Here are the U.S. and international fraudsters in the new Panama Papers release – Fusion https://t.co/Zes3QfmJCV #FATCA #GATCA
— Prof H Perryman CGMA (@haydonperryman) May 9, 2016
Today, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) released names of people connected to offshore accounts managed by Mossack Fonseca, the firm in question regarding the “Panama Papers.” From the moment I heard about this, I felt there was a strong possibility we could turn this bombshell to our advantage by emphasizing three facts:
- We have legitimate accounts in the countries we live in regardless of whether the US considers them “foreign”
- We are strong contrasts (i.e., tax compliant/law abiding as demonstrated in our countries of residence) to those named in this debacle
- Unlike those linked to Mossack Fonseca and specific criminal activity, there is nothing whatsoever to suggest those with US taint, living in their (“foreign”) country of residence, have done anything wrong
No big thoughts here or grand revelations. Just three simple distinctions to be made and repeated over and over, until those who are so thick they cannot see past a cliché finally wake up. Doesn’t matter whether they are dishonest politicians/civil servants or your not-so-favourite Auntie in the States. They all are wrong, period. Maybe we just haven’t “come into our time yet” – i.e., we get it and have been fighting it but the rest of the world is just now catching up to us. We must keep this up. Part of the “given” in “what’s right always wins” is staying the course until “the wind blows your way.”
Prof. Haydon Perryman outlines of few of these folks here.
- LEONARD GOTSHALK, an ex-NFL player with a history of making borrowed money disappear
- MARTIN FRANKEL, an American fraudster reportedly caught abroad with 547 diamonds and nine fake passports
- JOHN KNIGHT, an aspiring arms dealer who once negotiated with the genocidal Sudanese regime
- MARY PATTEN, a Florida-based individual played a “crucial role” in an investment scam
- SEMION MOGILEVICH, who earned a place on the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted involved in weapons trafficking, contract murders, extortion, drug trafficking, and prostitution on an international scale
- MARLLORY DADIANA CHACON ROSSELL, one of the most prolific narcotics traffickers in Central America
- ROBERT MIRACLE, architect of an alleged Ponzi scheme, telling his investors he’d worked at NASA and Disney, and that his companies were producing oil and gas in Indonesia
- ‘THE DUTCHMAN’, target of a drug bust in Rotterdam, where Dutch authorities discovered more than 1.5 tons of cocaine smuggled in a shipment of asparagus
I mean, I recognize Brockers, Sandboxers, Homelanders Abroad and all other sorts of expat behaviour in the descriptions of the above. NOT.
After reading the charming resumes of these people, I then came across these tweets:
Ensure to have a legal practitioner around or on your behalf for the #FBARfiling process. https://t.co/pKz6qetHTV pic.twitter.com/Fg6w4dNBGU
— FBAR Filing (@FBAR_Filling) May 9, 2016
Ridiculous. Anybody can look at a statement & find the highest amount on an acct. No one needs a lawyer for this. https://t.co/H2fhe0KY7i
— Homelander NOT (@Homelander_NOT) May 9, 2016
Seriously, here is a condor (sorry, this applies here) scaring people into thinking they cannot find the highest amount in an account and put it on a piece of paper. They need a LAWYER standing by, to ensure their safety. &*)$&F%VB!!! My accountant told me at the very beginning, that she did not do FUBARs. I asked her if it was due to concerns of liability. She said “No, it just didn’t make any sense for anyone to pay her $125 an hour to do what anyone with common sense and Grade 5 Math could do on their own.” Glad to see somebody calling out this vulture……….
And then our friend Elizabeth Thompson , at iPolitics, keeps the pressure on, so-to-speak, by reporting Minister Goodale’s statement “that the RCMP and other Canadian police forces (possibly even CSIS) will be poring over the Panama Papers data released Monday, searching for possible connections to criminal activity.”
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale during QP today:
“Now that it is in the public domain it will be possible for all the appropriate authorities, including the revenue agency and the RCMP, potentially other police forces to take a look at it and determine whether or not it reveals behaviour that ought to be further investigated.”
The database became available around 2 pm today, just in time for Question Period. There were questions and a call for an investigation into the deal between the CRA (that more reasonable “protector” of Canadian citizens’ personal financial information, thus the IGA) and KPMG, condor firm extraordinaire, who set up offshore accounts in the well-known tax haven of the Isle of Man so tax cheats could avoid declaring income.
Our friend NDP MP Peter Julian during QP today:
“The reality is, Canadians are implicated in the Panama papers , including the former boss of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage,” said .
“The government’s words are empty unless it is willing to actually charge people guilty of tax evasion and those aiding and abetting these tax cheats. With the release today of many more names from the largest offshore tax avoidance scandal in history, why is the government still refusing to launch an investigation into the KPMG tax scandal?”
It seems to me, that we need to keep the pressure up the same as Elizabeth Thompson, Peter Julian etc, are doing. Three simple facts. Over and over and over again. Keep at the letter writing. Keep trying to find the witnesses. Keep calling out the idiots on the articles. Keep calling out condors. Keep reaching out whereever it makes sense. Maybe somebody powerful will come along right when we need it……….
until those who are so thick they cannot see past a cliché finally wake up. Doesn’t matter whether they are dishonest politicians/civil servants…
I personally would like to see said dishonest politicians/civil servants…HUNG for treason.
“U.S. and international fraudsters in the new Panama Papers release”
Someone’s getting their countries confused. That should be Panamanian and international fraudsters.
But are they all fraudsters? Isn’t it a bit like calling us all tax evaders and terrorists?
@Norman,
That is not correct. No one is getting their countries confused. If you closely look at the brief descriptions, at least four are clearly American. And if you click on the link to Haydon’s article, you can read further about these people and see Americans are definitely involved.
I dont believe it is, given the fact these people have histories; none of what is written is a description based upon an initial observation.
‘I asked her if it was due to concerns of liability. She said “No, it just didn’t make any sense for anyone to pay her $125 an hour to do what anyone with common sense and Grade 5 Math could do on their own.”’
What’s the highest value in an investment account if a share’s highest price during the day took place at a different time of day from the Canadian dollar’s highest value in US cents? Both can fluctuate by more than 1% within a day, on occasion.
Don’t tell anyone, but there were times when I marked a checkbox for I think “$50,000 to $500,000” and wrote a note “Not sure if the maximum value might have been less than $50,000.” (I think those were the numbers. It’s been a while; the form was still on paper in those days.)
“No one is getting their countries confused.”
THE PANAMA PAPERS. Anyone not Panamanian is international.
@Norman,
My sense is that you are making that 1% more complicated than it is. Anyone who would be concerned would clearly opt for the higher value to be on the safe side.
I don’t follow you here about a checkbox for the highest value. I only remember a blank box which asked for a specific figure. I am thinking of FBAR, maybe you mean something else?
That is splitting hairs. What’s the problem with calling an American an American?
Thanks Trisha. Sometimes it all seems so futile but doing nothing is futile too. We just got to keep picking away.
‘Don’t tell anyone, but there were times when I marked a checkbox for I think “$50,000 to $500,000″ and wrote a note “Not sure if the maximum value might have been less than $50,000.” (I think those were the numbers. It’s been a while; the form was still on paper in those days.)’
“Anyone who would be concerned would clearly opt for the higher value to be on the safe side.”
Didn’t I say that’s what I did.
“I only remember a blank box which asked for a specific figure.”
It used to be checkboxes: https://web.archive.org/web/20080916040020/http://fincen.gov/forms/files/f9022-1_fbar.pdf
“What’s the problem with calling an American an American?”
None. But in the Panama papers, so the “and international” part already includes Americans, and the part before “and international” should be Panamanians.
@ Norman Diamond and Tricia
It was when the FBAR form changed from check a range to specific amount (2008) that I was concerned enough to phone my Canadian MP’s office (the assistant could hardly believe such a thing existed and was very sympathetic). I also tried to phone the IRS (no help there, ended up being passed on down the line to a warehouse fellow). Something seemed oh so very wrong and creepy about this change but I felt like I was the only one in the whole world who noticed or cared. I didn’t know there were such creatures as cross-border tax specialists and chances are even if I had found one he would have been badly versed in the vagaries of FBARs anyway.
“I didn’t know there were such creatures as cross-border tax specialists and chances are even if I had found one he would have been badly versed in the vagaries of FBARs anyway.”
Especially since it’s not a tax form ^_^
@ Norman Diamond
I admit it was bound to be futile asking the IRS about FBAR but that was the only phone number I had. I can’t remember if some of the 5 or so pass alongs I got took me to the Treasury Dept. or not. I just remember the guy at the warehouse was the most sympathetic, even though he couldn’t answer my questions.
All this writing, lawyering and anguish is un necessary if we as a country would get on the Trump Train and ask him to get the FairTax passed his first 100 days in the presidency. He doesn’t know anything about the FairTax, but would get on The FairTax Train if invited in the proper way.
@Wilton Jere Tidwell, I just wanted to say thank you for hanging around IBS. You are indeed a patriotic American and represent the distant memories I once had. If you knew my history, you would likely hate me and want to slap my face.
Most Brockers have either renounced/relinquished w/CLN, relinquished without a CLN, or walked away from what has become a 21st Century plantation house. As a result, we do not have skin in the election and some like me do not like telling others to vote in a foreign election….unlike certain americans who are telling the British what to do or not to do next month.
Regardless, thank you for listening to our plight.
“The government’s words are empty unless it is willing to actually charge people guilty of tax evasion and those aiding and abetting these tax cheats. With the release today of many more names from the largest offshore tax avoidance scandal in history, why is the government still refusing to launch an investigation into the KPMG tax scandal?”
This is really scary. Tax avoidance is not a crime, thus does not require an investigation nor is it a scandal. Tax evasion is a crime.
An MP not knowing the difference and it being reported as the same means that in the public’s mind it is the same.
Innocent people are going to be put through the wringer over non illegal activity. A government, press and public that does not understand the differences between these two activities can not be trusted to care about the differences between these and ours.
@Japan T,
Interestingly, the Japanese news programs have been very clear in pointing this out, that there is nothing illegal with avoidance, only with evasion. All while interviewing those Japanese business leaders who have shown up in the papers (who of course all assert no tax was evaded).
Will be interesting to see if this mindfulness persists in the reporting here.
@Trish
Not all of the U.S. citizens caught up in the Panama papers were fraudsters. Reportedly, some clients were retirees who just used the company to open up trusts to buy retirement homes abroad (since many countries have laws against foreign individuals owning property). What makes me perhaps less optimistic is that there has been hardly any mention of this in the U.S.-based press as far as I can tell.
A lawyer who suggests that an FBAR is something that requires their extremely expensive expertise isn’t a condor, they are a b*stard, but which I mean bustard, of course.
It will indeed. I have not been able to see what the Japanese news has been saying on it. I have read a few headlines and nothing more.
Personally, not speaking about Japan but in general, I think it is going to lead or help lead to even more suspician and greater difficulties for those who live outside the nation of their citizenship. Especially from their fellow citizens back in the homeland.
And of course for those still living in the homeland but are not breaking any laws by having money overseas.
2015 Posts the Deepest Decline in Offshore Investments in 10 years!
“The first three quarters of 2015 showed a rise in investment flows to so-called special purpose entities in low-tax jurisdictions, which have little connection to local economies and are often used by international businesses to raise capital, according to this new data from UNCTAD. This could be due to shifting investments to avoid the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) obligation, by re-domicile foreign trusts and entities to countries that do not participate in CRS?”
https://www.taxconnections.com/taxblog/2015-posts-the-deepest-decline-in-offshore-investments-in-10-years
@Publius
Thanks. I am not 100% sure but don’t think I have actually accused all of those named in the Panama Papers as being fraudsters. (The tweet at the top of this post is not mine). Those referred to by name certainly seem to have enough history to suggest they are.
I agree with you totally about the bustard. Really disgusting……..