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Wednesday, April 06, 2016

Panamapapers: Mossack Fonseca Going Mainstream

Prologue: ASIC and Westpac face off over rate rigging Sydney Morning Herald. Davin: “I think some bank traders must just want to get caught. Why else would they say openly on tape: ‘I know it’s completely wrong but f— it, I might as well, I thought f— it. We’ve got so much money on it we just had to do it, right?'”!

 Securency Scandal: bribes like rabbit out of a hat jury told

 Judge not, that ye be not judged. A recently-retired Tax Court judge has tax troubles of her own. From a Department of Justice Press Release

Louise Story, U.S. Plans to Require Banks to Identify Owners of Shell Companies(NYT 4/6/16), here.  Excerpts:
The United States government is close to issuing a rule that will for the first time require banks and other financial institutions to find out the identities of people hidden behind shell companies. 
 Jesse Drucker is one of my favorite reporters on the international finance scene and often writes on tax issues.  His latest is Source: Panama Has Company as Bank-Secrecy Holdout, as U.S. Offers Haven (Bloomberg 4/5/16), here
turtle mother links

Mossack Fonseca

It required journalists to go against all traditional training and view competitors as collaborators. It demanded of a notoriously gossipy species the sort of tight-lipped discretion more typical of confessors than those in the business of spreading the news.
Almost as mind-bending as the sheer volume of data leaked in the Panama Papers, and its reach into the lives of the rich and powerful, is the fact so many journalists in so many newsrooms in so many countries were able to keep so big a project secret for so long.
It defied the natural order of things. It required journalists to go against all traditional training and view competitors as collaborators. It demanded of a notoriously gossipy species the sort of tight-lipped discretion more typical of confessors than those in the business of spreading the news.
Yet the lid was so tight not even the New York Times, according to its deputy executive editor, knew the Panama Papers project was under way or the stories were coming.
#Inside the Panama Papers leak: Handling an historic data leak turned competing journalists into a global investigative team

Peter Reilly providing free advice, What To Sweat About If Your Surname (Imrich) Is In The Panama Papers

Mossack Fonseca's Ramon Fonseca Mora is a novelist in his spare time


Why HMRC will struggle to gain convictions from the Panama data leak


Since Monday, China’s censors have been blocking access to the unfolding revelations about its most senior political families. There are now reports of censors deleting hundreds of posts on the social networks Sina Weibo and Wechat, and some media organisations including CNN say parts of their websites have been blocked Secrets Behind Chinese red nobility east big bussiness buying up the west

So the Kremlin will seek to put a lid on the story – it has already dismissed the revelations as “Putinphobia” – and it can do so. The newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which is part of the worldwide Panama investigation, is certainly well respected, but its distribution – and reach – is extremely weak. Unsurprisingly, Russian state TV, the main source of information for Russian citizens, made no mention of the offshore scandal on Monday...One of the first Russian voices to denounce Putin for financial misdeeds was Marina Salye, a St Petersburg city councillor who had tried in the 1990s to launch an investigation into dubious contracts signed by Putin when he was deputy mayor there. She went in to hidingshortly after he became president in 2000, and she died in 2012. Marina would have found the Panama Papers interesting indeed.
Placing Putin's Panama Papers as Press Phobia and Paranoia  

Sydney-based businessman David Henty Sutton and South African born, Brisbane-based geologist Louis Schurmann were directors of two companies which announced the mining sub-license agreements on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).
Panamapapers Australian pair linked to sanctioned North Korea mining deals
The Panama Papers’ Sprawling Web of Corruption New York Times. Wellie, the news types say they can’t say anything about the Panama Papers because they don’t have access to them, but this editorial steps into the breach.
The Panama Papers: A Tropical Tip of the Hidden Wealth Iceberg Institute for New Economic Thinking. An interview with Gabriel Zucman, a world-recognized expert on hidden wealth, who is now at UC Berkeley. 











HSBC and Credit Suisse Deny Tax Cheating Allegations Prompted by 'Panama Papers'

 Inversion Surprise!
On Inversions, the Treasury Department Drops the Gloves (Victor Fleischer) (Via the TaxProf)

Treasury Implements New Rules Aimed at Inversions, Other Tax Strategies, Scuttling Pfizer-Allergan Deal and Evoking Howls from Pharma

Treasury tackles earnings stripping (TaxVox)


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