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Bigger than Wikileaks - ICIJ obtains 200GB of data on offshore money havens
40hz:
There's a new posse in town it seems. A group called the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has obtained over 2.5 million files with detailed confidential information on over 120,000 offshore money accounts. Accounts with estimated assets totaling somewhere between $20 and $32 trillion dollars.
The information in this info haul raises serious questions about exactly what sort of business is being conducted by banks in the British Virgin Islands. Because it seems that this well organized and secretive banking industry is the go to place for government officials, former dictators, large banks, multinationals, hyper-wealthy individuals, and pretty much anybody else with huge amounts of money, if they want to hide it. Or make their financial transactions extremely difficult to trace.
Full ICIJ write-up here.
Interesting reading...
Which also raises another question: Isn't this the exact same thing some governments are going after Wikileaks for? :-\
Tinman57:
There's a new posse in town it seems. A group called the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has obtained over 2.5 million files with detailed confidential information on over 120,000 offshore money accounts. Accounts with estimated assets totaling somewhere between $20 and $32 trillion dollars.
The information in this info haul raises serious questions about exactly what sort of business is being conducted by banks in the British Virgin Islands. Because it seems that this well organized and secretive banking industry is the go to place for government officials, former dictators, large banks, multinationals, hyper-wealthy individuals, and pretty much anybody else with huge amounts of money, if they want to hide it. Or make their financial transactions extremely difficult to trace.
Full ICIJ write-up here.
Interesting reading...
Which also raises another question: Isn't this the exact same thing some governments are going after Wikileaks for? :-\ -40hz (April 03, 2013, 11:14 PM)
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Careful now, some have lost their lives for exposing smaller things than this. :o
Besides, you know this is a hot topic for Renny. :P
40hz:
Careful now, some have lost their lives for exposing smaller things than this. :o
Besides, you know this is a hot topic for Renny. :P
-Tinman57 (April 04, 2013, 06:17 PM)
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Yeah. I think the stakes in something like this are considerably higher for the whistle blower. :tellme:
And I sorta posted this for Renny so he'd have something to chew on. It gets too quiet when he's not around because he's too busy market timing his bitcoin portfolio. ;D
kyrathaba:
Ren? You gonna comment? :P
IainB:
This is good news. I read about it in a post by Guido Fawkes:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)
A Tip-Off For the Guardian Investigations Team
April 4th, 2013
Today’s Guardian splashes on millions of leaked emails revealing the “secrets of the super-rich” using offshore tax havens to hide vast sums of money from the Exchequer. One company was missing from the list: GMG Hazel Acquisition 1 Limited, registered and still active on the Cayman Islands. The last time Guido asked the company’s owners, Guardian Media Group, for an explanation he was told their spokesperson was, er, abroad. When Guido asked Liz Forgan of the Scott Trust what was going on, she tried to blame it on Apax, GMG’s investment partner. Even Alan Rusbridger promised to look in to it, making a note of the company name on his phone.
Always one to help their journalists get to the bottom of the mystery, Guido suggests the Guardian’s investigations team take a look at the following:
If GMG Hazel Acquisition 1 Limited holds no assets, why have its owners continued to pay registration fees since 2007 so it can remain an active company?
If it does hold assets what is the total present value of GMG and associated companies’ assets held via the Cayman Islands or other offshore tax havens?
Does GMG Hazel Acquisition 1 Limited have “sham” nominee directors, if so, who are they?
If they could answer these questions, now that would be a great story…
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There's nothing new about these tax-havens. What does seem to be new is the dump of account-holder details.
I read that something similar happened some years back, regarding the publication of "Anonymous" Swiss bank accounts of deceased German Jews and German Nazis officials that the Swiss banks didn't want to be published (for fear of having to make restitution of assets to their descendants or government(s).
"The rule of thumb is that, if a business process can not stand the hard light of scrutiny, then there is probably something unethical about it". - Sir Adrian Cadbury (Chairman of the then Quaker family-owned Cadbury's) in his prize-winning article on Business Ethics for Harvard Business Review circa 1984.
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