ICIJ Damns Elite Secrecy 001

 Following information being collected
from  http://www.icij.org/offshore

 “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.”  - icij.org


¤ Worldwide Network of ‘Nominee Directors’
Helps Hide Rich Criminals Offshore ::

http://www.icij.org/offshore/faux-corporate-directors-stand-fraudsters-despots-and-spies

 A June 2012 report from the UK based
advocacy group Global Witness points
out that one of the problems is that
legal authorities in the United States,
United Kingdom and many other countries
don’t hold nominee directors responsible
for the conduct of the companies they
front.

 In addition, documents setting up
offshore companies often include clauses
that shield nominees from financial
liability if the companies get sued.

https://www.globalwitness.org/sites/default/files/library/Grave%20Secrecy%20briefing%20document.pdf

¤ Swiss Lawyers Who Help Europe’s Richest
Families Park Their Wealth Offshore ::

 Thyssen, Sachs and Rothschild are among
Switzerland’s largest law firm clients.

 Little did Zurich-based lawyer Peter
Hafter imagine how things would turn out
when he ordered a $2,700 offshore kit
to create a front company in the Cook
Islands on September 13, 1993. Twenty
years on from that day, the fax he sent,
the ensuing emails and all his business
correspondence with Portcullis TrustNet
in Rarotonga, the largest island in the
archipelago, have been copied and passed
on to journalists around the world. ...

 Peter Hafter also established 18 trusts
in the Cook Islands for Baron Elie de
Rothschild, the founder and former president
of the Rothschild Bank in Zurich, who died
in 2007. The famous lawyer declined to
comment on this case. He also declined to
explain his role in setting up companies
for art patron Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza,
wife of the German steel manufacturer
Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen.

http://www.icij.org/offshore/swiss-lawyers-who-help-europes-richest-families-park-their-wealth-offshore

¤ Dutch Banking Giants Helped Clients
Go Offshore ::

 The Dutch banks ING and ABN Amro
registered dozens of companies for
their clients in offshore refuges
with lovely beaches and low tax rates
such as the British Virgin Islands,
the Cook Islands and the Malaysian
island of Labuan, an investigation by
Dutch newspaper Trouw and the ICIJ
has found.

http://www.icij.org/offshore/dutch-banking-giants-helped-clients-go-offshore

¤ Billionaires Among Indonesian Regime
Found in Secret Offshore Documents ::

https://www.icij.org/offshore/billionaires-among-thousands-indonesians-found-secret-offshore-documents

 Owners of corporations registered in
tax havens include some linked to regime
of the late dictator, Suharto.

 Nine of Indonesia’s 11 richest families
have found shelter in tropical tax
havens, holding ownership of more than
190 offshore trusts and companies,
secret records obtained by the ICIJ show.

 The nine families, worth an estimated
$36 billion among them, are at the top
of a wealthy class that dominates
Indonesia’s politics and economy.

 Six were closely tied to the late
dictator Suharto, who helped a special
circle of Indonesians grow rich during
his 31-year rule by granting economic
fiefdoms to family and friends. ...

 Danang Wirdaus of Indonesian Corruption
Watch said that after Indonesia’s 1998
financial crisis many Indonesian tycoons
moved to Singapore and Hong Kong.

¤ Top Malaysian Politicians Use Offshore
Secrecy ::

http://www.icij.org/offshore/top-malaysian-politicians-use-offshore-secrecy-singapore

¤ Leaks Reveal Secrets of Oligarchs Who
Hide Cash in Offshore Tax Havens ::

 Millions of internal records have
leaked from Britain’s offshore financial
industry, exposing for the first time
the identities of thousands of holders
of anonymous wealth from around the world,
from presidents to plutocrats, the daughter
of a notorious dictator and a British
millionaire accused of concealing assets
from his ex-wife.

 The leak of 2,000,000 emails and other
documents, mainly from the offshore haven
of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), has
the potential to cause a seismic shock
worldwide to the booming offshore trade,
with a former chief economist at McKinsey
estimating that wealthy individuals may
have as much as $32tn (£21tn) stashed
in overseas havens.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/03/offshore-secrets-offshore-tax-haven

 The names have been unearthed in a
novel project by the Washington-based
International Consortium of Investigative
Journalists [ICIJ], in collaboration
with the Guardian and other international
media, who are jointly publishing their
research results this week.

http://www.icij.org/offshore/secret-files-expose-offshores-global-impact

¤ ICIJ’s Exploration of Offshore Secrets ::

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/04/offshore-secrets-data-emails-icij

 The ICIJ’s exploration of offshore
secrets began when a computer hard drive
packed with corporate data arrived in
the post. Gerard Ryle, ICIJ’s director,
obtained the small black box as a result
of his three-year investigation of
Australia’s Firepower scandal, a case
involving offshore havens and corporate
fraud.

 The hard drive contained more than 260
gigabytes, the equivalent of half a million
books. Its files included 2m emails, four
large databases. There were details of
more than 122,000 offshore companies or
trusts, and nearly 12,000 intermediaries
(agents or introducers).

 Unlike the smaller cache of US cables and
war logs passed in 2010 to WikiLeaks, the
offshore data was not structured or clean,
but an unsorted collation of internal memos
and instructions, official documents, emails,
large and small databases and spreadsheets,
scanned passports and accounting ledgers.

¤ Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze ::

http://www.icij.org/offshore/how-icijs-project-team-analyzed-offshore-files

• Government officials and their families
and associates in Azerbaijan, Russia,
Canada, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand,
Mongolia and other countries have embraced
the use of covert companies and bank accounts.

• The mega-rich use complex offshore
structures to own mansions, yachts, art
masterpieces and other assets, gaining
tax advantages and anonymity not available
to average people.

• Many of the world’s top’s banks –
including UBS, Clariden and Deutsche Bank
– have aggressively worked to provide
their customers with secrecy-cloaked
companies in the British Virgin Islands
and other offshore hideaways.

• A well-paid industry of accountants,
middlemen and other operatives has helped
offshore patrons shroud their identities
and business interests, providing shelter
in many cases to money laundering or other
misconduct.

• Ponzi schemers and other large-scale
fraudsters routinely use offshore havens
to pull off their shell games and move
their ill-gotten gains.
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