Panama Papers

[KopOut]

John Key now in the spotlight.

There are more than 16,000 Trusts in New Zealand.

He was warned many times not to turn NZ into a tax haven.

 

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/78838228/prime-minister-john-key-linked-to-company-specialising-in-foreign-trusts

 

http://thestandard.org.nz/key-changed-the-law-to-turn-nz-into-a-tax-haven/

[Ginny]

Load of shit this. I was dead excited when I seen the news about this last week. I had visions of that scene in Goodfellas were they are all getting dragged out in handcuffs and found in the back of frozen meat wagons and boots of cars to the piano outro instrumental part at the end of Layla.

 

But instead just Cameron and his helmet mates laughing their Tits off in parliament.

[Section_31]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/11/smash-uk-mafia-elite-treat-offshore-wealth-terrorist-finance-perugia

 

Smash the mafia elite: we should treat offshore wealth as terrorist finance

Paul Mason

 

Amid the cobbled passageways and tumbling tenements of the Italian city of Perugia, it’s possible to daydream you are in the middle ages. You are surrounded by medieval art and architecture. And then you think: hold on, what happened to the Renaissance?

 

Sure, there are some imposing private palaces from the period 1300-1500, and sure Raphael left half a fresco in a tiny chapel. But it’s not Florence. The money was clearly here at some point but, some time after 1300, the artistic, cultural and scientific riches moved somewhere else. By 1500, the city was “smaller, poorer and politically narrower” than 200 years before, writes historian Sarah Rubin Blanshei.

 

Why? Because the rich did not pay their taxes. The Perugian elite became a closed stratum of mafiosi, earning their money from mercenary work abroad, jealously guarding their family inheritance, stifling social mobility. Sound familiar?

 

As David Cameron’s fiasco over the Panama Papers collides with George Osborne’s over the budget, the danger is that we frame these merely as political scandals.

 

In fact, the Panama Papers point to a deeper sickness. Globalised capitalism has become an organised and legalised form of corruption, in which the work of the manager, the inventor and the entrepreneur come second to that of people whose wealth “works for them” – preferably in a jurisdiction nobody can see.

 

If you listen to Cameron’s defenders, their logic follows three contours: he did nothing illegal, nothing unparliamentary and nothing wrong.

 

I do not doubt his decision to invest in an offshore fund was legal.

 

That he failed to register his shares in Blairmore on becoming an MP, and lobbied for the protection of offshore trusts while being an undeclared beneficiary of one, does merit investigation by Parliament.

 

But it’s the insistence by the apopleptic right that he should not be criticised over tax avoidance – that “everybody does it” – that we should register as a kind of collective Marie Antoinette moment for the UK’s social elite.

 

If someone walked into a pub and announced they had found a way to scam the benefit system, they would face opprobrium or a swift, anonymous call to the benefit cheats hotline.

 

But a large part of the UK financial industry is dedicated to scamming the rules whereby both individuals and companies pay tax on income. London is home to literally hundreds of advisory companies – many of them registered professionals in finance, accountancy and the law – whose purpose is to do only this.

 

The size of the missing tax take is disputed. If, as the Tax Justice Network estimates, the global wealth held offshore is $21tn, it might generate $188bn a year for cash-strapped governments.

 

Why don’t they act? Because, as with the government of Perugia in the mid 1400s, they are stuffed full of people who benefit.

 

Why doesn’t the populace revolt? Well, the problem with a globalised economy composed of nation states is that you can revolt all you like, beef up national tax systems, even expose the doings of the rich in newspapers ... but as long as the concept of “offshore” exists, so will the legalised corruption.

 

To the mature democracies of the world, the Panama Papers – as with the Lux Leaks, Swiss Leaks and numerous other data dumps before them – are a warning. If wealth equals power, then the doubling of ratio of wealth to income in the advanced economies since the 70s (see Piketty and Zucman 2014) could tilt power so far in the direction of a new hereditary elite that there is no return.

 

Last week, Costas Efimeros, the editor of a Greek investigative website, warned that the Panama revelations might be the “last chance” for leak-journalism. If a revelation does not provoke outrage, and the wrongdoers go unpunished, he wrote, “then the continuous revelation of scandals has the exact opposite result: defeatism, the feeling of weakness, the fatalistic acceptance of the rule of the powerful”.

 

If he is right, there are implications for all of us locked into this scrum around documents, reputations, professional codes and disputed facts.

 

First, this has to result in action. I am less concerned with taking down an already hapless British prime minister than with empowering him, or his successor, with the will to act unilaterally.

 

Britain could and should take direct rule of its tax-opaque dependencies. It should abolish non-domicile status. And it should create a taskforce within HMRC specifically designed to prosecute evaders and collect money from the aggressive avoiders.

 

Second, it has to result in words. I would settle for a prime-ministerial statement to be read out at Oxbridge colleges, public schools and in every bank, law firm and adviser registered with the FSA. It should say: “It’s over. There are no more respectable forms of tax avoidance and from now on offshore wealth will be treated the same way we treat terrorist finance.”

 

Third, it should be unilateral. The great lesson of the Italian city states in the high Renaissance was that if you will it, it can happen. You can will an economy where science, innovation, art and banking coincide: talented people get rich, inherited wealth soon evaporates; rulers listen to demands for social justice – and if they don’t, they burn.

 

Acting unilaterally goes against the DNA of the globalised elite. Their “nation” is the global system, and it’s seen as heresy for one country to act without others. “If we do, money will simply move offshore,” is the mantra. “Let it go,” should be the response.

 

Unilateral action by the UK would be powerful. It would disrupt the system of organised corruption and it would send a signal. We want to enjoy the best of what the next 20 years can offer our population – not the second best after a 1% elite has skimmed off the cream.

 

We don’t want to be a neo-feudal backwater, where inherited wealth and an unofficial mafia rules. We want to be the Florence, Bruges or Amsterdam of the coming century, not the Perugia.

 

 

Terrifying stuff, and true. 

 

"Last week, Costas Efimeros, the editor of a Greek investigative website, warned that the Panama revelations might be the “last chance” for leak-journalism. If a revelation does not provoke outrage, and the wrongdoers go unpunished, he wrote, “then the continuous revelation of scandals has the exact opposite result: defeatism, the feeling of weakness, the fatalistic acceptance of the rule of the powerful”.

[Brownie]

Apathy reigns.

[setreal]

Terrifying stuff, and true. 

 

"Last week, Costas Efimeros, the editor of a Greek investigative website, warned that the Panama revelations might be the “last chance” for leak-journalism. If a revelation does not provoke outrage, and the wrongdoers go unpunished, he wrote, “then the continuous revelation of scandals has the exact opposite result: defeatism, the feeling of weakness, the fatalistic acceptance of the rule of the powerful”.

 

This sounds like something out of an updated version of "Untimely Meditations".

[Dr Nowt]

This posting of politicians' tax returns idea is great re what has been uncovered in the past week about the Prime Minister of the country, as it will definitely show up anything being hidden offshore in a tax haven.

[cloggypop]

I'm more interested in the party donors myself. Most of them have offshore accounts and are essentially buying influence.

[Strontium]

It seems that the MPs' very own pension fund is at least partially managed from Jersey.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Meanwhile, every local council has to publish details of every single purchase of £500 or more.

 

Have the Taxpayers' Alliance issued a statement yet?

[Section_31]

We really are the Mount Doom of all this shit. I remember watching a thing about the rise of the oligarchs in Russia - who we, quite rightly, like to demonise. But their rise to power started when the iron curtain fell and this bloke, a Kremlin advisor at the time, said you couldn't move in Moscow without bumping into some American or British 'financial advisor'. When there's quick money to be made and sculduggery to be done, we're like flies around shit. 

 

One can only dream of what we've done to the middle east these past 15 years, maybe Laura Kunesberg will tell us. 

[Anubis]

Unless you can pin it on Corbyn she goes into hibernation.

[Guest Pistonbroke]

We really are the Mount Doom of all this shit. I remember watching a thing about the rise of the oligarchs in Russia - who we, quite rightly, like to demonise. But their rise to power started when the iron curtain fell and this bloke, a Kremlin advisor at the time, said you couldn't move in Moscow without bumping into some American or British 'financial advisor'. When there's quick money to be made and sculduggery to be done, we're like flies around shit. 

 

One can only dream of what we've done to the middle east these past 15 years, maybe Laura Kunesberg will tell us. 

 

Aye, it's not like those who run the establishment in the UK haven't got a track record in raping countries of their wealth throughout the ages, be it by slavery, war or just out and out theft. Far too much wealth in the UK has been gained due to the things I mention and passed down the generations to keep the pompous bastards rich, then they have the Gaul to tell the people that they have earned their fortunes through hard work etc. 

[Champ]

Unless you can pin it on Corbyn she goes into hibernation.

Did he refuse to buy her lunch or something?

[Gnasher]

https://twitter.com/CourtNewsUK/status/718397888217366528

[Hades]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mODhm59KkVQ

[cloggypop]

Appaz Corbyn overstated his amount of tax payable and is now liable for a refund.

 

Ha ha!

[Guest Pistonbroke]

Appaz Corbyn overstated his amount of tax payable and is now liable for a refund.

 

Ha ha!

 

No doubt Cameron will have a dig at him for being stupid and the Tory benches will burst out into forced Tory pompous laughter. 

[Spy Bee]

Appaz Corbyn overstated his amount of tax payable and is now liable for a refund.

 

Ha ha!

Go and sit in the corner and think about what you've just done.

[Section_31]

Go and sit in the corner and think about what you've just done.

 

I have to agree here. 

[Ne Moe Imya]

Appaz Corbyn overstated his amount of tax payable and is now liable for a refund.

 

Ha ha!

 

Worse than tax dodging, this.

[cloggypop]

He was being accused this morning of not declaring income from lectures. When scrutinised he has not only declared them but is entitled to a small refund.

 

https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/news/73724/jeremy-corbyn-overstated-income-his-tax-return

 

He comes out of it as a decent, honourable man who isn't trying to get every rebate and expense he can get his hands on.

[Stickman]

He was being accused this morning of not declaring income from lectures. When scrutinised he has not only declared them but is entitled to a small refund.

 

https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/news/73724/jeremy-corbyn-overstated-income-his-tax-return

 

He comes out of it as a decent, honourable man who isn't trying to get every rebate and expense he can get his hands on.

Think you'll be waiting a long time for Kussenberg to tweet that considering she couldn't wait to mention he was fined a £100

[cloggypop]

Go and sit in the corner and think about what you've just done.

Soz

[Stickman]

Turns out Corbyn doesn't earn enough and he like the rest of us should cheer and salute Dave , Boris and George.

 

Was wondering how long it would take for it to be totally twisted around.

 

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/12/we-wont-build-many-hospitals-and-schools-on-jeremy-corbyns-incom/

[Jenson]

What really sticks with me is the absolute sense of entitlement these cunts have, and that the rest of us should stop being so bloody impertinent and know our place