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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOne Number Explains the Devastating Impact of the Panama Papers on Regular People
http://www.attn.com/stories/7075/one-number-explains-impact-panama-papers?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=internalBy Alex Mierjeski
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Simply put, Heritage Oil and Gas Ltd Company (HOGL) didn't want to pay the $400 million in taxes associated with the sale of an oil field it owned in Uganda, according to a video by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which played a key role in analyzing the Panama Papers.
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As the ICIJ video notes, $400 million is a significant amount in Uganda, where one in three people live on less than $1.25 per day.
Basically, that statistic contextualizes just how impactful the actions of shell companies can be; $400 million is more than the government's annual health budget, according to the video.
That means that while the company who sought the help of Mossack Fonseca to dodge taxes, the intended recipients places like hospitals were forced to operate on shoestring budgets. The video notes that patients slept on floors and were asked to provide basic medical supplies such as sterile cotton balls or protective gloves.
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More at the link including informative video.
http://www.attn.com/stories/7075/one-number-explains-impact-panama-papers?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=internal
scottie55
(1,400 posts)None of the Heritage Oil and Gas Ltd Company execs will ever be prosecuted.
Get caught with a piece of crack, get time.
Get caught ripping off a 3rd world country for $400 million get a bonus.
Welcome to the new world order.
I was beginning to worry that people were going to get angry at the wealthy people who hide money from governments I mean the "job creators". We can't have that happen!
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Until this leak, companies and individuals thought no one would ever know they are criminal.
JEB
(4,748 posts)There are enough criminals involved in this to keep the prison industrial complex alive for another generation. People are dying because of this greed. Will anything meaningful be done to put a stop to this behavior, let alone punish the offenders?
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Corporate McPravda's job is to entertain and misinform. They want nothing to do with this story. It shines light on where the owners and operators of the Media Monopoly hide their wealth.
The Internet may be the most Democratic thing ever. It puts the First Amendment into action on a global basis.
JEB
(4,748 posts)Tax evasion used to be a serious crime. Didn't they nail Al Capone on that basis?
Octafish
(55,745 posts)We may never know all the "Who's," but exposing their "sources and methods" goes a long way to putting a stop to their criminality.
Like banking, it's almost an ENIGMA, what the rich and powerful say. It's to hide what they do.
Case in point: One Neil Mallon Pierce Bush, son of then-president George Herbert Walker Bush and caught with his hand in a billion-dollar S&L cookie jar called Silverado Savings & Loan. Here he is talking in code for the benefit of his fellow denizens living under rocks:
How the Elite Talk in Code
EXCERPT...
A perfect example of code talk comes from a true master insider, George H.W. Bush, when his son, Neil, was caught red handed in the middle of the S&L crisis as a director of Sliverado Bank.
Did Bush lay out his cards and call in his operatives and say pull some strings, get my son out of this investigation (Remember Bush was president at the time.) No. Bush is too smooth. In his published collection of letters, All The Best, George Bush, he shows us how the heat is delicately taken off Neil. On page 449, there is this letter to Thomas Ludlow Ashley.
Ashley is a Yale University grad, and member of the secret society Skull and Bones along with Bush. Here's the letter:
The Honorable Thomas Ludlow Ashley
Association of Bank Holding Companies
Washington, D.C. 20005
Dear Lud,
Thank you for your good memo December 8th.
I would appreciate any help you can give Neil. He tells me he never had any insider dealings. He got off the Board early--long before I was elected President. The Denver paper apparently ran a very nice editorial about him on that. He is an outside director, and thus I guess has liability, but I can't believe his name would appear in the paper if it was Jones not Bush. In any event, I know that the guy is totally honest. I saw him in Denver and I think he is worried about the publicity and the "shame". I tell him not to worry about that but any advice you can give as this matter unfolds would be greatly appreciated by me. If it turns out there has been some marginal call, or he has done something wrong, needless to say there will be no intervention from his dad. But, I'm quite confident this is not true...
Warm regards,
George
Notice how smooth. No talk about getting Ashley anything for taking care of the matter. The nice touch about if Neil "has done something wrong", but the clear finish, he didn't.
CONTINUED...
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2009/07/how-elite-talk-in-code.html
When it comes to money and power, it really is a small world. We'd hear it more often, if only we were privy to the conversation.
The public discovering the kinds of treason and corruptions these characters are perpetrating frightens the crooks like nothing else. I know this is Old News to you, JEB. It's also why DU and the Web matter: They're how We the People get the Truth.
roamer65
(36,747 posts)See my thread for the link on it in GD. Looks like we have full blown information war.
Let the sunshine in!
intrepidity
(7,335 posts)Aw, wonder if that applies to GW too? We could have been spared 8 years of supreme tragedy if GW had been GWJones.
Rex
(65,616 posts)Wall Streeters seem to have dropped off with the never ending Obama hatefest. No dots there, probably just my conspiratorial mind.
You think people are finally realizing they live in a militant plutocracy? That the Congress, the SCOTUS, the POTUS and the M$M are just middle management?
felix_numinous
(5,198 posts)and not crimes against humanity, ecocides or robberies, as if they are cleaner somehow.