A world of hidden wealth: why we [The Guardian] are shining a light offshore
Though there is nothing unlawful about using offshore companies, the files raise fundamental questions about the ethics of such tax havens.
Since the 2008 crash, there has been a clamour for everyone to pay a fair share of the tax burden.
Unsurprisingly, the public is questioning – perhaps more than ever – whether a system that provides advantages only to the wealthy is immoral. And the political climate that once tolerated this inequality has changed decisively.
A vast leak of documents that allegedly open up the world of offshore tax havens is getting lots of attention. Although 107 news organisations were handed the material the BBC links specifically to the Guardian on the Today programme and on the website. The BBC and the Guardian are of course interested in framing this as a debate about fairness and equality…the rich getting richer whilst the poor get poorer. And yet offshoring is legal. There are criminals involved as in any industry or sphere of life, that doesn’t make offshore banking immoral anymore than the BBC as an institution is immoral for having had so many paedophiles within its ranks. It is entirely down to the politicians who make the rules to produce some that reflect what they think are the appropriate considerations. The Guardian even admits that offshoring has legitimate purposes….
Are all people who use offshore structures crooks?
No. Using offshore structures is entirely legal. There are many legitimate reasons for doing so. Business people in countries such as Russia and Ukraine typically put their assets offshore to defend them from “raids” by criminals, and to get around hard currency restrictions. Others use offshore for reasons of inheritance and estate planning.
What have we learnt so far? That the world’s rich use offshore tax havens. Blimey. The Today programme was trying to sensationalise it by intimating that it wasn’t just the usual suspects but that worryingly it stretched into democratic societies as well….though the Telegraph’s list of suspects didn’t raise any eyebrows here…
Named Leaders in Panama files
- Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson
- prime minister of Iceland
- Mauricio Macri
- president of Argentina
- Petro Poroshenko
- president of Ukraine
- Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud
- king of Saudi Arabia
- Ayad Allawi
- former prime minister of Iraq
- Bidzina Ivanishvili
- former prime minister of Georgia
- Ali Abu al-Ragab
- former prime minister of Jordan
- Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani
- former prime minister of Qatar
- Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani
- former emir of Qatar
- Ahmad Ali al-Mirghani
- former president of Sudan
- Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan
- president of UAE
- Pavlo Lazarenko
- former prime minister of Ukraine
There is a lot of attention on Putin as $1 billion looks to have been sent offshore by friends and associates…but what’s the problem…this is a man who stole the Crimea, who is trying to annex Ukraine and who hijacked the Syrian war to support his friend and ally Assad. Not only that but he stole Russia itself and has taken it as his own personal fiefdom, locking up or killing off opponents and critics……and the BBC is worried about a few dollars that may or may not be avoiding the tax rules in Russia.
The BBC is also going large on the Icelandic PM suggesting he used his position to protect his, or his wife’s, offshore investments by fixing how Iceland reacted to the banking crisis…saving Iceland’s banks to save his wife’s investments….
Court records show that Wintris had significant investments in the bonds of three major Icelandic banks that collapsed during the financial crisis which began in 2008. Wintris is listed as a creditor with millions of dollars in claims in the banks’ bankruptcies.
Mr Gunnlaugsson became prime minister in 2013 and has been involved in negotiations about the banks which could affect the value of the bonds held by Wintris.
He resisted pressure from foreign creditors – including many UK customers – to repay their deposits in full.
If foreign investors had been repaid, it may have adversely affected both the Icelandic banks and the value of the bonds held by Wintris.
But Mr Gunnlaugsson kept his wife’s interest in the outcome a secret.
However the Guardian has a completely different take.…..his wife’s company, foreign based as it was, would actually lose much of its investments due to Iceland refusing to pay foreign creditors….
The Guardian has seen no evidence to suggest tax avoidance, evasion or any dishonest financial gain on the part of Gunnlaugsson, Pálsdóttir or Wintris.
While Wintris was shielded from some of this turmoil, it had invested in bonds issued by three Icelandic banks and was owed more than 500m Icelandic króna (£2.8m) when they all collapsed. Only a small fraction of that sum is likely to be recovered.
Revelations from the Panama Papers about Gunnlaugsson and Pálsdóttir’s offshore activities are awkward for Iceland’s prime minister……He has dismissed suggestions that his wife’s ownership of Wintris compromised him as prime minister. On the contrary, he suggested, his consistently tough approach to foreign creditors, including Wintris, demonstrated that his wife’s financial interests had never affected his decision-making.
The BBC looks to be jumping the gun and making loud accusations when so far the evidence doesn’t stack up and it looks like the BBC is slinging mud hoping it will stick and is stirring up a controversy where there may not be a genuine one…nothing like inventing news to generate a sensationalist ‘scoop’.
Interestingly the Guardian tells us that:
While much of the leaked material will remain private, there are compelling reasons for publishing some of the data.
So presumably the vast amount of the information relates to legal transactions and the ones the Guardian and the BBC will investigate are those that reflect their own political interests and narratives about ethics and immorality….all of which is highly subjective and relies upon your own ideology….and never mind the legality.
The Guardian tells us…note only the ‘Conservatives’ get a specific mention though I’m certain many Labor donoors and politicians could be caught as well if they cared to look…..
Six members of the House of Lords, three former Conservative MPs and dozens of donors to UK political parties have had offshore assets.
What the Guardian doesn’t tell us is that the Guardian itself has used offshore holdings….as Guido revealed:
Perhaps that’s why they are a bit more circumspect when coming to condemn those who use them and makes sure we know that offshore tax havens are in fact legal…if ‘immoral’.
The ICIJ isn’t a purely disinterested party in all this…it often works closely with the Guardian and the BBC and has taken a moral stand over offshore banking…as this previous revelation in 2014 shows…
ICIJ director, Gerard Ryle, said: “We make this information available not because what we found is illegal but because we think most people would think it unfair. Tax havens allow some people to play by different rules.”
Different rules? They’re actually the same rules we all live under….just that we don’t have the resources to need to use them….just as most of us can’t afford a Lamborghini….does the buyer of one of those ‘play by different rules’ or is he just happen to be rich enough to buy a Lamborghini? You or I can buy a Lamborghini, or put our money in offshore accounts…if only we had the money….not different rules, just different sized bank accounts. Life’s so unfair.
I believe that offshore tax havens are the only thing stopping western governments from thinking they can confiscate all wealth if they want to. They know that the truly rich are beyond their grasp. I don’t trust the Panamanian government much, but I don’t trust our government at all.
It’s typical of the shift to believing that the only freedoms we enjoy are those which our governments choose to dispense.
We no longer have any claim over our children, money, property, language, culture, country …. anything. Just run along now and do as you are told, there’s a good boy.
Only Alan could defend the defrauding of our economy by the rich.
Let’s knock out the BBC/Guardian angle: these are the only two UK news organisations which are members of International Consortium of Investigative Journalists https://www.icij.org/ hence the reason they BOTH have all the documents and are therefore going through them.
There is sharing going on as the Daily Mail is leading on Cameron’s father being involved.
So we have the leader of our country whose inherited wealth comes from defrauding our economy. Cameron has so emasculated the Navy we can’t even protect the Falklands because of cuts, yet the rich (and Alan you ain’t one of them!) pay nothing!
I can see Cameron’s end in sight. June anyone?
“So we have the leader of our country whose inherited wealth comes from defrauding our economy”
I assume you are referring to his massive income from wind farm subsidies?
‘Defrauding the economy’? Offshoring is perfectly legal as even the Guardian admits.
‘Let’s knock out the BBC/Guardian angle’…you obviously have no idea what this blog is about.
The story is from the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung not the ICIJ and as the BBC admits, is being looked at by 107 media organisations…many in the UK…so why does the BBC and the Guardian point readers each other’s way? All a bit of a love-in for the fellow travellers.
Why is the ‘independent’ BBC a member of the ICIJ or indeed the CBI?
And I think you’ll find the Sunday Times has journalists in the ICIJ.
This isn’t about offshoring, it’s about “how Mossack Fonseca has helped clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax”.
I suggest you look at the detail coming out. Offshoring isn’t illegal but setting up dummy companies and straw men to hide money is. Putin is topping that list. It would appear the Brinks Mat stolen millions went through this company. This is only Day One.
As for the distribution of the info only the BBC and Guardian have it. Read the reports and you’ll see that other papers have to refer to both organisations as their source. The old traditional way of using someone else’s scope. The same happened when the Telegraph printed the expenses data. You’ll need to ask The Times why they are not involved. Or indeed the Telegraph or Mail or Independent. Maybe their ownership gives a clue.
The important issue is that this is a real can of worms. And for the Tories it gets even worse as a number of their MPS, Lords and supporters are already linked.
We are seeing the end of an era, when people believed in the trickle down economy. The wealth didn’t trickle down. It was defrauded.
Hypocrisy all over the place today on this subject,
Firstly, as Alan so rightly points out, offshoring is perfectly legal, no ifs, no buts.
The Guardian is completely protected from the British tax system by it’s offshore activities – but then tries to point fingers at anyone else doing the same thing. It points fingers at their political opponents in this instance, but fails to mention others from other political parties it backs, and of course, uses weasel words to try to implicate them in this – but no evidence so far.
The BBC has regularly conflated ‘tax avoidance’ with ‘tax evasion’ in order to try to point fingers at anyone it chooses – but fails to point the finger at its ‘sister’ organisation, The Guardian Group.
And, in all of this, what seems to have escaped the BBC is that there are already hundreds, soon to be thousands, of British millionaires whose assets are legally hidden from view in tax-exempt vehicles, just as offshoring allows. They are, of course, those people who have invested from the very start of the process in ISAs and their forebears, TESSAs. They do not have to declare these assets, or their incomes to HMRC. No difference.
So far, in all the stuff I have read and listened to today, I have not heard of one British person who has been even accused (far less found to be guilty) of doing anything illegal – i.e. so far as I am aware there is absolutely no evidence, as yet, of any offence being committed, and especially not of any fraudulent activity against HMRC. Now, there may well be some who are guilty of some offence – who knows – but there are bad apples concerning any aspect of life – benefits fraudsters, false insurance claimants, and actual tax evaders – but that fact should not be allowed to tar all benefits claimants, all insurance claimants or those who use perfectly legal means of avoiding taxes and preserving their privacy.
But, of course, from the BBC point of view, there are ‘good’ tax avoiders and there are ‘bad’ tax avoiders – the Guardian and BBC ‘self-employed’ service staff falling into the former category, and anyone who doesn’t fall into the same mindset as the BBC, the latter.
As I said at the start, hypocrisy – it seems to be far more in abundance at the moment than any evidence of any wrongdoing.
The BBC and the liberal left are so full of shit over this aren`t they?
When I was a revolutionary wannebe-arsehole, Facha-hating lefty throughout the 80s-whether Leyland or Westlands paid their taxes or not was simply not an issue…we wanted them under State control and oiled from Moscow or Libya…until the pinstripes were naturally wasted, or forced to repent and do Tony Benns biddings.
Evil, wrong headed shite from we godless, childless, angry friendless misfits alright-but there are(and were) principles of a kind to argue from..clear what, why and how-read Marx, look at Lenin, Stalin and Mao…fine tune like Hoenecker and Ceausescu( that`s how thick we were!)-and the workers would be ours.
Wrong-headed gobshites-as the Left inevitably are.
BUT…for all our faults, we`d not sip lattes with a Nokia brick in a salubrious cafe off Red Lion Square and draft manifestos to ensure that the Co-Op paid more to Lawson, that Derek Hatton declared the costs of his petrol-singed suits.
Nor did we sniff over Liverpool Taxis eco-footprint as they drove around the city sacking their staff…where did all those tips go, Deggsy-type of crap?
No-we wanted revolution…..not to force milksop capitalists into paying yet more for Cruise Missiles.
But then the Wall fell-and the 90s saw the greens take over the Left, far more prurient, fussy, superior and hypocritical than even the Labour Left like Harman or Abbott, Falconer or Cook.
Which is where we are today…imagine there`d be a campaign from these tax nazis to keep Ronnie in the freezer until he paid his death duties-avoided thus far, by him doing a Milibenn Manoevre oh his assets…only the LEFT are allowed to do this.
Do the Left KNOW that they could “raise awareness, and send signals?” if they refused to release the body `til the family had stumped up their due taxes.
And as I say-only one PM since Churchill has left us with a hospital wing that she paid for herself by way of bequest to the nation…guess who?…need I say?…Mrs Thatcher.
Lefty scum-total hypocrites and hollowed out lying losers-always have been, thank God I grew a brain.
Gee whizz-thanks Dorothy!…
That’s interesting because I have received information that mentions the “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists” on a few occasions before as regards the BBC,s censorship policy for climate science, scientists and scientific debate. The BBC told Mensa members that it had no scientific investigative journalists for investigating Climate science issues.
The reason for this seems to be that the Management makes sure that the BBC depends on a left-wing Mainstream Media gatekeeper called the “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists” which just happens to be funded by George Soros.
Just like the censorship of Climate science, scientists and scientific debate the “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists” is censoring most of the information leaked to it in the Mossack Fonseca database. In fact the Guardian has actually said that “much of the leaked material will remain private“. In Britain, only the Guardian and the BBC have access to the database.
The “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists” seems to have been set up by the establishment as a way of controlling the Mainstream media through censorship. Instead of having independent investigative journalists supplying the information directly to publication, this media gatekeeper organisation uses BBC and the Guardian journalists as useful idiots.
More information about this can be seen in this article:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/04/corporate-media-gatekeepers-protect-western-1-from-panama-leak/
Alan you have rattled some shit fest eating, spineless, self important, white man hating, success detesting, ROPer idolising, clagnuts of the worlds cages! To get so many of these traitorous bast@rds to scurry out from beneath mummy’s table to respond to your post is an achievement! We salute you Sir.
Mass rape of innocent white girls all over Europe? Clearly a criminal act! Nothing. Innocent kafir blown to hellfire for nothing more than not being born Muslim? Clearly a criminal act! Nothing. The evil rich man – who ironically pays for all the delusional vanity projects that our privileged, protected, affluent gobshites force on us and will destroy the safe, secure civilisation that the great British and European people have built – does an act that isn’t against the law? Uproar! WTF!
The traitorous, bigoted, conniving, devious left certainly knows how to have a hissy fit and take the bat and ball home when something doesn’t suit them don’t they!!