Leaked: Saudi King financed Netanyahu’s 2015 election bid

Mon May 9, 2016 8:47AM

http://presstv.com/Detail/2016/05/09/464706/Saudi-Arabia-King-Salman-Israel-Prime-Minister-Netanyahu-Isaac-Herzog-Panama-Papers/ 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) and Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud © Reuters

A member of Israel's Knesset (parliament) has revealed that Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud helped finance the election campaign of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015.
Citing a massive leak of confidential documents dubbed the “Panama Papers,” Isaac Herzog, who is the chairman of the Israeli Labor party said, “In March 2015, King Salman has deposited eighty million dollars to support Netanyahu’s campaign via a Syrian-Spanish person named Mohamed Eyad Kayali.”
Panama Papers, which detail the offshore wealth of politicians and public figures across the globe, exposed more than 11.5 million financial and legal records earlier in April.
“The money was deposited to a company’s account in British Virgin Islands owned by Teddy Sagi, an Israeli billionaire and businessman, who has allocated the money to fund the campaign [of] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” the lawmaker said.
In the recent past, Netanyahu has on several occasions talked of a budding relationship between Israel and Arab countries.
In March, Netanyahu said Israel's relations with regional Arab countries are “dramatically warming” in what analysts said was an acknowledgement of behind-the-scenes ties.
Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s minister of military affairs, in February pointed to open channels between the regime and Arab states.
Ya’alon said he was unable to shake hands with Arab officials in public due to the “sensitive” political realities.
The Israeli minister later publicly shook the hand of Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal al-Saud, who himself has openly met with a number of Israeli officials in the past.
Israel has covert ties with Arab states despite their claims that they would normalize relations with Tel Aviv only when it reaches a deal with the Palestinians. This is while the two sides “can meet in closed rooms,” according to Ya’alon.
Last month, the Jerusalem Post wrote that “rather than being isolated, Israel is being incorporated into the Saudi-led orbit.”
“Part of this includes the opening of a mission in Abu Dhabi and increasing contacts in the [Persian] Gulf States,” it said.
A former general in the Saudi military has also said recently that the kingdom would open an embassy in Tel Aviv if Israel accepted an Arab initiative to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Riyadh also maintains secret military ties with the Tel Aviv regime.
In April, Sheikh Naim Qassem, the deputy secretary general of Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement, said Israel was training Saudi military forces under the framework of clandestine relations. 
Dozens of Saudi military officers were being trained following secret contacts that led to military cooperation, he said.
“The Saudis are currently fulfilling the cycle of the Israeli project in public and secret meetings,” he added.

John Doe's Manifesto

The Source of the Panama Papers just released his/her manifesto.

"The defining issue of our time is income inequality."

http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/572c897a5632a39742ed34ef/ 
More than a year ago the Süddeutsche Zeitung was contacted by a source who was intent on staying anonymous. The source called himself “John Doe” and offered internal data belonging to the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. The Süddeutsche Zeitung decided to analyze the data in cooperation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). In the course of the research the cooperation was extended to include more than 100 media organizations from over 80 countries. The publication of the Panama Papers caused an enormous stir all over the globe: Politicians and functionaries had to resign, there was a large amount of public protest, and the stories led to raids and investigations in dozens of countries.
Now “John Doe”, the anonymous source, has sent the SZ a manifesto, which can be read as an explanation of his actions – and as a call to action. The manifesto and its inherent political stance had no editorial influence on the reporting by the SZ or of any of the other cooperating media organizations – nor will it influence them in the future. The SZ did not have to agree to any conditions concerning the reporting in order to receive the data of the Panama Papers.

Income inequality is one of the defining issues of our time. It affects all of us, the world over. The debate over its sudden acceleration has raged for years, with politicians, academics and activists alike helpless to stop its steady growth despite countless speeches, statistical analyses, a few meagre protests, and the occasional documentary. Still, questions remain: why? And why now?
The Panama Papers provide a compelling answer to these questions: massive, pervasive corruption. And it’s not a coincidence that the answer comes from a law firm. More than just a cog in the machine of “wealth management,” Mossack Fonseca used its influence to write and bend laws worldwide to favour the interests of criminals over a period of decades. In the case of the island of Niue, the firm essentially ran a tax haven from start to finish. Ramón Fonseca and Jürgen Mossack would have us believe that their firm’s shell companies, sometimes called “special purpose vehicles,” are just like cars. But used car salesmen don’t write laws. And the only “special purpose” of the vehicles they produced was too often fraud, on a grand scale.
Shell companies are often associated with the crime of tax evasion, but the Panama Papers show beyond a shadow of a doubt that although shell companies are not illegal by definition, they are used to carry out a wide array of serious crimes that go beyond evading taxes. I decided to expose Mossack Fonseca because I thought its founders, employees and clients should have to answer for their roles in these crimes, only some of which have come to light thus far. It will take years, possibly decades, for the full extent of the firm’s sordid acts to become known.
In the meantime, a new global debate has started, which is encouraging. Unlike the polite rhetoric of yesteryear that carefully omitted any suggestion of wrongdoing by the elite, this debate focuses directly on what matters.
In that regard, I have a few thoughts.
For the record, I do not work for any government or intelligence agency, directly or as a contractor, and I never have. My viewpoint is entirely my own, as was my decision to share the documents with Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), not for any specific political purpose, but simply because I understood enough about their contents to realize the scale of the injustices they described.
The prevailing media narrative thus far has focused on the scandal of what is legal and allowed in this system. What is allowed is indeed scandalous and must be changed. But we must not lose sight of another important fact: the law firm, its founders, and employees actually did knowingly violate myriad laws worldwide, repeatedly. Publicly they plead ignorance, but the documents show detailed knowledge and deliberate wrongdoing. At the very least we already know that Mossack personally perjured himself before a federal court in Nevada, and we also know that his information technology staff attempted to cover up the underlying lies. They should all be prosecuted accordingly with no special treatment.
In the end, thousands of prosecutions could stem from the Panama Papers, if only law enforcement could access and evaluate the actual documents. ICIJ and its partner publications have rightly stated that they will not provide them to law enforcement agencies. I, however, would be willing to cooperate with law enforcement to the extent that I am able.
That being said, I have watched as one after another, whistleblowers and activists in the United States and Europe have had their lives destroyed by the circumstances they find themselves in after shining a light on obvious wrongdoing. Edward Snowden is stranded in Moscow, exiled due to the Obama administration’s decision to prosecute him under the Espionage Act. For his revelations about the NSA, he deserves a hero’s welcome and a substantial prize, not banishment. Bradley Birkenfeld was awarded millions for his information concerning Swiss bank UBS—and was still given a prison sentence by the Justice Department. Antoine Deltour is presently on trial for providing journalists with information about how Luxembourg granted secret "sweetheart" tax deals to multi-national corporations, effectively stealing billions in tax revenues from its neighbour countries. And there are plenty more examples.
Legitimate whistleblowers who expose unquestionable wrongdoing, whether insiders or outsiders, deserve immunity from government retribution, full stop. Until governments codify legal protections for whistleblowers into law, enforcement agencies will simply have to depend on their own resources or on-going global media coverage for documents.
In the meantime, I call on the European Commission, the British Parliament, the United States Congress, and all nations to take swift action not only to protect whistleblowers, but to put an end to the global abuse of corporate registers. In the European Union, every member state’s corporate register should be freely accessible, with detailed data plainly available on ultimate beneficial owners. The United Kingdom can be proud of its domestic initiatives thus far, but it still has a vital role to play by ending financial secrecy on its various island territories, which are unquestionably the cornerstone of institutional corruption worldwide. And the United States can clearly no longer trust its fifty states to make sound decisions about their own corporate data. It is long past time for Congress to step in and force transparency by setting standards for disclosure and public access.
And while it’s one thing to extol the virtues of government transparency at summits and in sound bites, it’s quite another to actually implement it. It is an open secret that in the United States, elected representatives spend the majority of their time fundraising. Tax evasion cannot possibly be fixed while elected officials are pleading for money from the very elites who have the strongest incentives to avoid taxes relative to any other segment of the population. These unsavoury political practices have come full circle and they are irreconcilable. Reform of America’s broken campaign finance system cannot wait.
Of course, those are hardly the only issues that need fixing. Prime Minister John Key of New Zealand has been curiously quiet about his country's role in enabling the financial fraud Mecca that is the Cook Islands. In Britain, the Tories have been shameless about concealing their own practices involving offshore companies, while Jennifer Shasky Calvery, the director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network at the United States Treasury, just announced her resignation to work instead for HSBC, one of the most notorious banks on the planet (not coincidentally headquartered in London). And so the familiar swish of America’s revolving door echoes amidst deafening global silence from thousands of yet-to-be-discovered ultimate beneficial owners who are likely praying that her replacement is equally spineless. In the face of political cowardice, it's tempting to yield to defeatism, to argue that the status quo remains fundamentally unchanged, while the Panama Papers are, if nothing else, a glaring symptom of our society’s progressively diseased and decaying moral fabric.
But the issue is finally on the table, and that change takes time is no surprise. For fifty years, executive, legislative, and judicial branches around the globe have utterly failed to address the metastasizing tax havens spotting Earth’s surface. Even today, Panama says it wants to be known for more than papers, but its government has conveniently examined only one of the horses on its offshore merry-go-round.
Banks, financial regulators and tax authorities have failed. Decisions have been made that have spared the wealthy while focusing instead on reining in middle- and low-income citizens.
Hopelessly backward and inefficient courts have failed. Judges have too often acquiesced to the arguments of the rich, whose lawyers—and not just Mossack Fonseca—are well trained in honouring the letter of the law, while simultaneously doing everything in their power to desecrate its spirit.
The media has failed. Many news networks are cartoonish parodies of their former selves, individual billionaires appear to have taken up newspaper ownership as a hobby, limiting coverage of serious matters concerning the wealthy, and serious investigative journalists lack funding. The impact is real: in addition to Süddeutsche Zeitung and ICIJ, and despite explicit claims to the contrary, several major media outlets did have editors review documents from the Panama Papers. They chose not to cover them. The sad truth is that among the most prominent and capable media organizations in the world there was not a single one interested in reporting on the story. Even Wikileaks didn’t answer its tip line repeatedly.
But most of all, the legal profession has failed. Democratic governance depends upon responsible individuals throughout the entire system who understand and uphold the law, not who understand and exploit it. On average, lawyers have become so deeply corrupt that it is imperative for major changes in the profession to take place, far beyond the meek proposals already on the table. To start, the term “legal ethics,” upon which codes of conduct and licensure are nominally based, has become an oxymoron. Mossack Fonseca did not work in a vacuum—despite repeated fines and documented regulatory violations, it found allies and clients at major law firms in virtually every nation. If the industry’s shattered economics were not already evidence enough, there is now no denying that lawyers can no longer be permitted to regulate one another. It simply doesn’t work. Those able to pay the most can always find a lawyer to serve their ends, whether that lawyer is at Mossack Fonseca or another firm of which we remain unaware. What about the rest of society?
The collective impact of these failures has been a complete erosion of ethical standards, ultimately leading to a novel system we still call Capitalism, but which is tantamount to economic slavery. In this system—our system—the slaves are unaware both of their status and of their masters, who exist in a world apart where the intangible shackles are carefully hidden amongst reams of unreachable legalese. The horrific magnitude of detriment to the world should shock us all awake. But when it takes a whistleblower to sound the alarm, it is cause for even greater concern. It signals that democracy’s checks and balances have all failed, that the breakdown is systemic, and that severe instability could be just around the corner. So now is the time for real action, and that starts with asking questions.
Historians can easily recount how issues involving taxation and imbalances of power have led to revolutions in ages past. Then, military might was necessary to subjugate peoples, whereas now, curtailing information access is just as effective or more so, since the act is often invisible. Yet we live in a time of inexpensive, limitless digital storage and fast internet connections that transcend national boundaries. It doesn't take much to connect the dots: from start to finish, inception to global media distribution, the next revolution will be digitized.
Or perhaps it has already begun.

Where Are the Other 10 Million Panama Papers?

Posted on April 29, 2016 by WashingtonsBlog

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/04/where-are-the-other-10-million-panama-papers.html 

By Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and Rector (i.e. president) of the University of Dundee. Craigmurray.org.uk.
When I posted my scepticism that we would be given the full truth about the content of the Panama Papers by the mainstream media outlets who were controlling them, it went viral and became the first individual article to be read by half a million people on this blog alone, and a multiple of that as it was posted all round the web, translated into several languages.I also attracted some derision from establishment propagandists. I had contented that the fact the papers themselves were not made available, but we were rather fed selected information by the western and corporate state media, would limit and slant what the public was told. The initial concentration on Russia, Iran, Syria etc seemed to confirm this. But it was urged that more was to come, and I should wait, and it was suggested I would look foolish when they finished publishing. “Wait and see” tweeted the editor of the lead newspaper, the Suddeutsche Zeitung, in response to my post.
Well I waited, and what happened? The story fizzled out.
Take the UK. We got the stuff about Putin, Iran and various “baddies”. We got a story about Cameron’s dad that had been public knowledge already for four years. And we got the BBC chasing one bloke who had sold one house in Islington. And that was it.

We learnt that the majority of dodgy companies were registered in British overseas territories. We learnt that the largest number of dodgy lawyers and accountants working with Mossack Fonseca were in the UK. Yet in these millions of documents, not one major British company or individual not already known was implicated. Do we really believe that? And do we really believe the near complete absence of people implicated from the United States?
I have a clue what is going on. A young lady contacted me from Le Monde newspaper. She was one of the journalists working on the Panama Papers. She had been allocated the task of researching a Russian oligarch, and not knowing I had made any comment on the Panama Papers, she contacted me as I had background information on the man. Her email made plain that what the “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists” in Washington was closely controlling the process, and that what she wrote would have to go back to them for “checking” before publication. The ICIJ is funded, as I pointed out, by corporate America. Their donors include:
Ford Foundation
Carnegie Endowment
Rockefeller Family Fund
W K Kellogg Foundation
Open Society Foundation (Soros)
So, in one stroke, the argument that the data was not being controlled because it was “shared with hundreds of journalists around the world” falls. That argument was repeatedly thrown at me but it appears not to be true; hundreds of journalists did not have unfettered access to the entire database or free publication of their findings. It was very much a controlled leak.
Of course I am not claiming there is absolute control. It is a matter of degree. As I pointed out, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation made a documentary which directly implicated and challenged Australia’s biggest company, BHP Billiton, and Australia’s biggest foreign investor. But that only emphasises the problem.
Are we really supposed to believe that in Australia the biggest economic players were involved, but in the UK – where far more lawyers and accountants were implicated – it was just Cameron’s dad and a slightly dodgy geezer in Islington?
The corporate media still claim there are legitimate reasons, apart from avoiding tax and jurisdiction, for using companies like Mossack Fonseca. They will therefore – again contrary to a widespread claim – only be publishing a small minority of the actual documents for the public to search. “The application will not be a ‘data dump’ of the original documents — it will be a careful release of basic corporate information” says the ICIJ. Their words, not mine.
So the fundamental question is, do you trust the corporate media to give you a true picture? By passing the data to the corporate media the leaker has put us back to a pre-WikiLeaks world. My instinct is not to trust them, and the promised revelations that would prove me wrong are yet to appear.

Russia's Putin: Panama papers are a 'provocation'

Thu Apr 14, 2016 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-putin-panamapapers-idUSKCN0XB16D?utm_source=Facebook

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a live broadcast nationwide call-in in Moscow, Russia, April 14, 2016.

Reuters/Michael Klimentyev/Sputnik/Kremlin

Media reports about offshore accounts in Panama are a "provocation", Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, blaming U.S. officials and U.S. bank Goldman Sachs for attempts to influence Russian elections.The leak of confidential documents from a Panamanian law firm earlier this month has had political repercussions in many countries, after shining a spotlight on the offshore wealth of politicians and public figures worldwide.
The files, which contained the details of clients around the world, prompted Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, the prime minister of Iceland, to quit, put British Prime Minister David Cameron under pressure over his family's financial affairs, and sparked calls in Ukraine to investigate President Petro Poroshenko.
The revelations included details of offshore companies belonging to Sergei Roldulgin, a famous Russian cellist who was a childhood friend of Putin and is godfather to his eldest daughter, Maria.
Putin reiterated his defense of Rodulgin, portraying the scandal as a conspiracy orchestrated by U.S. officials and financiers aimed against Putin and his government.
"Who does it, these provocations? We know that there are some staff of official American institutions," he said at an annual televised phone-in with the Russian public.
Putin said that German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, which he said had been first to publish the Panama documents, belonged to a leading U.S. bank.
"Süddeutsche Zeitung is a media holding company owned by an American financial corporation, Goldman Sachs," he said. "That is, the ears of the instigators are sticking out everywhere, but they do not even redden."
"We should not be expecting them to show any kind of a remorse. They will keep on doing it and the closer to the (Russian) elections, there will be more of that stuff."
In a statement on the newspaper's website, Stefan Hilscher, managing director of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, said the newspaper "has no relationship under corporate law with Goldman Sachs", adding the paper's ownership was publicly available information.
Goldman Sachs referred to Hilscher's statement and declined further comment.
According to the leaked documents, the companies owned by Rodulgin had handled billions of dollars, including loans from companies linked to the state or other friends of Putin.
Putin has previously defended Roldulgin, saying he was not corrupt and that he was "proud to have such friends".
(Additional reporting by Jack Stubbs, Lidia Kelly, Dmitry Solovyov, Maria Kiselyova, Gleb Stolyarov and Anastasia Lyrchikova,; Writing by Jason Bush)

Shots Fired: Wikileaks Accuses Panama Papers' Leaker Of Being "Soros-Funded, Soft-Power Tax Dodge"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/05/2016 23:44 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-05/shots-fired-wikileaks-accuses-panama-papers-leaker-being-soros-funded-soft-power-tax
Earlier today, for the first time we got a glimpse into some of the American names allegedly contained in the "Panama Papers", largest ever leak. "Some", not all, and "allegedly" because as we said yesterday, "one can't help but wonder: why not do a Wikileaks type data dump, one which reveals if not all the 2.6 terabytes of data due to security concerns, then at least the identities of these 441 US-based clients. After all, with the rest of the world has already been extensively shamed, it's only fair to open US books as well."
The exact same question appeared in an interview conducted between Wired magazine and the director of the organization that released the Panama Papers, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, or ICIJ, Gerard Ryle.
This is what Ryle said:

Ryle says that the media organizations have no plans to release the full dataset, WikiLeaks-style, which he argues would expose the sensitive information of innocent private individuals along with the public figures on which the group’s reporting has focused. “We’re not WikiLeaks. We’re trying to show that journalism can be done responsibly,” Ryle says. He says he advised the reporters from all the participating media outlets to “go crazy, but tell us what’s in the public interest for your country.”

Question aside about who it is that gets to decide which "innocent private individuals" are to be left alone, Wikileaks clearly did not like being characterized as conducting "irresponsible" journalism - and to the contrary, many in the public arena have called for another massive, distributed effort to get to the bottom of a 2.4TB treasure trove of data which a handful of journalists will simply be unable to dig through - and moments ago, on Twitter, accused the ICIJ of being a "Washington DC based Ford, Soros funded soft-power tax-dodge" which "has a WikiLeaks problem."
WikiLeaks ✔ ‎@wikileaks

Washington DC based Ford, Soros funded soft-power tax-dodge "ICIJ" has a WikiLeaks problem #PanamaPapers https://twitter.com/ChMadar/status/717395684207550467 …

4:51 PM - 5 Apr 2016

Moments later, in a subsequent tweet it added that the "Putin attack was produced by OCCRP which targets Russia & former USSR and was funded by USAID & Soros." 

WikiLeaks ✔ ‎@wikileaks

#PanamaPapers Putin attack was produced by OCCRP which targets Russia & former USSR and was funded by USAID & Soros.

5:05 PM - 5 Apr 2016

WikiLeaks ✔ ‎@wikileaks

#PanamaPapers: WikiLeaks' Kristinn Hrafnsson calls for data leak to be released in full http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-new

WikiLeaks ✔ ‎@wikileaks

Should we release all 11 million #PanamaPapers so everyone can search through them like our other publications?

7:40 PM - 3 Apr 2016

95%Yes, make them searchable

5%No, let media cherry pick

Moments later, in a subsequent tweet it added that the "Putin attack was produced by OCCRP which targets Russia & former USSR and was funded by USAID & Soros."
And so, a new contest is born: one between the "old" source of mega leaks, and the new one. We wonder if and when Edward Snowden and/or Glenn Greenwald will also chime in.
But we are far more interested if now, that there appears to be a war brewing between Wikileaks and ICIJ, who what "information" will be released next, and whether whatever comes out will put the entire Panama Papers project in a different perspective, one which, as even Bloomberg has hinted, may have been to benefit the last remaining global tax haven around, the United States itself, as well as the most notorious provider of "tax haven" services in in said country: Rothschild.

The Very Nasty Truth About the Panama Papers

By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor on April 4, 2016

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/04/04/the-very-nasty-truth-about-the-panama-papers/ 

Given to the Mossad...to seed, fabricate and censor...just like Wikileaks

…by  Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

[ Editor’s note:  Last week when VT published information gotten during the interrogation of a Turkish intelligence agent, Sawash Yeldiz, captured by Popular Party of Kurdistan (PPK) militia inside Syria, information tying Turkish President Erdogan to the Brussels terror attacks, we saw how real leaks are dealt with.

The conduit for this information, European Department for Security and Information (DESI) Secretary General Haissam Bou Said, was threatened by Israeli security agents who may have had a part in the Brussels attacks and, moreover, DESI, an EU organization was threatened with sanctions for the leak. This is real investigative journalism… Gordon ]

____________

The Panama Papers are a scam, real documents turned over to a Mossad run organization that now has dirt on even more people and more power to make a very nasty world an even darker and nastier place.  This is what Wikileaks was and is, as exposed by VT and Zbigniew Brzezinski in December 2010.

The filth of the world will be protected and the innocent, should such things exist, can be targeted in the name of “investigative journalism” as teams seed phony material in and launder out damage to the politicians, names like Netanyahu and Bush, Cheney and Guiliani, Hollande and Blair, Kasich and Snyder, Gingrich and Romney, especially Romney.

The Panama Papers are a leak to a German newspaper of tens of thousands of corporate records from a law firm in Panama that ran much of the world’s money laundering.  When a German newspaper received this dump over a year ago, they turned, unknowingly, to an organization actually run by intelligence agencies, in fact those with the most to risk from the leak itself, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

The entire time this trove has been available it should have been in the hands of forensic accountants working for an agency or authority that none of us can name as such an agency simply doesn’t exist.  There is no international authority without an agenda to serve drug cartels and money launderers.

For the last year, lists of owners of thousands of phony corporations used to launder money, have been reviewed by dozens of “journalists.”  The result thus far has been to mention soccer officials, attack Russian president Putin and to smear the reputation of a well known worthless chiseler, Ian Cameron, father of slimeball David Cameron, long a blackmail victim tied to the News of the World “phone hacking scandal.
I am not going to begin to repeat what was found out about David Cameron, but “sick” is an understatement.  From Craig Murray:

Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan

“But why focus on Russia? Russian wealth is only a tiny minority of the money hidden away with the aid of Mossack Fonseca. In fact, it soon becomes obvious that the selective reporting is going to stink.

The Suddeutsche Zeitung, which received the leak, gives a detailed explanation of the methodology the corporate media used to search the files. The main search they have done is for names associated with breaking UN sanctions regimes. The Guardian reports this too and helpfully lists those countries as Zimbabwe, North Korea, Russia and Syria.

The filtering of this Mossack Fonseca information by the corporate media follows a direct western governmental agenda. There is no mention at all of use of Mossack Fonseca by massive western corporations or western billionaires – the main customers. And the Guardian is quick to reassure that “much of the leaked material will remain private.”

What do you expect? 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)

among many others. Do not expect a genuine expose of western capitalism. The dirty secrets of western corporations will remain unpublished.

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.”

Like Britain’s pedophile scandals, this one will lead the same way, the very old or targeted folks who got “out of line” will be thrown to the wolves.  The Mossad loves this dump, it gives them dirt on thousands of political leaders around the world they can now control even better.
As a real investigative journalist, with real sources in government, with first person sources watching drugs being smuggled out of Afghanistan, biological and chemical weapons out of Georgia or who has, with the team at VT, broken more stories in the past decade than all other publications combined, I know something about these things.
I also worked in banking as senior officer of an offshore banking operation and as a UN representative working with currency and “development” issues.  I saw it all first hand and know the mechanics very well.  I could teach this and probably should.
We know who the biggest players are in the Panama Papers.  The real list doesn’t start with David Cameron’s dad or a FIFA (soccer) official.  Bain Capital and Mitt Romney, followed by the Walton family of Walmart fame, the Canadian Bronfmans, Sheldon Adelson and, perhaps most newsworthy of all, several thousand corporations that tie the world’s drug cartels to American political leaders, including members of congress, state governors, city mayors, members of the US Supreme Court and a handful of former presidents.  Craig Murray goes further in his analysis:

“The corporate media – the Guardian and BBC in the UK – have exclusive access to the database which you and I cannot see.

They are protecting themselves from even seeing western corporations’ sensitive information by only looking at those documents which are brought up by specific searches such as UN sanctions busters. Never forget the Guardian smashed its copies of the Snowden files on the instruction of MI6.

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?

That would be much more interesting. I know Russia and China are corrupt, you don’t have to tell me that. What if you look at things that we might, here in the west, be able to rise up and do something about?

And what if you corporate lapdogs let the people see the actual data?”

____________

Surveillance photo from Mexican Intelligence of Romney and mistress, Yuri Andropov’s daughter

Back in 2012, two months prior to the presidential election, a former senior FBI official, actively employed by the FBI, came to us.  He had a story to tell.  He said that Mitt Romney, working with a series of financial organizations in the US including banks owned by the Walton family, maintained accounts overseas for hundreds of American political leaders.
The story of these accounts, not whose name was on them, but confirming they existed, hit the newspapers only a few short days before, citing Romney as having thousands of secret bank accounts in the Cayman Islands.
We were told of how Romney and Carlos Salinas, former president of Mexico, met at Harvard Business School, and together built an empire out of the drug cartels that, through buying 5 US Supreme Court Justices who passed “Citizens United,” legalized drug cartel bribery, done through corporations set up by a law firm in Panama with offices around the world.
The FBI had audio and video tapes of Romney with Maria Perez, his mistress in Cuba, daughter of former KGB chief Yuri Andropov and his Cuban mistress.  The tapes told of drug running and money laundering and more, so much more.
The source of the tapes was Mexican intelligence that had been after Salinas for years and had worked with our FBI source who had been the liaison between the US and Mexico on drug investigations through the 1990s. Of course we have all of these interviews recorded, some of them on YouTube.

The Pentagon missing trillions investigation died with the entire DC Able Danger team called in for an emergency meeting that day

The biggest single set of interlocking corporations that should have been exposed are tied to the nearly 3 trillion dollars missing from the US Department of Defense, money “disappeared” when the investigative records were mysteriously the victim of an aircraft accident on 9/11/2001 at the Pentagon, one of the most defended buildings on earth.
Not only were all the records destroyed but the 35 investigators were killed as well, having been asked to gather for a meeting with a White House official who never showed up.  But that’s another story.
What we are saying is this, when former crimes were erased there was a reason.  Bigger crimes were planned. Nearly every defense and intelligence contractor, from “Google Idea Groups” to the Blackwater network and hundreds more, were all tied to interlocking Panamanian corporations with ownership by members of congress, key Federal judges, and all of this run through a legal advocacy group known as the Federalist Society.
The Panama Papers could eventually expose certainly who is really behind 9/11.  In 2014, we were given documents out of Russia that included a preliminary report on 9/11 by the US Department of Energy, outlining that event as “nuclear” and not as the result of terrorism, not as it is typically defined.  The term “false flag terrorism” would apply, however.

PANAMA PAPERS: A Bogus Sting Operation To Smear Putin And Assad

Beware: Pure Propaganda Picture

Yes,  Mossack Fonseca Served As The Nexus For An International Organized Crime Ring …

… But where are all the well-known criminals from the Western Criminal Banking Cartel?

Conveniently missing, it appears.

The Millennium Report
http://www.cosmiconvergence.com/2016/04/04/panama-papers-this-is-who-theyre-really-are-out-to-get-and-why-they-published-them-now/
The overly dramatic picture shown above says it all about the AAA* agenda where it concerns Russia and specifically President Putin.
*Anglo-American Axis (AAA)
If ever there was a transparently fake sting operation to tarnish President Putin’s reputation, the “Panama Papers” is it.
Everything about this CIA-directed black operation was designed to damage Putin however they can make stuff up about him, with no evidence whatsoever.  Just ridiculous innuendo and idle speculation, and planted rumors and baseless hearsay.
The Zio-Anglo-American criminal cabal is so incensed that Putin broke up their little genocide party in Syria that they will do everything to get him back. The Syrian Holocaust: A Preplanned Genocide And Forced Exodus
So, what did they do?
They farmed out the various and sundry hit pieces to all their favorite MSM news outlets. You know, the ones that still possess the veneer of legitimacy with some of their readership. The British press is always employed whenever it comes to conducting classic hit pieces on the Russian Federation and especially on President Putin. They are always armed to the teeth when it comes to taking down ole Vladimir.  They just can’t get enough of this hide, can they?!
The Panama Papers: what you need to know by The Guardian
Not only was The Guardian conscripted to do the dirty work, a heavily CIA-connected German newspaper was actually contracted by The Company (aka the CIA) to do all the heavy lifting.   Just who is Süddeutsche Zeitung?  As follows:

On 6 October 1945,^[3][4] five months after the end of World War II in Germany, the SZ[Süddeutsche Zeitung] was the first newspaper to receive a license from the U.S. military administration of Bavaria. The first issue was published the same evening. The first article begins with:

For the first time since the collapse of the brown rule of terror, a newspaper run by Germans is published in Munich. It is limited by the political necessities of our days, but it is not bound by censorship, nor gagged by constraints of conscience.
(Source: Süddeutsche Zeitung) 

It should now be quite obvious that Süddeutsche Zeitung is nothing but a mouthpiece for their Anglo-American overlords.  Yes, the true chain of command goes way higher than just London and Washington, D.C.  However, the scope of this exposé is to merely reveal how the AAA is relentlessly used to pose a countervailing force to Russian independence.  The real mission is to keep Russia from leaving the NWO reservation and forever tethered to the International Crime Syndicate now known simply as the “Banksters”.
PANAMA PAPERS: The secrets of dirty money by Süddeutsche Zeitung

Syria and the Greater Israel Project

Of course, when recent headlines on Syria have read:  Putin Goes Ballistic In Syria, Obliterates The USA’s Secret ‘Mideast Strategy’, it’s easy to understand why they incessantly act with such a vengeance toward Putin and his Kremlin clan.  After all, the subtitle of that same article reads: Putin’s Russia Blows Up Scheme For ‘Greater Israel’.  And no one messes with their insane Greater Israel Project and gets away with it.
The Zio-Anglo-American criminal cabal will never leave Putin alone until he is driven out of office and without an iota of political power left.  After the overwhelming Russian military success in Syria, they (AAA leadership ) are not only livid with rage, but also totally beside themselves with revenge.  That’s where the highly trumpeted “Panama Papers” comes in.
In reality, there is nothing there with which to impugn Putin’s integrity.  However, they draw lines of association all over the place in order to connect him with the several crime scenes related to the operations of Mossack Fonseca.  Whoever wrote this global exposé worked harder than ever to throw dots up on the radar screen in order to create a fictitious crime scene where it concerns Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
What follows are a few other articles which have been written by some very credible alternative news outlets.  These are then used to lend credence to the MSM storyline.  Yes, most certainly there are many elements in this Mossack Fonseca crime spree which are entirely true.  However, that’s how they always rope you into their pen of profound prevarication and subtle sophistry.  Once they disseminate a few truths which can be verified easily, then they hit you with an all-out propaganda $hit-storm.
“Unprecedented Leak” Exposes The Criminal Financial Dealings Of Some Of The World’s Wealthiest People
Presenting The Mossack Fonseca Interactive Web Of Secret Companies (And All Available Source Files)
First Panama Papers Casualty? Former Iceland Premier Calls On Current PM To Resign To “Prevent An Uprising”
Mossack Fonseca: The Nazi, CIA And Nevada Connections… And Why It’s Now Rothschild’s Turn
Pay particularly close attention to that last headline.  “And Why It’s Now Rothschild’s Turn” is one development that will never happen until the whole Global Economic & Financial System crashes and burns.  The Rothschild banking group is well known as the backbone of the Bankster cabal that really does rule the world; albeit, on a fairly low level of financial administration.

Now, just how bad do they really want to take down Putin in order to win their version of the ongoing Great Game?  The following two essays reveal the true back story.  There is no speculation in these two exposés.  They both come from the AAA horse’s mouth.
STRATFOR Chief Reveals Zio-Anglo-American Plot For World Domination
Russia’s Biggest Threat Is The Promethean Strategy: Can Putin keep the Intermarium in check?
Now the reader can correctly comprehend the enormity of this long-planned sting operation.  The real Banksters have had this “Bear False Witness” scheme against Putin et al. on the drawing board practically forever.  However, you ain’t seen nothing yet.  Now it’s Putin’s move on the ever-changing geopolitical chessboard known as the Global Economic & Financial System.  Perhaps it’s time for the Almighty Dollar (the world’s king currency) to get checkmated!
The Millennium Report
April 3, 2016
Editor’s Note
The author of this exposé was quite negligent by failing to mention that the top propaganda photo not only includes Presidents Putin and Assad, but also Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson of Iceland.  As to whether the good PM is truly guilty of any financial crime remains to be proven in an unprejudiced court of law.  However, one thing is for certain and that is that Iceland is the only nation in the world that took punitive measures against the primary Banksters responsible for defrauding the citizenry, collapsing the banking system and crashing their economy.  Simply put, you just don’t get away with sending Banksters to prison and not expect serious blowback from the criminal AAA cabal.
Iceland’s Supreme Court Upholds Jail Sentences of Four Banking Executives
Endnotes
*Anglo-American Axis (AAA)

The Anglo-American Axis is represented, first and foremost, by the major English-speaking countries of the world: USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel. The European member nations of NATO, such as Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands are also closely aligned with the AAA as are all the Scandinavian countries. So are the Asian Pacific Rim nations of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar also owe their allegiance to the AAA but some of these may be changing. The World Shadow Government is an ultra-secret, supranational organization which completely controls the Anglo-American Axis, as well as the European Union, NATO, among many other institutional entities which constitute the Global Control Matrix.
(Source: Vladimir Putin’s Russia: Perfect Foil To The Anglo-American Axis And Their New World ‘Order’)

___
http://themillenniumreport.com/2016/04/panama-papers-a-bogus-sting-operation-to-smear-putin-and-assad/

Mossack Fonseca: The Nazi, CIA And Nevada Connections... And Why It's Now Rothschild's Turn

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/03/2016 23:38 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-03/mossack-fonseca-nazi-cia-and-nevada-connections-and-why-its-now-rothschilds-turn
For all the media excitement about the disclosed names in the "Panama Papers" leak, in this case represented by the extensive list of Mossack Fonseca clients, this is not a story about which super wealthy individuals did everything in their power, both legal and illegal, to avoid taxes, preserve their financial anonymity, and generally preserve their wealth. After all, that's what they do, and it should not come as a surprise that they will always do that, especially following last year's disclosure by the same ICIJ which revealed a list of 100,000 HSBC clients who had been dutifully avoiding the payment of taxes.
What the story is about is the nebulous world of offshore tax evasion and tax havens, which based on data from the World Bank, IMF, UN, and central banks, hide between $21 and $32 trillion, where registered incorporation agents and law firms in small Caribbean countries (and not so small US states) make the laundering of money and the "disappearance" of the super wealthy, into untracable numbers hidden behind shell companies, possible.
So, in order to learn some more about the real star of this story, the Panamanian lawfirm of Mossack Fonseca, we went to Fusion which has compiled a fascinating story of the company's history, founders, and key milestone events in its life.

These include the Nazis, the CIA, Mexican drug lords, and of course, the U.S.
First, here is the Nazi and CIA connection:

Jurgen Mossack’s family landed here in the 1960s. During World War II, his father had served in the Nazi Party’s Waffen-SS, according to U.S. Army intelligence files obtained by the ICIJ. Once in Panama, the elder Mossack offered to spy on communists in Cuba for the CIA. (Mossack Fonseca said the firm “will not answer any questions related to private information regarding our company founding partners.”)

Here is the connection to Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, and perhaps to the DEA:

Many times Mossack Fonseca has had no clue which nefarious characters were doing what with the companies the firm created – as when Jurgen discovered in 2005, according to internal emails, that he was the registered agent and listed as the director for a company controlled by the Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero. The co-founder of the Guadalajara Cartel was convicted in Mexico in 1985 for the brutal murder of U.S. DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. (Today, Quintero is again considered a fugitive by the US after walking out of prison in 2013 on a technicality).

Mossack Fonseca’s senior partners instructed an employee to carry out their resignation from the company upon the discovery. "Pablo Escobar was like a newborn compared to R. Caro Quintero!” Jurgen wrote in reaction to the news. “I wouldn't want to be among those he visits after he leaves prison!"

And then there is the state of Nevada:

In 2013, an Argentine prosecutor’s report linked Nevada-incorporated shell companies involved in a major corruption scandal to Mossack Fonseca. When those shell companies became the subject of a federal court battle in Nevada, the leaked files show, Mossack Fonseca employees took steps to remove paper records and to wipe computer files and phone logs at its Las Vegas office. One employee even traveled from Central America to Nevada to bring back files. “When Andrés came to Nevada he cleaned up everything and brought all documents to Panama,” according to an email dated Sept. 24, 2014.

Mossack Fonseca said it “categorically” denies hiding or destroying documents in its statement to the ICIJ: “Let us be clear that it is not our policy to hide or destroy documentation that may be of use in any ongoing investigation or proceeding.”

The leaked records also contradict sworn testimony by Jurgen Mossack, who told the federal district court that his firm was separate from “MF Nevada,” its office in Las Vegas, and had no control over it. Mossack Fonseca “has never maintained an office, establishment or principal place of business in Nevada,” Mossack testified in July 2015. But, according to the ICIJ investigation, internal documents show the opposite, indicating that the firm’s Panama City headquarters controlled MF Nevada’s bank account, and that the firm’s co-founders and one other official with the company owned 100 percent of MF Nevada.

Why is Nevada important? Because recall that according to a recent investigation by Bloomberg, "The World’s Favorite New Tax Haven Is the United States" ...

... and specifically several US states such as Nevada, Wyoming and South Dakota.

After years of lambasting other countries for helping rich Americans hide their money offshore, the U.S. is emerging as a leading tax and secrecy haven for rich foreigners. By resisting new global disclosure standards, the U.S. is creating a hot new market, becoming the go-to place to stash foreign wealth. Everyone from London lawyers to Swiss trust companies is getting in on the act, helping the world’s rich move accounts from places like the Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands to Nevada, Wyoming, and South Dakota.

“How ironic—no, how perverse—that the USA, which has been so sanctimonious in its condemnation of Swiss banks, has become the banking secrecy jurisdiction du jour,” wrote Peter A. Cotorceanu, a lawyer at Anaford AG, a Zurich law firm, in a recent legal journal. “That ‘giant sucking sound’ you hear? It is the sound of money rushing to the USA.”

That money is rushing for one simple reason: dirty foreign - and local - money is welcome in the U.S., no questions asked, to be shielded by the most impenetrable tax secrecy available anywhere on the planet.
One may even say that nowadays, US-based tax havens are the new Switzerland, or Bahamas or, for that matter, Panama. Indeed, for most Americans, offshore tax haven are now meaningless with the passage of the FATCA law, which makes the parking of dirty US money abroad practically impossible. So where does that money go instead - it stays in the US:

Others are also jumping in: Geneva-based Cisa Trust Co. SA, which advises wealthy Latin Americans, is applying to open in Pierre, S.D., to “serve the needs of our foreign clients,” said John J. Ryan Jr., Cisa’s president.

Trident Trust Co., one of the world’s biggest providers of offshore trusts, moved dozens of accounts out of Switzerland, Grand Cayman, and other locales and into Sioux Falls, S.D., in December, ahead of a Jan. 1 disclosure deadline.

“Cayman was slammed in December, closing things that people were withdrawing,” said Alice Rokahr, the president of Trident in South Dakota, one of several states promoting low taxes and confidentiality in their trust laws. “I was surprised at how many were coming across that were formerly Swiss bank accounts, but they want out of Switzerland.”

And, to top it off, there is one specific firm which is spearheading the conversion of the U.S. into Panama: Rothschild.

Rothschild, the centuries-old European financial institution, has opened a trust company in Reno, Nev., a few blocks from the Harrah’s and Eldorado casinos. It is now moving the fortunes of wealthy foreign clients out of offshore havens such as Bermuda, subject to the new international disclosure requirements, and into Rothschild-run trusts in Nevada, which are exempt.

* * *

For financial advisers, the current state of play is simply a good business opportunity. In a draft of his San Francisco presentation, Rothschild’s Penney wrote that the U.S. “is effectively the biggest tax haven in the world.” The U.S., he added in language later excised from his prepared remarks, lacks “the resources to enforce foreign tax laws and has little appetite to do so.”

Yes, Mossack Fonseca may now be history, and its countless uberwealthy clients exposed, but none other than Rothschild is now delighted to be able to fill its rather large shoes. In fact, someone with a conspiratorial bent may decide that today's dramatic takedown of the Panama "offshoring" industry was nothing more than a hit designed to crush the competition of domestic "tax haven" providers... suxh as Rothschild.

Corporate Media Gatekeepers Protect Western 1% From Panama Leak

3 Apr, 2016  in Uncategorized by craig

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/04/corporate-media-gatekeepers-protect-western-1-from-panama-leak/ 

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Whoever leaked the Mossack Fonseca papers appears motivated by a genuine desire to expose the system that enables the ultra wealthy to hide their massive stashes, often corruptly obtained and all involved in tax avoidance. These Panamanian lawyers hide the wealth of a significant proportion of the 1%, and the massive leak of their documents ought to be a wonderful thing.
Unfortunately the leaker has made the dreadful mistake of turning to the western corporate media to publicise the results. In consequence the first major story, published today by the Guardian, is all about Vladimir Putin and a cellist on the fiddle. As it happens I believe the story and have no doubt Putin is bent.
But why focus on Russia? Russian wealth is only a tiny minority of the money hidden away with the aid of Mossack Fonseca. In fact, it soon becomes obvious that the selective reporting is going to stink.
The Suddeutsche Zeitung, which received the leak, gives a detailed explanation of the methodology the corporate media used to search the files. The main search they have done is for names associated with breaking UN sanctions regimes. The Guardian reports this too and helpfully lists those countries as Zimbabwe, North Korea, Russia and Syria. The filtering of this Mossack Fonseca information by the corporate media follows a direct western governmental agenda. There is no mention at all of use of Mossack Fonseca by massive western corporations or western billionaires – the main customers. And the Guardian is quick to reassure that “much of the leaked material will remain private.”
What do you expect? 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)
among many others. Do not expect a genuine expose of western capitalism. The dirty secrets of western corporations will remain unpublished.
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.
The corporate media – the Guardian and BBC in the UK – have exclusive access to the database which you and I cannot see. They are protecting themselves from even seeing western corporations’ sensitive information by only looking at those documents which are brought up by specific searches such as UN sanctions busters. Never forget the Guardian smashed its copies of the Snowden files on the instruction of MI6.
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?
That would be much more interesting. I know Russia and China are corrupt, you don’t have to tell me that. What if you look at things that we might, here in the west, be able to rise up and do something about?
And what if you corporate lapdogs let the people see the actual data?
UPDATE
Hundreds of thousands of people have read this post in the 11 hours since it was published – despite it being overnight here in the UK. There are 235,918 “impressions” on twitter (as twitter calls them) and over 3,700 people have “shared” so far on Facebook, bringing scores of new readers each.
I would remind you that this blog is produced free for the public good and you are welcome to republish or re-use this article or any other material freely anywhere without requesting further permission.

11 Million Document “Panama Papers” Leak Implicates World Leaders in Money Laundering

Alan Jude Ryland | April 4, 2016 | 

http://secondnexus.com/politics-and-economics/panama-papers-leak/2/ 

[DIGEST: The Guardian, BBC, USA Today]
A huge leak of controversial documents has shed new light on how the super wealthy take advantage of secretive offshore accounts. The Panama Papers, a leak of 11 million documents and 2.6 terabytes of information from the databases of Panamanian offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca, is the largest data leak since Edward Snowden gave secret intelligence to journalists in 2013. French President Francois Hollande celebrated the release, claiming it would “increase tax revenues from those who commit fraud.”

President Hollande. Credit: Source.

An anonymous source obtained the documents before turning them over to the Munich based newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which in turn shared them with its network of international partners, including the BBC. Gerard Ryle, director of the ICIJ, said the documents illuminated Mossack Fonseca’s business practices over the last 40 years. “I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents,” he said. Currently, 109 media organizations in 76 countries are analyzing the documents.
The Panama Papers show the previously undisclosed offshore financial records of celebrities, sports stars and even world leaders. The documents implicate 143 politicians (including 12 heads of state) with family members and associates known to use offshore tax havens. Leaders implicated include Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister; Argentinian president Mauricio Macri; Petro Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine; Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypt’s former president; and Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, the prime minister of Iceland.
The files further reveal a $2 billion money laundering ring leading to Russian President Vladimir Putin. A friend of Putin’s, cellist Sergei Roldugin, stands at the center of the scheme; one money trail leads to a ski resort where Putin’s daughter, Katerina, held her 2013 wedding.

Credit: Source.

At least 33 people and companies featured in the documents are on a U.S. government blacklist for links to wrongdoing, including, but not limited to, doing business with Mexican drug cartels, terrorist groups and nations cited for questionable human rights records, such as North Korea and Iran. In an ironic twist, many of the world leaders and associates appearing in the documents ascended to public office through publicly championing anti-corruption platforms.
Mossack Fonseca offers a multitude of services, including investor advisory and wealth management, operating in tax havens like Switzerland and the British Virgin Islands. The company is the world’s fourth largest provider of offshore financial services. The global network, according to its website, consists of 600 employees across 42 countries. The company denies all allegations of criminal activity, insisting its business record is beyond reproach. “Our services are regulated on multiple levels, often by overlapping agencies, and we have a strong compliance record,” the company said in a statement. “In addition, we have always complied with international protocols… to assure as is reasonably possible, that the companies we incorporate are not being used for tax evasion, money laundering, terrorist finance or other illicit purposes. We are responsible members of the global financial and business community.”

Credit: Source.

Mossack Fonseca mostly acted on instructions from intermediaries, such as accountants and lawyers, rather than deal directly with company owners. Funds transfer between shell companies, which facilitate financial transactions while lacking significant assets or operations. This is not technically illegal or extraordinary, but businesses might place assets offshore to guard against government raids or circumvent currency restrictions.
Investigators often face difficulty ascertaining where the leaked offshore money originated because the actual owner can hide behind a nominee–someone with no real control and with no assets at stake who simply lends a signature. A sample of 13,000 owners compiled by Mossack Fonseca indicates that Russia and China top the list. Other countries, among them Hong Kong, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates, also prominently feature in the leaked data.

It is still too early to tell what the legal fallout could be for those involved, as laws vary from country to country. Whether international conventions were violated or whether money can be seized remains to be seen. But already there is political fallout: Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson faces strong criticism and calls for a snap election as Iceland is rocked by the scandal. Confronted by the revelations, he remained defiant. “You are asking me nonsense. You trick me into an interview under false pretenses,” Gunnlaugsson told interviewers. “This is totally inappropriate.”