Cryptocurrency: Pandora Papers - Proves Global Demand Is High for Personal Financial Freedom from the State

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Crypto Up 15% Since Midweek...

See also...
Global Corporate Minimum Tax
Bail-In's
UBI
"Tax The Rich"
"Property" Tax
CBDC's, GovCoin, CorpCoin, BankCoin, StableCoin, CentralCoin
$600 Tx Limit Financial SpyVeillance Reporting to Taxers
PrintFlation... No Vacation Upon Savings For You
Own Nothing, Be Happy... aka: Be Life Slave To and Worship The Owners
GovCorp Contract Bloat
When Government Subsidies Price the Majority of Humanity Out Of
Housing, Education, Food, Etc
When Your Nouveau Woke Ideas For Outright Theft... Eventually Runs Out
Of Other People's Money To Steal
Perfectly Legal Maneuvers That Everyone Can Do, But They Complain Instead


Leaked records open a ‘Pandora’ box of financial secrets

https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-business-religion-media-jordan-67b2674fc44fa543df49dfc8f52e29cd

Hundreds of world leaders, powerful politicians, billionaires,
celebrities, religious leaders and drug dealers have been stashing
away their investments in mansions, exclusive beachfront property,
yachts and other assets for the past quarter century, according to a
review of nearly 12 million files obtained from 14 different firms
located around the world. The report released Sunday, Oct. 3, 2021, by
the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists involved 600
journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries. Jordan's King
Abdullah II is one of 330 current and former politicians identified as
beneficiaries of the secret accounts.

The report released Sunday by the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists involved 600 journalists from 150 media
outlets in 117 countries. It’s being dubbed the “Pandora Papers”
because the findings shed light on the previously hidden dealings of
the elite and the corrupt, and how they have used offshore accounts to
shield assets collectively worth trillions of dollars.

The more than 330 current and former politicians identified as
beneficiaries of the secret accounts include Jordan’s King Abdullah
II, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, Czech Republic Prime
Minister Andrej Babis, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Ecuador’s
President Guillermo Lasso, and associates of both Pakistani Prime
Minister Imran Khan and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The billionaires called out in the report include Turkish construction
mogul Erman Ilicak and Robert T. Brockman, the former CEO of software
maker Reynolds & Reynolds.

Many of the accounts were designed to evade taxes and conceal assets
for other shady reasons, according to the report.

“The new data leak must be a wake-up call,” said Sven Giegold, a Green
party lawmaker in the European Parliament. “Global tax evasion fuels
global inequality. We need to expand and sharpen the countermeasures
now.”

Oxfam International, a British consortium of charities, applauded the
Pandora Papers for exposing brazen examples of greed that deprived
countries of tax revenue that could be used to finance programs and
projects for the greater good.

“This is where our missing hospitals are,” Oxfam said in a statement.
“This is where the pay-packets sit of all the extra teachers and
firefighters and public servants we need. Whenever a politician or
business leader claims there is ‘no money’ to pay for climate damage
and innovation, for more and better jobs, for a fair post-COVID
recovery, for more overseas aid, they know where to look.”

The Pandora Papers are a follow-up to a similar project released in
2016 called the “Panama Papers” compiled by the same journalistic
group.

The latest bombshell is even more expansive, porting through nearly 3
terabytes of data — the equivalent of roughly 750,000 photos on a
smartphone — leaked from 14 different service providers doing business
in 38 different jurisdictions in the world. The records date back to
the 1970s, but most of the files span from 1996 to 2020.

In contrast, the Panama Papers culled through 2.6 terabytes of data
leaked by one now-defunct law firm called Mossack Fonseca that was
located in the country that inspired that project’s nickname.

The latest investigation dug into accounts registered in familiar
offshore havens, including the British Virgin Islands, Seychelles,
Hong Kong and Belize. But some of the secret accounts were also
scattered around in trusts set up in the U.S., including 81 in South
Dakota and 37 in Florida.

Some of the initial findings released Sunday painted a sordid picture
of the prominent people involved.

For instance, the investigation found advisers helped King Abdullah II
of Jordan set up at least three dozen shell companies from 1995 to
2017, helping the monarch buy 14 homes worth more than $106 million in
the U.S. and the U.K. One was a $23 million California ocean-view
property bought in 2017 through a British Virgin Islands company. The
advisers were identified as an English accountant in Switzerland and
lawyers in the British Virgin Islands.

There was no immediate comment from Jordan’s Royal Palace.

The details are an embarrassing blow to Abdullah, whose government was
engulfed in scandal this year when his half brother, former Crown
Prince Hamzah, accused the “ruling system” of corruption and
incompetence. The king claimed he was the victim of a “malicious
plot,” placed his half brother under house arrest and put two former
close aides on trial.

U.K attorneys for Abdullah said he isn’t required to pay taxes under
his country’s law and hasn’t misused public funds, adding that there
are security and privacy reasons for him to have holdings through
offshore companies, according to the report. The attorneys also said
most of the companies and properties are not connected to the king or
no longer exist, though they declined to provide details.

Blair, U.K. prime minister from 1997 to 2007, became the owner of an
$8.8 million Victorian building in 2017 by buying a British Virgin
Islands company that held the property, and the building now hosts the
law firm of his wife, Cherie Blair, according to the the
investigation. The two bought the company from the family of Bahrain’s
industry and tourism minister, Zayed bin Rashid al-Zayani. Buying the
company shares instead of the London building saved the Blairs more
than $400,000 in property taxes, the investigation found.

The Blairs and the al-Zayanis both said they didn’t initially know the
other party was involved in the deal, the probe found. Cherie Blair
said her husband wasn’t involved in the purchase, which she said was
meant to bring “the company and the building back into the U.K. tax
and regulatory regime.” She also said she did not want to own a
British Virgin Islands company and that the “seller for their own
purposes only wanted to sell the company,” which is now closed.

A lawyer for the al-Zayanis said they complied with U.K. laws.

Khan, the Pakistani prime minister, is not accused of any wrongdoing.
But members of his inner circle, including Finance Minister Shaukat
Fayaz Ahmed Tarin, are accused of hiding millions of dollars in wealth
in secret companies or trusts, according to the journalists’ findings.

In a tweet, Khan vowed to recover the “ill-gotten gains” and said his
government will look into all citizens mentioned in the documents and
take action, if needed.

The consortium of journalists revealed Putin’s image-maker and chief
executive of Russia’s leading TV station, Konstantin Ernst, got a
discount to buy and develop Soviet-era cinemas and surrounding
property in Moscow after he directed the 2014 Winter Olympics in
Sochi. Ernst told the organization the deal wasn’t secret and denied
suggestions he was given special treatment.

In 2009, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis put $22 million into shell
companies to buy a chateau property in a hilltop village in Mougins,
France, near Cannes, the investigation found. The shell companies and
the chateau were not disclosed in Babis’ required asset declarations,
according to documents obtained by the journalism group’s Czech
partner, Investigace.cz.

A real estate group owned indirectly by Babis bought the Monaco
company that owned the chateau in 2018, the probe found.

“I was waiting for them to bring something right before the election
to harm me and influence the Czech election,” Babis tweeted in his
first reaction to the report.

The Czech Republic parliamentary election is being held on Friday and Saturday.

“I’ve never done anything illegal or wrong,” Babis added.