Eric Lipton and Julie Creswell, Panama Papers Show How Rich United States Clients Hid Millions Abroad. The New York Times, 5 June 2016. Financial transactions “for a stable of wealthy clients from the United States are outlined in extraordinary detail in the trove of internal Mossack Fonseca documents known as the Panama Papers. The materials were obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and have now been shared with The New York Times. In recent weeks, the papers’ revelations about Mossack Fonseca’s international clientele have shaken the financial world. The Times’s examination of the files found that Mossack Fonseca also had at least 2,400 United States-based clients over the past decade, and set up at least 2,800 companies on their behalf in the British Virgin Islands, Panama, the Seychelles and other jurisdictions that specialize in helping hide wealth…. For many of its American clients, Mossack Fonseca offered a how-to guide of sorts on skirting or evading United States tax and financial disclosure laws.”
Hidden in Plain Sight: New York Just Another Island Haven for Money Laundering into Real Estate
Michael Hudson, Ionut Stanescu and Samuel Adler-Bell, Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze: Hidden in Plain Sight: New York Just Another Island Haven. International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. 3 July 2014. “Lax U.S. rules and real estate industry’s no-questions-asked approach make it easy for dodgy characters to funnel wealth through high-end Manhattan apartments…. Government officials and their families and associates in China, Azerbaijan, Russia, Canada, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Mongolia and other countries have embraced the use of covert companies and bank accounts. The mega-rich use complex offshore structures to own mansions, yachts, art masterpieces and other assets, gaining tax advantages and anonymity not available to average people.” Winner of the 2014 George Polk Award for Business Reporting.