Largest Dataleak Ever - The Panama Papers

[PedroDaGr8]

So just last week, we had one of the largest corruption scandals EVER (Unaoil). This week we have the largest dataleak ever. This dataleak involves corruption, the mafia, heads of state, etc. This dwarfs anything done by wikileaks, cablegate, etc. Over 2.6TB (11.5 million documents) detailing how shell companies have been set up to funnel money and covers a period from 1970 to 2016. THese shell companies were used for tax evation, laundering of money from corruption and how politicians use it to hide their ties to various corportations. Supposedly it involves a quarter of Icelands cabinet, FIFA, 8 or 9 senior chinese politicians plus possibly the current Chinese Premier (Xi Jinping).

The leak is SO big it is being handled by over 400 journalists from a variety of papers in europe (and possibly elsewhere I haven't seen a list of all of the journalists involved):

http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/56febff0a1bb8d3c3495adf4/

Slowly but surely more and more summaries will be release, the first one discuses the Iceland (called Storm Brewing). So far, no signs of involvement of American politicians or businessmen. Pretty much all around us though the UK, Mexico, etc. Loads of countries you expect (Putin's off-shore network to funnel money from corruption for example).

This page from ICIJ lists some of the power players:
https://panamapapers.icij.org/the_power_players/

Honestly, I am still trying to wrap my head around this.

[CitizenBBN]

I would be more than a little delighted if they'd release all those sorts of things for American politicians. Theirs aren't as bad as someone like Putin, but they're there and we will all be better off the day it's all exposed.

[CitizenBBN]

FWIW when I talk about free markets, this is the opposite of what I'm talking about. People think "capitalism" is what we have now, but it's not. As the power of government has expanded all it's done is expand corruption and influence peddling. When Congress couldn't do much of anything unless impacted ALL the states there wasn't much need to bribe people b/c there wasn't much they could do for you.

Of course as the level of government intrusion goes up, so does corruption. So China and Russia will be worse than here, but here is plenty bad enough.

That's where the Clinton Foundation is so troubling. They're bringing a slice of the Third World to America with that setup, complete with the third world countries and companies making the donations.

[Doc]

When are people going to learn? If they kept this stuff on either private servers or Iphones, this stuff never would have gotten out

[PedroDaGr8]

I would be more than a little delighted if they'd release all those sorts of things for American politicians. Theirs aren't as bad as someone like Putin, but they're there and we will all be better off the day it's all exposed.
There has been a LOT of discussion on why American names are not on the list. The two leading theories are either there is a firm that specializes in this for Americans or the FCPA in effect, where foreign banks don't like dealing with American money due to the IRS headaches, so this firm did not handle American dollars.

[PedroDaGr8]

Good to see the American Press starting to cover things more.


Here is a good article from the ICIJ on the types of characters using this service:
https://panamapapers.icij.org/20160404-sanctioned-blacklisted-offshore-clients.html

[suncat05]

That is a serious list of "who's who" in the genuine bad guys club...........