Data breach is busting heads of states running a world of international crime

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Panama, Bahamas, USA, Anguilla, U.K.

Panama, Bahamas, USA, Anguilla, U.K. Iceland, Seychelles, Syria, Costa Rica, Belize, Hong Kong, Samoa, Niue, Singapore, New Zealand, Uruguay, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Malta, Cyprus, and Switzerland are only some of the countries mentioned in the biggest database breach ever, opening up the flood gates to bust heads of states and other high-level officials from some of these countries of running the world’s largest criminal enterprise. Revealed today were the Panama Papers: With 11.5 million emails, documents, contracts, invoices and bank statements, it is the biggest data breach ever.

It reveals global capital transfers and secret deals of condemning criminals and persons who prosecutors accused of serious crimes – including war crimes, drug trafficking, sanctions fracture, the trafficking of children.

The Panama papers also show how heads of state as well as authoritarian rulers and their families build and use secret asset structures without anyone this seriously controlling it.

This was revealed this morning by numerous Swiss and German newspapers including the Zurich Tagesanzeiger, Sueddeutsche Zeitung in Germany and others.

The reports stated:

In many cases, any explanation of the origin of the displaced asset is missing .A good part of the Panama papers is supervised from Switzerland , from local trustees and banks .

The World Bank and the UN a few years ago investigated 213 corruption cases . Involved: 56.4 billion US dollars of dirty money.

The data leakage from Panama shows the previously hidden operation of 214,000 offshore companies , trusts and foundations in 21 tax havens , of the British Virgin Islands to the island of Niue in the vastness of the Pacific.

The paper show who started such companies, who is involved and who did or is doing business with them.

It involves:
Five current heads of state and seven former heads of state, including the current PM of Iceland.
It further included 61 family members and close friends of current or former heads of state, including from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan
Included 100 ministers, high level officials, cereals, heads of intelligence, high court judges and officials related to international sports.
Fuel for Syria Army

Shell companies used in many cases to keep wealth discreet and move . They are not illegal and just Swiss asset managers who run the business wholesale, always emphasize , such vehicles were mainly the protection of legitimate customers and their legitimate assets . In fact, these companies are routinely used for everyday legitimate businesses .

But with the Panama papers independent journalists had the first time the possibility for months to analyze thousands of such companies . The balance sheet is sobering. It turns out that not only normal wealthy people used offshore companies , but also completely different clientele .

Rami Mahklouf , cousin of Syrian dictator Basher al – Assad , for example, relied in its dealings on the anonymity of shell companies . T

hanks to them, the financier of the torture regime was still in business , as long civilians were killed by the army of his cousin and he was already on the sanctions lists . We even find an offshore company that apparently provided fuel for aircraft with which the Syrian government bombed their country .

These are not isolated cases . The offshore clients also include :

The ex- Prime Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Lazarenko was sentenced to prison for money laundering , extortion and fraud .
A governor from Nigeria , sentenced to 13 years in prison . He was accused of a quarter of a billion dollars to have embezzled .
The son of the Malaysian Prime Minister . He is in the crosshairs of federal prosecutors in the corruption affair 1MDB , which is concerned about the misappropriation of 4 billion dollars.

Even ” ordinary ” criminals parked their money via offshore companies . Drug lords , mafia sizes and sanction breakers sought the protection of anonymity .

A US entrepreneur sentenced to eight years in prison for sex with children : He worked according to investigators with a child prostitution ring in St. Petersburg , organizing tourists trips for criminals wanting to meet 13 year old children.

The entrepreneur led while he was in prison undisturbed a letterbox company in the British Virgin Islands – with an address in Switzerland/

But what are these data ? Origin of the leaks is the large firm Mossack Fonseca , short MF , from Panama .

The company opened man box companies since since the 70s like on an assembly line and sells them to customers worldwide .

MF said that their firm had been strictly regulated and never charged in their 40 – year anniversary of a criminal offense .

MF regret any abuse of their services and fight such whenever possible . Last Friday informed MF informed customers about the data leak.

A large part of the data set of MF landed at the German newspaper: โ€ Sรผddeutsche Zeitung ” .

The oldest documents date back to the 70s , the latest are only a few weeks old .

The ” Sรผddeutsche Zeitung ” received the data in electronic form from an anonymous source after the paper reported aboutletterbox companies in Luxembourg .

That the material is genuine, showed not only the research of more than 370 journalists and the confrontation of dozens of victims. Already two years ago, a whistleblower German authorities had sold internal MF data .

As a result, investigators searche the homes and offices of about 100 people .

Then Commerzbank , HSH Nordbank and HypoVereinsbank in Germany were ordered to pay millions in fine because of their dealings with MF.

Meanwhile , other countries have acquired data , such as the United States, Great Britain and Iceland .

About the author

Avatar of Juergen T Steinmetz

Juergen T Steinmetz

Juergen Thomas Steinmetz has continuously worked in the travel and tourism industry since he was a teenager in Germany (1977).
He founded eTurboNews in 1999 as the first online newsletter for the global travel tourism industry.

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