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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: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 07 2017, @02:13AM (4 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 07 2017, @02:13AM (#593409) Journal

    Unfortunately, that competition is a race to the bottom and at the bottom, the state is unable to pay for the basic necessities of running a country.

    What are "basic necessities" again? Payouts to the right corporations? Or is it going to be a litany of expenses that make up a small fraction of a country's budget?

    I'd take your concerns seriously, if the costs of what I consider "basic necessities" were anywhere near the actual budget of an actual developed world country. Sure, roads, police, functional military, education, yep, yep, yep, all that important stuff, are needed. but that might be half the budget, but probably less. Why are we going to crack down on our economic freedoms merely because the state got greedy and spends well in excess of what it is needed for?

  • (Score: 2) by NewNic on Tuesday November 07 2017, @04:01PM (3 children)

    by NewNic (6420) on Tuesday November 07 2017, @04:01PM (#593688) Journal

    There are tax haven islands where you can see this in action. They are great places to put your money and great places to live, if you are wealthy, but they don't have the tax revenue to provide those things that you describe as basic necessities.

    --
    lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 07 2017, @04:47PM (2 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 07 2017, @04:47PM (#593710) Journal

      but they don't have the tax revenue to provide those things that you describe as basic necessities.

      What would be an example of this? Not seeing them myself. There's not a lot of need for a road system or police on a small island, for example.

      • (Score: 2) by NewNic on Tuesday November 07 2017, @06:13PM (1 child)

        by NewNic (6420) on Tuesday November 07 2017, @06:13PM (#593752) Journal

        You don't see them, because you don't want to see.

        But how about education? I saw a documentary about a British territory which is a tax haven and they don't have the money to properly fund education for kids.

        Also, better not get ill on those islands if you are poor, because health care for those people without the funds to pay is somewhere between non-existent and ineffective.

        --
        lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 07 2017, @06:44PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 07 2017, @06:44PM (#593760) Journal

          But how about education? I saw a documentary about a British territory which is a tax haven and they don't have the money to properly fund education for kids.

          I kinda was hoping for evidence at some point. Just because education isn't being "properly funded", doesn't mean that they don't have the money.

          I notice that most British territories [wikipedia.org] which happen to be tax havens have no such trouble funding education, such as Bermuda, Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, and Cayman Islands. Of the remaining two which have any sort of offshore banking activity, Montserrat is an active volcano and the Turks and Caicos Islands are seriously corrupt [telegraph.co.uk].