bdnews24.com :
A US researcher says the ‘Panama Papers’ exposing how the rich and powerful use tax havens to hide their wealth are only one side of the story and unless it is seen what big states like the US are “doing, and not doing”, the other side will remain unknown.
Jason Sharman, who teaches governance and public policy at the Griffith University, with his two colleagues ran their own investigation in 2009 to understand how offshore companies and bank accounts worked.
The Panama Papers are over 11 million documents
leaked from Mossack Fonseca, one of the largest law firms in the world based in Panama specialising in offshore accounts and incorporation of shell companies.
Sharman described in his article, published by the Washington Post this month, that he along with Michael Findley and Daniel Nielson “pretended to be crooks and terrorists and tried to buy shell companies”.
“…so in 2009 I went shopping to see if I could buy my way into the financial system without having to prove who I really was, directly violating international financial transparency rules that require firms to ‘Know Your Customer’,” reads the article.
The trio approached 54 firms, like Mossack Fonseca, who advertised that they provided services to form shell companies. Some of these were based in tax havens like Panama, the Cayman Island while others were in the US and other OECD countries.
“The result I found was startling. It was much easier to set up a company without having to prove my identity in the United States and other ‘onshore’ countries than in the offshore havens,” Sharman said in the article.
A firm in Wyoming offered them to sell an untraceable shell company as well as a bank account held in the name of the company.
A US researcher says the ‘Panama Papers’ exposing how the rich and powerful use tax havens to hide their wealth are only one side of the story and unless it is seen what big states like the US are “doing, and not doing”, the other side will remain unknown.
Jason Sharman, who teaches governance and public policy at the Griffith University, with his two colleagues ran their own investigation in 2009 to understand how offshore companies and bank accounts worked.
The Panama Papers are over 11 million documents
leaked from Mossack Fonseca, one of the largest law firms in the world based in Panama specialising in offshore accounts and incorporation of shell companies.
Sharman described in his article, published by the Washington Post this month, that he along with Michael Findley and Daniel Nielson “pretended to be crooks and terrorists and tried to buy shell companies”.
“…so in 2009 I went shopping to see if I could buy my way into the financial system without having to prove who I really was, directly violating international financial transparency rules that require firms to ‘Know Your Customer’,” reads the article.
The trio approached 54 firms, like Mossack Fonseca, who advertised that they provided services to form shell companies. Some of these were based in tax havens like Panama, the Cayman Island while others were in the US and other OECD countries.
“The result I found was startling. It was much easier to set up a company without having to prove my identity in the United States and other ‘onshore’ countries than in the offshore havens,” Sharman said in the article.
A firm in Wyoming offered them to sell an untraceable shell company as well as a bank account held in the name of the company.
