It's only day 1, and the ICIJ has said they have at least 14 days of "major revelations" mapped out in advance.
I expect we'll be seeing stories from the Panama Papers for months to come, spaced out for maximum impact, similarly to Snowden's leaks.
If a month goes by and not a single story is contrary to american corporate interests, the author's position may be reasonably supportable. But day 1? Not a chance. They went for the most immediate impact-- two CURRENT heads of state.
Note to readers: From a post in the other Pentagon Papers thread on HN, r3bl claims to be a web dev at one of the sites reporting on these leaks, ICIJ, Guardian, BBC, etc. So he isn't guessing!
Our journalists have already started posting this on Twitter, kind of like we did yesterday when we warned Russian spokespeople that they're going to have a sleepless night tonight: https://twitter.com/DrewOCCRP/status/716320506052493312?s=09
@smegal: Yes it is. They're actual journalists working on this. It's not illegal for most people to locate assets offshore, and just as importantly, most of that simply isn't newsworthy.
Reality has a well-known liberal bias. Seriously: the data that was leaked is a formation agent that has it's clientele in specific places and focusses on a specific type of clients. That doesn't seem to include US senators, or, for example, senior officials from my home country, Germany.
I can assure you that the folks doing research on this have run both names from "Western" and "other" countries. They are some of the best and most independent-minded people I know (and yes, they do need a salary). Many are actually from non-Western countries, check out these three amazing folks who actually did the heavy lifting on much of the Russia stuff: http://krug.novayagazeta.ru/
The fact they ended up with more stories from developing economies may just be a bias in Mossack Fonsecas client base, or it may be indicative of who uses these services, or of the sophistication in distancing assets from their real owners. Don't know.
But it does make sense to consider that people who run countries under less-than-democratic circumstances and use state capture to extract personal and family wealth might have a greater need of offshore services. Political leaders in Europe, on the other hand, sometimes actually are almost as boring as they make themselves look in public.
(Disclaimer: working with one of the reporting centers, same as r3bl)
I suspect that Mossack Fonseca avoids taking on American clients to skirt the federal Foreign Accounting Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). FATCA gives the IRS many powerful tools to pressure foreign banks and financial institutions to disclose information about American citizens in order to ensure that those citizens are reporting all of their income. This frequently involves disclosures of non-Americans' finances, because stashing income in a corporation with foreign citizenship is an easy way to evade income tax.
Many, many non-American financial institutions categorically refuse to provide services to American citizens in order to avoid IRS scrutiny of their books and to protect the privacy of their non-American clients. I expect that, before offshoring dark assets, the likes of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jiping would select a management firm that poses minimal risk of disclosure to US regulators and thus a firm that has no American clients.
Meaning, a firm providing these kinds of services can probably only serve either US citizens OR the government officials of America's geopolitical rivals, but not both. The presence of those officials does not indicate that Americans aren't engaged in similar activities, just that they are probably serviced by other firms and so won't be implicated in this particular leak.
Otherwise, there are three possible explanations for the lack of Americans that I can think of.
First, later releases may reveal US citizens in the client list, rendering this discussion moot. I have no idea why the journalists would wait to disclose information about Americans, but we might get some idea about that once further details emerge.
Second, the journalists may be protecting their own nations' interests, as posited by this article. Personally I find that unlikely given that the ICIJ has a track record of integrity and releasing information that is damaging to US persons. Plus, I suspect if they were protecting certain parties, they wouldn't protect an entire nation's citizenry but would instead selectively exclude key figures from the releases.
Third, it is entirely possible the party that released the data edited it before hand to exclude Americans and Germans. I think that may be the explanation if it turns out that this is a joint NSA-BND operation posing as an anonymous, solo whistle-blower. I could see a basic inter-agency operational agreement stipulating that the leaked information should not implicate anyone from the home nations of the participating agencies to avoid thorny political issues arising from intelligence agency activities that interfere with domestic politics.
Regardless, I personally see my original FATCA theory as the most probable explanation. But we can't know the true explanation given the current released information and ultimately we may never know the real truth.
That article is bullshit. Yes, we can't access the raw data - true, but understandable. The editor in-chief of the SZ says they are still working on it and will expose more and more "in waves", often getting statements from the accused before or sharing it with law enforcement agencies. And no, they didn't focus on Russia or Assad, one of the main revelations was that three members of Iceland's government (PM, financial, interior) have offshore accounts. And the scandal was, that the PM bailed out banks he had personal investments in. so no, "corporate media" isn't ignoring "the west". Also, as published pretty much everywhere, a number of heads of state had offshore accounts, many allies of "the west":
Mauricio Macri, president or Argentina.
Bidzina Ivanishvill. ex PM of Georgia
Sigmundur something something, PM of Iceland.
Ayad H. Allawi, ex PM of Iraq.
Ali Abu-Ragheb, ex PM of Jordan.
Hamad Jasim J.M. Al-Thani, ex PM of Qatar.
Sheik Al-Thani, Emir of Qatar.
HRH Prince Salman, King of Saudi Arabia
Ahmad Al-Nirghani, ex-president of Sudan
Sultan Al-Nahyan, president of the UAE.
Pavlo Lazarenko, ex-PM of Ukraine.
Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine.
Also pretty much every major german bank is on the list, as published widely, and new evidence in the Siemens scandal came to light. Non-germans didn't get fully published yet, because the journalists give them the chance to respond to the accusations (having an offshore account isn't illegal by itself, but is often used to hide the identitiy of the owner to do illegal things).
To think, that for a database of 2.6tb, that data can just be made public and seeded (see main HN thread) is absurd. Source confidentiality and all
I mistakenly assumed, very naively, that these people handling the leaks were wikileaks kind of people and not these other kind of people:
>The leak is being managed by the grandly but laughably named “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists”, which is funded and organised entirely by the USA’s Center for Public Integrity. Their funders include
>Ford Foundation
>Carnegie Endowment
>Rockefeller Family Fund
>W K Kellogg Foundation
>Open Society Foundation (Soros)
If you quote these, then why not the more completly:
"CPI reports receiving foundation support from a number of foundations, including the Sunlight Foundation, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Omidyar Network, the Open Society Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts.[31] The Barbra Streisand Foundation reports that it has funded CPI." -Wikipedia
And from their website:
"Recent ICIJ funders include: Adessium Foundation, Open Society Foundations, The Sigrid Rausing Trust, the Fritt Ord Foundation, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, The Ford Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts and Waterloo Foundation."
From the reporting:
- Fat Cat Hotel: How Democratic High-Rollers Are Rewarded with Overnight Stays at the White House.
- Windfalls of War, a report arguing that campaign contributions to George W. Bush affected the allocation of reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq
- CPI's report, Who’s Behind the Financial Meltdown?,[45] looking at the roots of the global financial crisis
- Tobacco Underground, an ongoing project tracing the global trade in smuggled cigarettes
The thing is, it's just a network. It's not an institution by itself doing all the work, just a platform for investigative journalists from different outlets to work together. Do you think that Hotel owner in Bavaria was, just because he organized the stay of the head of states, able to influence or even steer, as accused here, the conversation of the G8 group? The idea seems laughable.
I mean the criticism would probably be kinda useful and interesting to consider, would it have been published after the participating journalists said "that was it. That's all we got", but no, the publification of the leak just started and you can be sure, as confirmed by SZ, there's more to come. Most western countries have been implicated (https://twitter.com/thereaIbanksy/status/716740923615350784) and the db will be made searchable next month.
Also, most of the Wikipedia page on criticism of the Center for Public Integrity is filled with accusation of being "liberal biased" and being "anti-Koch brothers"
Dude, you literally just proved his point: Expect hits at Russia, Iran and Syria and some tiny “balancing” western country like Iceland. A superannuated UK peer or two will be sacrificed – someone already with dementia.
So far the revelations have indeed been "enemies of the West", ie. Russia, etc., Iceland, and some ancient Tory MPs and David Cameron's dead father.
Sure 2.6 TB is a lot of data. Probably had to be handed over in person rather than via some anonymous website. Also not easy to distribute in unprocessed form.
But I think this suspicion is very called for.
After all the law firm had offices in many "non-corrupt" European countries not on list of leaks:
Also wasn't this a law firm whose data was leaked? A lot of that information is probably financial and personal records which would be massively irresponsible, not to mention highly illegal, to release in a dump.
With over 200000 shell companies created, you can be pretty sure not every shell company is involved in illegal activity. In fact, it's perfectly legal to create them, though the majority of their use cases is illegal. That still doesn't mean you can just dump private information like that on the internet
The article mentions the Iceland info and characterizes it as a "token" revelation meant exactly to keep people obfuscated and arguing about whether the leak did or did not implicate wealthy Western elites.
I agree with the article. The leaks about Iceland and South America clearly do not count as major investigative reporting on western involvement.
When U.S. officials, celebrities, and financiers start getting named, since there is literally no doubt they have been involved in this in illegal ways, then I'll believe they aren't holding back to protect Western interests.
Until then, the article is absolutely on point with its criticism.
They should provide a torrent, with only 2 Chinese reporters having access and bashing the wives of the Chinese leaders is perceived as a poor western propaganda.
There is a very consistent pattern of events with sensitive subjects in the West when dealing with powerful interests.
Step #1 - Report on the people who can't sue you effectively.
Step #2 - Verify.
Step #3 - Report on what you can verify in regards to people who can sue you.
I'd give them a month before crying bias.
Gawker exploited this loop to a degree by skipping #2 and we've seen how well that turned out for them. However, it was largely their own hubris that created the problem that might sink them (Hulk Hogan). Most of the rest of the lawsuits they were able to bat away.
As much as I'd prefer some actual firebrand journalism which is willing to report with less verification (in regards to the people in power, not the general population), I can understand caution.
HSBC, Credit Suisse, etc. are named so its not like they are completely ignoring the West.
It also mentions David Cameron's father:
> Ian Cameron, a stockbroker and multimillionaire, was a Mossack Fonseca client who used the law firm to shield his investment fund, Blairmore Holdings, Inc., from U.K. taxes.
It's probably worth noting that the author (Craig Murray) is no apologist for non-Western dictators.
He was the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan until he decided that boiling people alive wasn't an interrogation method he believed a supposed UK ally should be using[1].
As such his views shouldn't be dismissed out-of-hand. I think it is worth noting that the data isn't available yet. I'm sympathetic to the view that journalists should get a first look at the data. But be aware that the longer they promise "more revelations to come" the higher chance that the operation will get shut down.
Additionally, we also have to consider why exactly this company out of all possible companies was selected as the target of the "leak" (or hack?) Maybe exactly because these who selected it as the target knew who would going to be hit and who wouldn't.
I wouldn't be surprised when the impression of most observing or commenting the case would assume "if somebody is not found here he's clean" instead of "this is a (possibly very biased) subselection of some people from all who possibly attempt to obscure something using similar methods."
His opinion is fairly extreme, though if you read carefully and follow the links in that post you might conclude that some of his concerns are at least worth bearing in mind.
It's hard to characterize this movement that this article is critiquing, because it is diffuse. But I think it's fair to say that events in Syria and Iraq, and the anti-Russian stance taken by the liberal media, show that there is some consensus among liberals and conservatives in the US and UK around ideas that used to be called "neoconservative".
The basic idea is that liberals want to spread liberal ideas in Russia and other places, and realize that Europe is too tired of war to do this, so they conclude correctly that this requires more US power. Similarly, the neoconservatives would like to increase US power for its own sake, and the pro-Israeli elements would like to encourage the US to be more hawkish so that it relies on Israel as an ally more.
So the net effect is that both liberals and conservatives (of some kinds) would like to move away from a balance of power between the US, Russia and China, and move to a unipolar world where the US calls the shots.
It's hard to characterise the "movement" the article is critiquing because it isn't a movement, still less a neoconservative conspiracy against Russia.
(personally if I wanted to facilitate the spread of liberal ideas in Russia, the very last thing I'd do is boost US power to be a convenient bogeyman for Russians to unite against)
The idea that the Guardian is reluctant to publish anything likely to unduly upset multinational corporations or powerful Westerners - as expressed in the original article - is a bit hard to take seriously if you've ever read the Guardian.
The idea that liberals are actually part of some general movement to orchestrate a "move to a unipolar world" because they have the temerity to criticise Russian policy (as well as US policy, especially US interventionism) is lunacy.
You say "personally if I wanted to facilitate the spread of liberal ideas in Russia, the very last thing I'd do is boost US power to be a convenient bogeyman for Russians to unite against", and characterize my ideas as a "conspiracy", but how else can you explain how the groups I described united to support the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine[1]?
The liberals I'm referring to are certainly not especially critical of US interventionism. I'm not referring to Chomsky or even Bernie Sanders here, I'm talking about George Soros and his camp.
The Democratic party's National Democratic Institute, the Republican party's International Republican Institute, the US state department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros's open society institute.
US pollsters and professional consultants are hired to organise focus groups and use psephological data to plot strategy.
Ford Foundation is no longer controlled by the Ford Family, and has divested itself of all Ford assets. I don't think you can reasonably believe that funder interference, or fear of funder interference, would alter how this into gets reported. You certainly can't make that claim about Ford, specifically.
I've also worked with OSF before, and can absolutely say that they routinely fund matters that fit the ideology of the Soros families, even if those grants fund activities critical of wealthy investment managers.
Actually, Wikileaks released a dump of everything Chelsea Manning sent them, including diplomatic cables that only served to hurt innocents across the globe. That's a great example of what not to do.
The Guardian and Washington Post handled Snowden's leaks very differently, sourcing and verifying each article, then releasing quite a lot more than 10 major headlines over the course of a year or so. I trust the ICIJ will do the same.
Wikileaks released the 'insurance file' encrypted. The release of the password seems to be some kind of bizarre mix-up, the Guardian journalists released it in a book... See:
In the first week this is just an ultra paranoid reaction. The comments about corporate ownership in view of the guardian being owned by an independent trust, and about them destroying the wikileaks info indicate that the author is either poorly informed or a shit-stirrer. The UK press in particular has to vet stuff before in prints in order to avoid being sued out of existence, and as a matter of good journalism will stretch this out over the summer
It was tweeted by one of the journalists last night-- I can't find the source tweet easily now. Reference is to the "panama papers" so no, it is current.
I am "hoping" to see US clients exposed. But even if they are, I expect a big "meh" from any authority that could do anything about it. It's easier to chase resourceless drug users and scientific publication "pirates."
> What if they did Mossack Fonseca database searches on the owners of all the corporate media and their companies, and all the editors and senior corporate media journalists? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on all the most senior people at the BBC? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on every donor to the Center for Public Integrity and their companies? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on every listed company in the western stock exchanges, and on every western millionaire they could trace?
This is exactly why the person who leaked this information didn't just torrent it. Not everyone that did business with Mossack Fonseca is guilty of a crime.
I'm calling B.S. on Mr. Murray's claims here. ICIJ provided a full searchable database of their prior documents trove. They're working with something immensely larger, and the story's less than 24 hours hold.
I'm just hoping that the mainstream media carry this. It's been awfully quiet on many fronts yet.
This to me is almost bigger news than the leak itself. Its so obviously and blatantly stacked one can't help but conclude media has been thoroughly "captured".
Checked British sites and it's splashed all across The Guardian, BBC, Telegraph, even Sky New and the Daily Mail. Each reporting it from multiple angles.
But the Washington Post has just: "The Panama Papers are super awkward for Beijing". ('super awkward'? really?) Couldn't find anything on The NYTimes front page. Fox has something at least.
Looks like Twitter fixed an old trick people used to pull to make misleading usernames. Scammers used to take advantage of the fact that lowercase L and uppercase I are indistinguishable in sans serif fonts, so you'd end up with people registering names like TWlTTER or StephenCoIbert to gin up followers for spamming and the like.
(And to reiterate another poster, that's not Banksy in any case.)
I wouldn't be surprised if my bosses are implicated in this. They're a rich and powerful family with generational wealth. Will be interesting if the full leak is published and I can search their name myself.
Everyone involved in this is going to have a copy and a copy of a copy for safety reasons. The whole thing will leak eventually.
What a fine day at the river, watching old enemies drifting by..
This will roll out slowly like the Snowden leaks over time.
Lets hope an pray, this time its about money something everyone understands an can get angry about.
Probably because the opportunities for gross corruption is much less in the west (though Italy might be an outlier) - and there are well established legal ways to shelter your assets.
It's possibly an oblique reference to one Lord Greville Janner, who was accused of child abuse by numerous witnesses, but was spared a trial because of advanced dementia - even though he'd been voting in the House of Lords and attending committee meetings.
Tragically, Janner died not long after he was declared unfit to plead. Even more tragically, it was decided the public interest would not be served by a trial of fact which would put evidence from witnesses and alleged victims on the record without aiming for a conviction.
I thought so too, it's silly to pretend this is all about putin putin putin and his cellists. Besides i would expect the russians to have moved their money in some offshore corner in middle east rather than panama. The Bloomberg website does not even report it in its frontpage right now (eventhough possibly many of their customers are in the list). However i trust that they are keeping the best bits for the starting week.
This seems very interesting btw. We should just face the fact that offshore banking exists and is neither good or evil, its a product of globalization and the emerging stateless jet set. If anything , maybe more and more people should take advantage of it.
Tax shelters and hiding money is difficult to explain to the average man on the street, so they're focusing on explaining the very real impact of this sort of corruption, talking about pension funds being drained, people not getting disability checks, and so on.
Corruption has a huge impact. The Putin fortune they talk about is blood money. It came from raping an entire country.
> Never forget the Guardian smashed its copies of the Snowden files on the instruction of MI6.
Wow. I actually did 'forget' this. Actually I don't think I ever heard of it. I see lots of articles about The Guardian being under pressure, but haven't found one confirming they actually "smashed" them. I haven't been looking that long, so would welcome any pointers.
I expect we'll be seeing stories from the Panama Papers for months to come, spaced out for maximum impact, similarly to Snowden's leaks.
If a month goes by and not a single story is contrary to american corporate interests, the author's position may be reasonably supportable. But day 1? Not a chance. They went for the most immediate impact-- two CURRENT heads of state.