Pandora Papers - the next big tax avoidance and wealth secrecy leak

[brad465]

As per the title, a major leak on this financial behaviour of current and former world leaders (inc. Blair, Putin and the Czech PM facing an election soon), has been made:

Pandora Papers: Secret wealth and dealings of world leaders exposed

The offshore dealings of presidents, prime ministers and royalty feature in the Pandora Papers.

www.bbc.co.uk

The secret wealth and dealings of world leaders, politicians and billionaires has been exposed in one of the biggest leaks of financial documents.
Some 35 current and former leaders and more than 300 public officials are featured in the files from offshore companies, dubbed the Pandora Papers.
They reveal the King of Jordan secretly amassed £70m of UK and US property.
They also show how ex-UK PM Tony Blair and his wife saved £312,000 in stamp duty when they bought a London office.

The couple bought an offshore firm that owned the building.
The leak also links Russian President Vladimir Putin to secret assets in Monaco, and shows the Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis - facing an election later this week - failed to declare an offshore investment company used to purchase two villas for £12m in the south of France.
It is the latest in a string of leaks over the past seven years, following the FinCen Files, the Paradise Papers, the Panama Papers and LuxLeaks.

The examination of the files is the largest organised by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), with more than 650 reporters taking part.
BBC Panorama in a joint investigation with the Guardian and the other media partners have had access to 12 million documents from 14 financial services companies in countries including the British Virgin Islands, Panama, Belize, Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Switzerland.

There's a lot to chew here, but first thing that comes to mind is when we talk about why public finances are in a hard way, one such reason is because of immoral behaviour, however legal it is, like this.

 

[Gloster]

I suspect that the Blairs will be the big names in many newspaper reports, partly because they are British and partly because they are Labour. However, although I am not in the habit of defending them, I think they are fairly minor players. They bought an offshore company that owned a property, which meant that they saved money on stamp duty. However, the previous owner, who had set the offshore arrangements up, insisted that the sale went through like that and the Blairs have since converted the building‘s ownership to that of a UK company. They might have been wiser to have completely avoided the situation, but they weren’t the creators of the shenanigans.

 

[brad465]

I suspect that the Blairs will be the big names in many newspaper reports, partly because they are British and partly because they are Labour. However, although I am not in the habit of defending them, I think they are fairly minor players. They bought an offshore company that owned a property, which meant that they saved money on stamp duty. However, the previous owner, who had set the offshore arrangements up, insisted that the sale went through like that and the Blairs have since converted the building‘s ownership to that of a UK company. They might have been wiser to have completely avoided the situation, but they weren’t the creators of the shenanigans.

On top of this the papers will apparently take days to fully dissect, so there maybe further UK politicians and business people implicated further ahead (I remember Cameron's implication in the Panama Papers did not get discovered the same day the leak was made). The leak is 2.94TB, which in data terms is the largest leak of this type of information (the Panama Papers were 2.6TB). If any current Tory politicians were to be discovered, the timing couldn't be worse with their conference on at the moment. The King of Jordan has been found to have a £70m property empire, including with London properties, so there should already be tough questions for our Government if asked.

 

[reddragon]

Many might wonder how 37 members of the Conservative right ERG not only managed to get a vote on Brexit in the first place, con the British Public and railroad the worst possible option through creating this mess.

And no, I do not blame those who voted Brexit for many good reasons.

It was all about money, off shore funds, tax avoidance and dodgy deals leaving us poor sods to pay for the mess left behind.

These ultra rich were about to fall under new EU regulations banning off shore tax havens. They did not want that and would stop at nothing to avoid that outcome, even turning the UK into a banana republic.

The exposé of this was leaked 18 months ago and after a lot of research publication of it starts this week across the world. Lots of top people are named and shamed exposing the real reasons we are now in this mess.

Enjoy!

Pandora papers: biggest ever leak of offshore data exposes financial secrets of rich and powerful

Millions of documents reveal offshore deals and assets of more than 100 billionaires, 30 world leaders and 300 public officials

www.theguardian.com

For those who don't like the Guardian, many others are publishing the same stories. You might not like our politicians anymore.

What are the Pandora papers?​

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The Pandora papers are the largest trove of leaked data exposing tax haven secrecy in history. They provide a rare window into the hidden world of offshore finance, casting light on the financial secrets of some of the world’s richest people. The files were leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which shared access with the Guardian, BBC and other media outlets around the world. In total, the trove consists of 11.9m files leaked from a total of 14 offshore service providers, totalling 2.94 terabytes of information. That makes it larger in volume than both the Panama papers (2016) and Paradise papers (2017), two previous offshore leaks.

 

[GusB]

I've a funny feeling that this won't be made into as big a scandal as it should be. First of all, we've become so used to the 1% hoarding wealth (and nothing being done about it) that we all just shrug our shoulders because there's little we can do about it. It doesn't seem to matter what colour of government you have, somebody somewhere has their snout in the the trough.

Secondly, there are people who think that anything to get one over on the establishment should be applauded, especially if those at the top are getting away with it. It starts low down and works its way up - for example, a tradesperson doing a "homer" off the books for cash. It won't stop as long as both parties are getting some benefit from it unless they get caught. It won't be those at the top feeling the full force of the law if they get caught, though.

 

[Cowley]

I've a funny feeling that this won't be made into as big a scandal as it should be. First of all, we've become so used to the 1% hoarding wealth (and nothing being done about it) that we all just shrug our shoulders because there's little we can do about it. It doesn't seem to matter what colour of government you have, somebody somewhere has their snout in the the trough.

Secondly, there are people who think that anything to get one over on the establishment should be applauded, especially if those at the top are getting away with it. It starts low down and works its way up - for example, a tradesperson doing a "homer" off the books for cash. It won't stop as long as both parties are getting some benefit from it unless they get caught. It won't be those at the top feeling the full force of the law if they get caught, though.

Yeah pretty much my take on it too. It feels to me like most media outlets would rather go after a personal story as clickbate than push the fact that we’re all being done over generally by a system that makes it very easy for that 1%.
The last few years have shown that you can be fairly blatantly at odds with public opinion and it’ll all blow over fairly rapidly.

 

[DarloRich]

I will wait to see what Private Eye say. If Blair is involved then that will be the focus of most of the media regardless of who else is in there.

 

[Cowley]

I will wait to see what Private Eye say. If Blair is involved then that will be the focus of most of the media regardless of who else is in there.

Absolutely spot on.

 

[GusB]

I will wait to see what Private Eye say. If Blair is involved then that will be the focus of most of the media regardless of who else is in there.

It's the top story on BBC News 24 at the moment, and while the report doesn't focus entirely on Blair, he's the first one mentioned.

 

[172007]

Makes me laugh. Everyone becomes pious over a few very wealthy individuals legally avoiding tax etc.

There are still millions who do cash in hand (albeit not like it used to be with anti money laundering checks). Down my local pub the amount of notes changed by trades people for food and beer is surprising. Enough people do this then there is quite a considerable tax hit to the treasury even if its a few hundred a week of each one. This is illegal and for people like myself who pay paye its more of a concern and frustration than Blair legaly avoiding a few million.

 

[EssexGonzo]

Not a huge surprise, given the enforced affinity of the BBC. I don’t suppose that we’ll see a Panorama any time soon connecting this and Brexit. Most of the British public seem more concerned with whether they’ll get their consumer goods for Christmas and filling up their rented SUVs. They have no appetite (unfortunately) for seeing the bigger picture with tax avoidance as the root cause of Brexit, which is the cause of the current woes., it’ll be someone else’s fault and their beloved, corrupt government will be seen to “save” their own catastrophe.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 4 Oct 2021 ==

An excellent point. I too have been PAYE all of my working life. We only now pay tradespeople by BACS which in turn verifies the name of the account we’re paying. For example, this weeded out an electrician who tried to firstly to get us to pay cash and then gave us his (under 18) daughter’s bank account details. His excuse was that his non-corporate jobs were a means of saving for his daughter’s future - fair point - but he didn’t really appreciate the point that his invoice had a trading name on it.

 

[reddragon]

Not a huge surprise, given the enforced affinity of the BBC. I don’t suppose that we’ll see a Panorama any time soon connecting this and Brexit. Most of the British public seem more concerned with whether they’ll get their consumer goods for Christmas and filling up their rented SUVs. They have no appetite (unfortunately) for seeing the bigger picture with tax avoidance as the root cause of Brexit, which is the cause of the current woes., it’ll be someone else’s fault and their beloved, corrupt government will be seen to “save” their own catastrophe.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 4 Oct 2021 ==

An excellent point. I too have been PAYE all of my working life. We only now pay tradespeople by BACS which in turn verifies the name of the account we’re paying. For example, this weeded out an electrician who tried to firstly to get us to pay cash and then gave us his (under 18) daughter’s bank account details. His excuse was that his non-corporate jobs were a means of saving for his daughter’s future - fair point - but he didn’t really appreciate the point that his invoice had a trading name on it.

I've been following this story since before the Brexit vote.

A sad state we have got ourselves in!

Did you know the no.1 source of their wealth? Borrowing either personal or by venture capitalism creating huge business debt, that we pay for!

 

[172007]

Venture capatilsm is based on debt yes, they reward then selves yes (who wouldn't). These companies act as financial recyclers. They usually purchase companies who can be divided up and the total of the parts is more than the sum total. They purchase underperforming companies (often by borrowing) rescue them and then sell them for a handsome profit which then goes to their next venture. This just scrapes the surface on their activities. Yes they make people redundant, strip assets but often it save jobs as the whole company would otherwise go to the wall, assets stripped are usally sold on so another company benefits.

Problem with venture capitalists is that many people just listen to what the Socialist Workers Party say rather than remember their A-level economics lectures.