The Panama Papers.

Almost as shocking as finding out that Dave has been the beneficiary of industrial scal tax avoidance, is the earth shattering revelation that the new head of FIFA has had some involvement too

In other news… apparently George Michael is gay?!!!! 😯

So are we all boycotting pro footie competitions now? Sport riddled from top-to-toe, it would be morally reprehensible to support such stuff surely…..

These clubs will be owned by shady foreigners next? 😉

So are we all boycotting pro footie competitions now? Sport riddled from top-to-toe, it would be morally reprehensible to support such stuff surely…..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

teamhurtmore – Member
So are we all boycotting pro footie competitions now? Sport riddled from top-to-toe, it would be morally reprehensible to support such stuff surely…..

These clubs will be owned by shady foreigners next?

ive already done that

According to the beeb, Osborne just terminated an interview, when asked about his having any offshore funds….

you know, I think that’s the answer. keep all the dodgy **** tied up with running sports, it will keep them out of politics (can you imagine if Sepp was running a country?) keep them occupied, and feed their megalomania, and ultimately as it’s sport…It doesn’t matter.

everyone’s a winner (although it’s sports, so maybe not…)

😆

you own a football team? were Mossack Fonseca any good?

you know, I think that’s the answer. keep all the dodgy **** tied up with running sports politics, it will keep them out of business (can you imagine if George was running a company?) keep them occupied, and feed their megalomania, and ultimately as it’s politics…It doesn’t matter.

FTFY

As I said @mefty we can agree to disagree, the uk is leading the way in tax disclosure – see extract from Guardian below. Yup the majority of Apple’s profts should be attributed to the point of sale. Design/manufacturing is the minority imo. The fact is they are paying virtually zero tax everywhere.60% of global profits booked and sheltered from tax through Ireland and the industrial scale tax avoidance that is the European Union where Luxembourg is the richest country per capita in the EU.

@tmh from what I infer Cameron is taking no income from the trusts currently nor since he was PM. I would imagine he’ll take income when he retires from Parliament in 2020. As I posted before I don’t see a furore over Ronnie Corbets inheritance tax planning ? He sold his home in 2003 and gave the money to his kids thus IHT is zero. Many of us here have argued IHT should be abolished as its a tax only the middle classes pay (£4.6bn this year).

Quote below from Guardian today, Obhama was elected in 2009 and promised to address tax avoidance, yet he has done pretty much zero and as I posted Apple has dodged $80 billion in global taxes during his preseidency and Facebook, Google, Amazon etc are doing the same. Note the comment from the Swiss lawyer about how US states like Wyoming have enacted secrecy laws to attract funds.

Soon after he took office in 2009, Obama outlined plans to crack down on offshore tax havens and return more than $200bn in unpaid taxes to the US. “I want to see our companies remain the most competitive in the world. But the way to make sure that happens is not to reward our companies for moving jobs off our shores or transferring profits to overseas tax havens,” he said. However, eight years on little has changed and indeed the US itself has emerged as a popular venue for tax avoidance.

The US states of Nevada, Wyoming and South Dakota have been promoted as new hot markets to avoid tax and stash cash secretly, because the US has been resisting international disclosure reforms. Last year the Tax Justice Network, an activist research group, ranked the US third in its annual financial secrecy index, citing its “wide array of secrecy and tax-free facilities for non-residents”.

“How ironic – no, how perverse – that the USA, which has been so sanctimonious in its condemnation of Swiss banks, has become the banking secrecy jurisdiction du jour,” Peter Cotorceanu, a lawyer at the Swiss law firm Anaford AG said in a recent legal journal, according to Bloomberg. “That ‘giant sucking sound’ you hear? It is the sound of money rushing to the USA.”

By all means abolish UK dependency tax havens, funds and business will flow elsewhere. Tax receipts will fall as unemployment will rise in those places. But hey ho we’ll have the moral high-ground eh ? As Obama says you need global action as unless everyone agrees the business will just move, the chances of global agreement are close to zeo imho. See thenquote above innthenUS you have one state playing off aganst the other.

We have much greater tax issues like Apple etc and internet

Interesting to see London property pop up in this case now as well… it’s so obvious to anyone who lives in London who saw the prices shoot up very very fast in late 2013 that something crooked was going on – prices were static from 2009-mid 2013 and then suddenly around September time they went through the roof – which clearly wasn’t some ‘supply and demand’ dynamic because demand doesn’t increase 20% in 3 months without some kind of trigger.

I reckon in time we’ll find out a massive tonne of crooked cash hit the market at that time as a load of these offshore companies bought into Prime London. It’s not just the scale of the ‘increase in demand’ but the speed of it which suggests something dodgy was going on.

It’s really not great that we’ve allowed our housing market to be corrupted like this…

Pfff, bloody conspiracy theorists!!

Unless…

Revealed: the tycoons and world leaders who built secret UK property empires

The Panama Papers show how billions of pounds of offshore cash flooded the British property market

Transparency campaigners have warned the secrecy of such arrangements can enable large sums of black money to be laundered through the property market. A senior National Crime Agency director warned last year that the capital’s housing market had been “skewed by laundered money”.

HMRC can and do challenge tax avoidance schemes.

Only to make sure they aren’t evasion.

Avoiding tax is by definition legal.

According to the beeb, Osborne just terminated an interview, when asked about his having any offshore funds….

I’ve not really been following this either on here or in the news as I’ve been busy. It would strike me though that this could be as big as the expenses scandal, the main difference being that it’s largely a tory problem. At least I hope so 🙂

Will Cameron even last to the referendum?

Will Cameron even last to the referendum?

Why wouldn’t he? Not to defend him but he’s not responsible for what his dad did.

As long as you count Blair as a Tory, which he pretty much is !

All this reminds me of a mega long thread on the contractoruk forum where a bunch of contractors used a “tax planning” scheme which had foreign exchange deals/loans etc etc going on. I think they were effectively being taxed at 3%, eventually HMRC caught up with the scheme and deemed it an evasion vehicle.

The contractors are still fighting the case I believe, but what were they thinking of entering into such a scheme initially. £££££££ greed.

the main difference being that it’s largely a tory problem

Oh I don’t know. I wouldn’t be remotely surprised to see you-know-who’s name pop up….

Trying to find a positive spin in all this… Offshore has been being used to launder money for longer than I’ve been alive – I’ve always assumed this kind of stuff was going on and assumed everyone else knew about it to… but now corruption is becoming a really big thing… so what;s changed? Is it?

a) the amount of it is so massively off the scale, so widespread and so blatant that people are now getting angry?

b) the economic crisis is making us all realise we’re not as comfortably off as we thought we were, and so we’re more angry that other people are scamming us that we would be if we though we had enough

c) email, mobile and internet make it much easier for records to exist of dodgy dealings, much easier for them to be leaked and therefore much easier for prosecutors or journalists to build their case… there was a guy on Radio 4 the other night made reference to ‘radical transparency’ which suggests it’s that much harder now for dodgy dealings to be kept secret. In which case, we can expect more and more stuff to keep coming out around all kinds of corruption for a few more years yet…

I believe there were rumours about Mark Thatcher for years, but the amount of pressure put on Maggie as a result wasn’t as great as the amount of pressure being put (rightly IMO) on Cameron. So I’m wondering what’s different this time?

<edit> I have it on good authority (my parents) that grass-roots Tory activists were talking about the need to get rid of Osborne and Cameron well before all this came out… they’re both seen as liabilities… so I suspect there’s some very serious plans now being drawn up in Westminster to replace him – this will be a massive massive gift to those who want to get rid, even if he does talk his way out of it in the short term

I believe there were rumours about Mark Thatcher for years, but the amount of pressure put on Maggie as a result wasn’t as great as the amount of pressure being put (rightly IMO) on Cameron. So I’m wondering what’s different this time?

Guess in many respects it’s cumulative… not only have we had the expenses scandal, the Phone Hacking Scandal (don’t forget how close Andy Coulson was to Cameron and how close Murdoch still is), the Snowden revelations where it was proven the Government was lying outright, we also have more details of how the Government armed and supported Saddam (mention of Mark Thatcher relevant there, as is John Bredenkamp, who I mentioned earlier in the thread) and intentionally or otherwise, led to the rise of Al-Qaeda (the Al-Yamamah deal involving Thatcher likely to be very relevant in that context). On top of that, you have the security services protecting MPs who were abusing children, whilst Special Branch was fully aware.

Oh, and don’t forget the tax payer had to pay for Maggie’s fancy pants funeral!

Could it be a case of we’re getting sufficient points of reference to build a bigger picture?

Only to make sure they aren’t evasion.

Avoiding tax is by definition legal.

That’s not true: HMRC can take you to a tax tribunal and give you a large bill plus penalties, without any suggestion of criminal activity. That’s one of the reasons why you are required to disclose certain schemes.

I think it’s because people in western democracies are now waking up to the 40 years of hurt

Whilst the corruption went on in the boom years from the 90’s to 2008 no one cared as the perception was that they were getting richer (I had no such illusions as my pay started flat-lining ca 2004).

So the stock market keeps rising, indicating more wealth, but only for the wealthy.

FTSE 100 barely changed over past 10 years, so how does that idea work?

Why wouldn’t he? Not to defend him but he’s not responsible for what his dad did.

Well, Cameron is where he is today as a result of his Dad’s money. Also, Cameron would have been influencing policy whilst his Dad was alive. Therefore you cannot seperate them with the simplistic statement you made above.

Why wouldn’t he?

Because mud sticks, irrespective of whether that’s fair or not. A politician’s power and position is a direct function of the confidence voters have in them. Cameron is already wounded from the budget, IDS, and Europe. This could quite easily tip him over the edge even before the fatal blow that the referendum could deliver. With the expenses scandal, the damage was less about the detail, and more about a public perception that they are all on the take, and this has exactly the same ring to it.

Example:

This is how it works. Let’s say a corporation picks and packs a container-load of bananas in Ecuador, and it costs the company $1,000. It sells them to a French supermarket for $3,000. Which country gets to tax the $2,000 profit – France, Ecuador? The answer is, “Where the multinational’s accountants decide.”

The multinational sets up three companies, all of which it owns: EcuadorCo, HavenCo (in a zero-tax haven) and FranceCo. EcuadorCo sells the container to HavenCo for $1,000, and HavenCo sells it on to FranceCo for $3,000. That’s basically it. (The bananas themselves don’t go anywhere near the tax haven: this is all just paper-shuffling in New York or London.)

If you blinked, you may have missed what happened here. It cost EcuadorCo $1,000 to pick and pack the container, and they sold it on for $1,000. So EcuadorCo records zero profits, meaning no taxes. Likewise, FranceCo buys it for $3,000 and sells it to the supermarket for $3,000. Again, no profits, and no taxes. HavenCo is the key to the puzzle. It bought the container for $1,000 and sold it for $3,000 – a $2,000 profit. But it is based in a haven, so it pays no tax. In short, all the profits have been stripped out of France and Ecuador, and shovelled into the haven. Hey presto!

What it doesn’t say is that the money to buy the banana was provided by a african government official who gets a salary of 10k a year but skims half a million from grants intended to improve the life of residents. He/She then uses another company in his daughters name to buy up flats in Islington and send his son to a private school who becomes a politician, defends tax havens and retires as a exec director of a investment business.

Private Eye interactive map of offshore owned property
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/mobi/registry

Had Ed been PM (or even David, remember them ?) then he would have some questions to answer.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/11410824/Ed-Miliband-intended-to-reduce-tax-admits-Keir-Starmer.html

Wilburt, are you sure the architect of that scheme you described wasn’t Cameroonian rather than Nigerian?

Well, Cameron is where he is today as a result of his Dad’s money. Also, Cameron would have been influencing policy whilst his Dad was alive. Therefore you cannot seperate them with the simplistic statement you made above.

Nonsense. You can’t blame any child for what their parents did (unless it fits your agenda of course…..)

That’s right. Vladimir Putin’s daughters are very smart and hard working. It’s no surprise they’re independently wealthy. I don’t know why everyone wants to make some sort of connection between them and their father.

You can’t blame any child for what their parents did

True. But when this child is (as PM) responsible for reducing the levels of such activity going on, it’s essential that we know if he received any benefits or will receive any benefits from his father’s activities.

After all, if he stands to gain from his father’s activities, he’s not very-well incentivised to cut down on such activities, as per his responsibility and public committment…

There’s a very clear conflict of interest – which needs resolving.

it seems his fathers business dealings were very in tune with daves career path

The Telegraph has established that Ian Cameron’s firm Blairmore Holdings Inc was moved to Ireland in 2010 – the year David Cameron became Prime Minister.
A source close to Blairmore Holdings – which is still operating with assets of £35 million – said the company had been moved because its directors believed it was about to “come under more scrutiny”.

Details of Ian Cameron’s offshore business interests were revealed in the so-called Panama Papers – a leak of 11.5 million documents from the Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca – which claimed their first major scalp on Tuesday with the resignation of Iceland’s Prime Minister.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/05/panama-papers-david-cameron-forced-to-declare-tax-affairs-amid-o/

Apparently this may be VERY significant in terms of Cameron Family finances…

The thing that strikes me most is this, from the video description:

Further sources have revealed that Gerald Carroll’s Farnborough Aerospace Aerospace Centre in Hampshire England was “targeted” by BAE Systems and HSBC International within the framework of a systematic break-up embezzlement operation

Which has direct parallels with what happened to Astra Holdings PLC

In the Public Interest: A Devastating Account of the Thatcher Government’s Involvement in the Covert Arms Trade

Worth noting that both David Cameron and John Bredenkamp have been linked to Astra Holdings…

Whether this is relevant to alleged links between Cameron’s Blairmore Holdings and the Carroll Trust remains to be seen… I’m approaching skeptically at the moment, but there does seem to be some truth in this[/url]:

Sources have confirmed that the dossiers contain compelling criminal evidential material surrounding Smith Williamson’s shocking fraudulent accounting operation which was targeted at the Carroll Global Corporation industrial empire. Further sources have said that Smith Williamson were appointed by the Carroll Foundation Trust immediately prior to the commencement of the systematic embezzlement and criminal liquidation of the trust’s billion dollar world wide investment holdings spanning a staggering sixteen years.
It is understood that the files also contain a forensic paper trail surrounding the very close links that Prime Minister David Cameron and Alexander Cameron QC criminal barrister family estate interests continue to retain with Smith Williamson the Cameron family offshore tax haven based investment vehicles Blairmore Holdings Blairmore Asset Management and the Cameron links to a clutch of Church of England charities and family trusts whose funds are also managed by Smith Williamson.

Panama fund run by David Cameron’s dad ‘used bishop middle-man to avoid UK tax for 30 years’

The preacher is said to be part of a “small army” of officers based in the Caribbean who put their names to investment fund Blairmore Holdings Inc

According to the Guardian, one of more than 100 news outlets which have studied the so-called ‘Panama Papers’, Blairmore Holdings did not pay a penny of UK tax over 30 years.

It was incorporated in Panama, based in the Bahamas and counted Mr Cameron Snr as one of 11 directors in a 2006 prospectus.

According to the Guardian, the firm’s complex structure meant it “retained up to 50 Caribbean officers each year” who signed paperwork and filled official roles such as treasurer and secretary.

They are said to have included Solomon Humes, a now-dead bishop with the Church of God of Prophecy whose roles in the fund included vice-president.

But despite the large contingent of directors in the Caribbean, the Panama Papers are said to show UK-based directors regularly held board meetings themselves.

“The clear intention for Blairmore was to avoid becoming UK tax resident and the test for this, even in 2006, is the location of the central management and control.

“This means where the key business decisions are taken. The evidence here suggests in this period they weren’t taken outside the UK, in which case it is hard to see how the company was not managed and controlled, and therefore tax resident, in the UK at the time.”

The Mirror phoned the London offices of investment firm Smith & Williamson, two of whose managers described themselves as directors of Blairmore, for comment.

FTSE 100 barely changed over past 10 years, so how does that idea work?

😯 the problem with a myopic worldview; check the long term patterns on not only the FTSE but also the Dow Jones and also look at the FTSE 250.
Also this[/url]

We’ve had 8 years of austerity for about half of the UK population, who at the same time pay all or at least most of their taxes.
In contrast, boom time has continued for some, who pay little or no tax whatsoever.
Here is why we should have taken the clues seriously for years; Cameron, Osbourne and all of their pals in larger business, the financial sector and those with wealth to disguise have been getting fatter throughout the difficult years. The current crop of greed-merchants at the helm in Westminster have kept the system working for them at the expense of everyone else, throughout. We should be angry at this and many folk have barely yet woken up to the huge extent of the scandal, the damage and the selfish greed.

no, you said that the stock market keeps rising ie using the present tense. that is not true, as noted it is largely unchanged over the past decade – a time when people like to claim that income inequality has increased

the problem with exaggerating to make a false point

But when this child is (as PM) responsible for reducing the levels of such activity going on, it’s essential that we know if he received any benefits or will receive any benefits from his father’s activities.

I don’t disagree at all. He’s still not accountable for it.

income inequality

😀

We should be angry at this and many folk have barely yet woken up to the huge extent of the scandal, the damage and the selfish greed.

bread and circuses

so the leaks so far show that tax avoidance crosses political parties, nations, sectors etc and included many famous names including the world’s most celebrated football star

so the obvious question is why?

why do so many people have such an obvious aversion to paying tax, especially those whose responsibility it is to spend/manage it?

@wrecker – what exactly do you mean by ‘he’s not accountable’ for his father’s finances?

so the obvious question is why?

why do so many people have such an obvious aversion to paying tax, especially those whose responsibility it is to spend/manage it?

Greed. Pure and simple. Greed and a sense of entitlement.