"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.
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.
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.
So the accusation of perjury left you cold? It was linked in the piece.
https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/04/03/19506/offshore-la...
Try thinking about the issue from the other side: suppose the dickheads ruining our future were actually doing all they are accused of doing (tax evasion on a massive scale, global 'conspiracies' i.e. forging strong alliances to screw everyone else over, etc), how would that look to the People? What would happen if the big media outlets were in these dickheads' pockets? What kind of coverage would the People get of such issues? What did the People get in this case, for example? No actual, in-depth analysis of the papers, that's for sure.
The world we are living in today exists in this form almost solely thanks to spinelessness and corruption at every level imaginable. What happens to a politician if he speaks openly about corruption in his own ranks? He'll be gone from the public eye in no time! Making people disappear like that is trivial: just stop reporting about them, and if they made too much of a mess to do that, just push another crisis to the frontpage. Public memory is horrifyingly short.
Your second paragraph displays the problem beautifully: how exactly is anybody supposed to have a clear view of global happenings (including lawmaking) when they happen in ways inaccessible to the common man (incomprehensible language or plain ol' closed doors)? Saying corruption actually occurs mainly in African states is just plain ridiculous. Some have valuable resources that get exploited by western or chinese corporations by way of corrupting the locals with nice gifts and whatnot. But that's pretty much it.
On the other hand, any western city with large building projects is subject to corruption. How else do you justify an advertised price of 600mil for, say, a new airport, blowing up ten-fold over the period of the airport's construction and its supposed opening (which only happened years later)? I'm thinking about Berlin Brandenburg here specifically, but no month passes without a similar case of a project starting out at a couple hundred million and progressively climbing up to billions in costs.
The recent VW scandal is another beautiful specimen of what you'd call global 'conspiracy' turning out to be ice-cold money-grabbing. VW was stupid enough to get caught by US environmental agencies and is dropping buttloads of cash to repair their image, all the while the rest of the automobile industry is quietly calling back cars to "fix problems". How come nobody covers this the way VW was scandalised?
Most shady things don't get covered because there's a total lack of material to work on or publish. Which brings us back to square one: how exactly is anybody supposed to have a clear view of global happenings (including lawmaking) when they happen in ways inaccessible to the common man (incomprehensible language or plain ol' closed doors)? I think the people in power have proven enough times already (not just nowadays, but throughout history) that they are not to be trusted. So instead of asking > They "write the laws" themselves, really? or > All lawyers are corrupt and unethical? try finding out what made that person make these claims instead of dismissing them based on your current knowledge. I'm not saying you have to agree with the claims, but you should at least make an effort to understand the issue for the sake of broadening your horizon. Knowing more about something never hurts ;)
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.
That's nonsense. Snowden revealed both legal and illegal behavior. In the U.S., as in most countries, it's totally legal to spy on foreign countries for political or economic intelligence. Whereas, it's illegal to spy on our own citizens in the U.S.. Snowden leaked both with full details on how they did it to point opponents could counter a bunch of the legal stuff.
That's why he's both a whistleblower (illegal stuff) and a traitor (leaking legal stuff).
Important read [1] - Antoine trial started few days ago!
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?
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.
Payday loan firms are enormously profitable, because they prey upon people who are in dire need of cash. The private individual you mention has managed to accumulate his wealth by exploiting those people.
So either humankind is part of nature, and then it's safe to conclude that nature has morals (no matter how little right now, it's certainly part of humankind), or we're out of nature and there's no advantage in pointing out that nature has no morals.
I don't condemn people who accept the first option as the absolute truth, but I'd like to believe we can make this blue marble a better place than that somehow.
>>[psadri] Does nature by default have morals?
Morality is the differentiation of actions proper and improper; generally defined 'morals' is that language that contains imperatives: what humans should do (as sentences, called 'norms').
When we wonder why there seems to be a lack of behavior that follows these morals in the world, we approach the concept of morality from a descriptive sense (we observe that human behavior has changed). Increased insight in this pursuit is found when we examine how humans themselves have approached morality from a normative sense (what is actually proper and improper). When humans have considered morality they have come to understand that the morals humans proclaim—again, language that contains imperatives—either correspond to real, objective moral facts ("Moral Realism") or are merely invented delusions expressing human emotions ("Moral Nonrealism").
Prior to the Enlightenment, there was a category of accepted knowledge outside of empirically observed nature (e.g., the non-natural, supramundane, supernatural, etc). The Enlightenment itself was a shift in human thinking that rejected this category as invalid, switching our criteria of acceptable knowledge to the material, to the empirically observed.
The shift in thinking did not happen all at once. Certain beliefs remained, held over from earlier times—somewhat as dependencies—until they could be examined and dismantled individually if they lacked empiric evidence. Western society's assumption that objective Moral Facts existed in a material universe remained for some time until examined by David Hume in 1738 in his A Treatise of Human Nature. Here Hume observed the difficult reality of the relationship between facts (that which is) and values (that which we claim ought to be), concluding that we cannot assert prescriptive or normative values based on descriptive facts.
Hume's Is-Ought observation upset the world, and has resulted in our modern condition. If empirical observation is categorically never able to locate oughts, a world that accepts Empiricism alone is one forced from Moral Realism to Moral Nonrealism: morals no longer correspond to Objective Facts, but can only be understood as invented whims and emotions, which—apart from society's ability to enforce or inflict punishment for as a conditional consequence (what Kant termed 'hypothetical morality')—can be ignored without consequence.
The transition from a society whose intellectuals and leaders held Moral Realism (viz, Christendom) to one where artists, philosophers, and intelligentsia hold Moral Nonrealism (the Modern West) has been a long, painful process since 1738. The Marquis de Sade astutely summed up the painful condition of man following Hume's revolution in thought saying "If there is no God, then everything that Is, is Right" and the majority of Western thought since then has either been in reaction against this belief (i.e., revivals of Evangelical Christianity) or experiments exploring this accepted world (e.g., Surrealism, Dada, Modern Art, Existentialism, Egoism/Individualism/Anarchism, Deconstructionism, Postmodernism, etc).
From the introduction to Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor by the American Heidegger-scholar and philosopher Charles Guignon:
Briefly put, the issue is this. Either God exists or He does not exist...if God does not exist, then the picture of the universe formulated by mechanistic materialism must be true. But, in this case, given the point of view of modern science (what Ivan calls "Euclidean reason"), the universe consists of nothing but meaningless material objects in causal interaction, effects follows cause according to the laws of physics, people are determined to do what they do, no one is guilty of anything, and so there are no such things as right or wrong, good or bad. Or, more precisely, the ideals of justice, goodness, benevolence, dignity, and so on turn out to be purely human inventions, the results of projecting our needs and wishes onto brute, meaningless matter, and so they are illusions lacking any basis in the order of things.
...Dostoevsky regarded [this] as the inevitable outcome of the perfectionist stance of detachment and moral superiority: the idea that, for higher people, "everything is lawful." [If] "God is dead"...then why not step outside the law and do whatever you want? From this standpoint, morality looks like a suckers game. The paradox [of] Westernized ideals, then, is that its austere discipline of detachment and self-transformation tends to undermine its own moral underpinnings. In the end this form of idealism spawns a self-serving moral nihilism.
Define nature, and, particularly, what things are excluded from it.
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.
> Mossack Fonseca did not work in a vacuum—despite repeated fines and documented regulatory violations, it found allies and clients at major law firms in virtually every nation. If the industry’s shattered economics were not already evidence enough, there is now no denying that lawyers can no longer be permitted to regulate one another. It simply doesn’t work. Those able to pay the most can always find a lawyer to serve their ends, whether that lawyer is at Mossack Fonseca or another firm of which we remain unaware.
And you said this.
> 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.
I agree that castigating all attorneys is going to far, but this comes dangerously close to two fallacies; that because it's legal, it's moral (namely that you can divorce your moral responsibility because you're acting in the letter of the law) and that you were just "following orders." If the consequence of failing to take advantage of loopholes is lawsuits for malpractice then that indicates a problem in itself. As a corporate lawyer you have to put yourself as an ethical person first, a lawyer second.
> I have to say, when I read the words of the purported, unverified "John Doe" they seem to me to be catastrophically naive in its critique of the legal profession and is all too happy to assign the blame with a fire-hose while uninterested in performing a surgical analysis of the pressure points where, if achievable reforms were made, could result in actual change.
I think it would be tremendously useful if you inject some needed surgical analysis into this. Any reasonable view point from the other side should be welcome into such a debate.
Please don't confuse "ethical" with "not illegal".
This seems worrisome to me. It looks like one of those cases where the system is set up so that we end up getting exactly what no one wants. Moloch[0] in other words. I don't have a solution (no one has a solution to Moloch), but it's worrisome.
[0]: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
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.
And they can't work effectively to further their own ends while in the light of public scrutiny.
I'm sure there are forces that act on politicians other than loyalty to their constituents, but there's no reason in the American democracy we couldn't (theoretically) get to a point where we elect representatives who understand the importance of whistleblower protection and care more about their constituents than other influences.
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.
So it might very well be a case of a German whistleblower, and a German editor.
Given that all the checks and balances have failed, I don't see very few other options.
American lawyers can provide the services provided by Mossack Fonseca.
What that doesn't explain is why no American clients were listed in this "leak".
...
>When the data is released, users will be able to search through the data and visualize the networks around thousands of offshore entities, including, when available, Mossack Fonseca’s internal records of the company’s true owners. The interactive database will also include information about more than 100,000 additional companies that were part of the 2013 ICIJ Offshore Leaks investigation.
>While the database opens up a world that has never been revealed on such a massive scale, the application will not be a “data dump” of the original documents – it will be a careful release of basic corporate information.
>ICIJ won’t release personal data en masse; the database will not include records of bank accounts and financial transactions, emails and other correspondence, passports and telephone numbers. The selected and limited information is being published in the public interest.
https://panamapapers.icij.org/20160426-database-coming-soon....
Calling on any government to create change, not it citizens, is a mistake - especially on a topic like this.
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.
But it is the citizens' responsibility to make clear to their representatives the problems they consider important. For a couple of examples of this principle in action, see the civil rights movement of the '60s, or the marriage equality movement of the noughts and teens. No politician would've dared approach those issues until the citizenry made its voice heard.
As a rule, on issues that we as peoples consider important, we lead our politicians, they do not lead us. This is partly because of the incentives in play in modern democracies and partly because, as you say, they are merely our representatives, not our dear leaders.
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.
there's absolutely no real news here. but suddenly "democracy’s checks and balances have all failed".
come on.
