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

41–50 of 452 posts

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

#41

Post by raverbashing »

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…

> This is a multi-state G20 planned leak and not the work of some moral insider or hacker, the money laundering world is becoming a difficult place and for good reason.

I agree

And of course those in the know are moving to hide their assets somewhere else

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

#42

Post by jblow »

akamaka wrote: post #20
SandB0x wrote: post #14

What would be the economic impact of a country recovering tens or hundreds of billions of dollars? It couldn't immediately actual economic productivity. Would it simply work out to reducing a country's debt obligations? Would it cause inflation? In what form is this wealth stored? This is beyond my understanding of economics, would love to get any insights.

One article claims there is $20 trillion hidden in tax havens.[1] That sounds like a lot, but considering that this is money that has accumulated over the course of decades (say 30 years), and only a portion of it would be taxable (say 20%), that would give an annual revenue stream of $133 billion per year. If that all went to the US, that would be about 7 times more than is collected by the estate tax, which is less…

$133 billion per year! That would buy us one F-35 fighter jet per year!

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

#43

Post by UVB-76 »

randomname2 wrote: post #24

Selected quote: "The ICIJ findings include evidence that: - Offshore companies linked to the family of China's top leader, Xi Jinping, as well as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has positioned himself as a reformer in a country shaken by corruption scandals - 29 billionaires featured in Forbes Magazine's list of the world's 500 richest people - Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and his w…

For what it's worth, being featured in these documents is not in and of itself evidence of any wrongdoing.

There are entirely lawful and legitimate reasons for making use of offshore company structures.

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

#44

Post by wyck »

raverbashing wrote: post #41
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…

> This is a multi-state G20 planned leak and not the work of some moral insider or hacker, the money laundering world is becoming a difficult place and for good reason. I agree And of course those in the know are moving to hide their assets somewhere else

The heads up was given a long time ago, you won't find their names in the leak, it's kinda funny Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson is being outed, I guess he didn't get the memo on account of his recent actions.

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

#45

Post by rwmj »

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…

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

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

#46

Post by jsprogrammer »

justincormack wrote: post #35
lumberjack wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>companies like Apple and Google will be forced to spend like the rest of the economy does Spending on what? I think one big problem here is that the capital is possessed by entities that were nurtured in very specific markets. Take Apple. They are really nothing more than a "shiny gadgets/personal computing" company. They have a ton of potential to invest in other markets but they do not have the expertise to do so.…

Return the money to shareholders who can spend or invest it.

Or, to the employees who made it, whom can spend or invest it.

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

#47

Post by snitko »

lumberjack wrote: post #34
cm3 wrote: post #17

Once tax havens and double dutch schemes are unavailable to legally operating businesses, we can be very hopeful that instead of accumulating digits in a bank account, companies like Apple and Google will be forced to spend like the rest of the economy does. Spending is what's keeping the lights on generally speaking, so allowing some wealthy companies to just sit and mountains of wealth benefits nobody. Of course th…

>companies like Apple and Google will be forced to spend like the rest of the economy does Spending on what? I think one big problem here is that the capital is possessed by entities that were nurtured in very specific markets. Take Apple. They are really nothing more than a "shiny gadgets/personal computing" company. They have a ton of potential to invest in other markets but they do not have the expertise to do so.…

Spending is only good if it is wise. If you tell a company "sorry, you have to spend it now" it is equivalent of telling you "sorry, I don't care if you don't like any house on the market now, you'll have to buy now, you can't wait". That's no freedom, but slavery. Only when you have a choice of hoarding vs spending, then you help the economy to truly grow by providing everyone with the best products and services. Incentivizing spending at all costs simply means creating more useless things instead of making technological breakthroughs and improving quality of life.

When you say "you don't trust Apple" it doesn't matter. Apple made its money honestly. It didn't steal from or rob anyone. More importantly, simply because Apple made so much money, it must mean it knows damn well how to invest it.

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

#48

Post by MIKarlsen »

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…

Disagree. This way they can perhaps force anyone involved to comment, while blowing everything wide open in public would perhaps make the case revolve around a single case, and not the actual political aspects of the case. Or am I just making stuff up here? In my world this is a great tactic. Danish television will be covering this for a week. If politicians are involved it's probably best to let them comment and do their job first, instead of putting them in the spotlight where they will avoid commenting on the case.

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

#49

Post by Jerry2 »

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…

Both the British and (especially) German [0] media are virulently anti-Russian. They blame Russians for all of their ills. Societal problems? Blame Russians. Anything that happens in their countries, they manage to find an angle to blame it on Russians somehow. Norway [1] & Sweden are also under a constant paranoia that Russians are just days away from invading them.

But nothing compares to German media when it comes to paranoia about Russians. They're truly in the league of their own. They have tabloids like BILD that devote several pages of every issue on "evil russians". They even print special issues about evil Russians and new Hitler aka Putin.

When I visited Germany last year, I felt like they're in a second Cold War or something. In the US, we managed to stop being paranoid after 1990s but Germans are still paranoid about Russians. It was explained to me by a german friend of mine that this is because their biggest publisher, Axel Springer, was started with CIA money and that every journalist who works for any of the Axel Springer properties has to sign a contract that says that they have to foster the relationship with the US. Unsaid rule is that they have to disparage Russians. And sure enough, if you search for some of this stuff, you can find things like [2] and [3]

[0]: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-28/top-german-journali...

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4192998/reference

[2] http://i.imgur.com/ufKQh49.png

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Springer_SE#Corporate_pri...

Edit : After some googling, I came across this interesting article by Rüdiger Göbel... it sums up things nicely.

http://russia-insider.com/en/groundhog-day-german-msm-keeps-...

Edit #2 : I see my comment is controversial and is being heavily down/upvoted with downvotes winning.

Anyway, to add even more evidence to what I'm saying, see the Twitter feed [4] of Julian Röpcke, who's a 'political editor at BILD'. Go take a look for yourself and start scrolling. Everything that happens in the world, Russians are somehow behind it according to him. Millions of refugees from Syria in Europe? That's because of Russians and Putin (never mind the fact that millions arrived way before Russians started their deployment in Syria). I guess he cannot mention that unrest started after US implemented a policy of destabilizing Assad and funding of various islamic terror organization... because that would be against his pro-US "jounalistic" contract that he signed.

[4] https://twitter.com/julianroepcke

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

#50

Post by sievebrain »

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…

Maybe, but "father of a PM" is not even close to the same thing as "PM". If Cameron's father has done something wrong, that doesn't (shouldn't) affect perceptions of his son. The days of punishing children for the crimes of their parents are long in the past.

Assuming the guy did anything wrong, of course. As these articles note, off shore companies are not illegal.

Post reply on HN