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 Iron_Captain wrote:
. What I do find strange however is the amount of attention given to Putin.

I agree that the focus on Putin is misdirected. I think it would be better if the Western press, and the Russian press, to be honest, asked the question: Putin is quick to defend Russia from real or perceived enemies abroad, why is he so soft on this economic threat at home? Clearly all this wealth should be brought back into the Russian governments sphere of influence, rather than being hidden in the decadent west!

 Iron_Captain wrote:
What I do find strange however is the amount of attention given to Putin. He is being given way more attention than anyone else.

Part of the upsurge is reporting about Putin stemmed from the Krelim's statement that the papers are a smear campaign, which put more attention on him. That's not a bias. That's action, reaction, reaction (one might call this a deductive interference).

Since the Icelandic PM resigned, most reporting has switched to him cause damn, the leader of a country resigning over this is big news.

You can't deny that is undue bias.

Yes I can. Here's a google search for "Panama Papers." I click the first article. Putin is mentioned once, at the beginning of the article in a single paragraph. The rest of the article is about others. At the bottom of the page there are two articles about FIFA officials, one about David Cameron, one about the Iceland PM, one about UK land deals related to the papers, one is about Putin, one is about Assad, and the last is about talk of sanctions and doesn't mention Putin. The article about Putin is two days old. All the other articles were posted today. Going even further down to "Panama Papers" there are not articles about Putin. One about Obama's response to the leak, one David Cameron, another about the FIFA guy, and one about Iceland's PM. I checked the Obama one cause why not? Putin is mentioned once at the beginning of a list of people.

I go back to the google page and click the second article from NY Times. Putin is mentioned once after a general list of current and former world leaders and right before a paragraph about Gianni Infantino. He is mentioned again when the article talks about the Kremlin's response to the papers. Related coverage does not include articles that seem to be about Putin. Skip.

I skip Wikipedia and go to the third article from BBC. Putin is mentioned twice. Once when talking about the "suspected money laundering ring" of his friends, and again talking about the Kremlin's response. At the bottom of the page there is an article specifically about Putin, alongside articles specifically about family members of Chinese leaders, David Cameron, the Iceland PM, the president of Ukraine, a FIFA ethics lawyer, the son of Pakistan's PM defending offshore holdings, and Marianna Olszewski (an American author I've never heard of before who is in the papers).

Do I need to keep going?

It is like if your friend was arrested for murder, but instead of your friend people would treat you as the murderer.

Well, if I'd been previously suspected of murder in the 90s, it wouldn't surprising.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
There are still plenty of other non-Western countries left though, India was just an example.

And this is why it's pointless. Not only did you make an absurd generalization, but it was shown false, and you're still sticking to your generalization.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
They are!

This is how claims systems work. When they're informal and subjective people you get fraud and manipulation, but you also get a lower level of actual claims. Most people aren't interested in pushing in to a legal grey area to claim a few extra bob.

When you formalise the system you remove a lot of the fraud and build a framework to properly punish the rest, but then you also make it clear to people how much they can now claim - and surprise surprise they take it. I support clearer, defined expense remuneration systems, but not as a cost savings measure, because that's not what they do.

Most of these watchdogs end up being de-fanged.

Proof of failure by prediction of future failure.

I'm not naïve enough to think the world is squeaky clean, nor am I stupid enough to think that everybody is corrupt, but track records speak for themselves and all I see is corruption and scandal swept under the carpet!

I complain about the focus on Putin, not because I'm pro-Putin ( I'm the very opposite) because we know Putin is bad.

We in the West on the other hand, are supposed to be the 'good' guys.

Sure, and I agree that Putin is an easy target, and we are better served looking inward. I'm simply arguing that any look inward is done with context and an understanding of the difference between minor corruption on the fringes, and systemic corruption like you see with the Putin's.

Its about not letting perfect be the enemy of good, yeah?

 LordofHats wrote:
They're just not places I would expect to learn people were hiding money in. When I think of tax havens I think of islands in the Carribeann, and Switzerland. Not Wyoming XD

I guess that makes it either a bad place to hide your money, or a really, really good place to hide your money.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
There are still plenty of other non-Western countries left though, India was just an example.

And this is why it's pointless. Not only did you make an absurd generalization, but it was shown false, and you're still sticking to your generalization.

This. The sound of those goalposts moving was loud enough to scare my dog.

Cameron and the Icelandic guy have been getting most of the front page coverage in the UK.

I don't see why American and European newspapers shouldn't publish about Putin, though. He's the head of the world's second superpower, etc. It makes a lot more difference to us if he's a tax cheat than some tin-pot dictator of a South American banana republic.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Cameron and the Icelandic guy have been getting most of the front page coverage in the UK.

I don't see why American and European newspapers shouldn't publish about Putin, though. He's the head of the world's second superpower, etc. It makes a lot more difference to us if he's a tax cheat than some tin-pot dictator of a South American banana republic.

It's going exactly as Craig Murray said it would.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 sebster wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
They are!

This is how claims systems work. When they're informal and subjective people you get fraud and manipulation, but you also get a lower level of actual claims. Most people aren't interested in pushing in to a legal grey area to claim a few extra bob.

When you formalise the system you remove a lot of the fraud and build a framework to properly punish the rest, but then you also make it clear to people how much they can now claim - and surprise surprise they take it. I support clearer, defined expense remuneration systems, but not as a cost savings measure, because that's not what they do.

Most of these watchdogs end up being de-fanged.

Proof of failure by prediction of future failure.

I'm not naïve enough to think the world is squeaky clean, nor am I stupid enough to think that everybody is corrupt, but track records speak for themselves and all I see is corruption and scandal swept under the carpet!

I complain about the focus on Putin, not because I'm pro-Putin ( I'm the very opposite) because we know Putin is bad.

We in the West on the other hand, are supposed to be the 'good' guys.

Sure, and I agree that Putin is an easy target, and we are better served looking inward. I'm simply arguing that any look inward is done with context and an understanding of the difference between minor corruption on the fringes, and systemic corruption like you see with the Putin's.

Its about not letting perfect be the enemy of good, yeah?

You completely overlooked the point I made about the serious fraud office having it's cases dropped due to political interference. If that isn't de-fanged, then I don't know what is.

More time has been spent debating Putin's depiction in the press in this thread than has actually been spent depicting Putin in the press. Irony.

Honestly the cool stuff won't happen until we get to may. Politicians of the world are easy targets because everyone already knows who they are, and no one needs to be told who David Cameron is and why they should care about him. The shell companies and all that though are going to get messy. They'll largely be linking to things most people in general have probably never heard of, and naming things that they won't see why they should care. The money trails will no doubt become host to a vast many conspiracy theories that will never make sense as people hunt for the guilty verdicts they really seem to want to find but aren't necessarily there.

 LordofHats wrote:
More time has been spent debating Putin's depiction in the press in this thread than has actually been spent depicting Putin in the press. Irony.

Honestly the cool stuff won't happen until we get to may. Politicians of the world are easy targets because everyone already knows who they are, and no one needs to be told who David Cameron is and why they should care about him. The shell companies and all that though are going to get messy. They'll largely be linking to things most people in general have probably never heard of, and naming things that they won't see why they should care. The money trails will no doubt become host to a vast many conspiracy theories that will never make sense as people hunt for the guilty verdicts they really seem to want to find but aren't necessarily there.

I know Putin, North Korea, and various tinpot dictators are up to no good. It's hardly as newsflash to me. They'll be telling me that grass is green next.

But Putin decision's don't have much of an effect on my life. I'm angry at the lack of coverage on things that do effect me.

For example, off-shore interests buying up thousands of houses in the UK, thus pushing up prices, thus making it harder for my friends and family to get a house. That effects me, not some modern day Tsar!

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


For example, off-shore interests buying up thousands of houses in the UK, thus pushing up prices, thus making it harder for my friends and family to get a house. That effects me, not some modern day Tsar!

I did find an article about that earlier. Linky. Honestly though this also reminds me of the US diplomatic cables leak. It was enlightening sure, but in many ways they revealed very little we didn't already know. It seems that people were already aware that lots of London property was owned by people overseas, and the reveal really is that there's much more than anyone suspected.

And I mean, none of it is illegal right? So really what is there to do but point out that 2008 was only eight years ago and already we have another real estate market inflating its prices in speculative trading

This has been fun



On page 7: The scandal of tax avoiders.

On page 27: How to avoid paying tax.









and coming out real WTF territory...

https://twitter.com/LBC

"Jeremy Corbyn says PM should come clean over family finances after Panama leak. Should Corbyn resign over this call?"

... ???

media doesn't know what to do.


... One can't help but wonder if this is, perhaps, due to the fact that so many of them -- Guardian included -- are eitehr owned by or use offshore accounts themselves.

 reds8n wrote:


On page 7: The scandal of tax avoiders.

On page 27: How to avoid paying tax.

Its almost is if home buyers pushing for their exchanges before the stamp duty increases are avoiding something...

Anyone with an ISA or other tax free savings vehicle is morally bankrupt as well.

Give to charity? declare it on your tax returns you filthy mongrels - that's money you are taking out of junior doctors pockets! Junior. Doctors.

 reds8n wrote:
This has been fun

http://www.thepoke.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/CfTsoBSW4AASLwL.jpg

On page 7: The scandal of tax avoiders.

On page 27: How to avoid paying tax.

Tax avoidance =/= tax evasion. Basically, if it works if you tell the government you're doing it, it's tax avoidance. If not, it's tax evasion. So you can avoid paying the excise taxes on cigarettes by not buying cigarettes, or you can evade the excise taxes on cigarettes by buying them on the black market.

Totally not the same thing. It irritates me when people mix these things up.

Using legal ways of reducing your tax liability is not the same as tax avoidance, which is not the same as tax evasion.

Putting money in to ISA's is not tax avoidance, nor is making sales of houses before tax changes. Those are not the same as tax avoidance, those are using tax regulations as intended. There is no problem at all with that. And not buying cigarettes is not the same thing at all.

People who put thousands of pounds in ISA's in the name of family members, with no intention of that money being for those family members, that is tax avoidance. Very difficult to prove, questionably legal and not at all what the law was intended for.

Just the same as companies:

If you are Mr Blogs the burger shop owner and pay franchise fees to McClowns Burgers, as you are a franchise owner, that is a cost of business. Perfectly legal and reduces the amount of tax you pay.

What large companies are doing is having "McClowns Burgers ltd" in the UK. They are owned by "McClowns Burgers Inc" in the US. "McClowns Burgers inc" also owns "McClowns Burgers LLC" in Liechtenstein. Because there is a better capital gains tax rate in Liechtenstein "McClowns Burgers ltd" claims that it makes zero profit in the UK because it has to pay £1million billion in franchise fees to "McClowns Burgers LLC". This reduces the tax bill from the UK rate to the Liechtenstein rate.

Is this legal? Yes, because many companies do pay these franchise fees quite legally and correctly. Is it appropriate for companies to abuse this tax rule? No. But how do you prove it? How do you put a number on the value of the use of Steve McClown, McClowns Burgers Incs happy mascot, or the use of the McClown name and the silver C logo? It is very difficult to value intellectual property, so these companies value it at whatever rate is best for them, when selling stuff to themselves.

No idea what the Express is doing, and I assume their thing on inheritance tax is all legal, but it is just amusing. Like the time one of the red tops had one of the "Peado horror" stories on the front page, right next to a picture of a 16 year old Charlotte Church with a headline along the lines of "Isn't she filling out well".

The Daily Fail, you would be hard put to make up something whackier than the stuff they already make up for themselves.

It's like a spEak You're bRanes machine embodied in the form of a legitimate newspaper of record.

I completely forgot about spEak You're bRanes. Posting its output in to the BBC Have Your Say was so much fun.

 Steve steveson wrote:


No idea what the Express is doing, and I assume their thing on inheritance tax is all legal, but it is just amusing. Like the time one of the red tops had one of the "Peado horror" stories on the front page, right next to a picture of a 16 year old Charlotte Church with a headline along the lines of "Isn't she filling out well".

They have to feed the outrage machine that is their readership.

The Daily Mail decries the exploitation of women, rants about scantily clad and skinny models whilst their website is filled with articles about how x went out of their house without make up and how y and z are going to seed (exposed via holiday snaps of them in bikinis).

I am fairly ambivalent to who avoided what and where. Our western society and sensibilities means that the richest know they can get away with literal murder. There is proper outrage but in the end change means running the risk of there being no hot running water, no food on the supermarket shelves and no reliable wi fi connection.

We cannot afford (nor will the majority abide) radical change.

 Steve steveson wrote:
Totally not the same thing. It irritates me when people mix these things up.

Using legal ways of reducing your tax liability is not the same as tax avoidance, which is not the same as tax evasion.

It was when many of the ways that are currently legal weren't - not everyone agrees with the way tax law has been loosened and undermined over the years, so why should they suddenly be OK with the results of those changes? Hell, many people think there shouldn't be any legal ways of "reducing your tax liability" at all - Joe Bloke doesn't get to "restructure" anything to avoid forking over his PAYE on every paycheque he earns, he pays the percentage he's told to pay like most people, so why should the law allow the wealthy to decide whether or not they want to pay their dues in-full?

The UK's combination of creaking ancient tax law rotten-through with Tory & KPMG-induced loopholes and legally ambiguous colonial territories is grotesque in the eyes of a lot of people who're watching their standard of living crushed and their public services eradicated -hell, even their disabled relatives dying for want of help- because it's "necessary" to reduce the deficit - telling folk they have to acknowledge some petty legal distinction(which largely exists because of the interference of tax evaders in the first place) between different forms of exactly the same thing is nonsense.

 Yodhrin wrote:

It was when many of the ways that are currently legal weren't - not everyone agrees with the way tax law has been loosened and undermined over the years, so why should they suddenly be OK with the results of those changes? Hell, many people think there shouldn't be any legal ways of "reducing your tax liability" at all - Joe Bloke doesn't get to "restructure" anything to avoid forking over his PAYE on every paycheque he earns, he pays the percentage he's told to pay like most people, so why should the law allow the wealthy to decide whether or not they want to pay their dues in-full?

I think you need to read my explanation of the difference between reducing your tax liability legally and tax avoidance. Using an ISA is reducing your tax liability legally that anyone can do. They are put in place to encourage saving. It becomes tax avoidance when Joe Bloke reaches his £15k limit for the year so decides to "loan" his parents, brother and sister £15k each to do with "whatever they want", but must be repaid with an interest rate that strangely exactly matches the ISA rate.

Then there is items like childcare vouchers or cycle to work that are taken pre tax and exempt from BIK. Those are legal ways of reducing your tax liability on PAYE. There are some gray areas that the general public take advantage of, such as selling fixtures and fittings separately to a house that is close to a stamp duty tax band. I'm afraid it is not as simple as you put it.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
There are still plenty of other non-Western countries left though, India was just an example.

And this is why it's pointless. Not only did you make an absurd generalization, but it was shown false, and you're still sticking to your generalization.

This. The sound of those goalposts moving was loud enough to scare my dog.

Not true. First of all, the generalisation is not absurd, it is a very common one and so far I have yet to see a convincing argument against it.
Secondly, the generalisation was not shown false. I gave multiple arguments to support my position, only one of which was shown false. Refuting a single argument (when multiple arguments are given) and then presenting the entire position as false is a fallacy.

 LordofHats wrote:
More time has been spent debating Putin's depiction in the press in this thread than has actually been spent depicting Putin in the press. Irony.

With the Ukraine thread being so quiet now, what else am I to do?
I am just really happy to finally have Putin come up again on Dakka. Need to earn my money, right

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Cameron and the Icelandic guy have been getting most of the front page coverage in the UK.

I don't see why American and European newspapers shouldn't publish about Putin, though. He's the head of the world's second superpower, etc. It makes a lot more difference to us if he's a tax cheat than some tin-pot dictator of a South American banana republic.

Yeah, and they should be getting the most coverage. But if you look back through the articles, Putin was the one everyone named and published about first. Then some news sites had entire articles dedicated to Putin even though his involvement (or rather, non-involvement) in this does not warrant such attention. And that was my entire point. Western media seem so obsessed with Putin that even when he doesn't do something it is front page news. Putin isn't the tax cheat, two of his friends were. A lot of media seems to have forgotten that and published as if Putin were actually on that list.

@Iron_Captain: This isn't really about tax evasion... it's really about corruption.

The political class *wants* to talk about tax evasion, because then they don’t have to talk about how corrupt said political class is.

It's a head fake here.

Does anyone want to wager that Hillary Clinton's "The Clinton Foundation" would be embroiled in this?

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Putin isn't the tax cheat, two of his friends were.

No, two of Putins friends were involved in money laundering. That is far more serious than tax issues, and is normally linked to far more serious crimes.

 whembly wrote:
Does anyone want to wager that Hillary Clinton's "The Clinton Foundation" would be embroiled in this?

No, because she's smarter than that. Like Putin, I'm sure her hidden money is buried deeper than this offshore company.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Does anyone want to wager that Hillary Clinton's "The Clinton Foundation" would be embroiled in this?

No, because she's smarter than that. Like Putin, I'm sure her hidden money is buried deeper than this offshore company.

So... wait.

Are you actually admitting that she's corrupt?

o.O

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
There are still plenty of other non-Western countries left though, India was just an example.

And this is why it's pointless. Not only did you make an absurd generalization, but it was shown false, and you're still sticking to your generalization.

This. The sound of those goalposts moving was loud enough to scare my dog.

Not true. First of all, the generalisation is not absurd, it is a very common one and so far I have yet to see a convincing argument against it.

You haven't done anything to prove it other than to say that it is so and then be proven wrong when you tried to do so. There's no argument against it that's possible to make because it is patently untrue; we even provided you with non-Western news sources to prove the point.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Secondly, the generalisation was not shown false. I gave multiple arguments to support my position, only one of which was shown false. Refuting a single argument (when multiple arguments are given) and then presenting the entire position as false is a fallacy.

This quote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Ustrello wrote:
RT's version is hilarious as it left dear leader and russia out of the names

As it should have been, because Putin is not in the papers at all. It is just a clear example of Western propaganda: Many people from across the entire world, including the prime minister of Iceland and President Poroshenko of Ukraine and many others. The list also includes two friends of Putin and suddenly the Western media is all over Putin, even though Putin is not on the list, is not responsible for and does not control the acts of his friends, and has no further link to this list at all. Meanwhile, they barely as much as mention the other people on the list.
The Western media's version is hilarious as it twists and distorts facts just to be able to take a shot at Putin. If Western media were truly independent and impartial, they would go after Poroshenko, Messi or someone else who is actually on the list. Now however they have shown themselves once more to be nothing but empty propaganda outlets, some more so than others.

was proven incorrect, as the Wicked Media of the West DID go after the Prime Minister of Iceland, Poroshenko, Messi, and a lot of others. That's you being wrong again. There's no arguments, there's just a long list of you being wrong repeatedly. You haven't proven that Western media is homogenous; you haven't even provided a definition of what "the West" IS for crying out loud!

 Iron_Captain wrote:
the generalisation is not absurd,

It's completely absurd.

Secondly, the generalisation was not shown false.

It has been shown false. People even went to the trouble of showing it was false in numerous ways even though you never provided any evidence it existed in the first place. You just proclaimed it existed and demanded people prove to you it doesn't.

I gave multiple arguments to support my position, only one of which was shown false.

Saying bias over and over and over again isn't an argument. The one and only thing you ever put up as an actual debatable position was that we wouldn't find similar reporting in non-Western news and a poster found one (and I found more on other Indian news sites) almost as fast as you made the statement. It's easy to point to China and Iran and say "they aren't reporting it this way" because they're barely reporting it at all. There's seven articles total on the entire subject on Xinhua and even they reported about the Putin connection, just without mentioning Putin (or anyone for that matter, its a bizarrely vague article). They didn't even identify the bank by anything but an abbreviation. Meanwhile there isn't a single article I can find on the English sites for Fars, and only one on Islamic Republic, which doesn't list anyone from Russia who is named in the papers and still manages to repeat the Kremlin's response to the papers (which just seems weird when they don't name any of the Russian's named). It's actually a really shoddy article that looks like it was copy pasted from some other articles I've seen and thrown together in about ten minutes And of course, this is after Iranian firms were found in the Panama Papers in violation of sanctions.

Then some news sites had entire articles dedicated to Putin even though his involvement (or rather, non-involvement) in this does not warrant such attention. And that was my entire point. Western media seem so obsessed with Putin that even when he doesn't do something it is front page news.

I gave you three articles about the Panama Papers, and Putin was mentioned no more frequently than anyone else except to report that the Krelim had offered an official response at a time when virtually everyone is offering not response at all. David Cameron actually has more articles specifically about him than Putin does at this point, and his name isn't in the papers either. He's not even on related news articles for the Guardian article I linked before anymore. Even yesterday when I spelled it out for you the PM of Iceland and David Cameron were getting more press than Putin. But please. Go on an tell us how "unfair" it is that Putin has been mentioned, and how biased the "western media" is even as the press moves on to talk about starlets, and China.

Putin isn't the tax cheat, two of his friends were. A lot of media seems to have forgotten that and published as if Putin were actually on that list.

Technically, no one has been shown to be a tax cheat save the American scam artists who've been listed in the papers (and is that really tax cheating or money laundering?). Simply having money offshore isn't illegal on its face. It's just that people assume it's illegal and look poorly on it.

 whembly wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Does anyone want to wager that Hillary Clinton's "The Clinton Foundation" would be embroiled in this?

No, because she's smarter than that. Like Putin, I'm sure her hidden money is buried deeper than this offshore company.

So... wait.

Are you actually admitting that she's corrupt?

o.O

I go by the general assumption that anyone of significant wealth and/or power has some hidden finances somewhere, or at the very least backers they wouldn't want everyone to know about. I'm not saying she is likely to be outright criminal with anything, but I would be surprised if she didn't have some wealth stashed away under-the-radar. The mention of Putin was to say that he isn't in this leak either because his hidden finances are better hidden. In Putin's case, however, I do believe those funds are likely engaged in various illegal (or at least amoral) activities.

This is very, very interesting:
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/717459700367790080
Wikileaks is claiming the US government is responsible for the Panama Papers leak so they could get at Putin. That might also explain why Americans are suspiciously absent in the leaked papers...

Seems like the US will do anything to damage Putin's reputation.

I don't think Putin's reputation needs the Americans to try and damage it. It's pretty fething low already, what with the Ukraine, Litvinenko, Pussy Riot and other such items. He did himself some good with bombing Syria, IMO.

However all this is rather off the topic, which is all of the revelations, not just a supposed smear campaign against Putin.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
This is very, very interesting:
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/717459700367790080
Wikileaks is claiming the US government is responsible for the Panama Papers leak so they could get at Putin. That might also explain why Americans are suspiciously absent in the leaked papers...

Seems like the US will do anything to damage Putin's reputation.

I was under the impression that more is coming...