I do not typically emerge to private browsing, and feel, "wow, news!"

But so I felt about Panama papers, Wow...

I am a Finn, and Nordea bank felt unashamedly free to create panama companies. Even when a responsible person had died, and used her post-grave power of attorney for a half-dozen years or so...

Nordea is super "anti tax-evasion," of course..

Right?

I can't wait to see what comes of the next batch of Panama Papers leaks. Supposedly, they will answer the question of why there were practically no US politicians or individuals implicated in the first leak and whatever they do have is supposed to be epic! I expect we'll see some rather interesting names, like maybe Trump, scrambling to explain their unethical (and possibly illegal) behavior.

Would you find me very poorly cogadh if I suggested that US could help beyond their immediate need? And if hep was on the way, it would be actually principled?

What greatly bothers me is that this sort of news only gets convictions in Germany.

Wasn't news of this bent / biased initially?

I will just leave it here. No comment, besides that ... its how everyone does this currently.


Edit:: yes, indeed.

"The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published on Sunday some 11.5 million documents revealing "the offshore links of some of the planet’s most prominent people." The leak includes material on hidden financial dealings of a range of Russian legal entities and individuals. Authors of the investigation claim that these operations could be tied to associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but said that the Russian leader’s name is not actually mentioned in the files." source

11 million documents? I do believe it was super harsh to analyse - but thence I also admire the journalists better.

Coordinating the output across a great number of media, and none leaking what would come out??

I suspect you might be more admirably bent and biased to learn from that! Or what say u? ;-) Do you mind?

In December 2015, about more than 200 people including me lost their job because our company was no more interested in continuing the service in which we were working.
And guess what I saw my company's owner name in news about those Panama Leaks.

Putinphobic!
XD

My first thoughts "what powerful group of people are profiting from this?" and "people that are cunning enough to not be caught... What are they doing?"

I'm not sure what the US could really do. Most of what has come out so far shows that no US laws were broken and no US citizens have been implicated (yet). Further investigation and leaks might change that, but its not like the US could do anything about the actions of Ukraine's president (for example). He's not a US citizen and it doesn't appear that he broke any laws that the US has the authority to enforce (he might not have even broken Ukrainian law). In fact, previous actions taken by the US triggered some of this. It appears that Syria's president, Bashar Al-Assad, may have used this Panamanian law firm to set up shell companies to funnel money around US and international sanctions.

That's the worst part about this whole thing: while everything these people did was really shitty, it wasn't necessarily illegal. They worked the system, but it was still all (apparently) within the legal limits of the system. Right now, the best we can hope for is that this exposure will force a change in international banking laws so that it will be illegal in the future, but when the people responsible for changing those laws are the same people who have been gaming the system in the first place... well, what are the odds they are going to cut off their own tax-free retirement funds?

I swear, this is one of those times when I want to start a real, honest to god revolution. Tear down the old broken system, throw out all the bums running it, rebuild it better, smarter, simpler. If I had half an idea on how to actually do that, I'd probably be on someone's watchlist. Or in jail.

I will point you towards the lyrics of the Who, wont get fooled again:
http://www.metrolyrics.com/wont-get-fooled-again-lyrics-who.html

I do find this "news" amusing, such a shock, rich people hiding money around the world, who would have thought it eh, shock horror. It seems people nowadays live in a state of media frenzied outrage at everything, who fecking cares, your not going to change anything. Just walk along the high street and see Starbucks and costa who are unable to pay to tax, all the online shops that don't etc.

Its less about the fact that they were hiding money and avoiding paying taxes, we all knew they were doing that to some degree, its the sheer scale of it. I don't think anyone realized just how much money, how many people and for how long they were doing it. One of the leaked documents was a 2015 internal audit done by the law firm in which they discovered that they knew the identities of the real owners of only 204 of the 14086 corporations they had incorporated in the Seychelles. Over 14000 companies incorporated in one year in just one of their tax haven countries, and they didn't even bother to keep track of who owned them! The leak includes 40 years worth of this kind of business. This is just one Panamanian law firm, they are certainly not the only one providing this kind of service at this scale. That is an inconceivable amount of money potentially being hidden by a few rich people for a very long time.

No. No, it's not. Compare and contrast:
Iceland.
Russia.

So idealistic. Who are these "ordinary taxpayers" of which we speak? Everyone from right at the top to the poorest person on the planet is on the take. Do you nip down the local council office every so often to check if your paying enough, I sure as hell won't. The crisis was not just created by greedy bankers, but the everyone, those running up huge credit debt, those buying mortgages they could never pay, those demanding free this, free that, reduce costs everywhere for better service etc.

Democracy is nonsense, a sticky plaster to keep people thinking they have any input in decisions at all, we don't. Money, power, these speak from the shadows, and once in a while it comes to light, the papers make a fortune ramming the story out through every medium available, then everyone realises it hasn't made any difference or something else comes out and mass media moves its outraged stance to the new posture.

Right, time to get down of my soap box :o)