Panama Papers Quotes

So many African leaders in the Panama Papers. I should have responded to those Nigerian emails.

The collective impact of these failures has been a complete erosion of ethical standards, ultimately leading to a novel system we still call Capitalism, but which is tantamount to economic slavery. In this system—our system—the slaves are unaware both of their status and of their masters, who exist in a world apart where the intangible shackles are carefully hidden amongst reams of unreachable legalese.

The borderlines of the secrecy world, the distance between what is hidden and the public's right to know, was shifting quickly. 'We live in a time of inexpensive, limitless digital storage and fast internet connections that transcend national boundaries,' the anonymous leaker wrote. 'It doesn't take much to connect the dots: from start to finish, inception to global media distribution, the next revolution will be digitized.

However, Putin's tilt toward Trump appeared to have been motivated by something deeper than a desire for revenge against Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration. Putin and Trump shared a similar zero-sum worldview and a penchant for operating in the shadows. Each man viewed the idea of a free press with contempt. They both believed that financial interests should be passed down to their children to create family dynasties ... Trump and Putin are both conversant with the secrecy world, practiced hands at using anonymous companies to wall off their activities and keep their business affairs secret. During the campaign, Trump reported that he had 378 individual Delaware companies, but the full extent of his business dealings remains hidden.

HSBC's executives saw an emerging class of global rich as the bank's path to prosperity. The superwealthy were increasingly stateless. They banked in Geneva. Lived in London and New York. Shopped in Paris and Milan. And they held their assets through offshore companies registered in places like the British Virgin Islands. HSBC executives were reading the telltale signs of a new age of inequality, even if they didn't recognize it as such. Governments were retreating from providing their citizens pension and health organizations, and HSBC strategy report observed. The stateless rich balked at paying taxes in their home countries, to which they felt little allegiance. It made sense to them to base their operations inside tax havens and to bank in Switzerland, where discretion was woven into the country's DNA. These trends represented an opportunity for the wealth management industry.

Beside him Mr. Harris folded his morning newspaper and held it out to Claude. "Seen this yet?" "No." "Don't read it," Mr. Harris said, folding the paper once more and sliding it under his rear. "It will only upset you, son." "It's a wicked paper... " Claude agreed, but Mr. Harris was overspeaking him. "It's the big black words that do it. The little grey ones don't matter very much, they're just fill-ins they take everyday from the wires. They concentrate their poison in the big black words, where it will radiate. Of course if you read the little stories too you've got sure proof that every word they wrote above, themselves, was a fat black lie, but by then you've absorbed a thousand greyer ones, and where and how to check on those? This way the mind deteriorates. The best way you can save yourself is not to read it, son." "No, I... " "That's right, if you're not careful," Mr. Harris went on, blue-eyed, red-faced, "you find yourself pretty soon hating everyone but God, the Babe, and a few dead senators. That's no fun. Men aren't so bad as that." "No." "That's right, you begin to worry about anyone who opens his mouth except to say ho it looks like rain, let's bowl. Otherwise you wonder what the hell he's trying to prove, or undermine. If he asks what time it is, you wonder what terrible thing is scheduled to happen, where it will happen, when. You can't even stand to be asked how you feel today - he's probably looking at the bumps on you, they may have grown more noticeable overnight. Soon you feel you should apologize for standing there where he can watch you dying in front of him, he'd rather for you to carry your head around in a little plaid bag, like your bowling ball. There's no joy in that. Men aren't so very bad." Mr. Harris paused to remove his Panama hat. Water seeped from his knobby forehead, which he mopped with a damp handkerchief. "I've offended you, son," he said. "Not at all, I entirely agree with you." Mr. Harris replaced his hat, folded his handkerchief. "I shouldn't shoot off this way," he said. "I read too much." "No, no. You're right...

dubious

Around 6.8 million files came from Appleby, a Bermuda-based offshore legal service provider. Appleby and its data were different from Mossack Fonseca and the Panana Papers. Whereas the upstart Panamanians were entrepreneurial risk-takers, their files filled with garrulously compromising emails, Appleby was the establishment. The firm had been founded in 1898 by Major Reginald Woodfield Appleby, who later became a commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Walker told Kristjánsson about the Mossfon data and Wintris Inc., the offshore company belonging to Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, Iceland's prime minister, who had been elected on a platform of getting tough on the country's creditors and their offshore dealings. Icelanders were not aware that their prime minister was himself involved in the very activity he was castigating.

Juncker, just a few months into his EU presidency, went into hiding for a week after the publication of the first round of stories. While he was gone, Luxembourg was widely castigated as a tax parasite, prospering from the depletion of government coffers throughout the world. When Juncker finally emerged, he refused to talk much about his tenure as the head of a tax avoidance factory masquerading as a country. Instead, he promised that he would lead the change to bring fairness to Europe's tax systems. Critics, not surprisingly, questioned his sincerity.

Secrecy laws and incomplete information hog-tied journalists who tried to expose offshore wrongdoing. Lawsuits and public ridicule frequently followed publication. A partial picture allowed critics to dismiss findings as anomalies rather than patterns.

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After his meeting with Romney, Fonesca encountered Keith Flax, a local jeweler who was also speaker of the legislative council and a close friend of both Romney and Peters. It didn't take long for the Panamanian and the Belonger to recognize they shared a special bond. Both were members of the ancient order of Freemasons. Dating to the Industrial Revolution in England, Freemasonry appropriated the symbols of craft guilds like the stonemasons to forge a fraternal order kept alive through esoteric rituals and Masonic lodges. ¶ Fonseca had tapped into an underground network—a secret society within a secret society—that exists in tax havens, particularly the British ones. Knowledge of Freemasonry, its signs, symbols, and rites, often serves as a doorway into closed cultures. It provides instant solidarity and an opportunity for government and business interests to network privately. John Christensen [the Jersey island exposé cooperator] says he was approached multiple times on Jersey to join one lodge or another. He always declined the offer. Holding no particular animus toward Freemasonry or the elite hobnobbing in the lodges, Christensen nonetheless viewed it all as slightly creepy.

In 2010, Nigeria also indicted Dick Cheney in the multimillion-dollar bribery scheme. Cheney, a notorious micromanager, claimed not to know about the bribery.

Mossfon subscribed to a Google-like paid search service called World-Check to help identify PEPs ["politically exposed person"] and criminals. It also, not for the first time, sent a letter to its professional clients requesting that they conduct a customer review. There was little follow-up. It was a question of incentives. When scandals sporadically came to light, they always seemed to resolve themselves without undue harm to the firm. Meanwhile, business was booming. In 2005, the firm tripled the number of shell companies it created on behalf of banks. By the end of the year, Mossfon had more than seventy thousand active companies. To do the necessary due diligence on all of them would have been prohibitively expensive, and sometimes impossible. In a business predicated on secrecy, no one wanted to produce the information.

The ICIJ is a sort of international club of investigative journalists that you can only join by nomination and invitation. Something

Jasmine would later attend Stanford University and then be identified in the Panama Papers as the sole shareholder of two offshore investment entities that were registered in the British Virgin Islands and specialized in investments and consulting.

The advantage with data is that it’s not self-important or verbose. It doesn’t have a mission and it isn’t looking to deceive you. It’s simply there, and you can check it. Every good dataset can be collated with reality and that’s exactly what you must do as a journalist before you start to write. At some stage you also have to consider very carefully which part of the data you’re going to exploit.

In one hearing, Levin estimated that $70 billion in tax revenue was lost each year because it was hidden offshore.

The Panama Papers changed into the Pleasure Papers.

Panama Papers executes the conspiracy of the world intelligence agencies and media mafia, to implicate the leadership for extortion. Indeed, its accuracy is in doubt!

Panama Papers at no, any point, penetrates the term corruption, within its context; however, it is the conception of the media under the shadow of intelligence agencies' collaboration, and its agenda. In fact, it shows just the disinformation or hiding the truth, from the income tax offices, which demonstrates their intimacy too; otherwise, it was impossible, to purchase objects and subjects, without helping of such interior ones. None of those involved states have faced the verdict by the courts that execute it as the corruption. The media and the investigation team of Panama Papers, fail to establish its precision and validity, except the wordy story of corruption that prevails nothing. Journalist mush and should be fair and stay within their journalistic limits.