ of the drugs trade and London its ‘head’. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Crime and Drugs Agency, says drug dealers invested $352-billion in Western banks in 2008, and this was key in keeping some major banks from collapse.

So corruption – receiving money from crime and drug cartels – is deeply ingrained in the culture of U.S. and European banks. And this is not going to stop, given the vast profits involved.

Controlling the State – and Looting its Assets

The klepocratic state is an old story. It's reckoned that no Mexican president leaves offices with less than $100-million. Key western allies from the 60s and 70s, like Mobutu, president of Zaire (DRC) from 1965-97, and Suharto, president of Indonesia from 1967-98, both established murderous regimes and systematically looted their respective peoples of billions of dollars.

But these were stand-out, atypical cases. Now looting the state by right-wing regimes, often military-controlled regime, is an epidemic.

Nigeria is a classic example today. A PricewaterhouseCoopers report reckoned that $100-billion of public money, much of it oil revenues, had been stolen by corrupt politicians and officials in 2014. The result of this massive theft is that 62 per cent of the population in a rich country live in absolute poverty.

That's the problem with the Peter Mandelson view of being comfortable about some people being ‘filthy rich’. Some people are filthy rich because millions are dirt poor. Nigeria is an example of something even more corrosive. Corruption at the top, backed by the army, creates corruption throughout society. Nothing happens at all without the payment of a bribe to some official or other. People who have no money to pay bribes stay at the bottom of the heap. Corrupt Nigerian state officials have no problems finding a bank to launder their money, but if in doubt, the London property market is a good option. James Ibori, a state governor in his homeland, stole $250-million from Nigeria, and much of the money was laundered through the UK to fund a luxurious lifestyle. He acquired a string of high-end properties in prime central London (see below on real estate corruption).

Mexico is an example of the synergy between crime proceeds, state corruption and international banks. Nearly all the drugs produced in Latin America have to go through, around, or over Mexico to get to the United States.

Except in the case of drug cartel turf wars, drug shipments are protected by the police and the army, and officials of the Mexican state and top politicians in the national government are all paid off. The Mexican national state is corrupted with drug money from top to bottom; it is a narco-state, pure and simple. The result is that even prosecutors have to look the other way. Border guards and junior police and army personnel have a stark choice: which do you prefer – a small bribe to look the other way, or torture followed by a bullet in the head? When everyone at the top is corrupted, local and junior officials are powerless.

The British media have been keen to highlight evidence from the Panama papers of offshore investments by people close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and relatives of top Chinese leaders President, Xi Jinping, and two other members of China's elite Standing Committee, Zhang Gaoli and Liu Yunshan. Despite the west wanting to divert attention to ex-Communist rivals in a one-sided way, these regimes of course are nonetheless deeply corrupt.

Corruption in Russia goes right up to the Kremlin, and the oligarchs who lead that country are linked to organized crime. Loyalty to the Putin state apparatus is ensured by the carrot and the stick. The carrot is the reward of state contracts to those who keep tight with Putin; the stick is the fear of violence at the hands of state-linked mafias.

In China, there has been a major ‘anti-corruption’ drive since the Communist Party congress in 2012, launched by Xi Jingpin and endorsed by his predecessor Hu Jintao. In fact, over the last decade there have been repeated calls to fight corruption. But given the naming of top Standing Committee members as controllers of offshore accounts, it seems hardly likely that this campaign is really inspired by a desire to ‘fight corruption’. More likely it is a mechanism for purging factional opponents – like the 2012 show trial of former minister and mayor of Chongqing Bo Xilai, accused of fomenting ‘egalitarianism’ and other pro-worker attitudes. It seems likely the campaign is also aimed at instilling fear and loyalty to the present leadership into the Communist Party's 90 million members: that's why more than 300,000 party members have been sanctioned so far.

Outdistancing these super authoritarian/corrupt states are the ‘patrimonial states’, countries where the state is virtually owned by a single family. Examples of this were Libya under Muammar Gaddafi and of course Syria under the Assad family. Turkey's Erdoğan is trying hard to build that kind of state.

Influencing the State

Direct corruption by the state is one thing; influence is something else. In western democracies, influence is stacked in favour of the rich and powerful. In the United States and increasingly in Britain, it is professional lobbyists who fight their corner. The Atlantic magazine in the U.S. points out:

“Corporations now spend about $2.6-billion a year on reported lobbying expenditures – more than the $2-billion we spend to fund the House ($1.18-billion) and Senate ($860-million). It's a gap that has been widening since corporate lobbying began to regularly exceed the combined House-Senate budget in the early 2000s.

“Today, the biggest companies have upwards of 100 lobbyists representing them, allowing them to be everywhere, all the time. For every dollar spent on lobbying by labour unions and public-interest groups together, large corporations and their associations now spend $34. Of the 100 organizations that spend the most on lobbying, 95 consistently represent business.”

The above account doesn't include the direct payments and other gifts given to members of Congress by big companies, not least the health insurance and healthcare companies who have fought so long and so successfully against a universal U.S. healthcare system.

Britain is going in the same direction. As in the United States, business and politics are often revolving doors with former ministers joining the boards of companies they dealt with when in power. Seumas Milne says:

“...lobbying doesn't begin to cover the extent of corporate influence. More than ever the Tory party is in thrall to the City, with over half its income from bankers and hedge fund and private equity financiers. Peers who have made six-figure donations have been rewarded with government jobs.

“But the real corruption that has eaten into the heart of British public life is the tightening corporate grip on government and public institutions – not just by lobbyists, but by the politicians, civil servants, bankers and corporate advisers who increasingly swap jobs, favours and insider information, and inevitably come to see their interests as mutual and interchangeable. The doors are no longer just revolving but spinning, and the people charged with protecting the public interest are bought and sold with barely a fig leaf of regulation.”

Legalized Corruption?

Corruption everywhere has the effect of transferring huge amounts of wealth from the poor to the rich. If poor individuals are not directly robbed, then their economic situation, public services, health service, transport, education – all these are robbed when taxes are avoided.

You can't analyse corruption today by looking for illegal activity alone. Many of the practices that happen in rich and poor countries are legal or in a grey area where it's difficult to tell criminal from the lawful.

For example, property dealing in Britain is profoundly corrupt. House prices in London (and thus in the whole country indirectly) are pressured by the huge amount of hot money from corrupt Russian oligarchs and assorted gangsters of various nationalities invested in the expensive end of the market. But nothing here is illegal, as far as the house purchases in Britain are concerned. It's just that they are bought with corrupt money and force up the living costs of millions of ordinary British people.

Look at the purchase of rare earth minerals from the Congo that are essential for computers and mobile phones. Much of this mineral wealth is controlled by war lord armies who are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The companies that buy the mineral products they control – the moral equivalent of blood diamonds – have no contact with them at all. Dealers act as a buffer and through their transactions – perfectly legal – wealth based on rape and murder is miraculously washed clean.

Finance capital is, by definition, corrupt. The investment banks typically do not disclose their fees to investors in advance (they call their charges ‘consideration’), deducting self-decided amounts as they go along. Free charging professionals like lawyers, as well as many doctors and dentists, make up their own huge fees. Isn't this corrupt? But there's nothing illegal about it.

The tax dodges by major companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Starbucks are perfectly legal. They pay all the tax they are required by law – or by agreement – in countries like Ireland and Luxemburg where they are registered. Whether these practices are illegal in the UK for example is a very grey area. But corruption it certainly is.

All these examples have the same effect: robbing the poor to further enrich the wealthy.

Corruption in Sport

So why do we have this rash of allegations and disclosures about corruption in sport? The money poured into sport by television and sponsorship deals is truly vast. Corruption in sport, including taking banned drugs, is about the division of the money coming into the game, or about gambling on the results.

Corruption around the edges of rich sports has always existed. For example, think of the exotic fees charged to some football clubs by the agents of players being transferred, some of whom have close links to club managers.

But today the profits from winning at sports are mind-boggling. Take Maria Sharapova. What she has won on the tennis court pales into comparison to the sponsorship deals she's gained from Porsche, TAG Heuer, Nike, and Evian. Performance enhancing drugs are definitely worth it if they get you into the top earning bracket. Each athlete and their coaches and managers want to maximize their share of the cash coming into sport.

Fifa and Sepp Blatter is something else. World soccer is the richest sport. Fifa had the ability to make people very rich by its allocation of contracts and competitions and was therefore always a prime target for bribery. But the bigger question is why all this corruption became a widely accepted or tolerated part of sport. Why would the South African cricket team under Hansie Cronje throw a match for a few hundred dollars per player?

The answer comes down to the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times. We live in a world where wealth and luxury are worshipped, where to have money is to be someone important, where to be a celebrity or a major sports star is to be worshipped. A world in which competition for wealth and celebrity is universal and where the rich are almost always keen to become even richer. And where not to be rich is to be a nobody.

Nothing exemplifies this more than the gift lounges and gift bags organized for Oscar nominees by big companies. Stars worth tens of millions of dollars stagger under the weight of free cameras, watches, jewellery, electronic goods picked up at these events. When being rich, or being one of the ‘lords of humankind’, is all that matters, then how you gain your wealth and keep it doesn't matter, regardless of whom it hurts or impoverishes. •

Phil Hearse is editor of www.marxsite.com where this article appeared.

« PreviousHomeToday
Mobile
Next »
Comments

#1 Vera Gottlieb 2016-04-12 12:03 EDT
Neoliberalism's World of Corruption
Why always point to Putin? For a change, why not point to Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg - presently the EU president - setting up facilities for so many large companies to come and do business via Luxembourg to avoid major taxation. This isn't corruption and theft? Why is the media so shy in naming ALL NAMES??? Isn't this a kind of cover-up too - guilty by association? The hypocrisy is revolting. All these thieves are being caught with the pants down (thank goodness!!!) and we seem to be running to cover up their nakedness. How pathetic.


Post New Comment:

Display Name:
Anonymous

E-mail:
enter your e-mail address (will not be shown publicly)

Subject:

Comment:

enter your comment here...

What is this text?: Prove you're not a robot :
Submit comment
« Previous~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( The B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
• ISSN 1923-7871 •Next »
Share: Delicious Digg Facebook Google bookmark MySpace Reddit StumbleUpon Twitter UnionBook RSS
^ Back to Top ^

[Klaatu]

EDIT: No American politicians have been implicated in the Panama Papers. Evidently, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (https://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Corporations/Foreign-Account-Tax-Compliance-Act-FATCA) is why.

I read that the Panama organization does not like doing business with Americans. Besides, some US states, such as Delaware and Wyoming, are already providing tax shelters for foreigners as well as Americans.

[Prof. Oblivion]

I read that the Panama organization does not like doing business with Americans. Besides, some US states, such as Delaware and Wyoming, are already providing tax shelters for foreigners as well as Americans.

Most Americans go through Cayman or Bermuda if they need to go offshore. Panama has been an unpopular choice for decades.