Law firm at heart of ‘Panama Papers’ leak owned by Nazi’s son
http://www.timesofisrael.com/law-firm-at-heart-of-panama-papers-leak-owned-by-nazis-son/
Erhard Mossack, father of one of Mossack Fonseca
founders, served as combat soldier in Waffen SS during World War II
BY
<http://www.timesofisrael.com/writers/times-of-israel-staff/>TIMES
OF ISRAEL STAFF AND
<http://www.timesofisrael.com/writers/afp/>AFP<http://www.timesofisrael.com/law-firm-at-heart-of-panama-papers-leak-owned-by-nazis-son/#comments>
April 4, 2016, 5:59 pm
<http://cdn.timesofisrael.com/uploads/2016/04/Jurgen_Mossack-wikimedia-e1459784868330.jpg>
[]
Jurgen Mossack, co-founder of Panama law firm
Mossack Fonseca that it is at the center of
leaked documents revealing offshore accounts of
politicians and celebrities around the world
(Wikimedia Commons, Jandrade97, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Mossack Fonseca, the Panama-based law firm at the
heart of the so-called “Panama Papers” scandal,
is a discreet outfit with a roster of big-name
clients and a quiet reputation for hiding money from the tax man.
But the company apparently also had another
secret. One of its founders, Jurgen Mossack, is
the son of a Nazi SS soldier who was a member of
the “Totenkopf” (Death’s Head) fighting unit
during World War II, the Daily Mail reported Monday.
Citing German media,
the<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3522538/I-shocked-astounded-Panama-tax-scam-lawyer-son-Nazi-SS-officer-dreaded-Death-s-Head-division-fled-South-America-SPIED-Cuba-CIA-brother-reveals.html>
report said that Erhard served as a rottenfuehrer
(senior corporal) in the SS’s combat branch, the Waffen.
The Waffen initially operated the concentration
camps, and later recruited into its ranks many
camp guards when it was formed into a combat
division. However, Erhard likely only served in
the fighting unit, which used the death’s head symbol as its insignia.
<http://cdn.timesofisrael.com/uploads/2016/04/totenkopf-adl.jpg>
[]
The symbol of the ‘Totenkopf’ fighting unit in the Waffen SS (courtesy of ADL)
In 1948, Erhard moved his family from Germany to
Panama, but returned with his wife in the 1970s.
He died in the 1990s and his wife passed away
five years later, the report said.
According to the International Consortium of
Investigating Journalists (ICIJ), citing US Army
records, “old intelligence files” showed the
father had also offered to spy for the CIA during
his time in Panama, apparently on nearby Cuba.
The cloak of secrecy that Mossack Fonseca wrapped
around itself was ripped apart on Sunday, when
media organizations around the world published
information from a massive leak from the firm’s supposedly secure data center.
Politicians, sports stars and celebrities were
named in the 11 million pages of documents,
according to information starting to be released
by the ICIJ, which is parsing the data.
So too were the techniques allegedly used by
Mossack Fonseca to make money trails murky,
including slavish use of offshore havens such as
the British Virgin Islands and some Pacific Ocean nations.
The revelation detailing the offshore structures
of many wealthy clients is a “crime” and an
“attack” on Panama, the law firm maintains.
“This is a crime, a felony,” Ramon Fonseca, one
of the founders of Mossack Fonseca, told AFP.
“This is an attack on Panama because certain
countries don’t like it that we are so
competitive in attracting companies,” he said.
Inside Mossack Fonseca
So who runs Mossack Fonseca, whose headquarters
are housed in a fairly nondescript mirrored
building in Panama’s business district?
One of the two lawyers who founded the firm more
than three decades ago, Jurgen Mossack, was born
in Germany in 1948 and moved to Panama with his
family, where he obtained his law degree.
The other founder is Fonseca, born in 1952. He,
too, got his law degree in Panama but also
studied at the prestigious London School of
Economics, and once said in an interview he had mulled becoming a priest.
Fonseca had a small business until he merged with
Mossack and the two went after offshore business
by opening offices in the British Virgin Islands.
The ICIJ said the leak shows that half of the
companies the law firm incorporated more than
113,000 were done so in that fiscal paradise.
But Mossack Fonseca also branched out to the
Pacific, to a tiny island nation called Niue.
According to the ICIJ, by 2001 the firm was
earning so much from its offshore registrations
on the island it was contributing 80 percent to Niue’s annual budget.
When the British Virgin Islands was forced to
clamp down on some methods that had previously
permitted anonymous ownership of companies,
Mossack Fonseca moved business to Panama and to
the Caribbean island of Anguilla.
Online scrubbing
The law firm spent money to try to remove online
references linking it to money laundering and tax evasion.
But other countries took an increased interest in
what it was doing. In Brazil, it was named as
being one of the parties within a huge bribery
scandal unfolding involving the state oil company Petrobras.
It also came under scrutiny in the US state of
Nevada, where a judge determined that it had
willfully tried to cover up its management role over its local branch there.
Last month, Fonseca who had also been an
adviser to Panamanian President Juan Carlos
Varela since 2014 declared he was taking a leave of absence.
The step was to “defend my honor,” he said, as
the Brazilian allegations piled up.
Mossack Fonseca: The Nazi, CIA And Nevada
Connections... And Why It's Now Rothschild's Turn
http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=172347#172347
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-03/mossack-fonseca-nazi-cia-and-nevada-connections-and-why-its-now-rothschilds-turn
For all the media excitement about the disclosed
names in the "Panama Papers" leak, in this case
represented by the extensive list of Mossack
Fonseca clients, this is not a story about which
super wealthy individuals did everything in their
power, both legal and illegal, to avoid taxes,
preserve their financial anonymity, and generally
preserve their wealth. After all, that's what
they do, and it should not come as a surprise
that they will always do that, especially
following last year's disclosure by the same ICIJ
which revealed a list of 100,000 HSBC clients who
had been dutifully avoiding the payment of taxes.
What the story is about is the nebulous world of
offshore tax evasion and tax havens, which based
on data from the World Bank, IMF, UN, and central
banks, hide between $21 and $32 trillion, where
registered incorporation agents and law firms in
small Caribbean countries (and not so small US
states) make the laundering of money and the
"disappearance" of the super wealthy, into
untracable numbers hidden behind shell companies, possible.
So, in order to learn some more about the real
star of this story, the Panamanian lawfirm of
Mossack Fonseca, we went to Fusion which has
compiled a fascinating story of the company's
history, founders, and key milestone events in its life.
These include the Nazis, the CIA, Mexican drug lords, and of course, the U.S.
First, here is the Nazi and CIA connection:
Jurgen Mossack’s family landed here in the 1960s.
During World War II, his father had served in the
Nazi Party’s Waffen-SS, according to U.S. Army
intelligence files obtained by the ICIJ. Once in
Panama, the elder Mossack offered to spy on
communists in Cuba for the CIA. (Mossack Fonseca
said the firm “will not answer any questions
related to private information regarding our company founding partners.”)
Here is the connection to Mexican drug lord
Rafael Caro Quintero, and perhaps to the DEA:
Many times Mossack Fonseca has had no clue which
nefarious characters were doing what with the
companies the firm created – as when Jurgen
discovered in 2005, according to internal emails,
that he was the registered agent and listed as
the director for a company controlled by the
Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero. The
co-founder of the Guadalajara Cartel was
convicted in Mexico in 1985 for the brutal murder
of U.S. DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena.
(Today, Quintero is again considered a fugitive
by the US after walking out of prison in 2013 on a technicality).
Mossack Fonseca’s senior partners instructed an
employee to carry out their resignation from the
company upon the discovery. "Pablo Escobar was
like a newborn compared to R. Caro Quintero!”
Jurgen wrote in reaction to the news. “I wouldn't
want to be among those he visits after he leaves prison!"
And then there is the state of Nevada:
In 2013, an Argentine prosecutor’s report linked
Nevada-incorporated shell companies involved in a
major corruption scandal to Mossack Fonseca. When
those shell companies became the subject of a
federal court battle in Nevada, the leaked files
show, Mossack Fonseca employees took steps to
remove paper records and to wipe computer files
and phone logs at its Las Vegas office. One
employee even traveled from Central America to
Nevada to bring back files. “When Andrés came to
Nevada he cleaned up everything and brought all
documents to Panama,” according to an email dated Sept. 24, 2014.
Mossack Fonseca said it “categorically” denies
hiding or destroying documents in its statement
to the ICIJ: “Let us be clear that it is not our
policy to hide or destroy documentation that may
be of use in any ongoing investigation or proceeding.”
The leaked records also contradict sworn
testimony by Jurgen Mossack, who told the federal
district court that his firm was separate from
“MF Nevada,” its office in Las Vegas, and had no
control over it. Mossack Fonseca “has never
maintained an office, establishment or principal
place of business in Nevada,” Mossack testified
in July 2015. But, according to the ICIJ
investigation, internal documents show the
opposite, indicating that the firm’s Panama City
headquarters controlled MF Nevada’s bank account,
and that the firm’s co-founders and one other
official with the company owned 100 percent of MF Nevada.
Why is Nevada important? Because recall that
according to a recent investigation by Bloomberg,
"The World’s Favorite New Tax Haven Is the United States" ...
... and specifically several US states such as
Nevada, Wyoming and South Dakota.
After years of lambasting other countries for
helping rich Americans hide their money offshore,
the U.S. is emerging as a leading tax and secrecy
haven for rich foreigners. By resisting new
global disclosure standards, the U.S. is creating
a hot new market, becoming the go-to place to
stash foreign wealth. Everyone from London
lawyers to Swiss trust companies is getting in on
the act, helping the world’s rich move accounts
from places like the Bahamas and the British
Virgin Islands to Nevada, Wyoming, and South Dakota.
“How ironic—no, how perverse—that the USA, which
has been so sanctimonious in its condemnation of
Swiss banks, has become the banking secrecy
jurisdiction du jour,” wrote Peter A. Cotorceanu,
a lawyer at Anaford AG, a Zurich law firm, in a
recent legal journal. “That ‘giant sucking sound’
you hear? It is the sound of money rushing to the USA.”
That money is rushing for one simple reason:
dirty foreign - and local - money is welcome in
the U.S., no questions asked, to be shielded by
the most impenetrable tax secrecy available anywhere on the planet.
One may even say that nowadays, US-based tax
havens are the new Switzerland, or Bahamas or,
for that matter, Panama. Indeed, for most
Americans, offshore tax haven are now meaningless
with the passage of the FATCA law, which makes
the parking of dirty US money abroad practically
impossible. So where does that money go instead - it stays in the US:
Others are also jumping in: Geneva-based Cisa
Trust Co. SA, which advises wealthy Latin
Americans, is applying to open in Pierre, S.D.,
to “serve the needs of our foreign clients,” said
John J. Ryan Jr., Cisa’s president.
Trident Trust Co., one of the world’s biggest
providers of offshore trusts, moved dozens of
accounts out of Switzerland, Grand Cayman, and
other locales and into Sioux Falls, S.D., in
December, ahead of a Jan. 1 disclosure deadline.
“Cayman was slammed in December, closing things
that people were withdrawing,” said Alice Rokahr,
the president of Trident in South Dakota, one of
several states promoting low taxes and
confidentiality in their trust laws. “I was
surprised at how many were coming across that
were formerly Swiss bank accounts, but they want out of Switzerland.”
And, to top it off, there is one specific firm
which is spearheading the conversion of the U.S. into Panama: Rothschild.
Rothschild, the centuries-old European financial
institution, has opened a trust company in Reno,
Nev., a few blocks from the Harrah’s and Eldorado
casinos. It is now moving the fortunes of wealthy
foreign clients out of offshore havens such as
Bermuda, subject to the new international
disclosure requirements, and into Rothschild-run
trusts in Nevada, which are exempt.
* * *
For financial advisers, the current state of play
is simply a good business opportunity. In a draft
of his San Francisco presentation, Rothschild’s
Penney wrote that the U.S. “is effectively the
biggest tax haven in the world.” The U.S., he
added in language later excised from his prepared
remarks, lacks “the resources to enforce foreign
tax laws and has little appetite to do so.”
Yes, Mossack Fonseca may now be history, and its
countless uberwealthy clients exposed, but none
other than Rothschild is now delighted to be able
to fill its rather large shoes. In fact, someone
with a conspiratorial bent may decide that
today's dramatic takedown of the Panama
"offshoring" industry was nothing more than a hit
designed to crush the competition of domestic
"tax haven" providers... such as Rothschild.
--
--
Please consider seriously the reason why these elite institutions are not discussed in the mainstream press despite the immense financial and political power they wield?
There are sick and evil occultists running the Western World. They are power mad lunatics like something from a kids cartoon with their fingers on the nuclear button! Armageddon is closer than you thought. Only God can save our souls from their clutches, at least that's my considered opinion - Tony
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Please consider seriously the reason why these elite institutions are not discussed in the mainstream press despite the immense financial and political power they wield?
There are sick and evil occultists running the Western World. They are power mad lunatics like something from a kids cartoon with their fingers on the nuclear button! Armageddon is closer than you thought. Only God can save our souls from their clutches, at least that's my considered opinion - Tony
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"PEPIS" group. Please feel free to forward it to anyone who might be interested
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