April 5, 2016
By Neil Chenowich
Paul Hogan (click here) achieved last October what a decade of Australian government investigations, dozens of criminal convictions and a global manhunt had failed – he managed to get his former Swiss financial adviser, Strachans, kicked off the island.
That's the metaphorical island of Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, which finally decided to drop Strachans as a client.
While the long-running Project Wickenby investigation into tax dodgers made Strachans infamous in Australia, it was only in 2013 when Hogan claimed in a US court that Strachans had misappropriated $33.5 million of his money that Mossack Fonseca began a major review of the Swiss firm.
Mossack Fonseca runs registry services in tax havens around the world. Strachans has been a client since 1991.The media reports of Hogan's court claims triggered a long-running internal debate at Mossack Fonseca offices, which led to new due diligence checks in 2014. These came to a head late last year....
What the Pentagon Papers reveals is that there is no way around a sovereign government. While some of the customers to (MF) Mossack Fonseca had legal reasons to seek services, it is illegal UNLESS the sovereign country passes laws to accommodate those legal reasons.
MF tried to circumvent sovereign rights to taxes and regulate commerce. In the USA the tax structure is to provide a treasury for the country and there are constitutional laws to regulate interstate and foreign exchanges in commerce.
The wealthy found a way of circumventing the authority of a sovereign government through MF even though serving in that very government. The elected government officials could not create their own governmental support for their so called legal reasons.
Then there are the funding for the global drug cartels.
...However, an unprecedented leak of almost 40 years’ worth of documents has revealed the firm’s services can also be used to facilitate massive money laundering, tax avoidance and criminal activity, including drugs and arms dealing....
...More than 500 banks, their subsidiaries and branches registered nearly 15,600 shell companies with Mossack Fonseca, analysis of the records show...British banking giant HSBC and its subsidiaries account for more than 2300 of the companies...UBS accounts for more than 1100 of the companies...Credit Suisse and 1105 companies, Societe Generale and 979 companies, Royal Bank of Canada and 378 companies and Commerzbank and 92 companies.
This is very interesting. At a time when the people of the USA are looking at unconventional candidates for leadership, this breaks out. The way the US Congress has dealt with Wall Street was to slap them on the hand and state don't do that again. This campaign by Paul Hogan reflects the people movement in the USA. Average citizens believes the Congress is basically corrupt for these very reasons. The American electorate is taking a very hard look at their leadership because of the lack of a living wage, the break down of the middle class and labor unions and the corrupt nature of international trade agreements.
ANZ appears in 7548 of the Mossack documents, reflecting the bank's extensive work in New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Samoa and Jersey. And intimidation by program participants. A financial representative for BHP Billiton threatened to fire Mossack Fonseca if it went ahead with a due diligence investigation.The leaked documents include 2.6 terabytes of information from 214,488 companies, trusts and foundations and 14,153 intermediaries such as lawyers and tax advisors who directed their clients to use Mossack Fonseca’s services.
This is going to change political paradigms.
Employees of Mossack Fonseca destroyed and hid documents to mask the law firm’s involvement in Brazil's bribery and money laundering investigation, dubbed “Operation Car Wash”. (What is Operation Car Wash? click here) So far the scandal has led to criminal charges against leading politicians and an investigation of popular former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
It will also spawn international investigations, if it hasn't already.
UK prime minister David Cameron’s (right) stockbroker father was a Mossack Fonseca client who used the law firm to shield his investment fund from UK taxes
Links between Nevada and Panama?
Mossack Fonseca employees worked in late 2014 to remove paper documents from its Nevada branch and delete computer traces of the link between the Nevada and the Panama operations, ahead of a US court order that it turn over information on 123 companies that Argentine prosecutors had linked to a corruption scandal involving an associate of former presidents Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
Client Lists (click here)
Ayad Allawi, a former Ba'athist, Allawi helped found the Iraqi National Accord, which today is an active political party. In the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the INA provided intelligence about alleged weapons of mass destruction to MI6. Allawi has lived about half of his life in the UK. His wife and children still live in Britain for their security. He survived assassination attempts in 1978, in 2004, and on April 20, 2005.
One my ask why there were no records concerning the $88 or so billions of US CASH DOLLARS sent to Iraq on a military transport?
61 associates of current or former heads of state
128 current and former politicians and public officials
29 Forbes listed billionaires
Michael Anthony Ashcroft, former member of UK House of Lords, as found to be producing illegal passports out of Belize. He has caused the Belizean government alot of problems, including, paying a sovereign debt established while Ashcroft had power before Belize became an independent country and not a colony of Great Britain.
Alaa Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, son of former president of Egypt Hosni Mubarak, was about to be elected to the presidency of Egypt when the revolution occured that ousted then president Hosni Mubarak.
There are a significant number of middle east Arabs mentioned. Most, if not all, are subjects of a Kingdom and a King. It isn't the same as a democracy with laws regarding the behavior of it's citizens. That would be different if there were illegal contacts within a western democracy and the middle east kingdom citizens.
France Patrick Henri Devillers, business partner of Gu Kailai, the wife of former high-flying Chinese politician Bo Xilai
There was quite a scandal surrounding Bo Xilai and his spouse. Now, China is a communist country, but, there is a governance with laws and punishment. The western media was doing it's level best to attempt to elect Bo Xilal to office at the time and to remove any criminal proceedings about the couple.
11 November 2016
Bo Xilai, the former Communist Party chief (click here) in Chongqing, was once seen as a high-flyer tipped for top office. But he has been expelled from the Communist Party, parliament and is to face prosecution. His wife was given a suspended death sentence for the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood last year. The BBC looks at how China's biggest political scandal in years unfolded...
