The Panama Papers.

According to wiki he only spent a few years in Belize, born and educated in the UK, it seems he infact owns most of Belize
Holds a dual British passport and spent at least five years saying he was registered in the UK, whilst he used this company to create shell companies to hide his wealth from the UK tax inspector…

I can’t believe there’s surprise about Putin’s inclusion in the list.

For a man who claims to own very little it’s been well known for quite some time that his late 20 something daughter (supposedly a student / researcher) has controlling interests in investments worth in excess of $1B.

Craig Murray has an interesting point to make, it will be interesting to see what comes out in the future.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

“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 The dirty secrets of western corporations will remain unpublished.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”

Im not a huge fan of the Guardian, but I hardly see them being played like puppets if there’s data in front of them to get stuck into.

meh, all those funders and their contributions are listed on their website, which puts them several steps above the tax havens and their patrons

theyve also investigated and been quite critical of some of their own funders, including Soros

actually youre right they are only going after the really nasty world leaders

Wonder if they’ve got anything from KPMG?

Anyhoo, here’s a couple of other shady types:

Wonder how much money relating to arms trafficking and the intelligence services is handled offshore?

Are the Cayman Islands better than Panama for legal tax avoidance?

Asking for a friend….

panamas possibly a bit compromised at the moment

definitely Cayman

Id like to think its the begining of the end for the tax havens, but itll never happen even if everyone of them was aggressively pursued, theyd only set up on the moon or mars, still it might be the driver for humanity to expand into the stars 😉

great interactive here

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

Several trillion dollars of untaxed income as a result of it being hidden away in fake companies, benefiting heads of state, film stars, sports stars, our beloved Prime Minister’s father?
Nah, it’ll all be forgotten about this time tomorrow.

You or we don’t know its untaxed income. If you are trying to legally shelter already taxed income the most common way is to put it into an offshore trust/company. Cameron for example pays tax on the income he receives from his family trust – the money in the trust has already been taxed. Sports stars like Hamilton, Murray etc live abroad and keep theirnearnjngs oitside the UK totally legally – why pay high uk taxes when youndon’t even live here ?

@kimbers the end for “tax havens” – what about Ireland and Luxembourg ? Under pressure from the EU Ireland finally agreed to end its triple-Irish zero tax deals but not for 4 more years !!! Junker personally negotiated dozens of similar deals and he’s been rewarded with the Presidency of the EU.

The garphic above – children involved in offshore companies owning property in uk – of course when you introduce property taxes of 5% but company transfers are 0.5% people are going to buy properties in companies unless you do something to prevent it. Labour didn’t think of it and the Tories closed the loophole.

CFH 😉 Panama is easily the “best” choice vs Cayman

Russia put on the most expensive Winter Olympics ever with facilities costing the government many many times originalmestimates. Money paid to private companies after contracts signed off by government officials. The whole thing is a disgrace but its hardly a Panama revelation is it ?

Oh there he goes again…”Ireland…blah…blah..Luxembourg…blah…blah…Junkers…blah…blah…blah…”

Bored already Jamba.

Of course, you probably already know why we don’t know whether it’s taxed or not don’t you?

I suppose with this Panama thing, one has to ask oneself why someone needs to head there to hide his of her cash. Nowhere offers the level of secrecy and opacity of Panama, despite it not exactly being next door to a fair chunk of the world, nor offering the relative safety of say, British-dependent tax havens such as Jersey or the Isle Of Man.

Nope, when it comes to secrecy and ethically dubious methods of wealth management, no one can beat Panama. So, when you’re wondering whether it’s all above board or not, ask yourself why the person whose methods of wealth management you’re judging: “Why Panama then matey?”

You get a free hat when you open an account?

(I keep mine on my parcel shelf)

Oh there he goes again…”Ireland…blah…blah..Luxembourg…blah…blah…Junkers…blah…blah…blah…”

Bored already Jamba.

You would think someone of jambas claimed background and knowledge would have known about the European savings directive.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/european-union-savings-directive-countering-cross-border-tax-evasion

The company said it..

has never been charged with criminal wrong-doing.

Is that not the Lance Armstrong defense?

I have never been caught taking drugs…

Ashcroft has claimed its all made up nasty lies 🙄

What company or organisation do you think this is?

– Headquarters registered in Jersey for tax avoidance purposes.
– 600 branch offices owned and controlled by a Bermuda holding company for the same reason.

RBS? BAe Systems? Barclays?

Nope, it’s HMRC.

It really is laughable. Corrupt from the very top.

Yup from the very top, Nothing illegal obvs 😕 , just a depressing state of affairs..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-35961422

the Panama papers are going to be in the news cycle and worthy of comment for a week or so,

I don’t think it was meant this way, but that sounds rather tired and jaded ie: no-one’s surprised, we all reckon this stuff goes on anyway and have tolerated it for years – and it’ll disappear off the front pages after a couple of weeks of fear for some…

Maybe I’m just getting old and cynical but I’m just not surprised they’ve been able to find a link to our own PM. There’s surely something on Osborne too, they’ve just not found it yet, and probably Blair as well…

Read Plato’s Republic, written around 300 BC and you’ll see that the idea that power appears impossible to deal with without it corrupting people, has been around for ever.

Ben – what’s the source for the HRMC stuff? Ironically amusing, if true, but I might be being thick here but why would government department need to do what you claim?

– Headquarters registered in Jersey for tax avoidance purposes.
– 600 branch offices owned and controlled by a Bermuda holding company for the same reason.

RBS? BAe Systems? Barclays?

Nope, it’s HMRC.

Eh? – got a link?

Read Plato’s Republic, written around 300 BC and you’ll see that the idea that power appears impossible to deal with without it corrupting people, has been around for ever.

I think Plato has it arse about face. Power doesn’t corrupt – only the corrupt can gain power (or – “if you want to get ahead, be a ****”)

It’s not HMRC directly.

They outsourced they management of their buildings to Mapeley for 20 years. Without checking where they were based!

Private Eye have been banging on about it for years, but as they don’t do online here’s the guardian from 6 years ago:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/apr/08/revenue-tax-offshore-millions-avoidance

thx, that makes a little bit more sense

Don’t they employ quite a few staff as contractors too?

Yes, It’s the usual trick of selling off assets then renting them back again.

Oldie but a Goldie:

Brinks Matt theft proceeds laundered as well 😆 they would work for anyone this lot

Facetious, I know but every time someone says Panama, I hear David Lee Roth.

Panama-ha-ha 😮

Ben, HMRC has 160 offices in the UK that it rents from a commercial series of landlords- at rather more than arm’s length.
The Department is based in Whitehall, not Jersey. Oh, and doesn’t exist as a commercial organisation, so has no profit taxes to pay. It is part of the civil service!
The relevant sections of crown estate, the buildings, were sold off many years ago by an idealogically challenged government to several property companies including at least one profit making off-shore registered entity.
But hey, lets not let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Wrecker- Contractors? er, no.

And finally, HMRC does not write tax law. The politicians do that. And they cut the budget, year after year. Close offices. Lay off staff. you’d almost think that they didn’t want the organisation to actually be an effective tax police force. HMRC now has half of the staff from just a decade ago. And is entering a programme of office closures that will see 145 offices close and at least another 10,000 staff depart permanently.
Does anyone else think that there might be an agenda behind this?

Does anyone else think that there might be an agenda behind this?

You are @jive and I claim my £5 🙂

Tax Office is being automated / taken online. The days of paper tax returns are behind us and you simply don’t need the same amount of staff.

Bringing the Referendum into this membership of the EU is the biggest cause of lost tax revenue to us, billions amd billions per anum. I am sure you are bored of hearing about it @dead, much more convenient if its just swept under the carpet

Brinks Matt theft proceeds laundered as well they would work for anyone this lot

Brinks-MAT is pretty small time in the bigger picture… how are organizations like Al-Qaeda and ISIS funded?

What about the 9/11 hijackers?

Being as records go back to the 70s, there may be further light shed on the activities of the BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International)

The Dirtiest Bank of them all

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the resulting strategic importance of neighboring Pakistan accelerated the growth of B.C.C.I.’s geopolitical power and its unbridled use of the black network. Because the U.S. wanted to supply the mujahedin rebels in Afghanistan with Stinger missiles and other military hardware, it needed the full cooperation of Pakistan, across whose border the weapons would be shipped.

By the mid-1980s, the CIA’s Islamabad operation was one of the largest U.S. intelligence stations in the world.

“If B.C.C.I. is such an embarrassment to the U.S. that forthright investigations are not being pursued, it has a lot to do with the blind eye the U.S. turned to the heroin trafficking in Pakistan,” says a U.S. intelligence officer.

The black network was a natural outgrowth of B.C.C.I.’s dubious and criminal associations.

The bank was in a unique position to operate an intelligence-gathering unit because it dealt with such figures as,

~General Noriega

~Saddam Hussein

~Ferdinand Marcos

~Peruvian President Alan Garcia

~Daniel Ortega

~Contra leader Adolfo Calero

~Arms dealers like Adnan Khashoggi

Its original purpose was to pay bribes, intimidate authorities and quash investigations.

THE WORLD; Offshore Banking’s Umbrella Shields More Than B.C.C.I.

Who presides over more Tax havens than any other entity on earth?

Oops, forgot this bit:

From interviews with sources close to B.C.C.I., TIME has pieced together a portrait of a clandestine division of the bank called the “black network,” which functions as a global intelligence operation and a Mafia-like enforcement squad. Operating primarily out of the bank’s offices in Karachi, Pakistan, the 1,500-employee black network has used sophisticated spy equipment and techniques, along with bribery, extortion, kidnapping and even, by some accounts, murder.

The black network – so named by its own members – stops at almost nothing to further the bank’s aims the world over.

The more conventional departments of B.C.C.I. handled such services as laundering money for the drug trade and helping dictators loot their national treasuries.

The black network, which is still functioning, operates a lucrative arms-trade business and transports drugs and gold. According to investigators and participants in those operations, it often works with Western and Middle Eastern intelligence agencies. The strange and still murky ties between B.C.C.I. and the intelligence agencies of several countries are so pervasive that even the White House has become entangled.

Here’s the link to the original TIME article so you know it’s not just loony stuff:

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,973481,00.html

Who presides over more Tax havens than any other entity on earth?

Keeping the other thread open would have been smarter.

BCCI has been extensively banged on about for two decades. It’s hardly a little known topic

😀

@dead thanks for answer on the other thread, I won’t mention Ireland again for .. a while

BCCI has been extensively banged on about for two decades. It’s hardly a little known topic

Indeed and nothing compared to the Russians today

BCCI has been extensively banged on about for two decades. It’s hardly a little known topic

Can you find another thread mentioning it?

Do allegations that funds from the Al-Yamamah deal between the UK and Saudi Arabia were used to fund Al-Qaeda in the run up to 9/11 have relevance today?

Who funds, arms and trades with ISIS anyhoo?

Can you find another thread mentioning it?

No because it’s ancient history. A number of Russian banks are subject to sanctions as they are well known to be fronts/owned by those close to Putin. IMO that’s all a lot more relevant.

Al-Q was funded by OBL who was independently wealthy, he didn’t need any deals with anyone