Hard News: Media Take: The Panama Papers
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On the question of Whitney's status as a lawyer / non-lawyer... was he perhaps sanctioned over protecting and facilitating a bankrupt during the Neilson affair? Maybe one of the lawyers here could clarify?
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Steve Barnes, in reply to
I get the feeling there’s a lot more to come as diligent journalists work their way through these millions of documents.
Or
I get the feeling there would be a lot more to come if we had enough diligent journalists to work their way through these millions of documents.
[fify]
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While John Key maintains that offshore trusts are used for “many legitimate purposes”, I’ve yet to hear of one. Apart from tax avoidance/evasion of course. Labour is calling for foreign trusts to be banned altogether, which seems like a fair call in the circumstances.
The SST is carrying an odd little story about another offshore Trust based in NZ. This one is called In Fiduciary and it’s based in Dunedin.
In Fiduciary’s website espouses the benefits of keeping money in trusts in New Zealand: “Advantages of using this jurisdiction are that New Zealand does not look like a ‘tax haven’ such as BVI (British Virgin Islands), Samoa, Cyprus, Jersey, etc, and that it is generally regarded as a high tax-paying country,” the In Fiduciary Services Ltd website says.
They state that NZ does not “look” like a tax haven which gives you a fair idea of the “services” being offered by the In Fiduciary Trust top offshore investors.
The NZ page of their website explains that they use “a dedicated company as trustee for each trust” and that in this country the trustee “does not have to disclose the name of the settlor and/or beneficiaries.” In other words, we help you hide your stuff.
The story gets interesting when you learn that the Republic of Macedonia is seeking to liquidate the Trust over a $1.6m unpaid debt incurred following a US investigation into money-laundering. The Trust has denied this, but the current local director of the Trust didn’t sound 100% certain.
Francken said he did not think Guardian had been involved in money laundering…
Hardly a confident response, is it. And just a thought… if fiduciary means "a legal or ethical relationship of trust", does In Fiduciary translate as a lack of trust?
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Sacha, in reply to
was he perhaps sanctioned over protecting and facilitating a bankrupt
doubt it - all standard practice, remember. :)
think he voluntarily gave up practising cert as part of transferring affairs to Antipodes from previous partnership with same chap.
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Ongoing (and not entirely inconsistent with previous occasions involving the PM), Morning Report has noted that the PM pulled out of its interview this morning, despite going ahead with interviews on TV3 (with Paul Henry) and Braakfast TV on TVNZ, despite RNZ offering to comply with the same conditions of declaring that he'd only just seen the info.
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Writing in the Listener, Ron Pol takes a look at various truths and lies spoken about the Panama Papers, New Zealand’s role as a tax haven and accessses the effectiveness of implementing the recommendations in the Shewan report.
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RNZ reports that since foreign trusts were required to file annual returns and identify their ownership, assets and beneficiaries, three quarters of the NZ-based trusts have fled the country.
Judith Collins claims it's because they couldn't be bothered filling in the "onerous" paperwork. Anyone with an ounce of commonsense will see through that line pretty quickly.
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A Maltese investigative journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, who exposed her island nation's links to offshore tax havens through the leaked Panama Papers was killed Monday when a bomb exploded in her car, Malta's Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said.
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Politico named Caruana Galizia as one of 28 Europeans who are "shaping, shaking and stirring'' Europe. She revealed that Muscat's wife, Michelle, as well as Muscat's energy minister and the government's chief-of-staff, held companies in Panama by looking into the 2016 document leak. Muscat and his wife deny they held such companies. -
Another offshore provider of "services" for the super-rich has been hacked. Bermuda-based Appleby has admitted their servers were hacked last year but decided to keep shtum... until journos from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists began asking some rather awkward questions.
Stand by for another round of crooks being exposed. I wonder how many New Zealanders are involved this time?
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