Opening.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
This shouldn't get any negative press like other whistleblowers have got, should it? It seems fairly uncontroversial.
Face-Puncher
We don't even know who the whistleblower even is. It's easier for right-wing politicians to rally against whistleblowers when it involves national security, but no politician in their right mind would denounce the reveal of mass tax evasion and money laundering.
Shop Owner
I feel dirty of being panamanian now.
Just think you guys are taking 'honor' of being the money laundering capital of the world away from the Swiss.
Unfortunately, the response to this so far has been kinda along the lines of "bear poops in the woods, film at 11." It's not like any of this is new information, and nobody is actually coming up with a plan for actively crushing this kind of crap (sanctioning Panama, for example).
I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.
V
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
The trouble is it's not just Panama — Tax Havens are a worldwide occurrence, involving many major countries note . And often, Tax Havens don't have much else in the way of economies (otherwise it's tourism).
Shop Owner
Sactioning Panama would work like shit, because what you'd have to do to is ask of Panama something in return for lifting the sanctions, which only implies, can you please remake your tax codes so that you aren't a tax haven anymore, which would end in tax raises up the butt for the general populace, which is a dick move to a country with barely any agricultural or industrial sector to speak of.
Tax code? Nah. Banking laws, on the other hand, and banking transparency laws, might have a better effect. In other words, making it impossible for any country's banks to hide money from another country.
(Of course, this idea is much easier said than done, and even harder to enforce.)
edited 5th Apr '16 12:02:58 AM by Ramidel
I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.
Field Marshal of Cracked
oh we all knew Call Me Dave's bastard father was more interested in his wallet than society, and Call Me Dave is just like daddy
advancing the front into TV Tropes
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
Part of me is just imagining the editor in chief of the SZ calling all the other German newspapers right now, laugh ten seconds into the phone and move to the next.
Also, according to news sites, Icelands PM has called for a new election.
edited 5th Apr '16 6:51:08 AM by 3of4
"You can reply to this Message!"
Field Marshal of Cracked
and has been blocked from doing so by the President
advancing the front into TV Tropes
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
I sense some constitutional shenangigans coming.
"You can reply to this Message!"
According to Reuters he's resigning
.
Field Marshal of Cracked
I found the source of the leak
I think the lack of US individuals on the list is because there are either so many that they need their own separate section, or because Washington is coordinating this and the US are trying to cover their own ass.
edited 5th Apr '16 7:31:33 PM by Bat178
Also note that the Panama firm is only the fourth-largest of its kind. So someone's got to be using the other three.
More like giant cherries
Also, note that contrary to public perception, the US is one of the biggest havens in the world. It's easier to register a shell company in Nevada or Delaware than almost anywhere else.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play
Show an affirming flame
There's also the possibility that Panama is too close to the US; if you were going to stash your ill-gotten gains somewhere and you were from the US, your natural choices would be countries without an extradition treaty.
All are possibilities, though, and most news sources favor the "US as tax haven" theory. Delaware, Wyoming, and Nevada have all come in for special mention, as states where LLC incorporation laws were the loosest.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
Yankee Doodle Dandy
France puts Panama back on list of countries that don't cooperate in catching tax evaders.
edited 5th Apr '16 8:19:57 PM by Demonic_Braeburn
Any group who acts like morons ironically will eventually find itself swamped by morons who think themselves to be in good company.
Panama was doing the best out of the Central American countries and was one of the better countries in North America besides the US and Canada. That's changing really fast, though!
The Potato's Choice
They already said "The best is yet to come" with regards to America not being listed.
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. - Douglas Adams
Shop Owner
Well, shite.
If there’s some Moore’s Law of Leaks, however, it seems to be exponential. Just five years have passed since WikiLeaks’ Cablegate coup, and now the world is grappling with a whistleblower megaleak on a scale never seen before: 2.6 terabytes, well over a thousandfold larger.
On Sunday, more than a hundred media outlets around the world, coordinated by the Washington, DC-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, released stories on the Panama Papers, a gargantuan collection of leaked documents exposing a widespread system of global tax evasion. The leak includes more than 4.8 million emails, 3 million database files, and 2.1 million PDFs from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that, according to analysis of the leaked documents, appears to specialize in creating shell companies that its clients have used to hide their assets.
Introduction from Wired (warning: does not play well with adblockers or scriptblockers)
; the Guardian's intro is here,
Fusion, here.
The home site of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which is handling the whole thing, is here.
As of this writing, the revelations have thus far implicated well over a hundred politicians, including over a dozen heads of state. Both Russia's Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's Petro Poroshenko are implicated (common ground—wouldja look at that!), as well as figures like Sir Ian Cameron (father of British PM David Cameron), and the PM of Iceland, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson (and Iceland is now in the midst of huge protests calling for Sigmundur's resignation). In addition to heads of state, there are shell companies linked to financial institutions under international sanction (i.e., North Korea, Syria), families of autocratic parties from Saudi Arabia to China...the list grows almost by the hour. ICIJ has them nearly sorted, here.
Journalists, representing over a hundred news organizations from across the globe, have been working on this project for the last year and a half; indeed, personally, the sheer professionalism in disseminating the information while not having any leaks is one of the most impressive things. There's a lesson in tradecraft for most intelligence agencies.
The notable dog that hasn't barked is the United States. I strongly suspect this isn't because of any lack of shell-company shenanigans here, oh no.
Buckle in, ladies and gents.
(And for anyone asking to examine the treasure trove for themselves, the leaked information will not, repeat not, be open-sourced. From the Wired article:)
edited 4th Apr '16 9:06:41 PM by SabresEdge
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.