Eli5: what are the Panama Papers and what did they expose?
In: Culture
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Offshore companies serve their purpose well and the rich hardly get imprisoned even if they are on trail for years.They evade justice because its easy to do.Countries like UK and Switzerland fully support this as loopholes in their laws are used to launder and hide some third world countries stolen tax-payers money.This is just a plus to their economies
Do you want to get assassinated?
The Panama Papers have some interesting revelations about where some serious sums of illegitimate money are being held. For one example, there is a multibillion dollar account from a close friend of Putin that potentially suggest funneling of Russian taxpayer funds offshore to be lavishly spent in western countries at the expense of the Russian people.
My source on that is just connecting the dots from the book Red Notice by William Browder. Some of the funds involved in the Russian tax rebate scandal that Magnitsky uncovered were linked to that account IIRC. When magnitsky act was passed, the funds that the oligarchs (those involved in gross human rights violations at least) had been funneling offshore were in jeopardy.
They exposed that the rich can keep all their cash and nothing will be done about it except that any whistleblowers will be murdered.
Here in Argentina, our president and cabinet were involved in this scandal but nothing happened.
Is there a list of people that this incriminated? I always hear “wealthy, famous, rich, politicians” but that doesn’t help me know if I need to start fighting my local politicians or trash talking a celebrity.
Let’s imagine you’re a kid living in a neighborhood with a number of other children. You and all your friends have started lemonade stands and have started to make money. At the end of the day, you take your money and put it in your piggy bank in your room, but you have to tell your parents whenever you do this, and how much you put in your piggy bank. They also tell you that you can’t take out more than $10 at a time unless you tell them what it is for, and they have to approve of the spending. Most of the other kids have to do the same. Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Your parents maybe just want to make sure that you are keeping track of your money and not spending it on bad things.
One day you hear from one of your friends that little Billy down the road doesn’t have to tell his parents when he puts money in his piggy bank. They don’t really care what he does with his money, and don’t keep track of how much he has and takes out. One day you decide that you don’t want your parents keeping track of your money, and you start keeping some, if not all, of your money in Billy’s piggy bank. You’re not even doing this for bad reasons. Maybe your trying to save up money to buy your mom a new necklace, or your dad a new golf club, and don’t want them knowing about it before hand. What a sweet kid you are.
But not all the other kids are as sweet as you. Other kids start keeping their money in Billy’s piggy bank too, but unlike you, they’re doing so because they want to start using their money for things that their parents wouldn’t approve of, and this keeps their parents from being able to keep tabs on how much money they make at their lemonade stands, and how much they spend on things.
Well, somebody snitched and now all the parents know about their kids hiding their money at Billy’s, and that many of those kids were doing so for bad reasons.
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