Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 452 posts

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#101

Post by [deleted] »

makomk wrote: post #84
mladenkovacevic wrote: post #29

Hilarious that BBC, a broadcaster paid for by British tax payers, has a subheading in that article titled "Russian connection" describing various dealings of Russian characters who are "close associates" of Putin and an equally sordid "Iceland connection" but not even a mention of David Cameron's father's tax evading schemes listed in the documents which the people of Great Britain should be vastly more interested in…

Not surprised. Last I heard, the Government was floating the idea of turning editorial control of the BBC over to a board of their own appointees: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/14/the-gua...

[deleted]

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#102

Post by mtgx »

makomk wrote: post #84
mladenkovacevic wrote: post #29

Hilarious that BBC, a broadcaster paid for by British tax payers, has a subheading in that article titled "Russian connection" describing various dealings of Russian characters who are "close associates" of Putin and an equally sordid "Iceland connection" but not even a mention of David Cameron's father's tax evading schemes listed in the documents which the people of Great Britain should be vastly more interested in…

Not surprised. Last I heard, the Government was floating the idea of turning editorial control of the BBC over to a board of their own appointees: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/14/the-gua...

BBC is just trying to get ahead - by self-censoring itself. They sure showed Cameron!

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#103

Post by elemenopy »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #87
sievebrain wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The leak is of historical documents dating back decades, not a snapshot of current setups. So I don't see why that'd affect anything. I really doubt this is some sort of official leak though. Governments hate leaks of all kinds.

>Governments hate leaks of all kinds. Not in the UK. Leaks and "off the record briefings" are practically official government policy. To me this looks like a rather stupid attempt to promote regime change in Russia. Putin was weakened by the low oil price, and now this has all the signs of a bizarre poli-sci undergraduate plot to push him over the edge. I'll change my mind if a list of significant British and US pols…

Per the Guardian[1]:

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

I expect we'll hear more about this in coming days and weeks.

I don't really understand this line of thinking. Big leak + "fancy website graphics" = vast Western conspiracy? Sounds less like insightful analysis and more like the kind of denial I'd expect from RT.

1. http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/the-panama-paper...

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#104

Post by tinbad »

Everyone in Russia knows government officials siphon off billions govt money to offshore accounts. Same happens in much of the developing world. Corruption is evreywhere but the scale and depth of it in these places is unprecedented. It baffles me how the west has allowed this to happen for many decades and now we're shocked corrupt Russians own half of London.

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#105

Post by temp »

Jerry2 wrote: post #81
g4k wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not true. Dr. Ulfkotte is a known fake journalist: http://www.dialoginternational.com/dialog_international/2015...

What's not true? This? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Springer_SE#Corporate_pri... or this: http://i.imgur.com/ufKQh49.png

>What's not true?

The part about poor Russia being targeted by German media for no apparent reason. German media space has plenty of differing opinions in it altho I do understand that the vocal Russian minority in Germany would rather if any criticism of Russia stopped regardless of its veracity.

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#106

Post by tomp »

neffy wrote: post #94
tomp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you were downvoted, but I completely agree with you. It's great that the Panama Papers were leaked, but blaming it all on Putin seems very convenient.

Right, because at no time in its entire history has Russia actively supported organisations whose sole goal was "the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_International

That was more than 70 years ago.

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#107

Post by mladenkovacevic »

asuffield wrote: post #97
mladenkovacevic wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean sure journalists and meme-makers will spin this however it suits them, but I thought here in the west we're assured that we have freedom of press. This type of obvious slant certainly doesn't make it seem that way.

There is no particularly strong legal basis for "freedom of press" in the UK. While recent history has had the press being largely unhindered by the government, our history is one of strict restrictions that have been gradually relaxed over the centuries. You're probably confusing us with the US, which has some constitutional guarantees.

Thanks for clearing that up. US press seems curiously absent from even covering this story. As per @mathewi the only US media companies on the #panamapapers team are Miami Herald, Univision, Fusion and McLatchy.

I guess we'll see how active they'll become and what their spin will be, if any, in the coming days.

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#108

Post by kuschku »

tomp wrote: post #72

> While much of the leaked material will remain private, there are compelling reasons for publishing some of the data. How convenient. > the papers simply reveal the vast number of people who use offshore to protect their wealth. There is nothing unlawful about doing this. It is not illegal to be a director, shareholder or beneficial owner – the real owner, even though their name may not appear on the shareholder reg…

On TV some of the journalists involved just said that they wouldn’t know "any western bank or government not involved in this".

You should watch the TV debate, btw.

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#109

Post by wyck »

discreteevent wrote: post #100
wyck wrote: post #21

Panama just passed compliance with FATF (February 2016) and it's a message that their political leader/law firm owner/world's largest money launderer (his name is in the OP's title) is no longer open for business after decades of being the go-to place for hidden $$$. http://www.fatf-gafi.org/countries/#Panama "The FATF recognised that Algeria, Angola and Panama have made significant progress in improving their regime…

"Real leaks don't have fancy websites" How something looks. It really is the shallowest form of dismissal, since the days of the village gossips.

Your missing the point, it's clear they this leak is planned and not someone just uploading a bunch of files.

People don't seem to understand what I mean by the above^.

The question is would it not be better to dump the entire data set to the public, instead of it being funnelled by reporters?

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#110

Post by sireat »

Is there a way to grep for a specific country related information?

This is an important leak, but I'd like to see come crowd-sourcing in this.

That is we have 100 newspapers with access, but that might not be enough.

We only get the condensed version deemed relevant to a particular subset of population. By combining these 100 subsets we are not going to get a full set.

In other words, UK paper might report on Russian connections, Russian paper(if any got access that is) might report on UK connections, but how do I find out if an obscure mid sized town city boss from Eastern Europe is on the list?

Post reply on HN