Panama Papers reveal George Soros' deep money ties to secretive weapons, intel invest

[mick silver]

Panama Papers reveal George Soros' deep money ties to secretive weapons, intel investment firmSource: Fox News (http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/05/16/panama-papers-reveal-george-soros-deep-money-ties-to-secretive-weapons-intel-firm.html?intcmp=hpbt2)

Billionaire George Soros, who has spent millions of dollars financing Democrats and left-wing causes, used a controversial Panamanian law firm to establish a web of offshore investment partnerships that operate around the world and out of the scrutiny of U.S. regulators, according to leaked documents.
The so-called Panama Papers, a trove of 11.5 million financial documents tracing the Mossack Fonseca law firm’s efforts to help politicians, celebrities and criminals shield their money from taxes, contain links to Soros, who funds the journalism group that is disseminating the information. So far, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has been silent on its benefactor’s ties to the law firm.
Three offshore investment vehicles controlled by Soros are catalogued in the Panama Papers. Soros Finance, Inc. was incorporated in Panama; Soros Holdings Limited was set up in the British Virgin Islands and a limited partnership called Soros Capital was created in Bermuda.
The laws of Panama, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands and a score of “tax havens” allow foreign firms to hide ownership of cash, real estate and other assets from securities regulators and tax collectors in the countries where they are physically headquartered.
On May 9, client data stolen from the Mossack Fonseca law firm in Panama was published online by the ICIJ as part of its Offshore Leaks database. The searchable database contains a portion of the offshore financial records given to the journalists by anonymous whistle-blowers since 2013; it does not include leaked emails and other explanatory data that ICIJ reporters use to write about the offshore financial holdings of newsworthy individuals.
News stories about offshore bank accounts revealed by the Panama Papers brought down Iceland’s prime minister last month. Heads of state, Hollywood stars, heiresses, arms dealers and drug lords who established secret offshore companies and bank accounts are outed almost daily by the ICIJ. Incorporating a business offshore is not illegal, but President Obama has called for the tax loophole to be sealed shut, saying everyone should “pay their fair share.”
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[mick silver]

pay their fair share.”
Record of Soros Holdings Ltd. in the Panama Papers | Graphiq (https://www.graphiq.com/wlp/gPMLkw1VrF3)

Soros, 86, is worth an estimated $25 billion. His Open Society Institute is one of ICIJ’s main funders, granting it $1.5 million last year. The Panama Papers data reveals only the tip of Soros' offshore iceberg, the Quantum Group of Funds. The ICIJ’s leader, journalist Gerard Ryle, said he had not noticed Soros’ companies in the Offshore Leaks database until FoxNews.com called the matter to his attention.
“I suspect we would have more information [on Soros] because the public database … does not contain the underlying data,” Ryle said in an email FoxNews.com.
FoxNews.com has requested access to that data.
Because it is based offshore, the Quantum Group of Funds is not normally subject to regulation by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. But in the mid-1990s, Soros Capital bought several SEC-regulated firms, an act which required it to disclose the basic design of the Quantum network of interlocking offshore companies and bank accounts that shield Soros’ billions.
Soros Capital set up an offshore company in the Cayman Islands (http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/785186/0000950123-96-001183.txt) for the purpose of investing private equity with the Carlyle Group, alongside members of Saudi Arabia’s Bin Laden family (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/26/business/bin-laden-family-liquidates-holdings-with-carlyle-group.html). Carlyle’s partners include ex-heads of state and former CIA officials (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/31/september11.usa4). The private equity partnership specializes in buying and selling weapons manufacturing and intelligence gathering companies with government and military contracts and it also uses secret offshore companies to conduct business.
Offshore Leaks does not include SEC information, but it reveals Soros Capital as a major investor and corporate officer of AIF (Indonesia) Limited. AIF combines private investments with public funding contributed by Asian governments to develop massive infrastructure projects. The database links Soros Capital to Dongya Ports Limited, owned by a tangle of offshore entities.

Record of Soros Finance Inc. in the Panama Papers | Graphiq (https://www.graphiq.com/wlp/k43W5uNBwtT)

Soros is certainly newsworthy. In 1992, the self-styled philosopher-economist nearly bankrupted the Bank of England by manipulating the price of the pound. Five years later, he exacerbated a regional economic crisis by betting against Thai and Malaysian currencies. Billions of dollars in profits from Soros’ currency-pummeling moves flowed through the Quantum Group of Funds.
Soros is the sole proprietor of Manhattan-based Soros Fund Management LLC, which controls his offshore empire. In July 2011, Soros closed the multibillion-dollar fund to all but members of his immediate family, allowing him to escape the Dodd-Frank Act mandate (http://www.thestreet.com/story/11198058/1/soros-returns-capital-avoids-dodd-frank.html) for hedge funds to disclose investors and conflicts of interest. A few months later, Soros lost the final appeal of his 2002 conviction (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/soros-loses-challenge-to-insider-trading-conviction/) by a French court for insider trading. But he remains a potent political force.
In 2014, Soros donated $381 million of Quantum Group of Funds shares to his Open Society philanthropy. The New York-based charitable foundation supports hundreds of advocacy groups, academic research and investigative journalists that align with Soros’ oft-stated goal to promote globalized capitalism and democracy.
On the other hand, the Panama Papers’ leaker, known as John Doe, said that he had exposed the vast cluster of offshore firms and bank accounts, because “income inequality” and “massive, pervasive corruption” are “the defining issues of our time.”
Soros’ offshore companies may not pay U.S. taxes (his spokesperson, Michael Vachon (https://sipa.columbia.edu/faculty/michael-vachon), declined to answer that question), but the billionaire donates lots of money to Democrats who write and enforce the tax laws. In the 2004 presidential election, he contributed $24 million to George Bush’s opponents. He is the largest donor (https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/donor_detail.php?cycle=2016&id=U0000000364&type=I&super=N&name=Soros%2C+George) to Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the presidency, plunking down $8 million, so far. He has donated “up to $1 million” to the Clinton Foundation. And Secretary of State Clinton’s emails reveal that Soros has lobbied her on behalf of his interests, which encircle the globe, mostly in the dark.

[mick silver]

Record of Soros Finance Inc. in the Panama PapersDetails
Relationships
More





Details


Status
Defaulted


Incorporation Date
December 27, 1979


Inactivation Date
August 5, 1989


Struck Off Date
March 27, 1981


Address
MR. GEORGE DE GEOFROY 5, AVENUE MIREMONT 1206 GENEVA SWITZERLAND


Country of Incorporation


https://s2.graphiq.com/sites/default/files/681/media/images/t/Panama_1059598.png
Panama (http://country-facts.findthedata.com/l/189/Panama)





Linked Countries



https://s.graphiq.com/sites/default/files/681/media/images/t/Switzerland_1059589.png
Switzerland (http://country-facts.findthedata.com/l/180/Switzerland)





Agent
Mossack Fonseca


Linked to
George De Geofroy






Relationships
<table><thead><tr><th scope="col">Name</th><th scope="col">Relationship</th><th scope="col">Name</th><th scope="col">ID</th><th scope="col">Link</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Soros Finance Inc.</td><td>has intermediary</td><td>George De Geofroy</td></tr></tbody></table>













Source: ICIJ, Panama Papers (https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/).
The Panama Papers data is current through 2015. Downloaded May 9, 2016. Showing the unaltered record from the database leaked to the ICIJ












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[mick silver]

Record of Soros Holdings Ltd. in the Panama PapersDetails
Relationships
More





Details


Status
Defaulted


Incorporation Date
December 10, 1996


Inactivation Date
July 7, 2000


Struck Off Date
April 30, 2001


Address
MANAGEMENT TRUSTEES GROUP S.A. RUE DU CONSAIL GENERAL 14 1205 GENEVE SWITZERLAND


Country of Incorporation


https://s2.graphiq.com/sites/default/files/681/media/images/t/British_Virgins_Islands_1059610.png
British Virgin Islands (http://country-facts.findthedata.com/l/202/British-Virgin-Islands)





Linked Countries



https://s.graphiq.com/sites/default/files/681/media/images/t/Switzerland_1059589.png
Switzerland (http://country-facts.findthedata.com/l/180/Switzerland)





Agent
Mossack Fonseca


Linked to
Management Trustees Group S.A.






Relationships
<table><thead><tr><th scope="col">Name</th><th scope="col">Relationship</th><th scope="col">Name</th><th scope="col">ID</th><th scope="col">Link</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Soros Holdings Ltd.</td><td>has intermediary</td><td>Management Trustees Group S.A.</td></tr></tbody></table>













Source: ICIJ, Panama Papers (https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/).
The Panama Papers data is current through 2015. Downloaded May 9, 2016. Showing the unaltered record from the database leaked to the ICIJ












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https://www.graphiq.com/wlp/gPMLkw1VrF3?utm_source=viz&utm_medium=viz.referral&utm_campaign=viz.ref&utm_viz_id=gPMLkw1VrF3&utm_pubreferrer=www.foxnews.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2F0 5%2F16%2Fpanama-papers-reveal-george-soros-deep-money-ties-to-secretive-weapons-intel-firm.html

[cheka.]

when it finally dies, the reveal will be that its wealth is a fraction of what claimed

it will be exposed as puppet

just like jp morgan was after his death

[Glass]

Chart showing the number of particular professions who use tax havens.
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2016/05/22/20160522_panam.png

Credit: Zero Hedge - story here
(http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-22/guess-what-occupation-most-frequently-cited-panama-papers)
Not sure it actually means the largest number of people involved in tax haven accounts is politicians or whether the most frequently mentioned names in the papers are politicians. May or may not be the same thing. For the sake of hating on politicians , lets assume that it is.

[cheka.]

http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2016/09/23/journalist-talks-corruption-panama-papers/

The Panama Papers implicated 12 former world leaders including those of the Ukraine, Brazil, Pakistan, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

“By our calculations, close associates to Putin shuffled around $2 billion in offshore funds,” said Hudson. “We had a subgroup of about eight to 10 journalists in Russia translating the documents of Putin and his cronies. Our teams would often communicate back and forth discussing the exact calculations; they would say ‘We think it’s $3 billion,’ then others would say ‘No, I think it’s closer to $2 billion because you may have double counted here,’ and so on.”

After describing the document acquisition process and its aftermath, Hudson explained how the papers revealed systemic corruption in the global financial system.

Even U.S. banks played a role, Hudson said, despite the U.S. government’s persistent criticism of other countries for not shutting down offshore account operations within their populations. Big banks such as J.P. Morgan were revealed to have been involved, and because laws vary across states, transactions and money movement in states like Delaware, Wyoming and Nevada particularly lacked transparency.

Hudson continued by explaining that the process of creating offshore accounts is complex.

“The money will be moved on paper, but the money is still sitting there [in that country],” said Hudson. “In the U.S., that money will often be still sitting there in a New York bank or in Miami.”

He added that the process of shuffling money can involve multiple banks for a single account or transaction — and often all the banks are from different countries.

Several people with strong interests in corruption, power and finance attended Hudson’s lecture. Among them was Mari Bastashevski, a Greenberg world fellow who uses art to explore how secrecy in states and corporations perpetuates armed conflicts.

“Investigating power and money is a very big part of my practice, so I was already very familiar with the work of ICIJ,” Bastashevski said. “While we should be careful in tying any one specific event to global and radical change, ICIJ is an extremely useful resource for researchers and practitioners across many fields, and it’s certainly one of the initiatives out there that could and should keep the world of murky corporate finance on their toes.”

Yanique Joseph ’00, who advocates for financial reform in developing countries, said she recognizes that power and money are obstacles toward economic development in places like Haiti, Puerto Rico and Brazil. She has worked with advocacy networks in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. According to Hudson, the World Bank was implicated in the Panama Papers too.

“There is a tolerance among these institutions for major corruption,” Joseph said.

She added that the head of the IMF has said that if governments do not achieve structural reform, there will be another economic crash in the next few years.

“Corruption is being enabled in countries of the Global South,” she said. “These corrupt elites are some of the same people who appeared in the Panama Papers.”

As a result of the Panama Papers, Germany and Ireland are already prosecuting citizens who facilitated offshore accounts.

[crimethink]

Car bomb kills journalist behind Panama Papers offshore tax evasion investigation 'days after she received threats to her safety'

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/car-bomb-kills-journalist-behind-11352821

[Joshua01]

Done by the guilty of course! No one with an objective brain cell can deny the relationship here take what she's written as factual. Personally I think people will forget all about this by next week.
Car bomb kills journalist behind Panama Papers offshore tax evasion investigation 'days after she received threats to her safety'

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/car-bomb-kills-journalist-behind-11352821