the international consortium of investigative journalist (ICIJ) received 260 gigs of data from off-shore banks. i can't figure out why this isn't bigger news in the US.ICIJ estimates that 1/3 of all of the Earth's financial resources are in these illegal holdings. They suggest that the amount of money in these holdings equal the US and Japanese budgets. Just imagine what that money could do if it was applied to the common good??
“I’ve never seen anything like this. This secret world has finally been revealed,” said Arthur Cockfield, a law professor and tax expert at Queen’s University in Canada, who reviewed some of the documents during an interview with the CBC. He said the documents remind him of the scene in the movie classic The Wizard of Oz in which “they pull back the curtain and you see the wizard operating this secret machine.”
"To analyze the documents, ICIJ collaborated with reporters from The Guardian and the BBC in the U.K., Le Monde in France, Süddeutsche Zeitung and
Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Germany, The Washington Post, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and 31 other media partners around the world. Eighty-six journalists from 46 countries used high-tech data crunching and shoe-leather reporting to sift through emails, account ledgers and other files covering nearly 30 years."
From ICIJ:
"A cache of 2.5 million files has cracked open the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts, exposing hidden dealings of politicians, con men and the mega-rich the world over.
They include American doctors and dentists and middle-class Greek villagers as well as families and associates of long-time despots, Wall Street swindlers, Eastern European and Indonesian billionaires, Russian corporate executives, international arms dealers and a sham-director-fronted company that the European Union has labeled as a cog in Iran’s nuclear-development program.
The leaked files provide facts and figures — cash transfers, incorporation dates, links between companies and individuals — that illustrate how offshore financial secrecy has spread aggressively around the globe, allowing the wealthy and the well-connected to dodge taxes and fueling corruption and economic woes in rich and poor nations alike."
Key Links:
- The ICIJ's introduction to the exposé can be found here: Secret Files Expose Offshore’s Global Impact
- How ICIJ’s Project Team Analyzed the Offshore Files
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| At a Bangkok airport, Thai police officers and soldiers found 30 tonnes of war weaponry in a cargo plane on its journey from North Korea to Iran. Photo: AP |
Big early discoveries:
Inside the shell: Drugs, arms and tax scams
Offshore Documents Solve Mystery of Pre-Civil War Helicopter Deal in Congo
Mugabe 'Crony' Among Thai Names in Secret Offshore Files
"To analyze the documents, ICIJ collaborated with reporters from The Guardian and the BBC in the U.K., Le Monde in France, Süddeutsche Zeitung and
Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Germany, The Washington Post, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and 31 other media partners around the world. Eighty-six journalists from 46 countries used high-tech data crunching and shoe-leather reporting to sift through emails, account ledgers and other files covering nearly 30 years."
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