#panama papers

[porterdavis]

[unwelcome-ozian]

[lizzylolz]

[humaninpogresss77]

These two things are not even close to be the same kind of fucked up.

But I truly hate how, just like with the Panama papers; it seems like there’s not going to be real consequences about any of this shit.

“The 1% is actually a horrible crime organization that do the worst things imaginable. No there’s not gonna be anything done about it. Why? Why do you care. Fuck you for caring!”

No you just keep paying your overpriced EVERYTHING so the same people that did all those horrible things can control your life.

[pinkrabit]

Frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog thinking about the rich

[l-in-c-future]

Prologue: The Red Aristocrats in the Panama Papers

Some pigs are more equal than others. This is the famous quote in the Animal Farm novel.

Have the political privileges enjoyed by the red aristocrats changed? A recent car crash in Sydney revealed a mysterious young lady YANG Lan-Lan whose true identity drew huge attention and speculations. First it was alleged that she used a stand-in (frequently seen wearing expensive Channel clothes and accessories) to appear at subsequent police station appearance after her photo was caught by the media. Then her 'body guards' being called in the middle of the night after the car crashed were found out to be ex top secret national security agents from Beijing. Among them was one being recognised by the netizens in China as one of the top ten security force agents 'retired' from the services. The mysterious 'bodyguards' were seen escorting YANG Lan-Lan in her every subsequent appearances to the police.

The speculations of her bailed out bond became astronomical rumours that prompted the NSW Police to clarify that there was no bond imposed. Her scheduled court appearance drew more than 100 China migrants outside the court just to see her face but they only discovered that Yang was allowed to attend video trial. That drew even more speculations to the reason behind this. Netizens in Australia bet that it was for the 'national security' reason.

On the other hand, netizens from Chinese circulated a X social media posted by Canadian Chinese journalist and human rights activitist Sheng Xue (Reimonna Sheng) exposing YANG Lan-Lan secretly flew through Hong Kong to meet Xi Jin Ping's mother QI Xin in March this year. Soon as YANG exited the special VIP gate at the Hong Kong airport, 3 luxury black Lexus sedens (that looked like security forces' vehicles) were seen waiting for her outside the gate. The fleet drove across the boarder to Shenzhen Guest House, one of the mostly known hotel and resorts in China, that is exclusively used by senior retired CCP cadres as retirement resorts or hosting important guests. QI Xin is well known to live there. The social media post was re-shared and cited by many internet social media platforms. (Note-Shen Xue didn't provide photos or videos to substantiate the contents.)

In Sydney, YANG's multi-million dollars deluxe mansion in Vancluse was soon unrevealed by the media and social media, including the interior designs.

The public's focuses all pointed to the identity of this mysterious young lady who has no social media and public available information and how she can sustain such a luxury lifestyle at age of 23. Of course why did the NSW court exempt her from personal attendance of hearing a car crash case. Both the Federal and NSW government play 'professional silence'.

Yet verified public information had long indicated that among the red aristocrats living in Australia, there were only two most powerful family clans: Zeng Qinghong (former Vice President of China) and Xi Jin Ping. They both have family members flagged in the Panama Papers. Among them, only the Xi clan in Australia has long history in the ores and minerals industry 'businesses' and 'investments'. When YANG Lan-lan or her stand-in being asked by Daily Mail whether her family's wealth came from iron ores as she was spotted at a NAB ATM withdrawing cash, the young lady remained silent.

Over the internet, people digged out another young Chinese couples bought a mansion closed to Yang's residence in Sydney. The buyers were around similar age with Yang with sparse public information except the names, if that were even their real names appeared on the public records regarding the ownership of the house. There is no public information that can link to the identities of this young couple and Yang apart from being 'neighbours' on the same street.

That points to one thing: NOTHING HAS BEEN CHANGED IN THE RED DYNASTY in the last nine years.

CCP censored the Panama Papers in just couples of hours after publishment. The red aristocrats still enjoy full political privileges for concealing their true identities within the system because they don't need to bear their real birth names. YANG Lan-lan is nothing more than a Jane Doe created by CCP to protect her true identity and the source of her wealth that can be traceable to her family clan. Thankfully, the Australian side plays silence show in the whole process for 'national security' interests.

Obviously, the KNOWN FACTS are long known. Can Australia afford to offend Xi's clan at the time when Donald Trump imposes unjustified tariffs on Australia exports steel and aluminum? NO WAY!

Australia has something bigger to ask Beijing-buy back of the Port Darwin. The real national security interests for Canberra.

When Donald Trump coldly sidelined Albanese for not meeting him in numerous occassions regarding the tariffs, his imminent alternaive was pay Beijing visits to close up trade relationships. Another national interests on the plate. Of course Australia wants to expand deeper trade relationship with EU but it is a long known bureaucratic and high standard process. Seriously, it may take longer for Australia exports to get in EU than waiting for GOP to bow out in the next election.

In such big picture, who cares "YANG Lan-lan" or YANG Lan-lan for a 'trivial' car crash in the middle of the night?

The lofty politics observed by John Doe in the Panama Papers in the West HAS NOT CHANGED.

[l-in-c-future]

A stocktake on the John Does' reality after a decade of the Panama Papers

"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."

"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."

"The collective impact of these failures (courts, media, and the legal profession all biasedly flavourable to the rich who had more powerful access to service their interests) 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." Panama Papers: John Doe's Manifesto

What has been happening 9 years afterward in democracy, in protection of journalists who reported the truth, and in laws that supposed to be reformed to provide more protections for whistleblowers when they exposed the governments' 'secrets' to be hidden?

Sadly year after year democracy index reports pointed to the same trends among the 'democratic' countries and non-democratic countries: recession of democracy, tightening of civil rights, and the rise of authoritarian populistic governments. In the non-democratic world, persecutions of dissidents and anybody to speak against or disagree with the regimes had ALL BEEFED UP significantly in the name of 'national security'. In Russia, the opposition leader Alexei Nalvany was assassinated. In Gaza, journalists were killed by Netanayhu's armies for reporting the truth. In China, a former Prime Minister Li Jia Kiang mysteriously died of "heart attacks" shortly after he was removed from power. In Hong Kong, the 'national security' law and Article 23 have NO LIMIT of political applications by the authority to anybody they consider has engaged in 'soft resistance'. In USA, Donald Trump becomes the president for everything. Trump and his government remove and intimidate anybody who simply does their job professionally but not in accordance with Trump's ideology. Latest victim was a senior committee board member of the Federal Reserve. Business mongrols such as Donald Trump and Elon Masks had bought their ways up to the White House. They own their own social media to spread whatever ideologies to serve their agendas. Musk formed his own political parties after breaking up Trump. Democracy is privatised by the rich people, situation is worse than what John Doe observed nine years ago.

Journalists leave the profession due to economic factors, including shrinking newsroom budgets, job insecurity and low pay which have led to mass layoffs and fewer opportunities. They also leave due to increased workload and pressure to produce content across multiple platforms, intimidation, political and economic pressures, and a lack of support and resources from their organizations. The changing media landscape has fragmented influence, making it harder to find and keep jobs. The situation is worse for investigative journalism. The reality pinpointed by John Doe in the Panama Papers still prevail: "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." In authoritarian regimes, the authority diminishes the freedom of press by staging pro-government billionares, whom the authority considers as 'patriotic and loyal' to buy out the ownership and flush the management of mainstream media. In USA, Fox becomes the de facto pffical propaganda outlet for Donald Trump. The Australian skynews becomes the de facto microphone for Netanyahu's genocide in Gaza. They tightened up the laws that allow the public to access public records of company ownerships and registrations of vehicles. They abuse the 'privacy laws' to create an opaque environment for the public to access information about the elites because the latter are typical pro-authority.

Despite the various legal reforms for better protection of whistle blowers in the West, the whistle blowers still face ongoing challenges, especially regarding the prosections of public interests disclosures when whistleblowers leake confidential information held up by the governments. For example, "one critical aspect of reform will be a response to the South Australian Court of Appeal’s decision in the case of tax office whistleblower Richard Boyle. Despite his appeal about the scope of whistleblower's protection, the High Court refused to hear his case. He was sentenced to jail. David McBride is presently serving a five year and eight months’ prison sentence for leaking documents to the ABC, which sparked the landmark Afghan Files reporting on war crimes committed by Australian forces in Afghanistan."

Despite the government subsequently initiated another investigation that led up to the convictions of the soldiers involved in the war crimes, it didn't change the reality of McBride. He faced the retailiation of the authority. In February this year, a Whistleblower Protection Act Bill was introduced to the Australia Federal Parliament by crossbench MPs and senators but since the current government has control of the majority seats, it is unlikely that this Bill can be passed. Let alone the Opposition will join forces with the government to vote down the Bill. The reality won't change as long as the Parliament is dominated by the big parties. This goes back to the first point I raise regarding the regression of democracy. Unless the Parliament is democratised, there is no effective democracy. We only have duopoly of the big political parties whose major interests are to preserve the status quo, play political correctness and protect those who can afford to lobby and continously funding their political parties'.

Unfortunately, the end result is more people will lost trust in the establishment. In the vaccum of alternatives, more people turn to fasle 'saviours': populism, far-rights, other anti-government movements such as the 'sovereign citizens'.

Sources

https://ballawyers.com.au/article/whistleblower-protection-reform-required-to-ensure-public-sector-integrity/#:~:text=The%20Department%20recommended%20a%20series,by%20some%20civil%20society%20groups

https://www.hrlc.org.au/updates/2025-3-13-why-we-need-stronger-whistleblower-protections/#:~:text=When%20whistleblowers%20are%20silenced%2C%20wrongdoing,to%20the%20prosecution%20of%20whistleblowers

[yanz-rutabaga]

The wealthy have a high propensity to evade taxes using offshoring, and on-average it's almost half of their wealth

Luckily my hunch from yesterday to start my delve into my research interests with Gabriel Zucman’s body of work was correct. 

Because I’m in the midst of reading two books centering around money laundering and offshoring: one focusing on the journalistic, sensational criminal activities of kleptocrats like the prior Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and other PEPs (Moneyland), and the other focusing more on the relationships between the ultra-high net worth individuals and high net worth individuals that perform offshoring activities (Spiderweb Capitalism), I was led to look into economic studies centering around tax evasion and offshoring. 

I began with a Zucman paper that is general in nature, entitled “Tax Evasion and Inequality.” Just from the introduction of this paper and some google searches, I have determined that the specific subfields of economics this research covers are public economics and inequality. All of my interests and work come back to inequality somehow. 

This paper hits what I’ve been reading about on the nose: wealthy individuals using offshore techniques to evade taxes. And it acknowledges that there is an industry that exists to specifically facilitate this process.

But what specific research question does the paper answer?

The paper is specifically asking the question: is there a class difference between who uses off shorting to evade taxes?

It also highlights that there is discourse surrounding who the primary tax evaders are in developed economies. Some think that the rich use offshoring and tax avoidance methods to ultimately evade paying large amounts of taxes, while others believe that lower-class people take advantage of tax credits to evade higher proportions of taxes.

The authors specify, however, that ndividuals in wealthy countries cannot offshore their money to avoid taxes (or really evade many taxes at all) as their income comes from wages, pensions, and investments that are automatically reported to tax authorities. For the wealthy, their income comes from wealth, and there is an industry that helps them manage it. 

And the self-employed are a separate group of interest with potential to evade taxes more effectively than low-class people, but there is more variability among the incomes and situations of self-employed people.

The most interesting quality of this paper is the data that the authors utilize: data from the Panama Papers, Swiss Bank Leaks, and Tax Amnesties.

Investigating tax evasion is supremely difficult. The only data that is widely available is that of tax audits, which are not concentrated among the rich and very limited in scale. The Panama Papers and Swiss leaks are both unicorns of insight into how the wealthy manage their assets and wealth, in concentrations we have not seen before.

[Note: It's also so interesting how these leaks came out haha. For the Swiss ones, a systems engineer at HSBC literally just pulled the account data for 30,000 people from the bank's systems and reported it to the French authorities. Like what? So hardcore I need to know this guy's story .]

The paper specifically studies individuals who claim residence in Scandinavian countries, so there is likely difference in analyses among different countries and regions.

The key findings of this study are striking:

The probability of hiding assets offshore rises sharply and significantly with wealth

The fraction of one's true wealth hidden abroad is high (around 40%)!!! (and this does not vary with amount of wealth)

In tax havens, the top 0.01% of people own about 50% of the wealth

*The top 0.01% evades about 25% of its tax liability by concealing assets and investment income abroad

The next paper I will probably look at is Allingham & Sandmo (1972), as it is widely cited as a foundational theoretical economic model of income tax evasion.