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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, @06:47AM (3 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 07 2017, @06:47AM (#593530) Journal

    Oregon is willing to cough up its share provided the Trimet MAX light rail is extended to go across the bridge. Presently it stops at the river.

    Sounds like cost is the big factor. The present line according to Wikipedia is $3 billion for 60 miles of line and only handles a little over 100k passengers per day. Typical US publicly funded mass transit money sink.

  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday November 07 2017, @07:54PM (2 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Tuesday November 07 2017, @07:54PM (#593786) Homepage Journal

    The trains are packed during rush hour.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 07 2017, @08:24PM (1 child)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 07 2017, @08:24PM (#593802) Journal

      It takes cars off the road

      There are very few actions without some sort of benefit. Or some sort of cost. Optimizing for benefit without regard for the cost is a classic failure mode of public goods.

      Here, why would Vancouver, Washington decide that somewhat less cars on the road is more important than the costs of buying into the Portland mass transit system?

      • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday November 07 2017, @09:18PM

        by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Tuesday November 07 2017, @09:18PM (#593818) Homepage Journal

        That bus goes very slow in both directions, if I ride it during the rush hours. The rush hour - singular "hour" - is all day long. The only time the bus moves quickly is when I ride it late at night.

        Were the train to extend across the river my commute would only be an hour and fifteen minutes, and I'd have one less wait at a bus stop. Presently my commute is two hours and I wait four times.

        Waiting at a stop can be miserable because the Pacific Northwest rains all winter long.

        --
        Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]