There's a lot to parse in that statement, but the call for whistleblower protections seems to be the single most important (and achievable) item. Most people are aware of Snowden and Manning, but it really surprises me that these haven't been reported more:
"Bradley Birkenfeld was awarded millions for his information concerning Swiss bank UBS—and was still given a prison sentence by the Justice Department. Antoine Deltour is presently on trial for providing journalists with information about how Luxembourg granted secret “sweetheart” tax deals to multi-national corporations, effectively stealing billions in tax revenues from its neighbour countries."
Law enforcement agencies don't have the resources or knowledge to go after much of the corruption and wrongdoing inside governments and large companies. If insiders with integrity don't have a safe way of stepping forward there will never be a way to keep wealthy/powerful/connected individuals from abusing the system.
I was unaware of - and totally flabbergasted by - the Birkenfeld case. His boss, who did not come forward at all, served 5 months probation and paid a $100 fine. Another extradited executive was not found guilty of anything. The tax evading client Birkenfeld helped (that was the basis for Birkenfeld's prosecution) paid a fine but served no jail time.
It's not that whistleblowers aren't receiving protections - it's that their prosecutions and punishments far outweigh those whose crimes are being exposed. It's absolutely mind-boggling.
I'd think it's the least achievable thing of all. Governments will happily pass laws to {increase transparency / reduce privacy} and will happily pass laws that {add new taxes / close tax loopholes}, because these things align with their pre-existing agendas. They will not, under any circumstances, make it easier to engage in whistleblowing and especially not large data dumps, because governments absolutely do not want millions of { citizens holding them to account / vigilante info-warriors } increasing their OWN transparency!
That said, whilst I agree with that part, the rest of John Doe's essay left me cold. Other than its defence of whistleblowers it reads like more or less any standard left-ish Guardian article. The cause of increasing global inequality being a handful of law firms, really? They "write the laws" themselves, really? Which laws does he have in mind? All lawyers are corrupt and unethical? The British island territories are the "cornerstone of institutional corruption worldwide" and not, say, African states where the corruption actually occurs? Billionaires own the press and serious investigative journalism is dead, except, presumably, the press and the journalists who he worked with?
I was and still am a huge supporter of Snowden because he revealed behaviour that was unquestionably bad. Literally nobody tried to defend what he showed was happening, and in fact the people doing it had lied in Congress to try and cover it up. It was a classic case where whistleblowing is justified. Additionally, Snowden had a very clear and straightforward thought process justifying his actions: what was happening was unconstitutional, and his attempts to use the formal complaint paths had failed.
John Doe comparing himself to Snowden rubs me up the wrong way, because although he claims the MF files are bursting with criminal evidence, so far all the stories I read about the Panama Papers were about things that are not illegal, and in fact apparently some of the papers show MF dropping clients when they started to suspect illegal activity, which implies MF was not quite the sinister conspiracy Doe makes it sound like. They clearly had legal compliance efforts and they clearly did things. And his justification is a long, rambling and rather incoherent screed that tries to claim the fault of every problem in the world lies with a kind of global conspiracy of evil and spineless people.
I think Doe is walking a very thin line between whistleblowing for a cause and generic vigilante-ism with his actions.
> There's a lot to parse in that statement, but the call for whistleblower protections seems to be the single most important (and achievable) item. Most people are aware of Snowden and Manning
One big difference between Snowden and the Panama Papers (and, to a degree, Manning) is that virtually all of what Snowden revealed is illegal action on the part of the government[0], or information directly tied to that (allegedly-)illegal behavior. With the Panama Papers, some of the information leaked is indeed evidence of actual crimes, but most of it is actually not[1]. One can make the argument that some of the behavior should be, but that's a far less compelling case for whistleblower protection than the evidence of actual crimes taken place under the law as it exists today.
While I do believe that Manning deserved whistleblower protection, her case was similarly harmed (both legally and in the public's perception) by the fact that the signal-to-noise ratio in the documents she provided was very low. It's a lot harder to convince the public that you were acting as a whistleblower if large parts of the data you're leaking isn't blowing the whistle on anything, even if some of it is.
[0] The government disagrees with the claim that it is illegal, but that is the premise of the leak.
But most of all, the legal profession has failed. Democratic governance depends upon responsible individuals throughout the entire system who understand and uphold the law, not who understand and exploit it.
Sigh. One of the most puzzling questions I have to deal with in my mind. Why is there so little moral left in this world?
This question gnaws at my bones, too. Best answer so far wrt the upper middle class: logics of capitalism (competition, accumulation) combined with ethnic/cultural/ideological/socioeconomic isolation makes it hard to identify with (most) other people. With reduced empathy for those affected by exploitation, we construct a new set of mythologies to normalize the exploitation (increasing efficiency of markets). Moral objections are then dismissed as quaint, naive, and/or utopian.
It also seems like material scarcity and instability make it harder to converge on norms like morality (for good game-theoretic reasons). But why would a private individual with $10M have a position in a company that provides payday loans? Beats me.
I'm a corporate lawyer who does a lot of cross borders work. I'm ethical - the lawyers I work with are ethical. The vast majority of lawyers are ethical.
If anything, the Panama Papers should be an object lesson that one firm or group of lawyers can be responsible for a huge proportion of activity in a given sector. Do you think, for a minute, that other firms have this astoundingly high rate of forming off-shore companies? I can assure you it is not the case.
Accordingly, to extrapolate that because one law firm in a central American country is (allegedly) corrupt that the entire profession is worth throwing out is just nonsense of the highest order. It's childish and counterproductively naive. How can you possibly hope to reform a system when you paint it with such a broad brush you are utterly blind to its reality?
The strong odds are that there was chicanery (quite possibly, a lot of it) at Mossack Fonseca. However, my money is on the fact that the substantial, if not overwhelming, majority of companies set up by the firm were for legal purposes and no laws were broken. If you want to argue that these laws themselves are problematic - sure, I am right there with you. Let's talk about reforming the laws in these small tax-haven nations and meaningful internal tax reform in major western economies that will prevent off-shoring from happening in the first place. Those are productive discussions - lets have them. That the Panama Papers may have furthered these discussions is also great.
But the idea that we should be castigating attorneys for taking advantage of legal loopholes that exist in their clients favor is utterly absurd. If you fail to take advantage of those loopholes you wind up getting sued for malpractice, plain and simple.
While I am deeply interested in the further releases of Panama Papers, and I fully support tax reform, a huge strengthening of whistleblower laws, and a whole bunch of other things that puts me, as a lawyer, closer to the 'pirate' end of the spectrum than then 'legal maximalist' side of the spectrum - I have to say, when I read the words of the purported, unverified "John Doe" - he seems to me to be catastrophically naive in his critique of the legal profession and he is all too happy to assign blame with a fire-hose while appearing totally uninterested in performing a surgical analysis of the pressure points where, if achievable reforms were made, real change could result.
Fundamentally, this screed is not a mature call to action. It is a "fuck you" to the system writ large by someone who appears to be more interested in burning things down than figuring out how to fix them.
I'll stand by and watch the flames - but I do not, nor should you, expect that it will be anything more than a campground fire. In order to get real reform achieved - guess what? - you need the buy in of the lawyers too - not just incidentally, but centrally. We write and enforce the laws. Calling us all assholes is not a great way to start that conversation.
The call for whistleblower protection is important, but it'll never happen. The powers-that-be don't want to encourage whistleblowers.
What may change their mind is if all the data were made public. Since whistleblowers have not much protections, their only protection right now is to release everything on the 'net, anonymously. Now, clearly this is not a good idea, as in many cases there will be collateral damage. But what is the alternative? Once the governments see that such collateral damage is the only alternative, they will be force to enact meaningful whistleblower protection.
This statement is very interesting, it is very well written and researched, and it uses less common words. I wonder if there was some level of editing/embellishment done to it.
Might as well be a non-native speaker. It also seems to me that the author might have had some personal reasons to target MF
But to be honest, I don't think Income Inequality is one of the most defining issues of our time, through human history, inequality, not only monetary, but cultural and intellectual has usually been higher.
It’s known that the editors working on the panama leaks are mostly Germans, and that Mossack Fonseca mostly targeted German customers, too, (and had mostly German employees).
So it might very well be a case of a German whistleblower, and a German editor.
It is a legitimate question but it could simply be the case that the US has laws that made it impossible for Americans to exploit the services of this particular law firm.
I wish there would be a Panama Papers leak, why do only a limited amount of people are allowed to see these things, who's deciding what to publish? (I know, they always quote privacy as a reason but just as John Doe said: Those who use the vehicle of an offshore account has most often something to hide...)
There will never be better protection for whistleblowers. That is just not in the interest of those who make the laws nowadays. What will come are new laws which will make the publishing of whistleblower material illegal. The EU for example is currently working on a law for better protection against theft of trade secrets. Which such a law in place no newspaper would risk anymore to publish something like the panama papers.
Question for John Doe. Where's the missing American names and other retracted elements. Further given his naive calls for governments to do something to fix the problem seems naive to the extreme since they were the ones who created the 'problem' or backdoors in the first place
How do you know there are missing American names? It was my understanding when this leak happened that Mossack Fonseca didn't have that many American clients, because Americans still have to pay tax if they try to hide their money in Panama. Admittedly, I have no clue what I'm talking about - but I'm quite curious how it is you know that Americans are being overtly excluded from this action?
That's a distinction without a difference considering that, in most democratic countries, the government is nothing but a segment of the overall population appointed as their legitimate representatives.
It is the government responsibility, in their mandate as representatives, to address the problems perceived as important by the citizens (as, for instance, the problem mentioned in the quote).
Now, if the government is unable or unwilling to use the power it was given "by the consent of the governed" to address such important issues then __that__ become "one of the defining issues of our time", not income inequality or any other problem derived from that.
The revolution might be digitized, but if it does indeed happen, I'm afraid it will also be bloody as hell, as almost all revolutions are. I suppose some things never change.
I think their upcoming release is more interesting:
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists will release on May 9 a searchable database with information on more than 200,000 offshore entities that are part of the Panama Papers investigation.
The data [...] includes information about companies, trusts, foundations and funds incorporated in 21 tax havens, from Hong Kong to Nevada in the United States. It links to people in more than 200 countries and territories.
more and more this feels like a big smoke screen to keep sheep walking in circles. german publications are losing readers in droves. they desperately need to capitalize on a good story.
there's absolutely no real news here. but suddenly "democracy’s checks and balances have all failed".
The tone of the statement is very anonymous in nature. Cold and factual. I wonder if this is how its author normally express theirself or if they've written in this style in order to defeat authorship attribution.
[+] [-] jobu|10 years ago|reply
"Bradley Birkenfeld was awarded millions for his information concerning Swiss bank UBS—and was still given a prison sentence by the Justice Department. Antoine Deltour is presently on trial for providing journalists with information about how Luxembourg granted secret “sweetheart” tax deals to multi-national corporations, effectively stealing billions in tax revenues from its neighbour countries."
Law enforcement agencies don't have the resources or knowledge to go after much of the corruption and wrongdoing inside governments and large companies. If insiders with integrity don't have a safe way of stepping forward there will never be a way to keep wealthy/powerful/connected individuals from abusing the system.
[+] [-] themartorana|10 years ago|reply
It's not that whistleblowers aren't receiving protections - it's that their prosecutions and punishments far outweigh those whose crimes are being exposed. It's absolutely mind-boggling.
[+] [-] sievebrain|10 years ago|reply
That said, whilst I agree with that part, the rest of John Doe's essay left me cold. Other than its defence of whistleblowers it reads like more or less any standard left-ish Guardian article. The cause of increasing global inequality being a handful of law firms, really? They "write the laws" themselves, really? Which laws does he have in mind? All lawyers are corrupt and unethical? The British island territories are the "cornerstone of institutional corruption worldwide" and not, say, African states where the corruption actually occurs? Billionaires own the press and serious investigative journalism is dead, except, presumably, the press and the journalists who he worked with?
I was and still am a huge supporter of Snowden because he revealed behaviour that was unquestionably bad. Literally nobody tried to defend what he showed was happening, and in fact the people doing it had lied in Congress to try and cover it up. It was a classic case where whistleblowing is justified. Additionally, Snowden had a very clear and straightforward thought process justifying his actions: what was happening was unconstitutional, and his attempts to use the formal complaint paths had failed.
John Doe comparing himself to Snowden rubs me up the wrong way, because although he claims the MF files are bursting with criminal evidence, so far all the stories I read about the Panama Papers were about things that are not illegal, and in fact apparently some of the papers show MF dropping clients when they started to suspect illegal activity, which implies MF was not quite the sinister conspiracy Doe makes it sound like. They clearly had legal compliance efforts and they clearly did things. And his justification is a long, rambling and rather incoherent screed that tries to claim the fault of every problem in the world lies with a kind of global conspiracy of evil and spineless people.
I think Doe is walking a very thin line between whistleblowing for a cause and generic vigilante-ism with his actions.
[+] [-] chimeracoder|10 years ago|reply
One big difference between Snowden and the Panama Papers (and, to a degree, Manning) is that virtually all of what Snowden revealed is illegal action on the part of the government[0], or information directly tied to that (allegedly-)illegal behavior. With the Panama Papers, some of the information leaked is indeed evidence of actual crimes, but most of it is actually not[1]. One can make the argument that some of the behavior should be, but that's a far less compelling case for whistleblower protection than the evidence of actual crimes taken place under the law as it exists today.
While I do believe that Manning deserved whistleblower protection, her case was similarly harmed (both legally and in the public's perception) by the fact that the signal-to-noise ratio in the documents she provided was very low. It's a lot harder to convince the public that you were acting as a whistleblower if large parts of the data you're leaking isn't blowing the whistle on anything, even if some of it is.
[0] The government disagrees with the claim that it is illegal, but that is the premise of the leak.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers#Disclosures
[+] [-] joering2|10 years ago|reply
Important read [1] - Antoine trial started few days ago!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxembourg_Leaks
[+] [-] mgraupner|10 years ago|reply
Sigh. One of the most puzzling questions I have to deal with in my mind. Why is there so little moral left in this world?
[+] [-] glup|10 years ago|reply
It also seems like material scarcity and instability make it harder to converge on norms like morality (for good game-theoretic reasons). But why would a private individual with $10M have a position in a company that provides payday loans? Beats me.
[+] [-] psadri|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandrake|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ccvannorman|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] libertymcateer|10 years ago|reply
I'm a corporate lawyer who does a lot of cross borders work. I'm ethical - the lawyers I work with are ethical. The vast majority of lawyers are ethical.
If anything, the Panama Papers should be an object lesson that one firm or group of lawyers can be responsible for a huge proportion of activity in a given sector. Do you think, for a minute, that other firms have this astoundingly high rate of forming off-shore companies? I can assure you it is not the case.
Accordingly, to extrapolate that because one law firm in a central American country is (allegedly) corrupt that the entire profession is worth throwing out is just nonsense of the highest order. It's childish and counterproductively naive. How can you possibly hope to reform a system when you paint it with such a broad brush you are utterly blind to its reality?
The strong odds are that there was chicanery (quite possibly, a lot of it) at Mossack Fonseca. However, my money is on the fact that the substantial, if not overwhelming, majority of companies set up by the firm were for legal purposes and no laws were broken. If you want to argue that these laws themselves are problematic - sure, I am right there with you. Let's talk about reforming the laws in these small tax-haven nations and meaningful internal tax reform in major western economies that will prevent off-shoring from happening in the first place. Those are productive discussions - lets have them. That the Panama Papers may have furthered these discussions is also great.
But the idea that we should be castigating attorneys for taking advantage of legal loopholes that exist in their clients favor is utterly absurd. If you fail to take advantage of those loopholes you wind up getting sued for malpractice, plain and simple.
While I am deeply interested in the further releases of Panama Papers, and I fully support tax reform, a huge strengthening of whistleblower laws, and a whole bunch of other things that puts me, as a lawyer, closer to the 'pirate' end of the spectrum than then 'legal maximalist' side of the spectrum - I have to say, when I read the words of the purported, unverified "John Doe" - he seems to me to be catastrophically naive in his critique of the legal profession and he is all too happy to assign blame with a fire-hose while appearing totally uninterested in performing a surgical analysis of the pressure points where, if achievable reforms were made, real change could result.
Fundamentally, this screed is not a mature call to action. It is a "fuck you" to the system writ large by someone who appears to be more interested in burning things down than figuring out how to fix them.
I'll stand by and watch the flames - but I do not, nor should you, expect that it will be anything more than a campground fire. In order to get real reform achieved - guess what? - you need the buy in of the lawyers too - not just incidentally, but centrally. We write and enforce the laws. Calling us all assholes is not a great way to start that conversation.
[+] [-] _lce0|10 years ago|reply
You can buy moral pretty much everywhere nowadays ;-)
[+] [-] 1024core|10 years ago|reply
What may change their mind is if all the data were made public. Since whistleblowers have not much protections, their only protection right now is to release everything on the 'net, anonymously. Now, clearly this is not a good idea, as in many cases there will be collateral damage. But what is the alternative? Once the governments see that such collateral damage is the only alternative, they will be force to enact meaningful whistleblower protection.
[+] [-] r00fus|10 years ago|reply
And they can't work effectively to further their own ends while in the light of public scrutiny.
[+] [-] raverbashing|10 years ago|reply
Might as well be a non-native speaker. It also seems to me that the author might have had some personal reasons to target MF
But to be honest, I don't think Income Inequality is one of the most defining issues of our time, through human history, inequality, not only monetary, but cultural and intellectual has usually been higher.
[+] [-] kuschku|10 years ago|reply
So it might very well be a case of a German whistleblower, and a German editor.
[+] [-] voodootrucker|10 years ago|reply
Given that all the checks and balances have failed, I don't see very few other options.
[+] [-] manopeace|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sohcahtoa|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] libertymcateer|10 years ago|reply
American lawyers can provide the services provided by Mossack Fonseca.
[+] [-] lumberjack|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philangist|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevinh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mgraupner|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tobltobs|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jayjay1010|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fit2rule|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nxzero|10 years ago|reply
Calling on any government to create change, not it citizens, is a mistake - especially on a topic like this.
[+] [-] luso_brazilian|10 years ago|reply
It is the government responsibility, in their mandate as representatives, to address the problems perceived as important by the citizens (as, for instance, the problem mentioned in the quote).
Now, if the government is unable or unwilling to use the power it was given "by the consent of the governed" to address such important issues then __that__ become "one of the defining issues of our time", not income inequality or any other problem derived from that.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] joesmo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] return0|10 years ago|reply
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists will release on May 9 a searchable database with information on more than 200,000 offshore entities that are part of the Panama Papers investigation.
The data [...] includes information about companies, trusts, foundations and funds incorporated in 21 tax havens, from Hong Kong to Nevada in the United States. It links to people in more than 200 countries and territories.
[+] [-] glasz|10 years ago|reply
there's absolutely no real news here. but suddenly "democracy’s checks and balances have all failed".
come on.
[+] [-] curuinor|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] homero|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yxlx|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marmaduke|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trepiedle|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jayjay1010|10 years ago|reply
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