There is a reason the author is on the board that gets to decide this. I wish the relevant people would just pocket the money and book a plane ticket to an offshore location, rather than bragging about it on social media. That way at least some people other than the hedge fund would get something out of this deal. I can understand simple corruption. I too need a fast-ish sportscar and a decently sized mansion to fuel my habits. But this, I cannot understand at all.
What i don’t understand is why does the article act like this clearly public government document was found/leaked in the Pandora Papers
The article seems more like a lobbying piece, how many more times can the author write “shady”
edit: Nicholas Shaxson (@nickshaxson) is a staff writer for the Tax Justice Network and a co-founder of the Balanced Economy Project, an antimonopoly organization. He is the author of “Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World” and “The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer.”
This is an article geared for people to agree with it because it matches what they want to read
Because money can circumvent regulations and hack the system. Using local strawmen as buyers etc.
Nothing more funny then these wealthy elites, believing they can become a island, disconnected from society, by taking refuge on an island.
How can you gain your wealth from a very complex international trading system and not realize, that there is no way to escape a decomplexification event in those systems is beyond me.
Must be some mammal brain part insisting that a burrow is needed.
I miss the post world-war 2 CEOs who instead would have taken that money to a company lab, to solve problems. Aka build a fusion plant, instead of a Global-Collapse-bunkervilla.
I don't get this part either. Imagine if they'd just thrown that money into AAA international real estate(ie buy skyscrapers outright in 20 major cities) or just run it like a private equity hedge and just bought major stakes in 20 world companies.
It seems hard to imagine that those strategies wouldnt have done alot to diversify and future proof their wealth without gambling on something like wework.
Maybe these transactions would be blocked under some type of foreign influence laws but maybe they could have also snuck under the radar by laundering credibility and origins through the vision fund.
They'll likely get it because they can pay politicians to vote in favor, or said politicians own a stake in those companies - probably indirectly to avoid an apparent conflict of interest, but who will find out?
Actually they did, see Panama Papers. So many higher-ups turned out to have a lot of money stashed away abroad.
Politicians are corrupt. I mean take Trump; while he 'officially' renounced control / ownership of his properties (I think?), he's still pumping hundreds of (tax payer) millions into his own resorts by going golfing every week in his own resorts. Said taxpayers are the common folk as well, not the actual resort itself.
The argument being made is that this wild speculation is enabled by the money laundering. If you know laundering will keep happening with impunity and that the whole thing is tacitly approved and backstopped by the Canadian government, then it becomes rational to participate too.
It practically requires people to play devil’s advocate to anything I observe about the cayman islands
But the article also contributed to that, it acts like its a big mystery when the reality is that academic research groups could just never get enough money to dry run forming a hedge fund in the cayman islands and say “oooh I get it”
now they finally did some research and realize this is the worst kept secret, everyone is using the Cayman Islands already for a multitude of reasons that have nothing to do with hiding anything from tax revenues
Well when you have a lot of money you can afford a legal team that can preemptively terrorize people for publishing anything that has even a whiff of bad press. Why do you think the offshore financial world can maintain the level of secrecy it has.
If you do $670,000,000 deal in this country, you have no choice but leaving in advance. That may be hard for foreigners to understand, but the entire case is done to extract as much money as possible out of it. Very naive of the guys, hope they can go through it as easy as it can be.
Financial elite finances all candidates, some of them win, the winners appoint the financial elite to be board members of the organization that is capable of printing money and giving bailouts/buying poisoned assets from said financial institutions. The money is not made from FED profits, the money is made by the financial institutions owned by the board members. What's so hard to understand about that? It's clearly a scam.
It does not only happen at the central-banking level, but it's another tool used by them.
Let me give you a similar example, not directly involving central banking, from my country. Paulo Guedes is the founder of BTG Pactual bank. He goes on and funds the candidate Jair Bolsonaro for presidency. Once elected, Bolsonaro appoints Guedes to Ministry of Economy. His monetary policies decisions makes the USD/BRL go from R$3.71 to R$5.70. November/2021 comes by and pandora papers are released. We find out the dude has almost 10 million USD stashed in offshore tax-heavens. His decisions made his personal fortune grow by 14 million BRL(equivalent to 956 years of minimum wage).
This does not involve central banking directly but the idea is the same: put the financial elite in positions that allow them to make large scale decisions to grow their personal fortunes while affecting the lives of all others. It's a scam.
I think he's talking about stowing his money there, not himself. Corrupt, oppressive, authoritative regimes are more likely to screw their own people than valued foreign investors. Theoretically.
I think the idea is to transit your money through there to launder it. part of a internation shell company game. sure the money coming from businesses and companies there look shady but not enough to cause anyone to investigate it as enough powerful and politically connected people from multiple countries would not like it to be looked at.
This is one of the most blanetly and openly corrupt transactions in modern history. It saddens me that it looks like they are going to get away with it as well..
The cynic in me thinks "it's a scheme by oligarchs and tyrants to get rid of troublesome /fully anonymous/ cash sold as a utopian scheme to those who are motivated by the promise of a quick rich scheme."
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