Its name: the Paradise Papers.
A 13.4 million leaked documents dubbed the Paradise Papers pertaining to offshore finance and the tax haven industry, has generated bombshell revelations about how the world’s rich and powerful invest in secret.
The papers show the Isle of Man, a 33-mile long island – a short ferry ride from Liverpool – is a place of choice for billionaires and businesses that want to avoid tax, and quite a lot else.
They have been published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) exposing the offshore banking activities of more than 120 politicians around the world.
The leak of documents from offshore law firms and registers have exposed in vivid detail the mechanics of a normally invisible and secretive industry – an industry that regards the Isle of Man as one of its global headquarters.
Manx companies have been used to transfer Kremlin-controlled state funds into Twitter and Facebook; they have obscured the financial connections between two Premier League football club owners; and they have been used to issue $1bn (£764m) of tax refunds to wealthy private jet owners, including sanctioned oligarchs from Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.
It’s an island where hundreds of “straw” men and women will, for a small fee, stand in as the nominee directors and shareholders of shell companies – a legal, if increasingly dubious way, for the real owners of companies to obscure their real identities.
Pity the island’s chief constable, Gary Roberts.
In May, he sounded the alarm in his annual report.
He described financial crime as a “genuinely strategic threat” to the future of the island.
His force has 70 investigators, about 14 of whom are allocated to financial cases.
But he says the nature and scale of investigations engaging his force is “without precedent”.
Even with his whole team focused on them, Roberts claims he could still not cover the waterfront. “If you are going to play in the big world of offshore finance,” he told reporters, “you’ve got to have the infrastructure to support it.”
Clearly, he does not.
First obtained by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, who shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
The documents were studied and analyzed by more than 380 journalists, active in 67 countries and 96 media outlets around the world, including the New York Times, Guardian, Le Monde, BBC, which L’Espresso publishes exclusively for Italy .
The island’s response to previous scandals has been to circle the wagons, but it might not be enough this time.
The island has been engulfed by a series of financial scandals.
Now, the British government is under pressure to stop rampant tax avoidance and rein in the offshore which make a rich living from the schemes that benefit the rich.
The Manx chief minister, Howard Quayle has already called in the investigators from HMRC, and promised that he would apologise if evidence of wrongdoing were found.
Since its days as an Edwardian seaside resort, the Isle of Man has sold escape: a break from the rules and restrictions of everyday life, and, more recently, escape from taxes and transparency.
Included in the leak are documents connecting U.S. Commerce Secretary and billionaire financier Wilbur Ross to a shipping company that does business with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law through a shipping venture in Russia.
Leaked documents and public filings show Ross holds a stake in a shipping company, Navigator, through a chain of offshore investments.
Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, a long-time business partner of President Donald Trump, still has investments in a shipping firm with significant ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law and a Russian oligarch under American economic sanctions — “cronies of Putin,” in one analyst’s words to The Guardian
Ross’ holdings in Navigator were disclosed at the time of his confirmation hearings in front of this Senate earlier this year but the holdings did not receive additional scrutiny.
Ross’ spokesman claimed the deal had been signed in February 2012 before Ross joined on March 31 of that year.
But a press release to the Securities and Exchange Commision on March 2 stated that Ross was already on the board, according to reporting by The Guardian.
Ross is just the latest member of Trump’s orbit to have close financial ties with Kremlin-aligned actors.
The federal government indicted and arrested Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort this past week in part for his work lobbying on behalf of the Russia-friendly president of Ukraine.
Manafort also had an intricate maze of offshore accounts where he hid money from U.S. scrutiny.
The disclosures come as inquiries intensify into Russian interference with the 2016 US election.
Congress and Robert Mueller, the special counsel, are investigating possible collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and Moscow. Ross has dismissed claims of collusion as “rumour and innuendo”.
The codename of the new international journalistic inquiry is Paradise Papers .
It is signed by the same network of Panama Papers, the secret cards of the Mossack Fonseca studio, which for the first time unveiled how the powerful of the world, including criminals, conceal their possessions in the tax and corporate paradises.
Paradise Papers reveal, among other things, business ties between Putin’s Russia and Secretary of Trump Trade; offshore operations carried out by treasurer of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau; interests in the Queen’s Cayman Islands; and accounts of more than 120 politicians around the world.
AFP | A look at the high-profile individuals and companies embroiled in the Paradise Papers leak.
These are documents that show how the offshore financial systems can handle enormous global wealth as a sort of parallel economy,by overlapping the visible world of businessmen, politicians, and actors .
Also , indicating Apple, Nike, Uber and other multinational corporations, who want to avoid paying taxes through increasingly intricate and imaginative accounting.
Appleby has not responded to the numerous requests for detailed explanations sent by the ICIJ consortium.
However, a published an online comment, merely claiming to be ‘satisfied that there is no evidence of any irregularity’.
Also adding , “We are subject to frequent regulatory controls and are committed to meeting the high standards imposed on them.”
Appleby allegedly files report their investments through offshore companies from a mega yacht and some submarines.
As the offshore wealth grew, according to Appleby’s papers, Bronfman and Kolbers attorneys rushed to the Canadian Parliament to block law proposals aimed at taxing offshore trusts.
Bronfman is a fundamental treasurer for Trudeau, who has also promised a vice versa against international tax evasion.
In September Trudeau, durring the United Nations General Assembly, said:
“We have a system that allows rich Canadians to resort to private companies to pay lower taxes than those paid by the middle class. It is not correct, we must take care of it. “
In a letter sent to Canadian Canadian partner Icij, Cbc TV, Kolber’s lawyers write that
“no transaction has been made to intentionally evade the tax.” also adding that “trusts respect applicable laws”.
REGISTERS AND MINISTERS IN PARADISE
Anantas Guoga, a Lithuanian, European Parliament and professional poker player, has a share of an offshore in Man Island, who sees, among other shareholders, a king of gambling, fined for fraud in the United States .
Some of the politicians, heard by IcIj, have responded by giving their justifications.
Sam Kutesa, a consortium partner through Uganda’s daily newspaper “The Daily Monitor”, claims that he has not done anything with the offshore: “I told Appleby to close them many years ago.”
Campos de Meirelles states that the foundation he has created will not personally benefit him and will support charitable activities for education after his death.
While Guoga declares his investment in a Man Island company has been reported to authorities and the latest shares sold in 2014.
Though the Russian government appears to have used its stakes to affect the decision making at Facebook or Twitter, the revelation comes amid growing scrutiny of how Russian agents used the social networks to influence the 2016 US election.
Parliamentarians from across Europe have criticised the British government for failing to take action against the offshore tax industry in the wake of disclosures from the Paradise Papers leak.
In an open letter more than 30 MEPs said they hoped the latest revelations would prove a tipping point that would force governments into action.
Their intervention came as the former prime minister Gordon Brown threw his weight behind calls for the G20 group of countries to crack down on the jurisdictions that allow tax to be avoided.
“First of all they have got to outlaw these tax havens, they have got to threaten to sanction them, they have got to punish them with, potentially, arrest warrants in some cases where people are breaking the law,” said Brown.
“This is not just about tax – it is symbolic of a system in which basic human needs and the future of our planet are cynically overlooked.”,