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The CumEx-Files – How Europe's taxpayers have been swindled of €55B

cumex-files.com

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Re: The CumEx-Files – How Europe's taxpayers have been swindled of €55B

#61

Post by woodpanel »

raffael-vogler wrote: post #52

correctiv.org is producing phantastic investigative journalism on a regular basis. one of their most important revelations recently was about a pharmacist who was selling heavily diluted cytostatic agents for chemo therapy. several people died because of this [1]. really awesome about correctiv is that they not just release their findings - they really make sure that something is going to be done about it. for exampl…

While I echo your appraisal, they have a hard time not to come across as biased.

for instance:

- In the article you've linked, I'm sure there were better images of a conservative politician to choose from. Small thing, but not for professional journalists

- In the CumEx-article, what information do I gain, when they state that one of the perpetrator's lawyers is a famous face of the German pro-market party FDP - other than that it's good that they aren't part of the government? BTW this politician is known to be a lawyer for defendants in cases with a lot of press coverage. Is he guilty by association? Is thus his party, the people voting for them?

- Their focussing so much about the new right-wing populist party AfD

And what of course will always make the tinfoil hats spin:

- Being funded (among others) by George Soros

Re: The CumEx-Files – How Europe's taxpayers have been swindled of €55B

#62

Post by buboard »

morsch wrote: post #30
sparkling wrote: post #23

The missing transparancy disclaimer: "The Cumex files" is headed by "Correctiv", a german based "journalist network" which receives large parts of its funding by german goverment organizations and/or organizations which have close gov connections. But: the german goverment itself was aware of this scheme since at least 2002. Also: this is a drop in the ocean compared to EU-internal tax loop holes and tax havens such…

A disclaimer implies there is something to disclaim, such as a financial conflict of interest - what reason for a disclaimer are you imagining? Besides, they literally have a link to a page with detailed financial information, including every organization that gave them more than 1000 EUR to them. Most of their funding in 2017 came from private parties not affiliated with any government. I can't find any numbers for…

The article may for example be intentionally be silent on inefficiency/misbehavior of tax authorities.

Re: The CumEx-Files – How Europe's taxpayers have been swindled of €55B

#63

Post by Svip »

skummetmaelk wrote: post #44
flexie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Danish tax payers have lost around EUR 1.7B. That's around EUR 300 for every Dane. Still a lot, but a lot less than they claim. I have two takes on this: 1: The Danish tax authorities have been extremely careless in the administration of the rules. They didn't even check that the people owned the shares they claimed to own. Virtually all of it was approved by one employee with zero oversight. 2: Different internation…

The Danish tax disaster has a long history beginning in the early 00's when it was decided to reform and digitalize the tax collection. Contractors were brought in to develop a nation-wide tax collection system that would reduce the cost of collecting tax. This system was to take many years to develop and a plan was made to gradually lay off employees in the tax collection agency as the system was made ready so that…

The worst thing is that our politicians seems to be mostly inclined to say they are disappointed whenever a new scandal erupts, and then nothing happens. If only they would have been as forceful in response as the new Social Agency scandal (even if 15+ years too late), when it came to the Tax Agency.

Then again, since it seems like most voters don't really give a damn, I guess it's politically expedient to just not care.

Re: The CumEx-Files – How Europe's taxpayers have been swindled of €55B

#65

Post by vijayr02 »

m12k wrote: post #48

This reminds me of the way most application developers aren't security experts, and it's taken decades with a lot of very public hacks for awareness about the risks to be spread and for a set of security practices and middleware to evolve (hashed & salted passwords, CSRF mitigation, input sanitation, etc.), to make it feasible for normal developers to create reasonably secure applications. It seems something similar…

The issue is that the tax system is a political/economic construct - so loopholes will take a very long time to be fixed. In the meantime, the white hat tax researchers have shown everyone else how to game the system.

Re: The CumEx-Files – How Europe's taxpayers have been swindled of €55B

#66

Post by ianai »

inetknght wrote: post #60
raffael-vogler wrote: post #52

correctiv.org is producing phantastic investigative journalism on a regular basis. one of their most important revelations recently was about a pharmacist who was selling heavily diluted cytostatic agents for chemo therapy. several people died because of this [1]. really awesome about correctiv is that they not just release their findings - they really make sure that something is going to be done about it. for exampl…

> it seems that journalism is more and more responsible for work police should be doing I think this echoes a lot of sentiment , if perhaps without concrete evidence, across the world. How can we solve this?

For people in “democratic” countries, get involved in civic duties. Register to vote, stay informed, volunteer to canvass and spread the word for campaigns. I donate monthly to causes I care about supporting. Corruption reform has taken place through these routes.

Edit-pedantry

Re: The CumEx-Files – How Europe's taxpayers have been swindled of €55B

#67

Post by pvaldes »

Reason077 wrote: post #2

”Tax payers have lost up to €2 billion, that’s nearly €350,000 for every Danish man, woman and child.” You sure about that math, cumex-files?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator

The decimal separator in most european countries is the comma. $350,000 in Denmark equals to $350. If there is an error by a factor of x1000 I would assume that is a case of meaning lost in translation and not intentional. The use of a third decimal is uncommon and unfortunate in any case.

Re: The CumEx-Files – How Europe's taxpayers have been swindled of €55B

#68

Post by lotsofpulp »

tasuki wrote: post #55
lotsofpulp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, there is only one meaning for billion. Thousands (10^3), millions (10^6), billions (10^9), trillions (10^12), quadrillions (10^15), etc. And 99% of people would have never heard of milliard or billiard or any other -ard.

No cue sports in the US?

Hah, I meant in the context of numbers.

Re: The CumEx-Files – How Europe's taxpayers have been swindled of €55B

#70

Post by cbnotfromthere »

ianai wrote: post #66
inetknght wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it seems that journalism is more and more responsible for work police should be doing I think this echoes a lot of sentiment , if perhaps without concrete evidence, across the world. How can we solve this?

For people in “democratic” countries, get involved in civic duties. Register to vote, stay informed, volunteer to canvass and spread the word for campaigns. I donate monthly to causes I care about supporting. Corruption reform has taken place through these routes. Edit-pedantry

"For people in democratic republic countries"

So obviously people from the UK, Norway, Netherlands, and Spain should not get involved /facepalm

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