Pandora Papers: Secret wealth and dealings of world leaders exposed

[Disir]

The secret wealth and dealings of world leaders, politicians and billionaires has been exposed in one of the biggest leaks of financial documents.
Some 35 current and former leaders and more than 300 public officials are featured in the files from offshore companies, dubbed the Pandora Papers.
They reveal the King of Jordan secretly amassed £70m of UK and US property.
They also show how ex-UK PM Tony Blair and his wife saved £312,000 in stamp duty when they bought a London office.
The couple bought an offshore firm that owned the building.

Pandora Papers: Secret wealth and dealings of world leaders exposed

The offshore dealings of presidents, prime ministers and royalty feature in the Pandora Papers.

www.bbc.com

Billionaires and world leaders, including Putin and King Abdullah, stashed vast amounts of money in secretive offshore systems, leaked documents find

A pool of $400 million contributed by taxpayers is waiting for Congress to decide how best to use it. Getty Images - An investigation has found that world leaders, rock stars, government officials and CEOs stashed billions of dollars in secret offshore accounts. - The trove of documents, called...

news.google.com

So, this is what the media looks like when they do their jobs. Maybe.

 

[Pete7469]

When the billionaires who sign the checks of most journalists and fund most elected campaigns are involved in this shit....

Don't expect it to be much of a story.

 

[Disir]

I had to go back in and add the maybe. I don't want to get too excited and they are patting themselves on the back a little too much.

 

[the other mike]

Look into the IMF, World Bank, the Jesuits and the Vatican.....there's probably more gold hidden in the Vatican than anywhere.

 

[the other mike]

I didn't just pull this out of my hat ( if I wore one)...
This lady was fired by the World Bank for doing her job and uncovering the corruption under Marcos in the Philippines.

 

[Ringo]

Representatives of the US State Department urge to thoughtfully interpret the ambiguous "Pandora's papers", because in addition to criminally acquired offshore accounts of obvious enemies of the West, there are full of representatives of "lackeys" countries, like Ukraine, whose money is honestly earned by theft and meanness.

 

[gtopa1]

When the billionaires who sign the checks of most journalists and fund most elected campaigns are involved in this shit....

Don't expect it to be much of a story.

It's on the ABC here in Oz tonight...................probably will ignore any Lefty Darlings!!!

Greg

 

[EvilEyeFleegle]

Here's the Guardian write-up:

Pandora papers: biggest ever leak of offshore data exposes financial secrets of rich and powerful

After more than 18 months analysing the data in the public interest, the Guardian and other media outlets will publish their findings over the coming days, beginning with revelations about the offshore financial affairs of some of the most powerful political leaders in the world.
They include the ruler of Jordan, King Abdullah II, who, leaked documents reveal, has amassed a secret $100m property empire spanning Malibu, Washington and London. The king of Jordan declined to answer specific questions but said there would be nothing improper about him owning properties via offshore companies. Jordan appeared to have blocked the ICIJ website on Sunday, hours before the Pandora papers launched.
The files also show that Azerbaijan’s ruling Aliyev family has traded close to £400m of UK property in recent years. One of their properties was sold to the Queen’s crown estate, which is now looking into how it came to pay £67m to a company that operated as a front for the family that runs a country routinely accused of corruption. The Aliyevs declined to comment.
The Pandora papers also threaten to cause political upsets for two European Union leaders. The prime minister of the Czech republic, Andrej Babiš, who is up for election this week, is facing questions over why he used an offshore investment company to acquire a $22m chateau in the south of France. He too declined to comment.
And in Cyprus, itself a controversial offshore centre, the president, Nicos Anastasiades, may be asked to explain why a law firm he founded was accused of hiding the assets of a controversial Russian billionaire behind fake company owners. The firm denies any wrongdoing, while the Cypriot president says he ceased having an active role in its affairs after becoming leader of the opposition in 1997.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who was elected in 2019 on a pledge to clean up his country’s notoriously corrupt and oligarch-influenced economy, is also named in the leak. During the campaign, Zelenskiy transferred his 25% stake in an offshore company to a close friend who now works as the president’s top adviser, the files suggest. Zelenskiy declined to comment and it is unclear if he remains a beneficiary.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, whom the US suspects of having a secret fortune, does not appear in the files by name. But numerous close associates do, including his best friend from childhood – the late Petr Kolbin – whom critics have called a “wallet” for Putin’s own wealth, and a woman the Russian leader was allegedly once romantically involved with. None responded to invitations to comment.
The Pandora papers also place a revealing spotlight on the offshore system itself. In a development likely to prove embarrassing for the US president, Joe Biden, who has pledged to lead efforts internationally to bring transparency to the global financial system, the US emerges from the leak as a leading tax haven. The files suggest the state of South Dakota, in particular, is sheltering billions of dollars in wealth linked to individuals previously accused of serious financial crimes.

 

[Ringo]

And do you remember, there was also the "Panama dossier", in which there was also a lot of compromising material on many world leaders, including from the most civilized democratic countries?
Were there any consequences for someone? And it won't be now either.
Take away from the capitalists the opportunity to steal, capitalism itself will be gone. And this, of course, is unacceptable!
Oh! Sorry, there were consequences... the woman- journalist who wrote about the "Panama dossier" was killed.

"Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed when a bomb exploded in her car. She wrote about the Prime Minister's ties with Panamanian offshore companies and the Azerbaijani authorities.

Earlier, Daphne Caruana Galizia announced the connection of Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and his wife with the company involved in the Panama Papers scandal."

 

[Turtlesoup]

I had to go back in and add the maybe. I don't want to get too excited and they are patting themselves on the back a little too much.

Completely understandable.

 

[Pete7469]

It's on the ABC here in Oz tonight...................probably will ignore any Lefty Darlings!!!

Greg

I saw a very long documentary about it. There are thousands of corporations that basically only exist on paper, with millions upon millions of dollars in hundreds of thousands of accounts all designed to hide assets not just from government agents, but media and investigative entities. That's just in Panama. Then you've got banks specifically in Delaware, the Cayman Islands and elsewhere that protect unknown quantities of cash for the globalist elite.

Make no mistake, Trump's got money in there too. At least as alleged by the documentary I saw.

.

 

[EvilEyeFleegle]

Representatives of the US State Department urge to thoughtfully interpret the ambiguous "Pandora's papers", because in addition to criminally acquired offshore accounts of obvious enemies of the West, there are full of representatives of "lackeys" countries, like Ukraine, whose money is honestly earned by theft and meanness.

I was surprised by the prominence of South Dakota, of all places, as a tax haven, who knew?