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Structural studies of the global networks exposed in the Panama papers

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Re: Structural studies of the global networks exposed in the Panama papers

#21

Post by idclip »

wombatmobile wrote: post #7

> In recent history, the Panama Papers have comprised one of the largest and most influential leaks detailing information on offshore entities, company officers and financial (and legal) intermediaries, and has led to a global exposé of corruption and tax evasion. A systematic analysis of this information can provide valuable insights into the structure and properties of these entities and the relations between them.…

It means corruption is a basic human behavior. Its a self generating phenomena, and is „natural“.

So there is no „illuminati“ to go after to solve this. Studies try and see how problems can be solved - if there was a single organizing entity like a mafia boss, it would be simpler to tackle the issue but there isn't, so its Marder than first expected.

As to tax evasion, id posit the question „so why are these people evading? Is it the law itself? Can they be otherwise somehow incentivized to invest in their Communities rather than evade? And how big is the contribution here? Is it worth pursuing?“

Re: Structural studies of the global networks exposed in the Panama papers

#22

Post by jariel »

seibelj wrote: post #20
jariel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at a company that payed out $700M in an IP dispute involving offshore entities (and worked for a while in an offshore entity, Monaco, though it's a different kind of 'offshore'). Edit: FYI your 'Bermuda' argument doesn't help make your point re: 'neutral ground IP law'. The reason companies exist 'offshore' is to avoid taxation and scrutiny, which is why they are there.

And I’ve worked for companies with extensive offshore arrangements, primarily for tax minimization and regulatory clarity. It sounds like a judge disputed your prior company’s issues!

" primarily for tax minimization and regulatory clarity"

--> primarily for tax and regulatory avoidance.

Re: Structural studies of the global networks exposed in the Panama papers

#23

Post by guerrilla »

idclip wrote: post #21
wombatmobile wrote: post #7

> In recent history, the Panama Papers have comprised one of the largest and most influential leaks detailing information on offshore entities, company officers and financial (and legal) intermediaries, and has led to a global exposé of corruption and tax evasion. A systematic analysis of this information can provide valuable insights into the structure and properties of these entities and the relations between them.…

It means corruption is a basic human behavior. Its a self generating phenomena, and is „natural“. So there is no „illuminati“ to go after to solve this. Studies try and see how problems can be solved - if there was a single organizing entity like a mafia boss, it would be simpler to tackle the issue but there isn't, so its Marder than first expected. As to tax evasion, id posit the question „so why are these people e…

> It means corruption is a basic human behavior.

That is most certainly not what the study means. If you were going to extrapolate, you might be able to get away with corruption is basic rich people behavior, but even that is going way further than what the study is actually saying.

Re: Structural studies of the global networks exposed in the Panama papers

#24

Post by vmception »

vikingcaffiene wrote: post #4

Everything I've heard about the panama papers suggests that it's a massive scandal that exposes how the rich and powerful are systematically fucking over society. The sad truth is that even though it's been exposed, the scheme is too complex for most people to grasp. Hell they even made a movie about it and no one paid much attention.

The movie was simplistic bullshit where every situation was nefarious broken people instead of the everyman that uses and would use these entity structures

Re: Structural studies of the global networks exposed in the Panama papers

#25

Post by ShamelessC »

vikingcaffiene wrote: post #4

Everything I've heard about the panama papers suggests that it's a massive scandal that exposes how the rich and powerful are systematically fucking over society. The sad truth is that even though it's been exposed, the scheme is too complex for most people to grasp. Hell they even made a movie about it and no one paid much attention.

What was the movie called? Don't think I saw that.

Re: Structural studies of the global networks exposed in the Panama papers

#26

Post by vmception »

BadassFractal wrote: post #8
roenxi wrote: post #2

Accounting has a rich history going back approximately 7,000 years [0]. This decade will get an entry in that history as "and in the early 21th century, it became a matter of public record how rich people actually managed their money". It might be easy to underestimate how tectonic papers like this are. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_accounting

I haven't been following the fallout of the Panama Papers leak, but has anything concrete (and positive for us vanilla tax payers) actually come out of it? Or did the ultra wealthy simply move their tax evasion schemes to a different set of countries?

Laws havent been reported to have changed, a few people had legal consequences, a few people had reputational consequences, most didnt because what they did may be misunderstood but not illegal

Re: Structural studies of the global networks exposed in the Panama papers

#27

Post by r721 »

BadassFractal wrote: post #8
roenxi wrote: post #2

Accounting has a rich history going back approximately 7,000 years [0]. This decade will get an entry in that history as "and in the early 21th century, it became a matter of public record how rich people actually managed their money". It might be easy to underestimate how tectonic papers like this are. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_accounting

I haven't been following the fallout of the Panama Papers leak, but has anything concrete (and positive for us vanilla tax payers) actually come out of it? Or did the ultra wealthy simply move their tax evasion schemes to a different set of countries?

https://old.reddit.com/r/PanamaPapers/comments/4e7f1n/person... (last updated 2 years ago, so without more recent developments)

Re: Structural studies of the global networks exposed in the Panama papers

#28

Post by kjksf »

ShamelessC wrote: post #25
vikingcaffiene wrote: post #4

Everything I've heard about the panama papers suggests that it's a massive scandal that exposes how the rich and powerful are systematically fucking over society. The sad truth is that even though it's been exposed, the scheme is too complex for most people to grasp. Hell they even made a movie about it and no one paid much attention.

What was the movie called? Don't think I saw that.

The Laundromat Available on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/title/80994011

Re: Structural studies of the global networks exposed in the Panama papers

#29

Post by csb6 »

vmception wrote: post #24
vikingcaffiene wrote: post #4

Everything I've heard about the panama papers suggests that it's a massive scandal that exposes how the rich and powerful are systematically fucking over society. The sad truth is that even though it's been exposed, the scheme is too complex for most people to grasp. Hell they even made a movie about it and no one paid much attention.

The movie was simplistic bullshit where every situation was nefarious broken people instead of the everyman that uses and would use these entity structures

Sure, non-wealthy people own stocks. But right now, the richest 10% of American households own 84% of the value of all stocks owned by Americans [1]. It is clear that the wealthy benefit massively from these structures and have much more use and access to them than the "everyman", who in the U.S. probably lives paycheck-to-paycheck. The fantasy that the "everyman" is this cowboy investor and broker is ridiculous and only makes sense if you define "everyman" as an upper middle class American who has a high-paying job and owns significant investments. Compared to the wealthy, most Americans see no benefit from these global networks of moving money around because they aren't rich enough to make the effort and investment worth doing, much less have the connections necessary to even access them.

[1] https://money.com/stock-ownership-10-percent-richest/

Re: Structural studies of the global networks exposed in the Panama papers

#30

Post by xavriley »

wombatmobile wrote: post #7

> In recent history, the Panama Papers have comprised one of the largest and most influential leaks detailing information on offshore entities, company officers and financial (and legal) intermediaries, and has led to a global exposé of corruption and tax evasion. A systematic analysis of this information can provide valuable insights into the structure and properties of these entities and the relations between them.…

In network science, it’s fairly common to take a graph of something and be able to apply techniques like neighbourhood analysis or clustering which then reveal something about the data. This comes up in all kinds of real world examples from social networks to music preferences etc. What the authors are saying (I think) is that they tried the same tricks on the Panama data and got nothing useful out of it. The standard graph techniques don’t explain anything useful about what’s going on. I would guess (from previous experience working on similar things at opencorporates.com a few years ago) that this is because these networks aren’t constructed according to the real world - instead they’re a response to specific tax rules. For example if you use a specific tax avoidance scheme like the Irish dog leg then the company structure will be defined by the laws of the countries involved. Another reason would be that intermediaries like company formation agents are likely to show connections where they don’t exist in reality. If I use the same company formation agent as say, Donald Trump, it doesn’t follow that we’re related financially. Finally the Panama papers were just about hiding assets in many cases, so you’ll have these chains of ownership going through as many countries as they could be bothered to work with. This is just to give law enforcement etc. a hard time. Again I wouldn’t expect graph analysis to make sense of that on its own. If anyone is interested, banks in the US are required to document their corporate structures so there’s good data available on their structures. It suffers from the same issues though - it’s hard to tell from looking at a graph of companies where the bad stuff is happening.
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