Mossack Fonseca

Mossack Fonseca
Formation	1977
Founder	•  Jürgen Mossack •  Ramón Fonseca
Headquarters	Panama City, Panama
Panamanian law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers data leak.

Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm and one of the world's most secretive companies, is at the centre of an international tax evasion scandal which involves the leaking of eleven million documents. Founded by Jürgen Mossack in 1977 and joined by Ramón Fonseca in 1986, the firm issued a statement saying that media reports had "misrepresented the nature of our work and its role in global financial markets."

On 5 April 2016, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told David Cameron on BBC News at Harlow in Essex:

“It is time to get tough on tax havens. Britain has a huge responsibility. Many of those tax havens are British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. As the leaked documents show, tax havens have become honey pots of international corruption, tax avoidance and evasion. They are sucking tax revenues out of our own country and many others fuelling inequality and short-changing our public services and our people.

“The Government needs to stop pussyfooting around on tax dodging. There cannot be one set of tax rules for the wealthy elite and another for the rest of us. This unfairness and abuse must stop. No more lip service. The richest must pay their way.”

Panama Papers

The Panama Papers are out and the commercially-controlled media propaganda is out right along with it. So why does this new mega-leak seemingly only expose those in the State Department crosshairs or expendable others and not a single prominent American politician or businessman? And what does this have to do with the OECD’s plan for a global taxation grid? Find out more in today’s Thought For The Day with James Corbett.

On 8 April 2016, The Guardian published an in-depth report on Mossack Fonseca, the world’s fourth biggest provider of offshore services.

Corporate media gatekeepers

Whoever leaked the Mossack Fonseca papers appears motivated by a genuine desire to expose the system that enables the ultra wealthy to hide their massive stashes, often corruptly obtained and all involved in tax avoidance, says Craig Murray. These Panamanian lawyers hide the wealth of a significant proportion of the 1%, and the massive leak of their documents ought to be a wonderful thing.

Unfortunately the leaker has made the dreadful mistake of turning to the western commercially-controlled media to publicise the results. In consequence the first major story, published today by The Guardian, is all about Vladimir Putin and a cellist on the fiddle. As it happens I believe the story and have no doubt Putin is bent. But why focus on Russia? Russian wealth is only a tiny minority of the money hidden away with the aid of Mossack Fonseca. In fact, it soon becomes obvious that the selective reporting is going to stink.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung, which received the leak, gives a detailed explanation of the methodology the corporate media used to search the files. The main search they have done is for names associated with breaking UN sanctions regimes. The Guardian reports this too and helpfully lists those countries as Zimbabwe, North Korea, Russia and Syria. The filtering of this Mossack Fonseca information by the corporate media follows a direct western governmental agenda. There is no mention at all of use of Mossack Fonseca by massive western corporations or western billionaires – the main customers. And The Guardian is quick to reassure that “much of the leaked material will remain private.”

What do you expect? The leak is being managed by the grandly but laughably named “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists”, which is funded and organised entirely by the USA’s Center for Public Integrity (CPI). Their funders include:

• Ford Foundation
• Carnegie Endowment
• Rockefeller Family Fund
• W K Kellogg Foundation
• Open Society Foundation (Soros)

among many others. Do not expect a genuine expose of western capitalism. The dirty secrets of western corporations will remain unpublished.

Expect hits at Russia, Iran and Syria and some tiny “balancing” western country like Iceland. A superannuated UK peer or two will be sacrificed – someone already with dementia.

The corporate media – The Guardian and BBC in the UK – have exclusive access to the database which you and I cannot see. They are protecting themselves from even seeing western corporations’ sensitive information by only looking at those documents which are brought up by specific searches such as UN sanctions busters. Never forget The Guardian smashed its copies of the Snowden files on the instruction of MI6.

What if they did Mossack Fonseca database searches on the owners of all the corporate media and their companies, and all the editors and senior corporate media journalists? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on all the most senior people at the BBC? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on every donor to the Center for Public Integrity and their companies?

What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on every listed company in the western stock exchanges, and on every western millionaire they could trace?

That would be much more interesting. I know Russia and China are corrupt, you don’t have to tell me that. What if you look at things that we might, here in the west, be able to rise up and do something about?

And what if you corporate lapdogs let the people see the actual data?

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
File:THE PRICE OF OFFSHORE REVISITED.pdf	paper	July 2012	James S. Henry	Study on the "offshore" private banking market.

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