The basics:
Millions of leaked documents and the biggest journalism partnership in history have uncovered financial secrets of 35 current and former world leaders, more than 330 politicians and public officials in 91 countries and territories, and a global lineup of fugitives, con artists and murderers.
The secret documents expose offshore dealings of the King of Jordan, the presidents of Ukraine, Kenya and Ecuador, the prime minister of the Czech Republic and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The files also detail financial activities of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “unofficial minister of propaganda” and more than 130 billionaires from Russia, the United States, Turkey and other nations.
Will anyone but the journalists be punished for this? I doubt it.
It all depends on how they amassed their wealth. Some of them might be completely legit.
I read the King of Jordan has purchased more then $100m worth of property around the world yet Jordan receives aid from other countries. That's not right.
I often wonder what the motive is. I don't believe billionaires are any happier because they're billionaires.
It shouldn't really come as any surprise at how the richest people on the planet, control a system that reaps them an ever increasing amount of wealth, at the expense of the poorest in society. Why should this revelation surprise anyone. Its a historic trait, its called greed and is, and will be ever present in todays wealthiest societys.
The substance of Juliannes revelations was equally disturbing about the treatment of people by their fellow brothers and sisters, but thats another thread.
There's something mentally wrong with very rich people who desire to become even richer - you can't take it with you - or have they discovered something that the rest of us don't know?
Del.Monte wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 8:39 am
There's something mentally wrong with very rich people who desire to become even richer - you can't take it with you - or have they discovered something that the rest of us don't know?
As my grandmother used to say, "There are no pockets in a habit"
The corpse was first washed by the women a few hours after death and laid out in a brown woollen habit for males, and a blue one for females and placed on the bed in white sheets. The coffin was often made of straw. The room was lit by candles, holy water shaken over the corpse and the full rosary recited.
Far be it from me to say so, but could it possibly be that so august an authority as Rónán Gearóid Ó Domhnaill (or his editor in Ireland's Own) has erred? After all, if they are capable of leaving out the fada in "Ó Domhnaill" , they are surely capable of any crime.
kadman wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 9:56 am
Well, many would not agree with you, but thats another thread, I am not about to go to war over it, but I wont be doubting my grandmother
Alas, any doubt would be well justified. The traditional habit, as worn in the 13th and 14th century when the Normans introduced the word to the language of the Anglo-Saxons, did indeed have pockets as it was a practical garment. Even today the modern version worn by monks and nuns also has pockets (and other hidden devices) to enable the wearer to conduct their business in as hands free a way as possible.
Was that some sort of orchestrated effort to derail this thread?
Back on track lads and lasses.
The Panama Papers came from the files of a single offshore services provider: the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. The Pandora Papers shine a light on a far wider cross-section of the lawyers and middlemen who are at the heart of the offshore industry.
The Pandora Papers provide more than twice as much information about the ownership of offshore companies. In all, the new leak of documents reveals the real owners of more than 29,000 offshore companies. The owners come from more than 200 countries and territories, with the largest contingents from Russia, the U.K., Argentina and China.
Well, on the original track, the question asked in the OP is "will anyone (apart from the journalists who exposed this) be punished for what is disclosed in the Pandora Papers"?
There's at least two kinds of "punishment" we might be thinking of here.
First, legal punishment - will people be prosecuted? Hit with tax penalties? Etc? The thing is, most of what is disclosed here is not illegal. It's mostly not illegal to set up a company in the British Virgin Island. It's mostly not illegal to use the services of nominee directors. Etc, etc. So,. mostly, nobody can be prosecuted for doing these things.
These things may be associated with illegal activities, though. People look for privacy, confidentiality, untraceablity, etc for a variety of reasons. One obvious reason is that they are concealing money obtained by illegal means - theft, fraud, extortion, corruption. Another is that they are evading tax.
But, for the most part, the Pandora papers give us no information about this. They don't tell us where people got the money that they are so carefully concealing. And they don't tell us what tax obligations they had in relation to that money, or whether they complied with them. So, why we might reasonably suppose that much of the money invested through these arrangements was illegally obtained or is being illegally concealed from the taxman or both, it's not the case that all of it is. And, more importantly, we can't tell from the Pandora papers alone which of it is, and which if it isn't. Which means there isn't enough information in this leak to identify many people who can be legally punished.
That is, we can't identify them, but in some cases the authorities will be able to. I don't know whether Mr Fatcat Billionaire, named in the Pandora papers, has complied with his tax obligations in his home country in relation to the squillions of dollars that he has put into the Entirely Legitimate Anonymous Trust Co. Ltd., but the tax authorities in his home country do know whether he has mentioned the matter in his tax return. So, yeah, if Mr Billionaire is resident in most Western countries, and is engaged in tax evasion, he can expect a torrid time and an adjusted tax bill. A lot of this did follow from the Panama papers, and it will here too. (According to Wikipeidia, estimates of total tax recovered in response to the Panama Papers disclosures by April 2019 were about $1.2 billion; it will be higher by now.) On the other hand, if he also happens to be a good mate of, and son-in-law to, the President-for-Life of the Republic of Snoutintrough, where he lives, life may be a bit easier for him. And, on the third hand - and this is perhaps the most disturbing bit - he may have done nothing (legally) wrong. A lot of these arrangements are designed to be perfectly lawful - they are complex because they have the twin objectives of (a) being effective to reduce your tax bill without (b) violating any tax laws. That requires a lot of nifty footwork but, if the footwork is nifty enough, it's all legal.
Then there's non-legal punishment, for figures in the public eye. As far as I can make out, what Tony and Cherie Blair did falls into the artificial but wholly legal category, so no legal punishment for them. But if Blair were still politically active, both he and his party might expect to suffer from the public backlash. After the Panama papers leak, for example, the Prime Minister of Iceland had to resign, and he was slung out of the party which he led. He now leads a small populist right-wing party whose main schtick is campaigning against the "global elites" who conspired to bring him down - the name of George Soros comes up frequently - and objecting to wokeness in all its many manifestations.
