{"id":19587,"date":"2016-04-06T11:17:06","date_gmt":"2016-04-06T16:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19587"},"modified":"2016-04-06T11:18:12","modified_gmt":"2016-04-06T16:18:12","slug":"panama-papers-only-a-glimpse-into-astonishing-wealth-stashed-offshore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19587","title":{"rendered":"Panama Papers only a glimpse into ‘astonishing’ wealth stashed offshore"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Panama Papers only a glimpse into ‘astonishing’ wealth stashed offshore<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

Some estimates suggest between 8 and 14 per cent of global wealth is kept in tax havens<\/strong><\/p>\n

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It’s estimated that at least $7 trillion and up to $32 trillion is currently kept in holdings in tax havens. (Eric Gaillard\/Reuters)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The provocative revelations coming out of the so-called Panama Papers are just a glimpse into the murky global network that’s keeping “absolutely astonishing” amounts of money out of public coffers.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The 11.5 million\u00a0files taken from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca\u00a0show how the financial elite exploit a secretive system to manoeuvre wealth anonymously and ensure the taxman doesn’t take his cut.<\/p>\n

The firm\u00a0is “the\u00a0world’s fourth biggest provider of offshore services,” according to the Guardian, with about $42 million in yearly revenue. The documents contain information about more than 214,000 shell companies, trusts and foundations \u2014 usually\u00a0used to hold or transfer financial assets while obfuscating the identity of their real owner\u00a0\u2014 that were registered with the firm.<\/p>\n

“That gives a sense of the tremendous scope of this\u00a0in terms of the flows of money into these largely mysterious\u00a0companies, and this is only one firm,” says Nicholas Shaxson, an investigative journalist and author of\u00a0Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It’s difficult to delineate what constitutes a\u00a0tax haven\u00a0but it’s generally agreed that, depending on the criteria, there are between 70 and 92 states serving as such worldwide. And there’s an estimated two million shell companies registered with offshore firms in these states.<\/p>\n

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“For a long time, people thought of tax havens as an exotic sideshow of the world economy. Now it’s clear they are absolutely central to it. We’re talking about absolutely astonishing, mind-boggling amounts of money,” Shaxson says.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Panama Papers only a glimpse into ‘astonishing’ wealth stashed offshore Some estimates suggest between 8 and 14 per cent of global wealth is kept in tax havens It’s estimated that at least $7 trillion and up to $32 trillion is currently kept in holdings in tax havens. (Eric Gaillard\/Reuters) The provocative revelations coming out of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3544,3000,12410,12349,13292,13313,13259,13314,783,868],"class_list":["post-19587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-cbc","tag-cbc-news","tag-global-wealth","tag-lucas-powers","tag-mossack-fonseca","tag-offshore-wealth","tag-panama-papers","tag-tax-haven","tag-taxes","tag-wealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19587"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19589,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19587\/revisions\/19589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}