Secrecy World Quotes

“The borderlines of the secrecy world, the distance between what is hidden and the public's right to know, was shifting quickly. 'We live in a time of inexpensive, limitless digital storage and fast internet connections that transcend national boundaries,' the anonymous leaker wrote. 'It doesn't take much to connect the dots: from start to finish, inception to global media distribution, the next revolution will be digitized.”
― Jake Bernstein, Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite

“However, Putin's tilt toward Trump appeared to have been motivated by something deeper than a desire for revenge against Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration. Putin and Trump shared a similar zero-sum worldview and a penchant for operating in the shadows. Each man viewed the idea of a free press with contempt. They both believed that financial interests should be passed down to their children to create family dynasties ... Trump and Putin are both conversant with the secrecy world, practiced hands at using anonymous companies to wall off their activities and keep their business affairs secret. During the campaign, Trump reported that he had 378 individual Delaware companies, but the full extent of his business dealings remains hidden.”
― Jake Bernstein, Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite

“HSBC's executives saw an emerging class of global rich as the bank's path to prosperity. The superwealthy were increasingly stateless. They banked in Geneva. Lived in London and New York. Shopped in Paris and Milan. And they held their assets through offshore companies registered in places like the British Virgin Islands. HSBC executives were reading the telltale signs of a new age of inequality, even if they didn't recognize it as such. Governments were retreating from providing their citizens pension and health organizations, and HSBC strategy report observed. The stateless rich balked at paying taxes in their home countries, to which they felt little allegiance. It made sense to them to base their operations inside tax havens and to bank in Switzerland, where discretion was woven into the country's DNA. These trends represented an opportunity for the wealth management industry.”
― Jake Bernstein, Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite

“Secrecy laws and incomplete information hog-tied journalists who tried to expose offshore wrongdoing. Lawsuits and public ridicule frequently followed publication. A partial picture allowed critics to dismiss findings as anomalies rather than patterns.”
― Jake Bernstein, Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite

“Juncker, just a few months into his EU presidency, went into hiding for a week after the publication of the first round of stories. While he was gone, Luxembourg was widely castigated as a tax parasite, prospering from the depletion of government coffers throughout the world. When Juncker finally emerged, he refused to talk much about his tenure as the head of a tax avoidance factory masquerading as a country. Instead, he promised that he would lead the change to bring fairness to Europe's tax systems. Critics, not surprisingly, questioned his sincerity.”
― Jake Bernstein, Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite

“Walker told Kristjánsson about the Mossfon data and Wintris Inc., the offshore company belonging to Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, Iceland's prime minister, who had been elected on a platform of getting tough on the country's creditors and their offshore dealings. Icelanders were not aware that their prime minister was himself involved in the very activity he was castigating.”
― Jake Bernstein, Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite

“Around 6.8 million files came from Appleby, a Bermuda-based offshore legal service provider. Appleby and its data were different from Mossack Fonseca and the Panana Papers. Whereas the upstart Panamanians were entrepreneurial risk-takers, their files filled with garrulously compromising emails, Appleby was the establishment. The firm had been founded in 1898 by Major Reginald Woodfield Appleby, who later became a commander of the Order of the British Empire.”
― Jake Bernstein, Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite

“Mossfon subscribed to a Google-like paid search service called World-Check to help identify PEPs ["politically exposed person"] and criminals. It also, not for the first time, sent a letter to its professional clients requesting that they conduct a customer review. There was little follow-up. It was a question of incentives. When scandals sporadically came to light, they always seemed to resolve themselves without undue harm to the firm. Meanwhile, business was booming. In 2005, the firm tripled the number of shell companies it created on behalf of banks. By the end of the year, Mossfon had more than seventy thousand active companies. To do the necessary due diligence on all of them would have been prohibitively expensive, and sometimes impossible. In a business predicated on secrecy, no one wanted to produce the information.”
― Jake Bernstein, Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite

“In 2010, Nigeria also indicted Dick Cheney in the multimillion-dollar bribery scheme. Cheney, a notorious micromanager, claimed not to know about the bribery.”
― Jake Bernstein, Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite

“After his meeting with Romney, Fonesca encountered Keith Flax, a local jeweler who was also speaker of the legislative council and a close friend of both Romney and Peters. It didn't take long for the Panamanian and the Belonger to recognize they shared a special bond. Both were members of the ancient order of Freemasons. Dating to the Industrial Revolution in England, Freemasonry appropriated the symbols of craft guilds like the stonemasons to forge a fraternal order kept alive through esoteric rituals and Masonic lodges. ¶ Fonseca had tapped into an underground network—a secret society within a secret society—that exists in tax havens, particularly the British ones. Knowledge of Freemasonry, its signs, symbols, and rites, often serves as a doorway into closed cultures. It provides instant solidarity and an opportunity for government and business interests to network privately. John Christensen [the Jersey island exposé cooperator] says he was approached multiple times on Jersey to join one lodge or another. He always declined the offer. Holding no particular animus toward Freemasonry or the elite hobnobbing in the lodges, Christensen nonetheless viewed it all as slightly creepy.”
― Jake Bernstein, Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite

“In one hearing, Levin estimated that $70 billion in tax revenue was lost each year because it was hidden offshore.”
― Jake Bernstein, Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite