Juggling Dynamite

They can run but it’s getting harder to hide.  With capital deficiency and deficits the norm in most governments, pensions, not for profit organizations, institutions and foundations today, tolerance for those hiding money from taxation is in retreat.  The fact that many of those hiding these funds have gleaned said funds from taxpayer funded subsidies, government jobs and abuse of trust, makes these maneuvers all the more brazen.  Biting the hands that feed has become an international mainstay.  Let them eat cake encore…human behavior is nothing if not repetitive.

See:  Politicians should keep their money at home for further discussion. Also:  The world’s favorite new tax haven is the United States and Big Banks top users of off-shore services.

Video link: Panama leak reports world leaders’ hidden billions

More specifics in this report. Here is a direct video link.

Yesterday, more than a hundred media outlets around the world, coordinated by the Washington, DC-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, released stories on the Panama Papers, a collection of leaked documents exposing a widespread system of global tax evasion used by a host of politicians, celebrities and other elites. Hopefully this will provoke further public unrest and demand for change…

The leak includes more than 4.8 million emails, 3 million database files, and 2.1 million PDFs from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that, according to analysis of the leaked documents, appears to specialize in creating shell companies that its clients have used to hide their assets….about 2,000 times larger than the WikiLeaks state department cables,” it’s indeed the biggest leak in history.  See: How reporters pulled off the Panama Papers, the biggest leak in whistle blower history.

…Based on a trove of more than 11 million leaked files, the investigation exposes a cast of characters who use offshore companies to facilitate bribery, arms deals, tax evasion, financial fraud and drug trafficking.  Behind the email chains, invoices and documents that make up the Panama Papers are often unseen victims of wrongdoing enabled by this shadowy industry. This is their story. Here is a direct video link.

Saudi Arabia is America’s second largest source of foreign oil behind Canada. Less understood perhaps, is that Canada itself spends some $26 billion a year importing oil from other countries and some $8 billion of that comes from middle east exporters including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Algeria, Angola. Money that could be kept at home to fund life-sustaining and enriching programs instead.  More excellent reasons to end our self-destructive reliance on oil.

With undercover footage and on-the-ground reporting, FRONTLINE reveals a side of Saudi Arabia that’s rarely seen, and traces the efforts of men and women who are working to bring about change.  Here is a direct video link.