How David Cameron dodged the Panama Papers questions – video explainer

Footage shows how David Cameron’s statements have gradually changed over the course of four days, eventually arriving at how he benefited from a Panama-based offshore trust fund set up his late father. On Thursday evening Cameron confirmed he sold shares in the Blairmore tax haven fund for £31,500 just before he became prime minister

Panama Papers: Have the media censored the story?

Can the corporate-owned media really hold the corporate world to account? Plus, Julian Assange on the Panama Papers.

In this special edition of The Listening Post, we look at the Panama Papers, the world's largest ever data leak that has been exposing how the RICH and powerful use tax havens to hide their wealth.

The papers - 11.5MILLION documents in all - have revealed how Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm, allegedly helped current and former world leaders, as well as businessmen, criminals, celebrities and sports stars, evade or avoid tax via anonymously owned shell companies and offshore accounts.

In terms of the size of the leak and the scale of the journalistic collaboration, the story has garnered wall-to-wall coverage and dominated the front pages of newspapers across the world.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalism, a non-profit group in the US, coordinated the reporting with 376 journalists from 109 news organisations and 76 countries poring over the files.

If You Ignore It Long Enough Does That Mean It Didn't Happen?

China's happy army of overworked and underpaid censors have been working at lightspeed to erase all mentions of the Panama Papers from Chinese websites now that the country's elite have been revealed as some of the bad people hiding their money in those secret bank accounts in the world's tax havens.  Yes, China has embraced capitalism as an  economic model but, is it really necessary to emulate the corrupt decadent west?  I thought they were better than that what with all their pure as the driven snow, holier than thou and supposedly incorruptible government officials and businesses.  What a joke. They're just as greedy and corruptible as everybody else.


    Websites ordered to purge all reports related to documents following publication of political elite’s offshore secrets

Documents from the leaked Mossack Fonseca database showed the relations of three of the seven members of the Communist party’s elite ruling council, the politburo standing committee, had companies that were clients of the offshore law firm. They included relatives of Chinese president Xi Jinping. 

A Communist party censorship directive instructed news organisations to purge all reports, blogs, bulletin boards and comments relating to this week’s highly sensitive revelations. 

“Please self-inspect and delete all content related to the ‘Panama Papers’ leak,” the order said according to China Digital Times, a website run by the University of California, Berkeley.

BBC and CNN broadcasts about the revelations have been blocked all week in mainland China.

China, Censorship And The Panama Papers

China the enigma. It's always amusing when a Chinese government official spokesperson or leader talks about all the "freedoms"  enjoyed by its citizens except when they don't.  For example the press: China always claims that the 4 estate is free to operate with all the freedoms enjoyed by their western counterparts except when they exercise said right they are inevitably dismissed from their job or worse imprisoned.  So, the Panama papers have been leaked which name relatives of Xi Jinping as having offshore bank accounts.  Because actual reporting on this important issue could lead to embarrassment for Communist Party leaders the censors have been very busy.


     Internet watchdog forbids editors from covering the scandal as names of high-profile Chinese emerge

According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the leaked trove of 11.5m files show that relatives of at least eight current or former members of China’s top ruling body, the politburo standing committee, possess offshore companies arranged though the law firm Mossack Fonseca.

Those reportedly named in the leaked database from the firm include Deng Jiagui, the brother-in-law of the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and Li Xiaolin, the daughter of former premier Li Peng, a Communist party hardliner who became known as the “Butcher of Beijing” for his role in ordering the 1989 military crackdown on Tiananmen protesters.

But a leaked censorship directive from one provincial internet watchdog informed Chinese editors they were forbidden from covering the Panama Papers leak.

“Find and delete reprinted reports on the Panama Papers. Do not follow up on related content, no exceptions. If material from foreign media attacking China is found on any website, it will be dealt with severely,” read the directive, which was obtained and published by China Digital Times, aWEBSITE AFFILIATED with the University of California, Berkeley.

“Please act immediately,” the censorship order reportedly added.

Panama Papers: Briton Set-Up Shell Company So North Korea Could Sell Weapons

North Korea is widely known to be one of biggest sellers of methamphetamines (meth), market in high end fake luxury items and the manufacture of counterfeit U.S. currency.  As with any secretive repressive government with a large standing army large sums of money are needed to support the military apparatus keeping you in power.  Who do you turn too? A British banker who lived in Pyongyang for two decades.  Even though the UN   and numerous countries have placed severe sanctions on North Korea Nigel Cowie was there to help set-up a front company ensuring Pyongyang's quest for nuclear weapons would be funded through illegal arms sales.

A British banker who spent two decades living in communist North Korea set up a secret offshore finance company allegedly used by the Pyongyang regime to help sell arms and expand its nuclear weapons programme.

Nigel Cowie – a fluent Korean and Chinese speaker, who studied at Edinburgh University – was behind a Pyongyang front company, DCB Finance Limited, registered in the British Virgin Islands, papers show.

He says DCB Finance was used forLEGITIMATE BUSINESS and that he was unaware of any unlawful transactions.

Cowie moved to North Korea in 1995 when Kim Jong-il was in power, and went on to become head of its first foreign bank, Daedong Credit Bank. Initially operating out of a ramshackle PyongyangHOTEL with a staff of three, Cowie led a consortium that in 2006 bought a 70% stake in the bank.

He was unaware that the shell company he help create was being used to get around the embargo on the sale of military equipment by North Korea. Unaware because he's now been implicated in a blatantly illegal scheme to circumvent the sanctions placed on North Korea,