• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

The Panama Papers - Massive leak of secret documents about offshore companies

Status
Not open for further replies.
G

gabbo

Member
Monkey_Plunkett said:
For those of you wondering why no major western officials/leaders are being outed, yet.
Click to expand...

Seeing RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) come up shocked me a bit both in a 'I'm sad they're in here" and "Whoa, would not have expected a bank to be so blatantly open about it"
 
K

KernelPanic

Member
gabbo said:
Seeing RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) come up shocked me a bit both in a 'I'm sad they're in here" and "Whoa, would not have expected a bank to be so blatantly open about it"
Click to expand...

Wow I just had to do a google search to see that RBC was named in the Panama Papers. That's my bank:(
 
P

Pedrito

Member
Canadian banks have a really big presence in the Caribbeans. They're the top banks in some countries. With as much shady stuff going on in that region, it's natural that would be involved directly or indirectly.
 
G

gabbo

Member
Pedrito said:
Canadian banks have a really big presence in the Caribbeans. They're the top banks in some countries. With as much shady stuff going on in that region, it's natural that would be involved directly or indirectly.
Click to expand...

This I am aware of (RBC has a lot of employees in the Caribbean), that's why I need to read more about what's in the leak before condemning them.
 
K

KernelPanic

Member
gabbo said:
This I am aware of (RBC has a lot of employees in the Caribbean), that's why I need to read more about what's in the leak before condemning them.
Click to expand...

That's definitely true.

Still their response came off fairly defensive to me. We'd more details.
 
S

Strax

Member
Macho Madness said:
Welp
Click to expand...

Well yes and no.

The details are still unclear. He will still be the party chairman and maybe a member of parliament. The cabinet are made out of two parties and the other party has not agreed to anything.

The chairman of the other party in the cabinet (who is also the minister of finance) is also in the Panama Papers
 
D

Deleted member 126221

Unconfirmed Member
Woohoo. Can't wait for people to dig up american / canadian names. I don't think traditional medias will, but once the leak inevitably become public (a leak of a leak?), I'm sure we'll hear a lot more names.
 
O

OverBlood 3

Banned
gaboumafou said:
Woohoo. Can't wait for people to dig up american / canadian names. I don't think traditional medias will, but once the leak inevitably become public (a leak of a leak?), I'm sure we'll hear a lot more names.
Click to expand...

CfQQKXCXIAA7LRZ.jpg
 
C

chadskin

Member
On Mossack Fonseca's poor security measures:
FORBES discovered the firm ran a three-month old version of WordPress for its main site, known to contain some vulnerabilities, but more worrisome was that its portal used by customers to access sensitive data was run on a three-year-old version of Drupal, 7.23. That platform has at least 25 known vulnerabilities at the time of writing, two of which could have been used by a hacker to upload their own code to the server and start hoovering up data. Back in 2014, Drupal warned of a swathe of attacks on websites based on its code, telling users that anyone running anything below version 7.32 within seven hours of its release should have assumed they’d been hacked.

That critical vulnerability has been open for more than two-and-a-half years on Mossack Fonseca’s site. It remains a valid route for hackers to get more data from the firm and its customers. On its site, the company claims: “Your information has never been safer than with Mossack Fonseca’s secure Client Portal.” That boast now looks somewhat misguided.
Click to expand...

On how the 400 journalists were able to work together:
To make all the information accessible to more than 400 journalists, Cabra said the files were uploaded to Amazon, a lengthy process, but not as time-consuming as sorting data into searchable formats.

All the software used was open source, tweaked to suit the reporters’ needs. The search tool, allowing reporters to hunt for names like Putin or places like the British Virgin Isles, was based on Apache Solr, used by a large number of search-heavy organizations, including DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused tool. Solr was combined with Apache’s Tika, an indexing software that can parse different file types, be they PDFs or emails as in the Panama Papers, drawing out the text from the non-essential data. Layered on top was the shiny interface, built using Blacklight, another open source development.

Once built, more than 400 reporters, who would meet in person at events organized by SZ and the ICIJ throughout 2015 and 2016, only needed the link and a randomly-generated password to start rummaging around the Panama Papers for leads. Outside of security against brute force guessing of usernames and passwords, there was no other access protection, though anyone communicating with the site did so over encrypted lines using the SSL protocol, just as cryptographically-protected websites from banks to Facebook do.

To understand what they were looking at, the reporters could use integrated data visualization, running on a mix of graph database tech Neo4j with Linkurious made the job of making connections between files easier.

A separate site, a “virtual newsroom” as Cabra called it, did include an extra protection: two-factor authentication using Google Authenticator, providing an additional one-time code to enter after the password was provided. In that space, reporters could update colleagues with their latest story ideas, all delivered via a Facebook-like newsfeed, whilst using the chat feature for further collaboration. Again, the social network was constructed on open source software, Oxwall.
Click to expand...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasb...ers-amazon-encryption-epic-leak/#6968f69b1df5
 
H

Harmen

Member
I think I read somewhere that some services of varying nations want access to the full leak in order to investigate criminal activities, and I assume they will eventually get it. I honestly think a lot of big names are missing due to there probaby being more networks than just the Panama one, rather than (solely) censoring.
 
P

Pedrito

Member
There won't be any big name politicians from the US/Canada, at least directly implicated. First thing they did was CTRL-F with "Obama", "Trump", "Clinton", "Trudeau", etc. and nothing came up or else we'd know about it. If there's a link to them, it's gonna be through someone else like their brother in law or a business partner.

Also, like said above, Americans don't need to go to Panama when their american lawyer can just set something up in Delaware or Nevada.
 
RoadHazard

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Oh, how I hope every single of these fuckers is exposed. The greed is astounding. You're already rich enough to live like a king and buy anything you want for the rest of your life, but you just HAVE TO become even richer. Fuck all the rest of us who have to work our lives away, paying our fair share of taxes to contribute to society, without even making - in total lifetime earnings - what you make in a month (or last Thursday, in some cases). Why is it so important for you to have ALL THE MONEY?

Make these fuckers pay. I mean, it won't really matter, they'll still be richer than the rest of us can even dream of, but I'm sure it will piss them off. Small victories.
 
S

Steel

Banned
gaboumafou said:
Woohoo. Can't wait for people to dig up american / canadian names. I don't think traditional medias will, but once the leak inevitably become public (a leak of a leak?), I'm sure we'll hear a lot more names.
Click to expand...

Why do people think this is the end and all and be all of tax dodges that covers the entire world?
 
C

chadskin

Member
Pakistan PM announces commission to investigate Panama Papers claims
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced Tuesday the formation of a commission to investigate allegations made in the so-called Panama Papers that linked his family to a series of offshore companies.

"I have decided to set up a high level judicial commission headed by a retired judge of the Supreme Court. This commission will decide after its investigation that what is reality and how much weight these allegations should be given," Sharif said in a TV address broadcast nationwide.
Click to expand...
 
D

Dangansona

Member
gaboumafou said:
Woohoo. Can't wait for people to dig up american / canadian names. I don't think traditional medias will, but once the leak inevitably become public (a leak of a leak?), I'm sure we'll hear a lot more names.
Click to expand...

I think some will pop up, and I suspect that there are papers in this country who will release something. If not the media coalition elsewhere will get to us eventually.
 
L

Lime

Member
I just listened to a depressing radio debate that basically said that these tax havens are a necessary condition and won't ever be removed.
 
L

Linkark07

Banned
chadskin said:
On Mossack Fonseca's poor security measures:
Click to expand...

All I can say: what an idiots. Can't believe they didn't update Drupal after the Drupal Team urged everyone to update their sites.

Well, all I know is that nothing will happen here. Hell, in fact, many people are saying this is an attack towards "Panama financial system". Politicians and lawyers are the ones that invented that crap.
 
N

norinrad

Member
gaboumafou said:
Woohoo. Can't wait for people to dig up american / canadian names. I don't think traditional medias will, but once the leak inevitably become public (a leak of a leak?), I'm sure we'll hear a lot more names.
Click to expand...

They are too powerful and will probably escape this.
 
C

chadskin

Member
OCCRP with a new story as well, involving the Clinton's, among others:

How CIA spies and others used Mossack Fonseca's bag of tricks for personal and private gain
One day during his presidential re-election campaign in September 1996, Bill Clinton walked into a room in Westin Crown Center hotel in Kansas City, Mo. At stake was a quarter-million dollars in campaign fundraising. Clinton turned to his generous host, Farhad Azima, and led the guests in song.

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you….”

Azima, an Iranian-born American charter airline executive, had long donated to both Democratic and Republican administrations. He visited the Clinton White House 10 times between October 1995 and December 1996, including private afternoon coffees with the president. Years later, as Hillary Clinton stood for election to the Senate in December 1999, Azima hosted her and 40 guests for a private dinner that raised $2,500 a head.

Azima’s Democratic fundraising activities provided an interesting twist in the career of a man who has found himself in a media storm of one of America’s major political scandals, the Iran-Contra affair, during the Republican Reagan Administration.

In the mid-1980s, senior Reagan administration officials secretly arranged to sell weapons to Iran to help free seven American hostages then use the sale proceeds to fund right-wing Nicaraguan rebels known as the Contras. On a mission to Tehran in 1985, one of Azima’s Boeing 707 cargo planes delivered 23 tons of military equipment, the New York Times reported. Azima has always claimed to know nothing about the flight or even if it happened.

“I’ve had nothing to do with Iran-Contra,” Azima told ICIJ. “I was investigated by every known agency in the U.S. and they decided there was absolutely nothing there,” said Azima. “It was a wild goose chase. The law enforcement and regulators fell for it.”

Now, records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and other media partners reveal new details about one of America’s most colorful political donors. The records also disclose offshore deals made by another Iran-Contra figure, the Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi.
Click to expand...
https://www.occrp.org/en/panamapapers/spies-and-shadowy-allies/
 
U

Unknown Soldier

Member
RoadHazard said:
Oh, how I hope every single of these fuckers is exposed. The greed is astounding. You're already rich enough to live like a king and buy anything you want for the rest of your life, but you just HAVE TO become even richer. Fuck all the rest of us who have to work our lives away, paying our fair share of taxes to contribute to society, without even making - in total lifetime earnings - what you make in a month (or last Thursday, in some cases). Why is it so important for you to have ALL THE MONEY?

Make these fuckers pay. I mean, it won't really matter, they'll still be richer than the rest of us can even dream of, but I'm sure it will piss them off. Small victories.
Click to expand...

There needs to be a widespread revolt where the regular citizens of the country refuse to pay their taxes until the rich do. There's no feasible way to arrest millions of people in the country, so if 10 million people decided to protest by not paying taxes there would be actual change. It's time to burn the system down, widespread tax refusal protest by the 99% would do it.
 
C

chadskin

Member
No need to look to Panama

How the U.S. became one of the world’s biggest tax havens
The single-story brick building at 1209 North Orange St. in downtown Wilmington, Del., looks bland and innocuous. But the building, home to the Corporation Trust Company, has an intriguing claim to fame. In the last few years, it has served as the registered address for more than 250,000 businesses, giving companies around the world access to Delaware’s business-friendly laws.

During his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama criticized Caribbean tax havens. He mentioned one building in the Cayman Islands that is the registered home of more than 12,000 U.S.-based corporations, saying, “That’s either the biggest building in the world or the biggest tax scam on record.” But as the example of 1209 North Orange St. demonstrates, the same activity is going on in President Obama’s backyard.
Click to expand...
 
Dr. Zoidberg

Dr. Zoidberg

Member
Delaware has voted Democratic in the last six elections. Does that mean they will crack down on the business-friendly laws and tax-havens at some point?
 
Square2015

Square2015

Member
Saw this on Yahoo! News. From News.mic

Clinton and Obama Pushed the Trade Deal That Made the Panama Papers Scandal Possible
The Panama Papers may spell disaster for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. As it turns out, the then-Secretary of State and President Barack Obama supported the trade deal that made the whole thing possible.

The papers consist of more than 11.5 million documents from the world's fourth biggest offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in Panama, accounting for one of the largest document leaks in history. They were obtained by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung — it subsequently shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists before they made their way to major news organizations like the BBC and the Guardian — and expose the shady dealings and tax evasion of the the world's richest.


Clinton and Obama supported the U.S.-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement, which came into effect in 2012 and facilitated many of the most outraging revelations from the Panama Papers, such as offshore accounts for huge corporations and tax loopholes for America's wealthiest.

To make matters worse for Clinton, Democratic presidential rival Bernie Sanders warned against the agreement in October 2011, in an impassioned speech on the Senate floor.

"Panama is a world leader when it comes to allowing wealthy Americans and large corporations to evade U.S. taxes by stashing their cash in offshore tax havens," Sanders said of the proposed agreement. "The Panama Free Trade Agreement would make this situation much worse."

Other major politicians have been implicated, such as Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson. Although he initially said he would not leave office despite calls for his resignation, Gunnlaugsson stepped down Tuesday.

As for Clinton, some may argue the Panama Papers debacle underscores her position as the candidate of the establishment and elite, particularly in comparison to the populist Sanders
Click to expand...
 
P

Pedrito

Member
Unknown Soldier said:
There needs to be a widespread revolt where the regular citizens of the country refuse to pay their taxes until the rich do. There's no feasible way to arrest millions of people in the country, so if 10 million people decided to protest by not paying taxes there would be actual change. It's time to burn the system down, widespread tax refusal protest by the 99% would do it.
Click to expand...

Terrific plan

How do you stop employers from taking taxes on your paycheck?
How do you determine that the rich have finally paid their taxes?
What do you do when hospitals and schools start shutting down because of lack of funds?

If people were really fed up, the first step would be mass protests everywhere. If 7% of Americans (like in Iceland) were marching in the streets of Washington, maybe you'd see some results. Alas, no one protests anymore. Things are still too good.
 
R

Roland_Gunner

Member
Square2015 said:
Saw this on Yahoo! News. From News.mic

Clinton and Obama Pushed the Trade Deal That Made the Panama Papers Scandal Possible
Click to expand...

That doesn't make any sense. These documents go back to at least the mid-90's. How can a law that was passed in 2012 enable something thats been going on for 20 years?
 
C

ClosingADoor

Member
ape2man said:
:S where are you reading this? not on forbes
Click to expand...
It's right there:

FORBES discovered the firm ran a three-month old version of WordPress for its main site, known to contain some vulnerabilities, but more worrisome was that its portal used by customers to access sensitive data was run on a three-year-old version of Drupal, 7.23. That platform has at least 25 known vulnerabilities at the time of writing, two of which could have been used by a hacker to upload their own code to the server and start hoovering up data. Back in 2014, Drupal warned of a swathe of attacks on websites based on its code, telling users that anyone running anything below version 7.32 within seven hours of its release should have assumed they’d been hacked.

That critical vulnerability has been open for more than two-and-a-half years on Mossack Fonseca’s site. It remains a valid route for hackers to get more data from the firm and its customers. On its site, the company claims: “Your information has never been safer than with Mossack Fonseca’s secure Client Portal.” That boast now looks somewhat misguided.
Click to expand...

Comically sloppy business for a company involved in these kinds of matters.
 
F

Frodo

Member
One can only hope other big firms like this will be just as careless and be opened for more hacks and more leaks.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

EA is trying to drive players towards Lootboxes, leaked documents reveal
44
3K
BadBurger replied
Stolen CD Projekt data including Cyberpunk 2077 source code has reportedly leaked
Drama Game Dev 2
88
11K
Halo is Back replied
Paradise Island papers released link trump cabinet to Russian investments.
29
7K
Hashmal_Bringer_of_Order replied
  • Locked
Panama Papers: Iceland's Prime Minister Resigns
2
77
11K
Strax replied
Panama Leaks Case: The most important judicial trial in Pakistan's history
4 5 6 7 8
366
66K
Tumle replied
Top Bottom