Panama Papers Reveal How Wealthy Americans Hid Millions Overseas

[Judi Lynn]

Source: New York Times

Panama Papers Reveal How Wealthy Americans Hid Millions Overseas

By ERIC LIPTON and JULIE CRESWELL
JUNE 5, 2016

Over the years, William R. Ponsoldt had earned tens of millions of dollars building a string of successful companies. He had renovated apartment buildings in the New York City area. Bred Arabian horses. Run a yacht club in the Bahamas, a rock quarry in Michigan, an auto-parts company in Canada, even a multibillion-dollar hedge fund.

Now, as he neared retirement, Mr. Ponsoldt, of Jensen Beach, Fla., had a special request for Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm well placed in the world of offshore finance: How could he confidentially shift his money into overseas bank accounts and use them to buy real estate and move funds to his children?

“He is the manager of one of the richest hedge funds in the world,” a lawyer at Mossack Fonseca wrote when the firm was introduced to Mr. Ponsoldt in 2004. “Primary objective is to maintain the utmost confidentiality and ideally to open bank accounts without disclosing his name as a private person.”

. . .

Thus began a relationship that would last at least through 2015 as Mossack Fonseca managed eight shell companies and a foundation on the family’s behalf, moving at least $134 million through seven banks in six countries — little of which could be traced directly to Mr. Ponsoldt or his children.


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/06/us/panama-papers.html?_r=0

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[center]

William R. Ponsoldt
in 1986.



William Raymond Ponsold, Jr. [/center]

[Sunlei]

1. Us little people can't even open a savings account in another country that gives it's 'little

people' 3% interest

[Plucketeer]

2. What an upstanding American!

Folks like this run in the same circles as other millionaires and billionaires. Luckily for us, there's people of influence who want to redistribute these ill-gotten gains to good ends for the general populace. Of course, on the flip side, there's those who LOVE wads of cash and the power such affords them.

[tenderfoot]

3. How Patriotic!

[Major Hogwash]

4. How much money from the Clinton Foundation found its way into foreign banks?

I guess we'll never know, huh?

[Darb]

5. Pretty ridiculous post when you think about it, but..........

bernies.

[Major Hogwash]

7. Where do you think the FBI thinks the money is stashed, Darb?

We'll soon find out, huh.

[Darb]

8. What "money"?

Have the bernies invented some money that has gone missing?

[Babel_17]

6. Who's up to sealing with this?

Thank god for these leaks.

[karynnj]

9. Rainbow in this ugly rain cloud is that it is very clear that the US has succeeded in making

tax evasion harder by demanding more transparency from banks. The US effort was alluded to at the anticorruption conference in London last month, but this is one of the clearest articles - not quoting the government to say that some gains have been made.

Jack Blum, quoted in the article, was also Kerry's lead investigator on BCCI and he spoke to the Senate Finance committee on offshore tax evasion in July 2007.

I hope the IRS is able to go after the disgusting Ponsolts and other people profiled in this article. It is disgusting with anyone at the level of wealth that would make these schemes lucrative would not reject them knowing that they rob their own communities. So, I hope that this exposure will cause them real embarrassment.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Rich People Can Be Dumb Mouth-Breathing Fox News Morans, Too

Rich People Can Be Dumb Mouth-Breathing Fox News Morans, Too

By Doktor Zoom -
June 6, 2016 - 1:10pm


The New York Times did a great big serious drill-down Sunday on how the international money-launderers at the Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca helped hide rich people’s money from all over the world — the great big hidden assets scandal revealed by the “Panama Papers” investigation. The story itself is pretty interesting, what with all its revelations of financial skullduggery by the well-connected. You should read it! But an Alert Wonkette Operative tipped us to a small, especially poignant part of the story: the sad fact that wingnutty paranoia isn’t only for stereotypical red-state yokels. It can also be the province of those you might think are far less provincial.

The article looks at how Mossack Fonseca hid assets for several ridiculously rich American investors to avoid taxes and U.S. financial disclosure regulations. Among these fat cats was William R. Ponsoldt of Florida, an entrepreneur who had run any number of successful businesses and, before retiring, wanted to pass on part of his hundreds of millions of dollars to his children without dealing with any troublesome taxes on transfers of huge wealth, because taxes are for little people. A Mossack Fonseca memo was refreshingly transparent about what Ponsoldt wanted:

“Primary objective is to maintain the utmost confidentiality and ideally to open bank accounts without disclosing his name as a private person.”

In summary, the firm explained: “He needs asset protection schemes, which we are trying to sell him.”

So far, so Romney. Just a well-off gent trying to circumvent financial regulations, as any smart investor with a larcenous disregard for the law (which is UNFAIR to the rich) might do. Under our tyrannical laws, rich folks are only supposed to be able to transfer $14,000 a year to their offspring before a gift tax kicks in. But Mr. Ponsoldt needed to transfer millions to his kids so his estate wouldn’t be raided by the Death Tax when he passed. And here’s where we learn about his darling daughter’s special fears of the dreaded socialist Muslim president. No doubt she was able to nod off at the best schools and didn’t have to bother knowing anything about politics-n-stuff beyond the obvious fact that, as Victoria Jackson warned us, there was a Communist in the White House:

Tracey Ponsoldt Powers, William Ponsoldt’s daughter, approached the firm in October 2008 with an urgent request for help in secretly moving some of her family’s money to Panama and then into gold coins. She feared political developments at home.

More:
http://wonkette.com/602630/rich-people-can-be-dumb-mouth-breathing-fox-news-morans-too#4ZftZmLCJo2i0mQO.99

[harrose]

11. That's OUR money that they stole...

... we have to seize it and return it to the people, where it belongs.