Offshore Leaks «Une masse aussi importante de documents, c’est une extraordinaire opportunité» - PARADIS FISCAUX / ENTRETIEN Il y avait eu WikiLeaks, les révélations sur les télégrammes diplomatiques américains ; VatiLeaks, ces fuites sur les secrets ponticaux du Vatican, et bien voici maintenant, Offshore Leaks ! Offshore Leaks c'est une somme incroyable de listes, de documents, de fichiers qui attestent d'un système mondial au service de la fraude fiscale. Offshore Leaks, c'est une sorte de bottin international du paradis fiscal, des fraudeurs dont les noms sont rendus publics grâce aux recherches d'un groupe indépendant de journalistes d'investigation. Cette opération de révélation des noms des pirates fiscaux a rassemblé plusieurs grands journaux en Europe et aux Etats-Unis, dont le quotidien français Le Monde. 120 000 sociétés écrans, des banques, et une liste de 130 Français détenteurs de comptes... Offshore Leaks dévoile donc tout un système que l'organisation CCFD-Terre Solidaire dénonce depuis des années. RFI : Est-ce que vous aviez connaissance de ces documents ?
David Cameron urged to act over British Virgin Islands | UK news The prime minister has come under pressure to act against Britain's secretive offshore industry at June's G8 summit, as leaked evidence continued to mount that politicians and tycoons from all over the world have used the British Virgin Islands to hide funds. The premier of Georgia, Bidzina Ivanishvili, was the latest to be named, along with prominent Pakistani, Indian, Thai and Indonesian figures – while there was fresh evidence of Britons acting as front directors for companies based in offshore havens such as the BVI. A senior Liberal Democrat figure said the leaks showed the secret haven of the BVI "stains the face of Britain", as anti-corruption campaigners called for action. Lord Oakeshott, the Lib Dem peer and a former Treasury spokesman, said: "How can David Cameron keep a straight face calling for the G8 to make big business pay tax when we let the BVI use British law and British protection to suck in billions in dirty money?" Ministers insist they are not ready to act.
Secret Files Expose Offshore’s Global Impact Dozens of journalists sifted through millions of leaked records and thousands of names to produce ICIJ’s investigation into offshore secrecy A cache of 2.5 million files has cracked open the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts, exposing hidden dealings of politicians, con men and the mega-rich the world over. The secret records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists lay bare the names behind covert companies and private trusts in the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and other offshore hideaways. They include American doctors and dentists and middle-class Greek villagers as well as families and associates of long-time despots, Wall Street swindlers, Eastern European and Indonesian billionaires, Russian corporate executives, international arms dealers and a sham-director-fronted company that the European Union has labeled as a cog in Iran’s nuclear-development program. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Mobsters and Oligarchs
UK unemployment rise adds to pressure on Osborne's austerity strategy | Business Unemployment jumped by 70,000 in the three months to the end of February, amid the lowest growth in pay rises since 2001, as pressure mounts on George Osborne to adopt a more aggressive growth strategy. The number of unemployed people reached 2.56 million, with 20,000 under 25-year-olds joining the jobless ranks, pushing the unemployment rate up from 7.8% to 7.9%. It was the third consecutive increase and the highest level since July. Britain's working population is also suffering from an austerity squeeze, with the average pay rise slipping to 1%, the lowest since records began in 2001 and well short of the 2.8% inflation rate. The figures, which reflect a reversal of last year's trend of falling unemployment, come after the International Monetary Fund this week urged the chancellor to ease his austerity plans and deploy more aggressive measures to spur growth. The MPC has remained split for several months despite the governor, Sir Mervyn King, regularly voting for a £25bn boost to QE.
Lifts Veil on Offshore World WASHINGTON, DC – The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a project of the Center for Public Integrity, released today its first of many reports from a 15-month investigation that cracks open the historically impenetrable world of offshore tax havens. Drawing from a leaked trove of 2.5 million digital files, ICIJ led what may be the largest cross border journalism collaboration in history. Listen to the press conference given by ICIJ director Gerard Ryle, deputy director Marina Walker Guevara, and senior editor Michael Hudson, about the investigation. ICIJ’s investigation opens the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts and nearly 130,000 individuals and agents, exposing hidden dealings of politicians, con artists, and the mega-rich in more than 170 countries. Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze, ICIJ’s largest investigative reporting project in its 15- year history, is available at www.icij.org/offshore.
European Welfare States: World ranking in Unemployment Benefit replacement rates In times of crisis, the ability of workers who lose their jobs to retain their purchasing power has important social and economic implications. A high replacement rate (ratio of unemployment benefits a worker receives relative to the worker’s last gross earning) ensures that the negative effects of rising unemployment on aggregate demand are mitigated. It also prevents workers from falling into poverty when they lose their jobs. The table below shows the gross replacement rate in the first year of unemployment for as many countries as is available. An interesting finding is that European countries did not have the monopoly of high replacement rates in 2000. The Anglo Saxon countries rank poorly: UK (46th), Australia (43rd) and Ireland (39th); US (31st) i.e.: coming after Venezuala, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Belarus... Data taken from: Mariya Aleksynska and Martin Schindler (2011) Labor Market Regulations in Low-, Middle- and High-Income Countries: A New Panel Database.
Mythbusters: “There’s nothing we can do about tax havens” May 16, 2013 // By: Stephen Reid Tax havens play a key role in facilitating tax avoidance, yet so far, few serious measures have been taken to prevent their operation. Fuelling this inertia are not one, but several myths: a book of fairy tales and fantastical claims telling us there’s nothing we can do to tackle the glorified accounting functions that are tax havens. Let’s take a moment to clear these up. Sub-myth 1: “There’s no such thing as a tax haven” The lobby for tax havens tries to convince us that because there’s no universally accepted definition of what a tax haven is, no one can be accused of being one. But even in the absence of clear-cut definition, facts are stubborn things. Sub-myth 2: “Financial secrecy is a basic human right” Lobbyists further tell us that tax havens safeguard basic human rights. In reality, having your money stashed offshore does not protect you from persecution. Sub-myth 3: “There’s nothing to do – the offshore sector has already reformed” Issues Like this?
If the IMF is criticising UK austerity, things must be bad | Michael Burke The failure of the government's economic policy has led to a damning indictment from the International Monetary Fund. In the fund's flagship World Economic Outlook report it lowered the forecast growth for the advanced economies as a whole, but Britain by more than the rest. The IMF repeatedly singled out the British economy for weak growth and negative outlook. Its chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, said the UK chancellor, George Osborne, was "playing with fire". If the IMF has become a severe critic of Britain's version of austerity, then things must be bad. The IMF cannot produce an over-arching framework for its policies precisely because there is no intellectual justification for the different policies it pursues. The ideological back of this government is broken and there is now no prospect of the Tories winning the 2015 election. But severe criticism is emerging of one of the key tracts purporting to justify austerity policies.
Globalisation isn't just about profits. It's about taxes too | Joseph Stiglitz | Comment is free The world looked on agog as Tim Cook, the head of Apple, said his company had paid all the taxes owed – seeming to say that it paid all the taxes it should have paid. There is, of course, a big difference between the two. It's no surprise that a company with the resources and ingenuity of Apple would do what it could to avoid paying as much tax as it could within the law. While the supreme court, in its Citizens United case seems to have said that corporations are people, with all the rights attendant thereto, this legal fiction didn't endow corporations with a sense of moral responsibility; and they have the Plastic Man capacity to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time – to be everywhere when it comes to selling their products, and nowhere when it comes to reporting the profits derived from those sales. It is not even true that higher corporate tax rates would necessarily significantly decrease investment. Globalisation has made us increasingly interdependent.
Thatcher funeral: Demonstrators pretending to be mourners plan to disrupt funeral by blowing horns and turning their back as the cortege passes Rows broke out between supporters and demonstrators in the crowds Two dozen people turned their back as coffin went past Effigy strung up in a noose in town of Goldthorpe, South YorkshireFake funeral held in south Yorkshire former mining town Three men arrested on suspicion of anti-Thatcher graffiti this morning Funeral was not shown on big screen in Liverpool and Edinburgh4,000 officers to guard against demonstrations which failed to happenReports of missiles being thrown at coffin were in fact flowersPolice arrest 40-year-old man in Trafalgar Square five hours after funeral Arrested for public order offence after alleged to have been verbally abusive By Jill Reilly Published: 08:09 GMT, 17 April 2013 | Updated: 14:44 GMT, 23 April 2013 Despite heated threats from anti-Thatcher protestors, the demonstrators at the Iron Lady's funeral were drowned out by her supporters today. Scroll down for video She said: 'Thatcher’s policies were all about individualistic materialism.