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posted by takyon on Monday November 06 2017, @01:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the trouble-in-paradise dept.

Paradise papers - leaked document trove show Trump officials, Queen Elizabeth's offshore tax dodges

While you were doing whatever you were doing last Sunday, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists - the same that brought you the Panama papers less than two years ago revealed itself to be in the possession of a 13.4 million leaked documents on tax dodgers.

A trove of 13.4 million records exposes ties between Russia and U.S. President Donald Trump's billionaire commerce secretary, the secret dealings of the chief fundraiser for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the offshore interests of the queen of England and more than 120 politicians around the world.

The leaked documents, dubbed the Paradise Papers, show how deeply the offshore financial system is entangled with the overlapping worlds of political players, private wealth and corporate giants, including Apple, Nike, Uber and other global companies that avoid taxes through increasingly imaginative bookkeeping maneuvers.

One offshore web leads to Trump's commerce secretary, private equity tycoon Wilbur Ross, who has a stake in a shipping company that has received more than $68 million in revenue since 2014 from a Russian energy company co-owned by the son-in-law of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In all, the offshore ties of more than a dozen Trump advisers, Cabinet members and major donors appear in the leaked data.

The new files come from two offshore services firms as well as from 19 corporate registries maintained by governments in jurisdictions that serve as waystations in the global shadow economy. The leaks were obtained by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and a network of more than 380 journalists in 67 countries.

[...] The most detailed revelations emerge in decades of corporate records from the white-shoe offshore law firm Appleby and corporate services provider Estera, two businesses that operated together under the Appleby name until Estera became independent in 2016.

At least 31,000 of the individual and corporate clients included in Appleby's records are U.S. citizens or have U.S. addresses, more than from any other country. Appleby also counted clients from the United Kingdom, China and Canada among its biggest sources of business.

Keep your eyes peeled for more articles as they are published by various news outlets:


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  • (Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Monday November 06 2017, @07:30PM (4 children)

    by linkdude64 (5482) on Monday November 06 2017, @07:30PM (#593265)

    a) If you believe in America First ...why are you investing in other countries

    Because globalism rewards you for doing as much. Tax law under Obama rewarded this behavior.

    why not invest openly why go through hidden routes

    Have you ever stopped to think why these countries are called "Tax Havens?"
    Using context clues, it is probably because the Paradise islands have a lower corporate investment and income tax rate than the US.

    So if you want investment to come back to the US, you have two options: Make the Paradise Island's tax rates higher, or make the US corporate tax rates lower.

    You have no control over the first option, and you will get angry at the second, so I take it you want things to remain as they were, correct?

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @09:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @09:31PM (#593316)

    why not invest openly why go through hidden routes

    Have you ever stopped to think why these countries are called "Tax Havens?"
    Using context clues, it is probably because the Paradise islands have a lower corporate investment and income tax rate than the US.

    That's a red herring. For example, I could easily imagine Donald Trump to make a political talking point about why tax "reform" is needed like:

    "The US Tax Code is so broken, I personally have my company have a subsidiary in Paradise Islands, so they can invest in Russian Oil to get the best returns. It's ridiculous that this is possible, and shows how broken the US Tax Code is. Under my tax plan, we're going to make US companies the best investments, and prevent the corrupt elite from stealing money from the people from shell companies."

    Of course he won't. He won't even admit to doing these kinds of tricks. The real reason they do this hidden, as the GP was suggesting and you conveniently ignored, is that they know it's immoral (and sometimes even illegal), and they don't want others to know they are abusing the system.

  • (Score: 2) by tizan on Monday November 06 2017, @09:35PM

    by tizan (3245) on Monday November 06 2017, @09:35PM (#593320)

    Good ...tax are lower in tax havens (heavens ? paradise ?) ...Then do it publicly. Who is stopping you from doing that...why hide it ...nothing illegal in it. Just do it and be proud of it. Base your business in Cayman islands really ...why not ?

  • (Score: 2) by tizan on Monday November 06 2017, @09:51PM

    by tizan (3245) on Monday November 06 2017, @09:51PM (#593323)

    Let me propose the answer why ...people don't want to be pure capitalist and openly based their business in the Cayman's for example.

    1) May be you appear un-american if you are a politician
    but the real reason according to me
    2) being money grabbers ...you want to get US based (financed by tax payers) incentives but not pay tax on your incomes when you can hide it.

    Isn't that the reason rather than Obama gave incentive to invest abroad or the tax rate is too high ?

    One has to accept one rule ...be in the US or the Cayman but not loop around and cheat the rules.

  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 06 2017, @10:12PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday November 06 2017, @10:12PM (#593332)

    One major problem is that of sovereign discretion over monetary policy. Really little countries like some of the south Pacific islands have been strong-armed into discontinuing tax-haven (and money laundering) activities, but the established players like the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, et. al. represent too much monetary power for the mere evil stare of the U.S. or Europe to get them to change their ways.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]