The Panama Papers

Nobody said, or tried to insinuate, that everyone involved or using such firms is suspicious of fraud. Why do you keep going back to that?

When it comes to politicians and the extremely rich, people have obvious reasons to cast doubts.

As for the bolded part, I know my country's flag bothers you, but you have a tendency of trying to turn any decent discussion into an argument by bringing up irrelevant nonsense.

Try debating and exchanging PoV's instead of arguing, make your focus arriving at truth rather than triumphantly walking away.

make your focus arriving at truth rather than triumphantly walking away.

I'm done with you.

Last I saw people from most of your political parties were mentioned.


Panama Papers: 57 people linked to Brazil's Petrobras scandal also feature in Mossack Fonseca leak
International Business Times.

Brazil politicians linked to offshore companies in Panama leaks: paper
Reuters.

Then again I really don't know how man parties you have.

How can we debate when you refuse to answer any of my questions.

The western media always goes after African politicians and military figures for much much less evidence than what is available in the panama papers.

Really? Like who? The western media cares about Africa about as much as everyday Americans, which is not at all. The US gov't goes after African leaders for things like murder, genocide, gun running, drug running, human trafficking, and this is just in some occasions. Other times the US gov't takes the same stance as the rest of us Americans. Do we target their offshore bank accounts once we decide to go after them? Sure. Do we care that they have them? No. No we don't.

To me this is not an American scandal, I understand its a big deal in other countries but over here we don't care about offshore banking. Money laundering? Sure, ok, thats a problem. But I haven't seen anything related to that and I'm not digging into it.
Pay your taxes and its a nonissue. Having connections to offshore banking is nothing. Having a Swiss bank account is a sign of wealth to most people, that they don't care about.

They are creating chaos to get people to create more chaos (i.e. riots and removing heads of state) to sell more stories. The real story is: Why isn't anyone going after the hackers who broke into a private company and released private and personal information to the media? Why is the media protecting said hackers?

Slightly relevant, since you mentioned the US: (its not always money laundering)
US shuts door on tax inversions

What if in a twist. Burnie Sanders was named under this. He is really getting more donations than you think.

Bernie sanders opposed free trade treaty with Panama, while Clinton is on the record and on Video, heavily championing it.

At this point, if you're a democrat and vote for Clinton, you need to go over to the other side and join the republicans.

David Cameron has finally admitted he benefited from a Panama-based offshore trust set up by his late father.

The prime minister chose his response to reporter’s question about Blairmore Holdings very carefully – and he will probably get away with it

After three days of stalling and four partial statements issued by Downing Street he confessed that he owned shares in the tax haven fund, which he sold for £31,500 just before becoming prime minister in 2010.

In a specially arranged interview with ITV News’ Robert Peston he confirmed a direct link to his father’s UK-tax avoiding fund, details of which were exposed in the Panama Papers revelations in the Guardian this week.

Admitting it had been “a difficult few days”, the prime minister said he held the shares together with his wife, Samantha, from 1997 and during his time as leader of the opposition. They were sold in January 2010 for a profit of £19,000.

He paid income tax on the dividends but there was no capital gains tax payable and he said he sold up before entering Downing Street “because I didn’t want anyone to say you have other agendas or vested interests”.

But the interview appeared unlikely to end scrutiny of Cameron’s tax affairs.

The Labour MP John Mann, a member of the Treasury select committee, said the prime minister should resign, claiming that Cameron had “covered up and misled”.

Cameron also admitted he did not know whether the £300,000 he inherited from his father had benefited from tax haven status due to part of his estate being based in a unit trust in Jersey.

“I obviously can’t point to the source of every bit of money and dad’s not around for me to ask the questions now,” Cameron said.

David Cameron's father sought legal advice on best tax havens
Panama Papers show Ian Cameron apparently ‘jurisdiction shopping’ for best haven to secure his Blairmore Holdings fund

It was the fifth explanation in four days from Cameron and his aides about the benefits he and his family had enjoyed from the offshore fund.

Downing Street initially insisted it was a private matter, but Cameron then said he had “no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds”. His spokesman later clarified: “The prime minister, his wife and their children do not benefit from any offshore funds.”

Downing Street then said there were no offshore funds or trusts the family would benefit from in future, leaving questions about the past.

In his first interview on the topic after days of stonewalling, Cameron was questioned on whether there was a conflict of interest between his father setting up the Panama-based Blairmore Investment Trust, which did not have to pay UK tax on its profits, and his professed policy to crack down on aggressive tax avoidance.

“Rules have changed, culture has changed,” he said. “And I welcome that. I want to be as clear as I can about the past, about the present, about the future, because frankly, I don’t have anything to hide.”

Earlier Cameron had refused to take questions from the press while campaigning in Exeter for Britain to stay in the EU. A student managed to address him, saying: “I am very interested in what the collective EU states could do to combat tax avoidance – something you have personal experience of.”

A student questions David Cameron on tax avoidance
Speaking about his personal wealth, Cameron told Peston: “In all of this I’ve never hidden the fact that I’m a very lucky person who had wealthy parents, who gave me a great upbringing, who paid for me to go to an amazing school. I have never tried to pretend to be anything I am not. But I was keen in 2010 to sell everything – shares, all the rest of it – so I can be very transparent. I don’t own any part of any company or any investment trust or anything else like that.”

He also said it was a misconception that Blairmore had been set up to avoid tax. “It wasn’t,” he said. “It was set up after exchange controls went so that people who wanted to invest in dollar denominated shares and companies could do so.”

David Cameron avoids question on benefiting from father’s tax affairs
PM sidesteps issue of whether he benefited in past from assets revealed in Panama Papers, saying he has no offshore trusts, funds or shares

Richard Burgon, the shadow Treasury minister, said Cameron’s admission showed a “crisis of morals” at the heart of the Conservative government.

He said: “After four days of refusing to answer this question David Cameron has now finally been forced to admit he directly benefited from Blairmore, a company which paid no tax in 30 years. He must now further clarify whether or not he or his family were benefiting directly or indirectly in 2013 when he was lobbying to prevent EU measures to better regulate trusts as a way to clamp down on tax avoidance.

“David Cameron needs to properly put the record straight in full on this matter and issue a statement to parliament on Monday. We can’t let this crisis of morals at the heart of the Conservative government further undermine public trust in the office of prime minister or the principle that those who govern us should pay their tax like the rest of us.”

By making a contribution you can help support our investigative journalism that speaks truth to power.

The Panama Papers were leaked to the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, which shared them with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Guardian, BBC and other media organisations. Four days into the torrent of revelations, regulators stepped up their response.

Twenty banks and financial firms in London have been told to disclose their dealings with Mossack Fonseca to the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority by Friday next week in a first step that could potentially see wrongdoing punished with heavy fines. It cited the need for financial institutions “to mitigate the risk that they might be used to commit financial crime”.

In Geneva, the Swiss chief prosecutor, Olivier Jornot, said he had launched an undisclosed number of investigations and said his office was paying very close attention to new information as it emerged.

In Brussels, the EU tax commissioner, Pierre Moscovici, threatened “to hit [tax havens] with appropriate sanctions if they refuse to change”.

He added: “The amounts of money, the jurisdictions and the names associated with this affair are frankly shocking. If these leaks reveal that any EU laws have been broken the commission will not hesitate to act.”

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, dismissed revelations about a network of offshore deals worth $2bn involving members of his close circle, as a conspiracy to undermine Russia.

Responding for the first time on Thursday, he claimed the reports were “one more attempt to destabilise the internal situation [and] make us more accommodating”.

He said in St Petersburg: “Your humble servant was not there [named in the files], but they don’t talk about that. So what did they do? They make an information product – they found acquaintances and friends.”

China, meanwhile, stepped up its efforts to stop its population reading revelations that showed that relatives of three of the seven members of the Communist party’s elite ruling council, including relatives of the president, Xi Jinping, had companies that were clients of Mossack Fonseca.

The Guardian’s coverage of the Panama papers was blocked to internet users not on a special secure network. The Communist party reportedly told news organisations to “self-inspect and delete all content related to the ‘Panama Papers’ leak”.

It was announced that the Argentinian president, Mauricio Macri, was facing an investigation into his financial dealings via two offshore firms that appeared in the files. The federal prosecutor, Federico Delgado, opened an investigation to find out if Macri, who denies wrongdoing, failed to declare assets as required by public officials.

Bunch of fluff

And? Are we still holding this witch hunt? Hell, even the article said that he paid taxes on the income from it.

If you're not aware of the legislation passed against the people of Britain under Cameron and his party over the past six years, why are you even a part of this conversation?

All this over what I assume are rolling papers? You guys are rolling the wrong kind of smoke here.

Way I see it, somebody in the media must be on something to think this "news" is relevant.

Sure, it got a PM removed from office, but they could have done it differently. Instead of "World Leaders and Rich People Not Breaking the Law, but One World Leader May Have Been Hypocritical On His Campaign" they could have focused on that Iceland PM himself, since his is the only story worthwhile from the release of these "papers"

In reality, the reporters of this story has no clue as to what's going on, so they release a sensational story to fish for more sensational stories. Iceland bit on the bait. They are now hoping UK bites too.

In reality Iceland's former PM broke disclosure laws.

If you are going to continue on this witch hunt, should we condemn Obama for a fight he got while he was a kid in school? I mean, you are going after Cameron for what he did before he was PM, you should also do the same for everyone else. Hell, we can all go after you for what you did in the past while we are at it. Shame on you!

Cameron simply looks bad but seemingly did nothing wrong. Cameron is an unpopular politician. You think no one will take advantage of appearances? As in British politics are somehow purer than American politics?

Anecdotal hot take:

The Brits I know are hammering the poor SOB non-stop. My global attention span the past few weeks has been extremely limited but if he deserves a fraction of the shade they're throwing, dude's life has to be a mess right now.

Anecdotal hot take:

The Brits I know are hammering the poor SOB non-stop. My global attention span the past few weeks has been extremely limited but if he deserves a fraction of the shade they're throwing, dude's life has to be a mess right now.

Or take the Russian route and start campaign claiming the whole thing is a C.I.A conspiracy.