Note the location of “Planet 9” and the inbound path for Nibiru provided by the Zetas in 1997. Nibiru arrived, right on schedule in 2003, and right where predicted a full 7 years earlier. Where the Zetas provided the location of the gravity draw represented by the Sun’s dark unlit binary and the inbound Nibiru in 1983, when the IRAS team lofted its infra-red balloon in search of the inbound Nibiru, this location was not provided to the public. All articles in print at that time only referring to the location as the “western edge of the constellation Orion”, quite vague, and the “western edge” is vast. Yet the Zetas pinpointed the location as being just outside the lower bow of Orion. Such is the accuracy of ZetaTalk. How would the public eventually become “aware of the history and accuracy of ZetaTalk predictions” as predicted by the Zetas on April 16, 2016? ? It would seem this is already in process.
SOZT March 19, 2016
So what happened to the announcement? Obama lacked the courage. As a result of this colossal failure, having to disband the Jade Helm structure, the US military reacted. Obama is no longer running the country. Chief of Staff General Dunford is. Ben Fulford has for months been referring to Obama as the US “spokesperson”. Is this true, and how does this work? In that the Middle East, under the direction and press from Israel, Turkey, the Jewish bankers of the Federal Reserve, and the Saudis were supporting ISIS and this threatened to create a force that would not only invade Europe but also create an endless terrorism threat to the US, the military did indeed effect a silent coup. Russia needed to enter the fray, and Dunford, but not Obama, agreed. This will never be admitted, publicly, nor do the parties want this. EOZT
SOZT October 1, 2015 The three major social media outlets in use around the globe all had significant, and simultaneous outages between September 20-24, 2015. Skype had complaints from the UK, Australia, and Japan. Twitter received reports from the US, Australia, and Singapore. FaceBook had the loudest howls, primarily from the US and Europe. Notably these downtimes, some lasting for hours or even days, got no attention in the major media, and there was no real explanation for the outages. Every Skype user has an account and a password, as do their contacts. Every Skype user can broadcast messages to their contacts, even if these contacts are not presently online. Every twitter use likewise has an account and a password, and by sending a tweet passes information along to subscribers, who can retweet the info in the future. FaceBook users likewise have an account and a password, with many friends who pick up info from each other and pass it along on their FaceBook accounts. In all of this, the networks themselves are AWARE of the accounts and passwords, and could do a broadcast to all in the event of an announcement. Check your user agreements. This is legal! EOZT
SOZT April 25, 2015 When we announced that the Council of Worlds would be going to war with the elite over their blockage of the announcement, the tools available to the Council were not immediately apparent. Early in the campaign the Sony hack showed one such mechanism, whereby an anonymous hacker revealed embarrassing information about Sony executives.Similarly exposing pedophile activities by Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton and blatant lies by self-promoting media talking heads such as Brian Williams and Bill O’Reilly required nothing more than encouraging contactees to step forward. In many, many cases a financial loss sufficient to trigger a clash among the elite is a result of an electronic delay during trades. EOZT
SOZT July 4, 2015 What is the message here? As with other failed launches, this most recent failure is a definitive message from the Council of Worlds. Space X has had success in resupplying the ISS, though has flounded on landing on a floating ocean platform. Resupply of the ISS is OK, reuse of their launch equipment so as to help the elite escape, not OK. The message now is that the elite should not expect to get into space at all. No escape. The message here is to take all hope away from such plans among the elite. They are to remain on Earth with the common man. We expect the battle to shift from attempts to block the announcement, or deny its meaning, to attempts to enslave the common man in some way. That is another fight, on another day. EOZT
SOZTNovember 1, 2014 The elite – the wealthy and politically powerful in the world – have continued in their attempts to thwart the announcement by Obama and his partners admitting that Nibiru, aka Planet X exists. We have long stated that the announcement date was set by Obama and Xi at their June 7-8, 2013 meeting in Santa Monica. The flustered slip given by the French Foreign Minister on May 13, 2014 re “500 days http://www.zetatalk.com/ning/17ma2014.htm until climate chaos” was in reference to this, as the date set was to be 500 days from the 2013 meeting, ie October 20, 2014. EOZT
SOZTNovember 8, 2014 Relying solely on Russia or China to proceed would get the truth out BUT since the block had always been on the US end, via Reagan’s national security directive, without a confirmation from Obama this is awkward and subject to being countered. If true, where is the confirmation from Obama? It would be packaged as some odd communist attack against Obama going into the elections, to make him seem weak, almost comical. So where is this going now? For us to comment would be to empower the enemy, which of course we will not do. Your curiosity is not as important as having the announcement succeed. EOZT
SOZTDecember 10, 2014 We have stated that the public will see only the flash and parry of swords from a distance during the Council of Worlds war with the cover-up crowd. Meanwhile, periodic tests of the Emergency Broadcast System in the US are done, to see if the channels are open. As of this writing, they are not yet open. The war is still on, full press. Meanwhile, during the flash and parry of swords, one can see resistance, pleading, panic, and capitulation. EOZT
Panama City (AFP) - Several countries launched tax evasion probes Monday after a massive leak of confidential documents lifted the lid on the murky offshore financial dealings of a slew of politicians and celebrities.
The scandal erupted on Sunday when media groups began revealing the results of a year-long investigation into a trove of 11.5 million documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specialises in creating offshore shell companies.
Among those named in the "Panama Papers" are close associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, as well as Barcelona striker Lionel Messi.
"We have opened an investigation for money laundering in relation to the law firm," a judicial source at Spain's National Court told AFP after the release of the documents, which named Oscar-winning Spanish film director Pedro Almodovar among others with offshore holdings.
Messi's family immediately came to his defence, saying he was innocent of all wrongdoing and "accusations he created a... tax evasion plot, including a network of money-laundering, are false and insulting".
Messi has been charged with tax fraud in a separate case that is due to go to trial in May.
Australia said it had launched a probe into 800 wealthy Mossack Fonseca clients. Prosecutors in France and tax authorities in the Netherlands also announced investigations, while the United States said it was reviewing the files.
In Iceland's capital Reykjavik, thousands took to the streets late Monday to demand the prime minister's resignation over allegations that he and his wife used an offshore firm to hide millions of dollars of investments.
- Kremlin denials -
The trove of documents was anonymously leaked to German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and shared with more than 100 media groups by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). More information is expected over the coming weeks.
The first revelations elicited a chorus of denials, including from the Kremlin, which suggested a US plot after the leaks put a close friend of Putin's at the top of an offshore empire worth more than $2 billion that has made his circle fabulously wealthy.
"Putin, Russia, our country, our stability and the upcoming elections are the main target, specifically to destabilise the situation," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, claiming the journalists were "former officials from the (US) Department of State, the CIA and other special services."
Offshore financial dealings are not illegal in themselves but may be used to hide assets from tax authorities, launder the proceeds of criminal activities or conceal misappropriated or politically inconvenient wealth.
Among other key findings of the probe, which named about 140 political figures, including 12 current or former heads of state:
-- The families of some of China's top brass -- including President Xi Jinping -- used offshore tax havens to conceal their fortunes, including at least eight current or former members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the ruling Communist Party's most powerful body.
-- Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson secretly owned millions of dollars in bank bonds at a time when his country's banking system was collapsing in 2008. He has so far steadfastly refused to step down.
-- A member of FIFA's ethics committee, Juan Pedro Damiani, had business ties with three men indicted in a corruption scandal.
-- A Panamanian shell company may have helped hide millions of dollars from a $40 million British gold bullion robbery at London-Heathrow Airport in November 1983 that is etched in criminal folklore, according to the ICIJ.
- 'An attack on Panama' -
The papers, from around 214,000 offshore entities covering almost 40 years, also name the president of Ukraine and the king of Saudi Arabia, as well as sporting and movie stars including Jackie Chan.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko denied any wrongdoing, but he may face an attempt to impeach him.
French newspaper Le Monde cited documents showing that Syria used Mossack Fonseca to create shell companies to help it break international sanctions and fund its war effort.
Pascal Saint-Amans, head of tax policy at the OECD, said the leaks showed that Panama is now almost unrivalled as a world tax haven.
"Among the countries that refuse to automatically exchange information, there are Bahrain, Nauru, Vanuatu and Lebanon," he told AFP. "Switzerland is really making progress, so there is a concentration of problems in Panama."
One of the Panama law firm's founders, Ramon Fonseca, told AFP the leaks were "a crime, a felony" and "an attack on Panama".
Panama's government said it had "zero tolerance" for shady deals, and vowed to "vigorously cooperate" with any legal investigations.
More than 500 banks, their subsidiaries and branches have worked with Mossack Fonseca since the 1970s to help clients manage offshore companies. UBS set up more than 1,100 and HSBC and its affiliates created more than 2,300.
The documents show "banks, law firms and other offshore players often fail to follow legal requirements to make sure clients are not involved in criminal enterprises, tax dodging or political corruption," the ICIJ said.
Mossack Fonseca is already subject to investigations in Germany and Brazil, where it is part of a huge money laundering probe that has threatened to topple the current government.
Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said that Western mass media intends to launch a new slander attack on Vladimir Putin and expressed regret that reporters’ professionalism is often “sacrificed to political demands.”
According to Peskov, the fresh set of false reports made with intent to harm the president’s reputation will be released in the nearest future. He said the presidential administration received letters with requests to comment on more unfounded allegations.
He went on to blame “certain public groups, NGOs, Western special services and certain mass media outlets” for attempts to destabilize the situation in Russia ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections by attempting to discredit senior officials and above all, Putin.
“Another piece of spin, which is claimed to be sensational and objective, will happen in the nearest days. We have received some excessively-rich requests that, however, in their form were more like questions at an interrogation,” Peskov said.
He explained that the letters contained some personal questions about Putin, as well as questions about Russian president’s family, his childhood friends and some businessmen.
“They are repeating themselves. ‘Is it true that the amount of your personal accumulated wealth is about US$40 billion?’ ‘Is it true that you possess gigantic residences, mega-yachts and other assets?’
“They claim that the president maintains close relations with Sergey Raldugin and they speculate that if Raldugin is running some business, this must have immediate relation to the president. ‘Is it true that when you were young you spent time together on the Leningrad streets, that you ate, drank and got into street fights together?’ I have just quoted an actual question,” Peskov told reporters.
“We deeply respect the work of journalists and such form of it as an investigative report. We admire this work when it’s professional and objective. But when we talk about these idle conversations, about sending us questions that have been already asked and answered hundreds of times… Here we see no intent to conduct objective investigations, we see just an intention to publish a hatchet job; to direct, put together and release a media attack on to the informational agenda,” he said.
Peskov recalled a recent film released by BBC that contained similar accusations without any proof supporting them. Source: rt.com
Comment by SongStar101 on April 4, 2016 at 12:12pm
This Hacker Rigged Elections in 9 Latin American Countries
Andres Sepulveda hacked and spied in elections in Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, and Venezuela.
A highly sophisticated Colombian hacker rigged elections across Latin America in favor of right-wing candidates for almost eight years, pulling in hefty paychecks for highly-coveted dirty work in at least nine different countries’ elections, including for Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto's rise to power.
A Bloomberg Business article published Thursday told his story for the first time, forcing the Mexican government to deny on Friday that Peña Nieto's campaign spied on rivals.
Andres Sepulveda, now in jail in Colombia, was in the business of the “whole dark side of politics that nobody knows exists but everyone can see,” he told Bloomberg Business.
He started with small jobs in 2005, but quickly ramped up to helping presidential campaigns in Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, and Venezuela smear, hack, and spy on their left-wing rivals for a bill of at least US$12,000 per month, and often more.
His first gig was for the re-election campaign of former right-wing Colombian President Alfaro Uribe in the lead-up to the 2006 election, which Uribe won. Sepulveda hacked a rival’s website and campaign database.
But the jobs grew in budget and scope over the years. In the lead-up to Mexico’s 2012 presidential election, Sepulveda hacked, spied, and manipulated social media for President Enrique Peña Nieto’s campaign with a US$600,000 budget as the PRI aimed to regain power after losing it in 2000 for the first time in over 70 years.
Peña Nieto, who was shown ahead in the polls early in the campaign, won the election amid widespread allegations of electoral fraud. His main rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, then of the PRD, demanded a full vote recount.
Sepulveda also had a role in the 2009 campaign of Honduras’ right-wing post-coup National Party President Porfirio Lobo, and spearheaded malicious campaigns against Nicaragua’s socialist President Daniel Ortega in 2011 and Venezuela’s former President Hugo Chavez in 2012.
All the while, Sepulveda told Bloomberg Business that he was working for Miami-based political consultant Juan Jose Rendon, who former Salvadoran leftist President Carlos Mauricio Funes accused in 2014 of running dirty campaigns across the region. Rendon denied to Bloomberg Business of having collaborated with Sepulveda on illegal jobs.
Sepulveda is now serving 10 years behind bars for various crimes including espionage and conspiracy to commit crime linked to hacking during Colombia’s 2014 election.
He told his story to Bloomberg Business in hopes of getting a lighter sentence by showing he’s owned up his dark past.
Comment by SongStar101 on April 4, 2016 at 11:58am
A world of hidden wealth: why we are shining a light offshore
They are known as the CDOTs – the UK’s crown dependencies and overseas territories – island states such as the Caymans and the British Virgin Islands.
On maps they appear no bigger than a full stop, but each year billions of dollars in capital sail into the global banking system along the warm currents of the Caribbean.
Economists are charting an unrelenting, escalating transfer of wealth, enabled by the offshore system, often from the very poorest to the very richest nations.
The money is sometimes spent in obvious ways – funding super-yachts, private jets, fine art auctions and, of course, property. But there is the unseen damage. It harms the ecology of vibrant cities by making them unaffordable to ordinary people.
The cash is also a shot in the arm to the financial system. Lawfully injected into London hedge funds and Wall Street trading rooms, it funds high-stakes investments and, in the good years, big bonus pools.
The movement of this offshore money is an industry made possible in part by the secrecy on sale in tax havens, led by the UK’s substantial network of offshore enclaves. The Panama Papers lift the veil on how this world works – and the people who use it.
While much of the leaked material will remain private, there are compelling reasons for publishing some of the data. The documents reveal a huge breadth of unseen activity.
At one end of this spectrum, the papers simply reveal the vast number of people who use offshore to protect their wealth. There is nothing unlawful about doing this. It is not illegal to be a director, shareholder or beneficial owner – the real owner, even though their name may not appear on the shareholder register – of an offshore company. But the financial advantages these structures provide are not generally available to the ordinary taxpayer.
Since the 2008 crash, there has been a clamour for everyone to pay a fair share of the tax burden.
Unsurprisingly, the public is questioning – perhaps more than ever – whether a system that provides advantages only to the wealthy is immoral. And the political climate that once tolerated this inequality has changed decisively.
At the other end of this spectrum there is, frankly, what could be described as offshore pandemonium.
In the files we have found evidence of Russian banks providing slush funds for President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle; assets belonging to 12 country leaders, including the leaders of Iceland, Pakistan and Ukraine; companies connected to more than 140 senior politicians, their friends and relatives, and to some 22 people subject to sanctions for supporting regimes in North Korea, Syria, Russia and Zimbabwe; the proceeds of crimes, including Britain’s infamous Brink’s-Mat gold robbery; and enough art hidden in private collections to fill a public gallery.
Just as importantly, we will shine a spotlight on the role of the facilitators: the well-paid lawyers, accountants and private bankers in financial centres such as London and Geneva, whose expertise lies in moving money offshore.
Behaviour revealed in the Panama Papers highlights the failures of regulatory regimes that were either oblivious to, or unwilling to act against, Mossack Fonseca, the law firm from whose database the documents have been leaked.
Yet at least one underling in the firm recognised the jeopardy. He emailed the head office in Panama to ask: “Is there any kind of indemnity that stop[s] us as employees of Mossack Fonseca from being prosecuted? We are getting a bit worried …”
The disclosures have been made possible by the biggest data leak in history – 11.5m documents detailing the activities of more than 200,000 offshore companies, about two-thirds of the total incorporated by Mossack Fonseca.
Obtained from an anonymous source by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with other media organisations, the files are a mine of emails, shareholder registers, bank statements, internal reports, passport scans and company certificates.
Companies should know who really owns them and law enforcers should be able to obtain this information easily Though the source of the leak is not known to the Guardian, there can be no doubt as to the files’ authenticity – and potential impact.
The offshore industry may say there are good reasons for sheltering assets in tax havens. Big corporations often argue they have a duty to their shareholders to pay as little tax as is legal. But they are swimming against the tide.
Research group Global Financial Integrity puts the figure for illicit financial outflows from developing countries at $1tn a year and growing.
No wonder then that some world leaders are now taking a stand.
In June 2013, at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland, Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, promised to fight the “scourge of tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance”, with transparency, in particular “transparency about who owns which companies”.
World leaders, including Barack Obama, signed up to the plan, which stated: “Companies should know who really owns them and tax collectors and law enforcers should be able to obtain this information easily.”
The details from the Panama Papers will contribute to an important public debate – not just in the UK but across the world – about what offshore activity can be tolerated, and what should not.
Can you have transparency if some activities are kept secret, and others not? And who makes that judgment? These are huge questions that governments have not been able to answer.
In May, the UK is planning to host an anti-corruption summit. Offshore tax havens are to be discussed – and after the Panama Papers disclosures they are likely to be top of the agenda.
Comment by SongStar101 on April 4, 2016 at 11:45am
Leaked papers give Fifa ethics committee new credibility crisis
Football (soccer) body launches inquiry after documents shows member’s links to ex-vice-president accused of corruption
Sunday 3 April 2016 13.51
Fifa could face another crisis after the Panama Papers revealed an apparent conflict of interest at the heart of the ethics committee supposed to clean it up.
The documents – part of a huge data leak from the law firm Mossack Fonseca, which helps clients set up companies in offshore tax regimes – show links between Juan Pedro Damiani, a Uruguayan lawyer and long-serving member of the ethics committee, and Eugenio Figueredo, a former senior Fifa vice-president recently accused of corruption, are far more extensive than previously known.
The files could threaten to undermine the credibility of the ethics committee, which is central to attempts to show Fifa is willing to reform after decades of corruption allegations.
Fifa’s ethics committee immediately launched an inquiry, insisting it did not know about Damiani’s business links to Figueredo before the former informed its chair, the German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, via email on 18 March after being confronted by the Guardian and its partners in the Panama Papers project.
Eckert, who chairs the adjudicatory chamber of the committee on which Damiani sits, passed the case to the investigatory arm. In his email to Eckert, Damiani said he had maintained a professional relationship with Figueredo since 2007 – although documents seen by the Guardian suggest it may go back even further.
Eugenio Figueredo is accused of being involved in a bribery scam. Photograph: Agencia EFE/Rex Shuterstock “We confirm that on 19 March the investigatory chamber of the independent ethics committee was informed by the chairman of the adjudicatory chamber, Hans-Joachim Eckert, about becoming recently aware of a business relationship between the member of the adjudicatory chamber Juan Pedro Damiani, and Eugenio Figueredo Aguerre,” a spokesman said. “After receiving the information Dr Cornel Borbély, chairman of the investigatory chamber of the ethics committee, has immediately opened a preliminary investigation to review the allegations in question.”
According to the Panama Papers, Damiani and his law firm act for more than 200 offshore companies registered with Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian legal firm whose database has been leaked.
There is nothing unlawful in acting for or setting up offshore companies, but the lack of transparency is a cause for concern.
The files reveal several of these companies are connected to Figueredo – who was arrested in Zurich last year and accused of involvement in a $110m (£77m) bribery scam – and that the two men appear to have had ties dating back to 2002.
The documents also show that Damiani arranged the formation of a Panamanian company through which Figueredo, who is also Uruguayan, was given special powers to make loans to sporting institutions.
The professional links between them continued until at least February 2015, when Damiani asked Mossack Fonseca to give special powers to Figueredo’s wife over a company called Gilson Overseas SA, which is now under investigation. Less than four months after Mossack Fonseca carried out the work, Figueredo was provisionally banned by the ethics committee.
The documents also reveal that in June 2015, a month after Figueredo’s arrest, the former Fifa vice-president was still the “beneficial owner” – the real owner of a company, whose name may not appear on the shareholder register – of five companies. He was also still named as an official of two other companies. All seven were represented by Damiani’s law firm. Five out of the seven remained active at the end of 2015, the Panama Papers show.
The revelations will not only call into question Damiani’s position on the committee. He will also have to explain how he came to represent the offshore financial interests of an official who has now been accused of bribery.
The disclosures may damage the credibility of the ethics committee, which has fought the perception that it is being used for political ends by Fifa’s disgraced former president Sepp Blatter and others.
Damiani, who has served on the committee since its formation in 2003, and Figueredo are two of the biggest names in South American football. As well as being a lawyer, Damiani is president of one of the country’s biggest football teams, Peñarol. He has handled a string of bans, including Blatter’s suspension. Figueredo, 84, a former head of Uruguay’s football association and a key figure in South American football for decades, was a Fifa vice-president in 2013 and 2014. Figueredo’s time as head of Uruguay’s FA was tainted by claims of cronyism.
He was arrested in a swoop on Zurich’s five-star Baur au Lac hotel last May after the US Department of Justice outlined corruption charges including money laundering, racketeering and tax evasion. He is accused of being involved in a scheme to solicit $110m in bribes from broadcasting executives in exchange for a suite of rights to the Copa America – the South American version of the European Championships – and a centenary edition of the tournament to be played in 2016. Prosecutors say Figueredo was in line for a $3m payment as a result of the scheme.
In addition to the US accusations, Figueredo pleaded guilty this year to fraud and money laundering in a separate case in Uruguay.
The US indictment alleged one of the three sports rights companies involved was led by the sports marketing executives Hugo Jinkis and his son Mariano. The files show Damiani once represented their offshore vehicle Cross Trading, registered in the tiny island country of Niue. In June 2015, as the scale of corruption within Fifa began to emerge, Mossack Fonseca resigned as the registered agents of Cross Trading.
It is understood from Fifa sources that Damiani did not mention any links to Cross Trading in his email to the ethics committee last month.
Damiani told the Guardian he was not authorised to comment on the case while Figueredo was being investigated in Uruguay. A spokesman for one of his law firms said Damiani himself had first submitted a report that led to action being taken against Figueredo by the Uruguayan authorities. He also said Damiani had kept the Fifa ethics committee informed and reported the case to it in January 2014. Asked about links that appeared to continue beyond that date, Damiani refused to comment further.
“To sum up, as an organisation, but also on a personal level and a professional level as president of Peñarol, Mr Damiani took all the relevant measures to bring clarity to these incidents, even though following those steps was not a legal requirement on his part,” said the spokesman. He said Damiani did not maintain any professional or commercial links with anyone under criminal investigation in the US over the Fifa scandal.
Jinkis failed to reply for requests to comment.
Lionel Messi
The world’s best footballer, Lionel Messi, is one of the high-profile people who crop up in the Panama Papers. Records show he and his father, Jorge Horacio, were the ultimate beneficial owners of a company called Mega Star Enterprises, registered by Mossack Fonseca in February 2012. There is nothing unlawful about having an offshore company.
Both men are currently on trial in Spain for tax evasion. That case centres on the alleged simulated transfer of image rights into front companies with no business activity in Uruguay and Belize. Both men have denied the accusations and instead blamed a former financial adviser. Jorge Messi made a voluntary corrective payment of €5m in August 2013. Mega Star enterprises is not mentioned in the case.
The Guardian contacted Messi about Mega Star 12 days ago. He has not responded. His father declined to comment to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
I think its also interesting to note the Western Corporate media's 'selective' searches within the data. I have read on twitter etc... that people are questioning why Iceland (no western banks) and in particular Russia (Putin fascination) are being singled out while no real mention of Western CEO's and billionaire's being singled out is being brought to light.
Of course...it is relatively early in the investigation of the data being released.....I am hopeful that the CoW and those working behind the scenes can reveal for impactful information!
Iceland’s prime minister is this week expected to face calls in parliament for a snap election after the Panama Papers revealed he is among several leading politicians around the world with links to secretive companies in offshore tax havens.
The financial affairs of Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson and his wife have come under scrutiny because of details revealed in documents from a Panamanian law firm that helps clients protect their wealth in secretive offshore tax regimes. The files from Mossack Fonseca form the biggest ever data leak to journalists.
Opposition leaders have this weekend been discussing a motion calling for a general election – in effect a confidence vote in the prime minister.
On Monday, Gunnlaugsson is expected to face allegations from opponents that he has hidden a major financial conflict of interest from voters ever since he was elected an MP seven years ago.
The former prime minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir said Gunnlaugsson would have to resign if he could not regain public trust quickly, calling on him to “give a straightforward account of all the facts of the matter”.
The former finance minister Steingrímur Sigfússon told the Guardian: “We can’t permit this. Iceland would simply look like a banana republic. No one is saying he used his position as prime minister to help this offshore company, but the fact is you shouldn’t leave yourself open to a conflict of interest. And nor should you keep it secret.”
Leaked papers show Gunnlaugsson co-owned a company called Wintris Inc, set up in 2007 on the Caribbean island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, to hold investments with his wealthy partner, later wife, Anna Sigurlaug Pálsdótti The couple were living in the UK at the time and had been advised to set up a company in the tax haven in order to hold and invest substantial proceeds from the sale of Pálsdóttir’s share in her family’s business back in Iceland.
Gunnlaugsson owned a 50% stake in Wintris for more than two years, then transferred it to Pálsdóttir, who held the other 50%, for one dollar. The prime minister’s office now says his shareholding was an error and “it had always been clear to both of them that the prime minister’s wife owned the assets”. Once drawn to the couple’s attention in late 2009, the error was corrected.
Towards the end of Gunnlaugsson’s time as a Wintris shareholder, having returned to Iceland, he was elected to parliament as leader of the Progressive party.
Gunnlaugsson, who became prime minister four years later, never disclosed his Wintris shares on Iceland’s parliamentary register of MPs’ financial interests.
Nor has he spoken about the offshore company publicly – until questioned by the Guardian and other media working in conjunction with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
When first asked if he had ever owned an offshore company, Gunnlaugsson said: “Myself? No. Well, the Icelandic companies I have worked with had connections with offshore companies … but I can confirm I have never hidden any of my assets.”
Asked what he knew about Wintris, he initially said: “Well, it’s a company, if I recall correctly, which is associated with one of the companies that I was on the board of.” Shortly afterwards, Gunnlaugsson ended the interview.
Public statements
The prime minister and his wife then rushed out separate public statements in Icelandic condemning reporters’ intrusions into their private business matters.
Both stressed their financial interests had always been properly disclosed to the Icelandic tax authorities. The Guardian has seen no evidence to suggest tax avoidance, evasion or any dishonest financial gain on the part of Gunnlaugsson, Pálsdóttir or Wintris.
The prime minister now accepts he did jointly own Wintris with his wife. Copies of the share certificate in his name and of Wintris’s share register are published today by the Guardian.
He nevertheless insists he did not have to declare his shares on the parliamentary register because Wintris was a holding company, not a “commercial company”.
He was elected to parliament in April 2009 and did not transfer his Wintris shares to Pálsdóttir until the last day of that year. A copy of the transfer agreement is published here.
Asked if he had nevertheless breached the spirit of the disclosure rules, the prime minister declined to reply. He conceded there might be a case for tightening the rulebook.
Leaked Wintris documents show in detail the layers of complexity associated with such BVI companies, masking the identity of those in charge.
They also raise uncomfortable questions about how Gunnlaugsson could have remained unaware – for more than two years – that he was the owner of 50% of Wintris and its considerable investments.
The instruction to set up Wintris first came through agents in Luxembourg, who contacted Mossack Fonseca, an international law firm specialising in offshore secrecy. A registered office was set up in the BVI and three nominee directors recruited from Panama.
Power of attorney
Names of the Panamanian directors appear on almost all of the company’s official paperwork for the first three years, but it was Gunnlaugsson and Pálsdóttir who held the authority to control the firm, having privately been granted power of attorney over Wintris’s affairs.
Five months after it was set up, the company also made arrangements to open a bank account at a London branch of Credit Suisse. By then, the involvement of Gunnlaugsson and Pálsdóttir in the activities of Wintris was well hidden from the public gaze.
A woman leaves a branch of Iceland’s second largest bank, Landsbanki, in October 2008, a day after the state officially announced it had nationalised it.
Later that year, Iceland became one of the most severe casualties of the global credit crisis. Financial meltdown meant the country was forced to seek bailout loans and impose currency controls as foreign investors rushed to sell out of the rapidly devaluing Icelandic króna.
While Wintris was shielded from some of this turmoil, it had invested in bonds issued by three Icelandic banks and was owed more than 500m Icelandic króna (£2.8m) when they all collapsed. Only a small fraction of that sum is likely to be recovered.
Revelations from the Panama Papers about Gunnlaugsson and Pálsdóttir’s offshore activities are awkward for Iceland’s prime minister, who has made a name for himself defending the collapse of his country’s financial system against the demands of foreign creditors, whom he has repeatedly characterised as “vultures”.
He has dismissed suggestions that his wife’s ownership of Wintris compromised him as prime minister. On the contrary, he suggested, his consistently tough approach to foreign creditors, including Wintris, demonstrated that his wife’s financial interests had never affected his decision-making.
Icelanders’ suspicions
For some years many ordinary Icelanders have grown suspicious about wealthy Icelanders and their use of offshore companies, concerned such arrangements are designed to avoid tax.
To pursue investigations in this area, Iceland’s tax office last year paid a whistleblower for a cache of data from Mossack Fonseca’s regional office in Luxembourg. As a result, tax inspectors are said to have in their hands the private details of up to 400 Icelanders with interests in tax havens.
There is no suggestion of tax avoidance in the case of Wintris, but the prime minister said he and his wife had “always assumed” the whistleblower data could include information on Wintris. He said he supported the tax office’s ongoing inquiries.
A rebellion against the prime minister in parliament on Monday may depend in part on the position taken by his partners in coalition government, led by the finance minister, Bjarni Benediktsson.
But Benediktsson’s name also appears in the Panama Papers as he previously owned a third of a company called Falson & Co, incorporated in the Seychelles. Benediktsson’s interest in Falson was held through bearer share certificates, which do not record the name of the owner.
He told the Guardian the company had been set up with two co-investors to buy a property in Dubai, but the deal had fallen through in 2009 and he had had no dealings with the company since.
In a television interview last year, Benediktsson was asked if he had ever done business in tax havens. “No, I haven’t done that,” he said. “I have not had any assets in tax havens – not done anything like that.”
Asked why he had not mentioned Falson, Benediktsson said he had not realised it was based in the Seychelles. He had thought it was in Luxembourg.
Greece has demanded "explanations" from the International Monetary Fund after WikiLeaks made public a transcript suggesting that the organisation was pushing for a crisis or "event" to force the country into deciding on new reforms.
U.N. audit identifies serious lapses linked to alleged bribery (4/3/16)
...The 21-page confidential report by the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services' (OIOS), reviewed by Reuters, outlines the results of an audit ordered by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in response to charges against John Ashe, General Assembly president in 2013-2014, and six other people.
...the irregularities uncovered - a U.N. document improperly altered, travel expenses paid by NGOs against U.N. guidelines, U.N. employees keeping iPads given to them by an NGO headed by an indicted individual.
...The audit came in response to an ongoing U.S. investigation that has since October resulted in charges against seven people including Ashe, a former U.N. ambassador from Antigua and Barbuda.
U.S. prosecutors say Ashe received $1.3 million in bribes from Chinese businessmen including Ng Lap Seng, a billionaire real estate developer who heads Macau-based Sun Kian Ip Group and was seeking to build a U.N.-sponsored conference center in Macau.
Francis Lorenzo, a suspended deputy U.N. ambassador from the Dominican Republic who prosecutors said helped facilitate Ng's bribes and received bribes himself, pleaded guilty in March and agreed to cooperate with U.S. authorities. Sheri Yan, chief executive of Global Sustainability Foundation, a New York-based NGO, and Heidi Hong Piao, its finance director, accused of facilitating bribes to Ashe, pleaded guilty in January. Julia Vivi Wang has not yet entered a plea, and Ng's assistant Jeff Yin pleaded not guilty.
Comment by Shaun Kazuck on April 3, 2016 at 11:05pm
Seems the war against the coverup continues.
"Unprecedented Leak" Exposes The Criminal Financial Dealings Of Some Of The World's Wealthiest People
An unprecedented leak of more than 11 million documents, called the "Panama Papers", has revealed the hidden financial dealings of some of the world's wealthiest people, as well as 12 current and former world leaders and 128 more politicians and public officials around the world.
Comment by SongStar101 on April 5, 2016 at 3:59am
Comment by Stanislav on April 4, 2016 at 3:03pm
Comment by Corey Young on April 4, 2016 at 7:13am
Comment by Starr DiGiacomo on April 4, 2016 at 5:58am
Comment by casey a on April 4, 2016 at 12:51am
Comment by Scott on April 3, 2016 at 11:38pm
Comment by Shaun Kazuck on April 3, 2016 at 11:05pm
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