Panama papers: China censors online discussion

[Anonymous]

This revelation has rattled the nerves of the standing committee of the CCP.



http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-35957235">http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-35957235

China appears to be censoring social media posts on the Panama Papers document leak which has named several members of China's elite, including President Xi Jinping's brother-in-law.

Hundreds of posts on networks such as Sina Weibo and Wechat on the topic have been deleted since Monday morning.

The leaked papers, from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, reveal how the rich have used tax havens.

They mention Deng Jiagui, who is married to Mr Xi's older sister.

An investigative report by Bloomberg News in 2012 suggested that Deng and his wife had hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate, share holdings and other assets.

There are legitimate ways of using tax havens and offshore companies, although these entities are often used to hide the true owners of assets or avoid paying tax on the money.

Panama Papers reaction - latest

Censored terms

According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the Panama Papers show that Mr Deng acquired two offshore companies in 2009, at a time when Mr Xi was rising in politics.

It is unclear what the companies were used for.

The two companies were dormant by 2012, when Mr Xi was named general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

Mr Deng did not respond to requests for comment from the ICIJ.

State media appeared to black out the news. But many on microblogging network Sina Weibo and mobile chat network Wechat were discussing the topic on Monday morning, sharing Chinese translations of details of the story, including information on Mr Deng.

A hashtag created on the topic quickly trended.

Checks by the BBC found that by the end of the day many of those posts had disappeared, with at least 481 discussions deleted from the hashtag's Weibo topic page, and other posts shared on Wechat also deleted.

The website Freeweibo.com, which actively tracks censorship on Weibo, listed "Panama" as the second-most censored term on the network. The top censored term was controversial Hong Kong movie "Ten Years".

[Anonymous]

The Panama papers are a who's who of wealthy hiding from national leaders to celebrities to sports stars. Lots of Canadian money sitting offshore and out of the reach of the Canada Revenue Agency.



http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/canadians-are-right-to-be-angry-over-the-panama-papers-leak/">http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/cana ... pers-leak/">http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/canadians-are-right-to-be-angry-over-the-panama-papers-leak/

Once the property of Mossack Fonseca, a law firm based in Panama City, and now in the hands of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and 100 media outlets around the world, the documents give an unprecedented glimpse of how the wealthy protect and hide their money. The names involved are already dazzling—soccer god Lionel Messi, filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, Jackie Chan, Ian Cameron, the father of David, the British PM. And the many friends of Vladimir Putin, with fortunes totalling US$2 billion that are always at the Russian president's disposal.



The eye-popping revelations will continue for weeks, if not months. But let's not lose sight of the 350 or so largely unknown Canadians whose shell companies have been caught up in the data dump. Ottawa's official figures say $200 billion in Canuck wealth currently sits offshore and out of reach of the Canadian Revenue Agency. The actual amount, however, appears to be much, much higher, with annual tax losses somewhere in the $6-billion to $7.8-billion range—roughly a quarter of the current federal deficit—according to an estimate obtained by the Toronto Star, a partner in the consortium.

[Anonymous]

This revelation has rattled the nerves of the standing committee of the CCP.



http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-35957235">http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-35957235

China appears to be censoring social media posts on the Panama Papers document leak which has named several members of China's elite, including President Xi Jinping's brother-in-law.

Hundreds of posts on networks such as Sina Weibo and Wechat on the topic have been deleted since Monday morning.

The leaked papers, from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, reveal how the rich have used tax havens.

They mention Deng Jiagui, who is married to Mr Xi's older sister.

An investigative report by Bloomberg News in 2012 suggested that Deng and his wife had hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate, share holdings and other assets.

There are legitimate ways of using tax havens and offshore companies, although these entities are often used to hide the true owners of assets or avoid paying tax on the money.

Panama Papers reaction - latest

Censored terms

According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the Panama Papers show that Mr Deng acquired two offshore companies in 2009, at a time when Mr Xi was rising in politics.

It is unclear what the companies were used for.

The two companies were dormant by 2012, when Mr Xi was named general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

Mr Deng did not respond to requests for comment from the ICIJ.

State media appeared to black out the news. But many on microblogging network Sina Weibo and mobile chat network Wechat were discussing the topic on Monday morning, sharing Chinese translations of details of the story, including information on Mr Deng.

A hashtag created on the topic quickly trended.

Checks by the BBC found that by the end of the day many of those posts had disappeared, with at least 481 discussions deleted from the hashtag's Weibo topic page, and other posts shared on Wechat also deleted.

The website Freeweibo.com, which actively tracks censorship on Weibo, listed "Panama" as the second-most censored term on the network. The top censored term was controversial Hong Kong movie "Ten Years".

If the economy was growing at 9% per annum, zhongnanhai would not lose a minute's sleep over this. With people losing their life's savings in the stock market and the economy slowing quickly, tolerance for this sort of thing is low among the masses.

[Anonymous]

The Panama papers are a who's who of wealthy hiding from national leaders to celebrities to sports stars. Lots of Canadian money sitting offshore and out of the reach of the Canada Revenue Agency.



http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/canadians-are-right-to-be-angry-over-the-panama-papers-leak/">http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/cana ... pers-leak/">http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/canadians-are-right-to-be-angry-over-the-panama-papers-leak/

Once the property of Mossack Fonseca, a law firm based in Panama City, and now in the hands of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and 100 media outlets around the world, the documents give an unprecedented glimpse of how the wealthy protect and hide their money. The names involved are already dazzling—soccer god Lionel Messi, filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, Jackie Chan, Ian Cameron, the father of David, the British PM. And the many friends of Vladimir Putin, with fortunes totalling US$2 billion that are always at the Russian president's disposal.



The eye-popping revelations will continue for weeks, if not months. But let's not lose sight of the 350 or so largely unknown Canadians whose shell companies have been caught up in the data dump. Ottawa's official figures say $200 billion in Canuck wealth currently sits offshore and out of reach of the Canadian Revenue Agency. The actual amount, however, appears to be much, much higher, with annual tax losses somewhere in the $6-billion to $7.8-billion range—roughly a quarter of the current federal deficit—according to an estimate obtained by the Toronto Star, a partner in the consortium.

That's an interesting list of tax cheats.

[Anonymous]

What the hell is Jackie Chan doing hiding money? He lives in Hong Kong. I think they have about the lowest taxes in the developed world.

[Anonymous]

Unless the money was earned illegally who fucking cares?



Here's an article by Kevin Libin

'When people and companies use legal means to minimize taxes, that's not

corrupt or greedy or unfair;

it's playing by the rules.'



THE PANAMA PAPERS HAVE ALL THE JUICY INGREDIENTS TO GET

JOURNALISTS IN A LATHER.



Did you just feel the earth move? Maybe you're not paying attention, because the "Panama Papers" have already been rated the biggest bombshell of the decade. A "huge news story" about international "greed and corruption" involving offshore tax havens, one Canadian media professor tweeted Monday morning. Why, this could be more earth-shaking than LuxLeaks. Perhaps you don't remember LuxLeaks, the 2014 bombshell that was supposed to blow the lid off sneaky ways the rich and powerful evade taxes. If not, don't worry. You probably won't remember the Panama Papers, soon, either.



LuxLeaks found some multinational corporations taking perfectly legal advantage of the ability to park profits in Luxembourg at lower tax rates. A year before that, in 2013, the CBC wallpapered its TV news broadcasts, radio programming and websites for days with its "Secrecy for Sale" exposé, using "an unprecedented leak of data... that involves more than 100,000 people from around the world," nearly 500 of them in Canada. The CBC named just one — Regina lawyer Tony Merchant, who would later file a libel suit against the CBC's reporting on his alleged "tax haven." But, as the CBC itself admitted, "the reality (is) that holding an offshore account is not evidence of wrongdoing and may not be controversial." Perhaps unsurprisingly, the CBC came up with no more controversies.



The number of actual scandals so far? One. And not even a particularly exciting one at that. The Icelandic prime minister allegedly used Mossack Fonseca to register a company that lost big on bonds of failed Icelandic banks, which he later helped claimants' reach a deal over. It certainly doesn't look good for Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, but it's a sign that your globe-rocking scoop is off to a weak start when its big opener is a conflict-of-interest allegation against an Icelandic parliamentarian. Even Putin appears to go unmentioned by name in any of the documents, while his network of cronies salt away billions of dollars skimmed from his corrupt state.



As for the 350 Canadians apparently mentioned in this mountain of misconduct, the details appear to promise several news cycles of disappointment. The Star (it and the CBC were the only Canadian media allowed access to the documents), says it will deliver the story of a "Canadian art maven" with a "hidden corporate network"; a Toronto-based firm "fighting to lift the corporate veil that masks the ownership" of an allegedly Nazi-looted masterpiece; and a "Dubai-based Canadian lawyer" who helps global clients shelter money. How very nonscandalous. The Star also outs several Canadians whose passport photos appear in the Mossack Fonseca files. Not one of the "exposed" is shown to have done anything dirty.



But that's the beauty of these routine exposés, which are really about convincing us the rich still aren't being soaked hard enough. Every media organization is careful to note that "much of this is perfectly legal," as the Star put it, and "offshore accounts are not in themselves illegal" as the CBC eventually mentions. But the mere idea that anyone could arrange finances using foreign holdings to minimize taxes — even when it's all totally legitimate, as will be the case in nearly all these files — is enough to justify the unseemly snooping into private affairs. "The rich play get to play by different rules than the rest of us," complain the Star's editors, in their front-page justification for their sensationalism. "That's unfair — and everyone should know about it."



No, actually. The rules are precisely the same, rich or poor. Unlawful activity is illegal no matter the income bracket. But avoiding taxes isn't just legal and available to anyone, it's often a policy goal, as governments seek to give breaks for certain behaviour, and reshape their economies into low-tax magnets for foreign investors. Canada even earns a mention in the Mossack Fonseca documents as one option for clients to shelter cash, perhaps due to the same comparatively low business taxes that have attracted multinationals, like Burger King, to relocate here using tax inversions.



"Money goes wherever it wants and ... It wants to go where there is no tax," commented Allison Christians, McGill University's chair in tax law, in response to the Panama Papers report. And it's clear that the agenda behind these routine exposés is to inspire more rules and regulations to stop that; more barriers to capital mobility. The same group is behind all of them: the Center for Public Integrity, which is driven by the conviction of its founder, journalist Charles Lewis, that our political system is corrupted by secret wealth. In kleptocracies like Russia, that is plainly true, everyone knows it, and these leaks won't change it. But in Iceland? That just seems ridiculous. In Canada, too — where the two biggest LuxLeaks gotchas involved tax avoidance by the government-owned Public Sector Pension Investment Board and government-favoured Bombardier. Wealthy people aren't the problem. Corrupt people are.



But when people and companies use legal means to minimize taxes, that's not corrupt or greedy or unfair, it's playing by the rules. If we really want to keep more cash here, it won't happen by trying to lock it up, but by keeping taxes competitive and saving everyone the cost and trouble of resorting to Panamanian lawyers and Caribbean accountants. In the meantime, whatever estate-planning methods law-abiding people are taking advantage of are entirely none of our business.

[RW]

The problem is the rules.



See people like to make money here but ship it out of Canada to avoid paying their share.  That's bullshit and shouldn't be allowed not only in Canada but any where.

[Anonymous]

The problem is the rules.



See people like to make money here but ship it out of Canada to avoid paying their share.  That's bullshit and shouldn't be allowed not only in Canada but any where.

Who would want to give any government tens of millions of dollars.

[RW]

I'm happy to pay my taxes for what I have in this country such as universal health care and education.  Why do I have to pay my taxes and others get to shell it away in Central America?  Because they're rich?  That's bullshit.

[Anonymous]

I'm happy to pay my taxes for what I have in this country such as universal health care and education.  Why do I have to pay my taxes and others get to shell it away in Central America?  Because they're rich?  That's bullshit.

They pay taxes too just like you and I. They are also very philanthropic. They have a problem with paying tens of millions and I do not fault anyone for that

[RW]

I'm happy to pay my taxes for what I have in this country such as universal health care and education.  Why do I have to pay my taxes and others get to shell it away in Central America?  Because they're rich?  That's bullshit.

They pay taxes too just like you and I. They are also very philanthropic. They have a problem with paying tens of millions and I do not fault anyone for that

I do.  I have to pay my share but they don't?



They pay tens of millions because they make a shit ton more than that.

[Anonymous]

I'm happy to pay my taxes for what I have in this country such as universal health care and education.  Why do I have to pay my taxes and others get to shell it away in Central America?  Because they're rich?  That's bullshit.

They pay taxes too just like you and I. They are also very philanthropic. They have a problem with paying tens of millions and I do not fault anyone for that

I do.  I have to pay my share but they don't?



They pay tens of millions because they make a shit ton more than that.

They do pay taxes, lots of it. Their property taxes alone are more than someone making 40 grand would pay in income taxes. Nobody should owe a government a million dollars no matter how much they earn. That is not taxation, that is the kind of fees the Hells Angels charge.

[RW]

You realize taxation is based on income right?



My dad always says he wishes he paid a million dollars in taxes.

[Anonymous]

I'm happy to pay my taxes for what I have in this country such as universal health care and education.  Why do I have to pay my taxes and others get to shell it away in Central America?  Because they're rich?  That's bullshit.

I've never objected to paying taxes.  I'm often pretty pissed at what the taxing bodies do with my money, though.



I suppose I'd be even MORE pissed if I were paying more in taxes, but as long as the tax structure is fair (i.e., not regressive) I have no problem with people who make money legally and can legally offshore it doing so.  The people in this data dump who are interesting to me are the ones who did not make the money legally or who illegally evaded paying taxes on it.



I don't like the tax code at present, because too may legislators and bureaucrats have prostituted themselves to the very rich and helped create ways for them not to pay their share.  That problem needs to be addressed, and if it is not...it is only a matter of time before the pitchforks and torches appear, the tumbrels roll in the streets, and the lampposts begin serving an additional purpose.  It's happened before and will happen again.

[RW]

I think it imbalances the system to allow one group to funnel away cash where anyone group can't.  It's unfair.