{"id":19685,"date":"2016-04-08T11:40:24","date_gmt":"2016-04-08T16:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19685"},"modified":"2016-04-08T11:40:24","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T16:40:24","slug":"panama-partners-in-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19685","title":{"rendered":"Panama partners in crime"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.golemxiv.co.uk\/2016\/04\/panama-partners-in-crime\/\" target=\"_blank\">Panama partners in crime<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"post-meta\">\u201cWe have broken no laws and cooperated with the government at all times.\u201d<\/div>\n<div class=\"entry\">\n<p>Variations of that statement seem to be the default defence of everyone from bankers to politicians when their names come up in the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/panamapapers.icij.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Panama Papers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In the UK the latest to resort to some version of it, was first\u00a0Downing Street on behalf of the Prime Minister David Cameron, and then HSBC on behalf of it\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2015\/jun\/04\/hsbc-fined-278m-over-money-laundering-claims\" target=\"_blank\">notorious Swiss\u00a0subsidiary<\/a>. \u00a0The former because his father who lived in the UK, set up an off-shore company which has never paid any taxes in the UK, and the latter because it turns out HSBC has once again\u00a0been handling dirty money, this time\u00a0holding and moving money for\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.icij.org\/project\/swiss-leaks\/banking-giant-hsbc-sheltered-murky-cash-linked-dictators-and-arms-dealers\" target=\"_blank\">off-shore companies owned by relatives of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Now HSBC is a well known money laundering bank. They have been indicted and convicted of money laundering so\u00a0many\u00a0times in so many different countries. \u00a0The best known case was in\u00a02012\u00a0when HSBC were found guilty of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-20673466\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a0laundering drug money out of Mexico<\/a>. HSBC\u00a0were tried in the US\u00a0and fined\u00a0$1.9 billion. They\u00a0paid and said how sorry they were, and their group Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-20673466\" target=\"_blank\">accepted\u00a0responsibility for their past mistakes<\/a>,\u00a0but assured everyone they had now put all that behind them and had even,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>spent $290m on improving its systems to prevent money laundering,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That was 2012. In\u00a02015 HSBC\u00a0all that was found to be blather. HSBC were caught\u00a0laundering \u00a0\u2013 again. This time it was\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2015\/jun\/04\/hsbc-fined-278m-over-money-laundering-claims\" target=\"_blank\">HSBC\u2019s Swiss subsidiar<\/a>y which had\u00a0laundered<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>the proceeds of political corruption and accepted deposits from arms dealers while helping wealthy people evade taxes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Panama partners in crime \u201cWe have broken no laws and cooperated with the government at all times.\u201d Variations of that statement seem to be the default defence of everyone from bankers to politicians when their names come up in the\u00a0Panama Papers. In the UK the latest to resort to some version of it, was first\u00a0Downing [&hellip;]<\/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":[6],"tags":[1769,2346,1195,6992,3372,537,13259,13305,783],"class_list":["post-19685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-corruption","tag-crime","tag-david-cameron","tag-golem-xiv","tag-hsbc","tag-money-laundering","tag-panama-papers","tag-tax-havens","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19685","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=19685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19686,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19685\/revisions\/19686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}