The Panama Papers

Author: Frederik Obermaier
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1786071495
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 535

Book Description
From the winners of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting 11.5 million documents sent through encrypted channels. The secret records of 214,000 offshore companies. The largest data leak in history. In early 2015, an anonymous whistle-blower led investigative journalists Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier into the shadow economy where the super-rich hide billions of dollars in complex financial networks. Thus began the ground-breaking investigation that saw an international team of 400 journalists work in secret for a year to uncover cases involving heads of state, politicians, businessmen, big banks, the mafia, diamond miners, art dealers and celebrities. A real-life thriller, The Panama Papers is the gripping account of how the story of the century was exposed to the world.

The Laundromat

Author: Jake Bernstein
Publisher: W H Allen
ISBN: 9780753553992
Category : Corruption
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Book Description
Now a Major Motion Picture The Laundromat from Director Steven Soderbergh, starring Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, and Antonio Banderas. The two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jake Bernstein takes us inside the world revealed by the Panama Papers, illicit money, political corruption, and fraud on a global scale. A hidden circulatory system flows beneath the surface of global finance, carrying trillions of dollars from drug trafficking, tax evasion, bribery, and other illegal enterprises. This network masks the identities of the individuals who benefit, aided by bankers, lawyers, and auditors who get paid to look the other way. In The Laundromat, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Jake Bernstein explores this shadow economy and how it evolved, drawing on millions of leaked documents from the files of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca - a trove now known as the Panama Papers - as well as other journalistic and government investigations. Bernstein shows how shell companies operate, how they allow the superwealthy and celebrities to escape taxes, and how they provide cover for illicit activities on a massive scale by crime bosses and corrupt politicians across the globe. The Laundromat offers a disturbing and sobering view of how the world really works and raises critical questions about financial and legal institutions we may once have trusted.

The Panama Papers

Author: Ritu Sarin
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
ISBN: 9353056993
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
An anonymous whistle-blower and an astounding 2600 GB of data. A giant leak of 11.5 million financial and legal records. A global collaboration of over 100 news organizations working in twenty-five languages in eighty countries. More than 350 reporters on the trail for nine months in complete secrecy. The Panama Papers exposed in black and white the crime and corruption of the rich and powerful who stashed away their wealth in tax havens. This is the India story of the mega investigation. The Panama Papers shook the world, woke up governments and showed what investigative journalism could achieve even in a post-truth world through a path-breaking alliance between an individual whistle-blower and a coalition of global media. The only Indian publication in the global collaboration, the Indian Express played a crucial role. Now, for the first time, award-winning journalists Ritu Sarin, Jay Mazoomdaar and P. Vaidyanathan Iyer tell the backstory of hot leads and cold trails, of open denial and veiled intimidation. The Panama Papers underlined the loot of public money and the need for tax reforms. In an age of rising inequality, the importance of public funding to fight poverty cannot be overstated. The lack of public confidence in regulatory frameworks or political will also fuels perceptions of illegitimacy of wealth. In India, black money has gained more currency than ever as a political metaphor and future electoral gains may well depend on the perceived success of a war against illegal wealth. Financial corruption though cannot be defeated without transparency in election funding. The Panama Papers reignited a global debate on surmounting these challenges.

Vice

Author: Lou Dubose
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588366162
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 263

Book Description
The riveting, disturbing exposé of the vice president who co-opted executive control over the U.S. government and became the “shadow president” of the George W. Bush administration. Dick Cheney was the most powerful yet most unpopular vice president in U.S. history. He thrived alongside a president who had little interest in policy and limited experience in the ways of Washington. Yet Cheney’s quiet, steady rise to prominence over a span of three decades occurred largely behind the scenes. He survived the collapse of the Nixon presidency, finding a position in the administration of Gerald Ford. He was then elected to the House of Representatives, and later he earned a spot in the cabinet of the first Bush presidency. But when he became George W. Bush’s running mate, Cheney reached a new level of influence. From engineering his own selection as vice president to his support of policies allowing torture as a permissible weapon in the “war on terror,” Cheney steered America consistently rightward. In Vice, veteran reporters Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein uncover startling revelations, including • the extraordinary intimidation of CIA officials by a vice president bent on obtaining intelligence to support a foregone conclusion: the invasion of Iraq • details on Cheney’s secret energy task force, including his meeting with Enron chief Ken Lay months before Lay was indicted—and how Cheney went to court to erode the powers of Congress • how Cheney helped to kill 2003 diplomatic overtures from Iran to discuss concessions on its nuclear program and policy toward Israel • Cheney’s role in engineering multibillion-dollar military contracts in Iraq to benefit Halliburton, the company he once ran In the words of one of Cheney’s colleagues from the House: “Dick keeps his own counsel. He’s completely in control. He’s completely sure of himself in everything he does. It’s what got him to where he is today: the most powerful vice president to ever hold office. It’s also what’s bringing about his downfall.”

Disrupting Investigative Journalism

Author: Amanda Gearing
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000412040
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Book Description
This book makes the case for the enormous potential embodied in investigative journalism if reporters collaborate in the digital sphere and engage with emerging techniques and technologies. Bringing together personal narratives from investigative journalists who have successfully found, verified and published stories using social media platforms and Web based communications, Disrupting Investigative Journalism explores the risks and benefits that come from this kind of digital collaboration. Citing how digital connection has enabled reporters around the world to form the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which in turn led to such global news sensations as the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers, this book makes a practical argument for how the daily work of investigative journalism can change to capture enormous latent potential. This is a valuable text for students and scholars in the fields of investigative journalism, media and digital communication.

Money Laundering Blacklists

Author: Michele Riccardi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000531031
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 120

Book Description
What are the criteria used by Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the European Union to blacklist jurisdictions at high-risk of money laundering? What are the countries at highest risk according to Panama Papers and FinCEN files? Where do criminals move their illicit money, according to judicial and investigative evidence? This book answers these questions. It is an unprecedented study on the countries at highest risk of attracting money laundering and organised crime proceeds – and how they are identified as such by scholars, policy-makers and anti-money laundering (AML) practitioners. It targets an issue which is central to the policy debate, in the media, but is under-studied. This book is divided into two parts. Part I discusses the concept of money laundering risk, its main determinants, and carries out a review of extant country ratings, ranging from official blacklists and grey lists, to media leaks and scholarly papers. Part II discusses the weaknesses and the myths behind the current ratings and proposes a new approach to assess the risk of money laundering across countries. With a critical research perspective, empirically driven, this book aims to satisfy both scholars and students – in particular from criminology, economics, and international relations – and practitioners from banks, professional firms, and AML authorities.

Harmful Tax Competition An Emerging Global Issue

Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
ISBN: 9264162941
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 82

Book Description
Tax competition in the form of harmful tax practices can distort trade and investment patterns, erode national tax bases and shift part of the tax burden onto less mobile tax bases. The Report emphasises that governments must intensify their cooperative actions to curb harmful tax practices.

The Red Web

Author: Andrei Soldatov
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610395743
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Book Description
A Library Journal Best Book of 2015 A NPR Great Read of 2015 The Internet in Russia is either the most efficient totalitarian tool or the device by which totalitarianism will be overthrown. Perhaps both. On the eighth floor of an ordinary-looking building in an otherwise residential district of southwest Moscow, in a room occupied by the Federal Security Service (FSB), is a box the size of a VHS player marked SORM. The Russian government's front line in the battle for the future of the Internet, SORM is the world's most intrusive listening device, monitoring e-mails, Internet usage, Skype, and all social networks. But for every hacker subcontracted by the FSB to interfere with Russia's antagonists abroad -- such as those who, in a massive denial-of-service attack, overwhelmed the entire Internet in neighboring Estonia -- there is a radical or an opportunist who is using the web to chip away at the power of the state at home. Drawing from scores of interviews personally conducted with numerous prominent officials in the Ministry of Communications and web-savvy activists challenging the state, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan peel back the history of advanced surveillance systems in Russia. From research laboratories in Soviet-era labor camps, to the legalization of government monitoring of all telephone and Internet communications in the 1990s, to the present day, their incisive and alarming investigation into the Kremlin's massive online-surveillance state exposes just how easily a free global exchange can be coerced into becoming a tool of repression and geopolitical warfare. Dissidents, oligarchs, and some of the world's most dangerous hackers collide in the uniquely Russian virtual world of The Red Web.

Dirty Secrets

Author: Richard Murphy
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786631695
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 150

Book Description
What happens when the rich are allowed to hide their money in tax havens, and what we should do about it The Panama Papers were a reminder of how the superrich are allowed to hide their wealth from the rest of us. Dirty Secrets uncovers the extent of the corruption behind this crisis and shows what needs to be done in the face of this unregulated spread of rampant greed. Tax havens, we are often told, are part of the global architecture of capitalism, providing a freedom from regulation necessary to make markets work. In this book, leading authority Richard Murphy uncovers the truth behind this lie. The fact of the matter is that this increasingly popular practice threatens the foundations of democracy, sowing mistrust and creating a regime based upon opacity. As Murphy shows, how we manage our economy is a political decision, and one that can be changed. Dirty Secrets proposes ways to regulate tax havens and what the world might look like without them.

Capital Without Borders

Author: Brooke Harrington
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674743806
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Book Description
“A timely account of how the 1% holds on to their wealth...Ought to keep wealth managers awake at night.” —Wall Street Journal “Harrington advises governments seeking to address inequality to focus not only on the rich but also on the professionals who help them game the system.” —Richard Cooper, Foreign Affairs “An insight unlike any other into how wealth management works.” —Felix Martin, New Statesman “One of those rare books where you just have to stand back in awe and wonder at the author’s achievement...Harrington offers profound insights into the world of the professional people who dedicate their lives to meeting the perceived needs of the world’s ultra-wealthy.” —Times Higher Education How do the ultra-rich keep getting richer, despite taxes on income, capital gains, property, and inheritance? Capital without Borders tackles this tantalizing question through a groundbreaking multi-year investigation of the men and women who specialize in protecting the fortunes of the world’s richest people. Brooke Harrington followed the money to the eighteen most popular tax havens in the world, interviewing wealth managers to understand how they help their high-net-worth clients dodge taxes, creditors, and disgruntled heirs—all while staying just within the letter of the law. She even trained to become a wealth manager herself in her quest to penetrate the fascinating, shadowy world of the guardians of the one percent.