Panama Papers showed vulnerability of whole system: Panama president

Yahoo – AFP, May 3, 2016

Panama's President Juan Carlos Varela delivers keynote address at a luncheon
during the Washington Conference on the Americas at the State Department on
May 3, 2016 in Washington, DC (AFP Photo/Mandel Ngan)

Washington (AFP) - The scandal triggered by the Panama Papers leak of information on how and where the world's wealthy stash funds to avoid detection or taxes underscored many countries' vulnerabilities, President Juan Carlos Varela said Tuesday.

Speaking at the State Department in Washington, the Panamanian president said the documents "reveal a worldwide problem, that involves many countries with legal and financial institutions" vulnerable to actions "that are not in the public interest."

Mossack Fonseca's founder lawyer Ramon

 Fonseca is a friend of Panama's President 

Juan Carlos Varela (shown here) and, until 

March, served as a senior advisor in his 

cabinet (AFP Photo/Rodrigo Arangua)

To that end, countries need to improve transparency and information sharing, Varela argued.

"We urge the international community to maintain a respectful dialogue through diplomatic channels," he added.

Panama and the United States last week signed an agreement on sharing of back account information in a step Panama's finance minister hailed as proof of his country's cooperation in fighting tax evasion.

The bilateral agreement comes weeks after the Panama Papers, a series of reports around the world revealing how one Panamanian law firm set up offshore entities to help the world's wealthy stash their assets.

Following the revelations, Panama has come under intense international pressure to open its financial sector to greater transparency or risk being put back on a global "tax haven" blacklist.

While the government has long said it is committed to that goal and has made some reforms in that direction, it has so far not signed up to an international standard on automatic sharing of tax information set by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Panama's President Juan Carlos Varela, left, sits with Singapore's President 

Tony Tan, right, for a meeting at the Istana or presidential palace on Friday, 

April 22, 2016, in Singapore. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

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Asian Teens Lead World in Science as Indonesia Ranks Near Bottom

Jakarta Globe, May 14, 2015

Students in Surabaya taking the National Exam last week. (Antara Photo/
Herman Dewantoro)

Jakarta. Asian nations make up the entire top 5 of best performers in the biggest-ever school rankings compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, but Indonesia was placed in the bottom ten.

A BBC report on the rankings, which are set to be formally presented at the World Education Forum in South Korea next week, shows Singaporean 15-year-0lds lead the world in knowledge of mathematics and science, followed by Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

A total of 76 countries were included in the survey, said to be much more comprehensive than the OECD’s PISA tests, which also saw Indonesia perform poorly.

In the latest amalgamated rankings, Indonesia is placed 69th, just ahead of Botswana, Peru and Oman. Neighboring Malaysia is ranked 52nd and Thailand is placed 47th.

Besides Singapore, another Southeast Asian nation performing well is Vietnam, ranking 12th.

Finland, Estonia, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Canada make up the remainder of the top ten, while Australia ranks 14th and the United States 28th.

Andreas Schleicher, the OECD’s education director, implies in the BBC report that the secret to success is better teachers.

“If you go to an Asian classroom you’ll find teachers who expect every student to succeed. There’s a lot of rigor, a lot of focus and coherence,” Schleicher says. “These countries are also very good at attracting the most talented teachers in the most challenging classrooms, so that every student has access to excellent teachers.”

Indonesia, Singapore Agree to Step Up Sharing of Tax Information

Jakarta Globe, Reuters, Dec 15, 2014

Indonesia and Singapore have

agreed to step up efforts to counter

cross-border tax evasion. (Reuters

Photo/Edgar Su)

Jakarta. Indonesia and Singapore have agreed to step up efforts to share tax-related information to tighten loopholes on tax evasion in each other’s countries, Indonesia’s finance ministry said.

The commitment came after Indonesia’ Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro met his counterpart Tharman Shanmugaratnam in Singapore on Monday, the ministry said in a statement.

Indonesia and Singapore have an agreement to exchange tax-related information upon request, including data from financial institution and individuals, since 1992.

“Exchanging information by request is not enough to reveal all assets hidden by citizens of both countries. Therefore, to accelerate information flows, Indonesia and Singapore have committed to exchange information automatically to complement the mechanism for information exchange by request,” it said.

The mechanism should start as early as 2017, or at the latest, by end of 2018, the statement said. Both countries have also agreed to amend local legislation to support the exchange of information.

Singapore’s finance ministry could not be immediately reached for comment.

In a bid to tackle cross-border tax evasion, countries across the world are signing up to new standards drawn up in 2013 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for “automatic exchange of information”. Under these standards, countries can sign reciprocal agreements that they will automatically share certain pieces of financial information about each others’ taxpayers.

Indonesia’s new president Joko Widodo has made improving tax collection as one of his priorities. During his campaign, he pledged to increase Indonesia’s tax ratio to 16 percent of gross domestic product from around 12 percent now.

Many wealthy Indonesians are known to have assets in Singapore.

Debate over monetary system grows

Nearly all money is created by commercial banks in the act of lending. They also decide whom to lend it to, and for what purposes. Is this good for the economy? A growing movement is arguing for an alternative.

Deutsche Welle, 28 Nov 2014

Where does money come from? Printing it yourself, unsurprisingly, is illegal. But in today's digital society, creating money has less and less to do with the printing of notes or minting of coins.

"If you ask people where money comes from, most of them will say it's made by the government," says Ben Dyson, founder of the UK organization Positive Money, part of a growing international movement pushing for reform to the current monetary system."But the reality is that the government is only responsible for creating three percent of the money that we use, and that three percent is the cash: the coins and the paper money."

In fact, money is created when commercial banks issue credit, or "make loans". Banks don't take money from someone else's account when they make a new loan. Rather, they enter the amount of the loan simultaneously as a debt and a credit, in equal amount, on either side of a double-entry bookkeeping ledger.

“When a bank makes a loan ... it credits the borrower's bank account with a bank deposit ... At that moment, new money is created," explains the Bank of England in its 2014 introduction to money in the modern economy.

That is how new money - and debt - enter the financial system. Conversely, when a borrower pays back a bank loan, the entries on both sides of the ledger are cancelled - both the "money" (credit record) and the corresponding debt are destroyed.

Cash is actually just a physical token
that people can obtain for money that
 originally arose as an electronic credit
record in the banking system, when a loan
was approved

So if everyone in the Eurozone paid back the principal of all their bank debts tomorrow, at the end of the day, there would be no debt, but neither would there be any money left anywhere in the system. The modern monetary system, in fact, is a scorekeeping system composed of precisely equal amounts of bank credit and bank debt.

Transferable IOUs administered by the banking system

What we think of "money" is really nothing other than transferable IOUs created and administered by the banking system, and supported by contract law.

The banking system's job is twofold: First, to keep track of exactly how much is owed to whom - by debtors to banks, and by banks to creditors.

And second, to decide on the allocation of new loans - to whom, and for what purposes. That's a powerful role - and a growing international movement is pushing for a wide social and political debate over the role of banks in making such decisions.

Creating electronic money

In the UK, 97 percent of the money that exists, Dyson says, is electronic money – money which exists only in computer banking systems and not in physical form. This is created not by the state, but by commercial banks.

In Germany, where many businesses do not accept card payments, around 85 percent of money is electronic and created by commercial banks, and 15 percent is cash, according to a German branch of the monetary reform movement called the Monetative.

While governments create money as coins and notes, commercial or high street banks create money as debt.

Financial instability, social disadvantage

"What this means for the economy is that because it is the banks that are creating the money and deciding who to lend it to, they get to choose where that money goes, for what purposes," Dyson told DW. The monetary reform movement argues that this is not only undemocratic, but damaging to the economy too.

According to Positive Money's research, in the ten years leading up to the financial crisis, around half of the money created by commercial banks was going directly into mortgage lending - loans to enable people to buy houses or commercial property - and around a third into the financial market, in order to buy existing financial assets, not to make new investments in things like factories.

"All that mortgage lending had the effect of pushing up house prices, and created a lot of instability in the market," Dyson says. Unaffordable housing has been a particular problem for the UK during the past couple of decades, as mortgage over-lending has relentlessly inflated a bubble in the price of housing.

If and when that bubble pops, many people will be left with housing debt in excess of the current market value of the house they borrowed so much money to buy. Precisely that problem - the bursting of a huge bubble in real estate prices - is what led to the economic depression in Spain after 2008. Instead of spending money on consumer goods or investment, Spaniards have been trying to pay down excessive debt accumulated pre-2008 during a decade-long era of real estate speculation.

Post-crisis public spending austerity has hit
 the UK hard - yet critics say it could be
 ended tomorrow with fresh central bank
money

Growing debate

Dyson and his counterparts around the world – the International Association for Monetary Reform lists initiatives in 20 countries – are not alone in believing in the need for change. The debate is also taking off among economists and politicians, particularly in the UK, where last week a backbench parliamentary debate took place to discuss the issue took place.

Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, has written several recent columns in favor of stripping the banks of their monopoly on the power to create money.

Lord Adair Turner, former head of the UK's Financial Services Authority, recently wrote a Financial Times opinion article calling on the UK government to direct the Bank of England to create debt-free money to fund the government deficit.

The government could spend a carefully calibrated amount of new, debt-free money into circulation to stimulate demand - for example, by using it to build new low-carbon energy infrastructure or improved rail systems. The new infusion of cash in workers' pockets would circulate, and as it got into the hands of debtors, it would them a source of fresh funds with which to pay down excessive previously accumulated debt, Turner and others have argued.

Mervyn King, who headed the Bank of England for ten years until 2013, has also called for reform of the monetary system, saying that "of all the many ways of organizing banking, the worst is the one we have today."

Calls for monetary reform from such prominent figures remains "barely imaginable" in Germany, says Klaus Karwat of the Monetative. "The banking sector plays a much greater role in the UK economy than it does here, so the need for debate is much more pressing there," he told DW.

The movement's focus is raising awareness of how the current system of money creation works: surveys conducted by Positive Money and Monetative showed that many MPs in both countries lacked a general understanding of the monetary system.

Returning the power to create money to the state

"What we're saying is that commercial banks shouldn't have the ability to create electronic money, the deposits in your account, because they have incentives to lend recklessly. The more they lend, the more interest they can charge. So they over-lend, especially in housing, and create bubbles - debt bubbles and housing price bubbles.

Lloyds TSB was one of the UK banks
to receive a government bailout in 2007

Dyson and his colleagues propose that the power to create money should be returned to the central bank, which is owned by the government, working closely with the Treasury. The state would then control the creation of electronic money as well as notes and coins.

"But the government monetary authority's job will be to create what the economy needs, looking at the economy as a whole and on a long term basis, whereas the banks are currently looking at the very short term, and only at their opportunity to profit rather than the wider needs of the economy," Dyson said.

"We don't need banks nearly as much as we think we do," added Dyson. "And if we take the power to create money away from them, we'll need them even less, because we'll have a source of money created by public central banks which will come into the economy without debt - without anybody having to borrow it."

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Putin, Xi urge stronger ties within security bloc

The BRIC Post, September 13, 2014

The SCO Council of Heads of State met in Dushanbe, Tajikistan on
12 September 2014 [PPIO]

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping have said members of the Russia-China-led SCO share identical views on economic and political cooperation, including the Ukraine crisis and subsequent sanctions.

“At the meeting in narrow format we discussed some other current international affairs too, including the situation in Ukraine. We are very pleased to see that we share identical or similar views on the main areas of cooperation. This consensus of views is reflected in the Dushanbe Declaration that we are adopting,” said Putin.

As the US and EU step up pressure on Moscow with a new round of sanctions, Russia is seeking to strengthen ties with allies in the region, predominantly the SCO members.

Putin on Friday also warned against complacency regarding the global economy. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on Thursday said global growth is unlikely to pick up significantly this year.

“The global economy has not yet overcome the crisis and its problems, and the current political risks and various restrictions and barriers are only worsening the situation, causing direct damage to the global business climate and undermining confidence in international trade and the financial system,” said Putin.

SCO members will improve cooperation on security in food, transport, energy and finances, asserted the Russian President.

“We see great potential in the idea of developing a common SCO transport system that would make use too of Russia’s Trans-Siberian Railway and Baikal-Amur Mainline and be tied into China’s plans for developing the Silk Road route. I am sure that big projects of this kind serve the interests of our organisation’s members and would benefit all countries in Eurasia.

Meanwhile, in Dushanbe, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday called for joint efforts to fight extremism and internet terrorism among the members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

“Currently, (we) should focus on combating religion-involved extremism and internet terrorism,” said Xi when delivering a speech at the 14th meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of State in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe.

He suggested the SCO members launch consultations on an anti-extremism convention and initiate studies on “a mechanism for actions against internet terrorism”.

“(We) should take it as our own responsibility to safeguard regional security and stability, enhance our ability to maintain stability, continue to boost cooperation on law enforcement and security, and improve the existing cooperation mechanisms,” said Xi.

The president also called on the SCO members — China, Kazakhstan,Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan — to urgently grant the group’s Regional Counter-Terrorism Structure (RCTS) new functions to combat drug trafficking.

“(We) should make concerted efforts to crack down on the ‘three evil forces’ of terrorism, extremism and separatism,” Xi said.

The presidents of Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and China signed a package of agreements following the summit. The documents signed include the Dushanbe Declaration.

Russia takes over as acting chair of the organization and will host the next SCO leaders summit in 2015 in Ufa.

TBP and Agencies

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Asian logging companies 'use British islands for tax dodging'

Calls for crackdown as investigation finds huge Indonesian corporations evading tax through network of secret shell companies in British Virgin Islands and other tax havens

The Guardian, The Observer, John Vidal, environment editor,  Saturday 10 May 2014

In the British Virgin Islands it is easy to set up shell companies, which makes
them popular with companies and the wealthy. Photograph: Neil Rabinowitz/Corbis

Giant Asian logging companies that make billions from destroying rainforests use a labyrinth of secret shell companies based in a UK overseas territory, the British Virgin Islands (BVI), which operate as a tax haven, according to documents seen by the Observer. The 13 companies own millions of acres in Indonesia, provide much of the world's palm oil, timber and paper, and use complex legal and financial structures to keep their tax liabilities low.

An unpublished two-year investigation by anti-corruption experts, and seen by the Observer, says Britain should launch a major investigation into the use of the BVI and other tax havens by "high-risk" sectors such as Indonesian forestry. This follows a court case in Jakarta in which one of the world's largest palm oil companies, owned by billionaire Sukanto Tanoto, was fined US$205m after being shown to have evaded taxes by using shell companies in the BVI and elsewhere. The company has agreed to pay the fines.

Documents arising from the case show that Tanoto's company, Asian Agri, systematically produced fake invoices and fake hedging contracts to evade more than $100m of taxes.

According to evidence contained in more than 8,000 papers, the company, which employs 25,000 people in 14 subsidiaries and owns 165,000 hectares of plantations, was engaged in "routine and systematic fraudulent accounting and book-keeping practices" using British jurisdictions.

It is easy to set up shell companies in the BVI, and this makes them a favourite destination for Asian corporations and individuals. A cache of leaked documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists showed last year that nine of Indonesia's 11 richest families had used tropical tax havens.

Although there are legitimate uses for offshore companies, critics say tax havens fuel corruption and allow corporations and individuals to dodge taxes. "Powerful forest and palm oil conglomerates have set up shell companies in the BVI, Cayman Islands and Bermuda, but lack of transparency – including public access to the names of the actual owners of shell companies – makes it difficult for governments to monitor the legality of their activities," said Stephanie Fried of Ulu Foundation, a US organisation that tracks international financial flows. "Clearly, a full international investigation is needed not only by Indonesian authorities, but also by those in the BVI, the UK and other jurisdictions."

A government spokesperson said: "The government put tax and transparency at the heart of the UK's G8 presidency. As a result, the UK's overseas territories are consulting on establishing a central registry of beneficial ownership and on whether it should be publicly accessible. We believe a registry of this kind would provide the best outcome for sound corporate behaviour and for helping authorities, including those in developing countries,prevent misuse of companies for illicit purposes." 

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Asian logging companies 'use British islands for tax dodging' - New
Wealthy in China need new tax haven as Switzerland U-turns on banking privacy - New
Offshore tax-dodging piece shows anti-Chinese bias: report
Chinese oil giants make use of offshore shell companies in Caribbean
China's cash haven in the British Virgin islands – the key points
China's princelings storing riches in Caribbean offshore haven

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Swiss bank accused of helping clients evade US taxes
Gibraltar tries to lure London hedge fund bosses with promise of low taxes
Dutch savers have €1.1bn in Luxemburg and Austria: tax office
Dutch finance ministry denies Starbucks tax secrecy claims
100 of UK's richest people concealing billions in offshore tax havens
The 'who's who' of European tax havens
Accountancy firms 'use knowledge of Treasury to help rich avoid tax' – MPs
The nation at the heart of the offshore scandal: Britain
Leaks reveal secrets of the rich who hide cash offshore

Wealthy in China need new tax haven as Switzerland U-turns on banking privacy

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2014-05-10

The Credit Suisse Group building in Zurich, Switzerland, March 12, 2012.
(Photo/CFP)

The agreement of Switzerland to disclose information on banking accounts in its territory, at the risk of its time-honored status as the world's foremost tax haven, may prompt the wealthy worldwide, including Chinese nationals, to search for new shelters for their fortunes.

Switzerland, the world's largest offshore financial center, announced the sea change in its policy on May 7, pledging to turn in detailed information on the banking accounts of foreigners in the nation, which represents a breakthrough in the global crackdown on tax evasion. The change marks a departure from the nation's insistence over several hundred years on protecting the privacy of bank customers.

The change has been made apparently in response to the long-standing pressure of Western nations, notably Germany, France, and the UK, which have urged other nations to include Switzerland on a blacklist of "uncooperative tax havens," due to the convenience for some enterprises and individuals worldwide to use their accounts in the country to evade tax and launder money.

The US and other Western nations have stepped up their pressure on Switzerland to change its banking policy, as part of their effort to crack down on tax evasion amid their dire financial straits.

The development coincides with an anti-graft campaign sweeping China. In 2013, the State Council issued a decree requiring Chinese residents to report their overseas assets and liabilities, violation of which are liable to just under 300,000 yuan (US$48,200) in fines for institutions and just under 50,000 yuan (US$8,000) for individuals.

According to Shanghai-based China Business News, Huo Jianguo, president of the Institute for International Trade, Economy, and Cooperation, under the Ministry of Commerce, pointed out the decree was meant to improve transparency with regard to the assets of Chinese nationals. Yang Xianyong, researcher at the Institute of Finance and Economy, under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the decree means the government is preparing to levy tax on overseas assets.

As the world's largest offshore financial center, Switzerland boasts over 300 private banking institutions, which manage US$2 trillion of offshore assets, or one third of global savings.

Many experts believe that with Switzerland facing mounting pressure on its operations of offshore financial centers, Singapore may overtake its status in the future. As the world's second largest offshore center now, Singapore boasted US$1.3 trillion of assets, mainly owned by customers from Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, under the custody of its fund managers as of the end of 2012. Singapore also agreed on May 6 to disclose information on the banking accounts of US nationals and enterprises, in order to facilitate a crackdown on tax evasion by the US government.

Although most other tax havens, such as Liechtenstein, Cypress, Luxembourg, Monaco, Bermuda, and the British Virgin Islands, have pledged to take similar steps, rich people around the world can still transfer their assets to Panama and Dubai, among others, which have yet to pledge information disclosure for their foreign-owned bank accounts.

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Singapore and US reach tax evasion deal

BBC News, 6 May 2014

Singapore has one of the world's highest concentration of millionaires

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Singapore has agreed to share information with the US under a new law aimed at preventing offshore tax evasion by American citizens.

The city-state is one of Asia's biggest financial centres and is forecast to overtake Switzerland as the world's largest wealth management centre.

It will participate in the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which takes effect on 1 July.

The move provides a boost to US efforts to clamp down on tax-dodgers.

The US intergovernmental agreement with Singapore was agreed "in substance" and is set to be finalised by the end of the year.

It requires financial firms to report information on US account-holders to the relevant tax authorities.

More than 60 such deals have been negotiated, most recently with Indonesia, Peru and Kuwait.

The US Treasury Department said FATCA applied to US citizens who had more than $50,000 (£29,600) in their personal accounts.

Firms that do not comply will face a 30% withholding tax on their US investment income and could in effect be frozen out of US capital markets.

This includes banks, investment funds and insurers, who will be required to regularly report US citizens' financial information to the Internal Revenue Service.

Prior to any FATCA agreement, financial firms that reported information about their account holders risked violating local privacy laws.

Tax crackdown

There is a rising amount of wealth being held in offshore financial centres in Asia.

According to the Boston Consulting Group, there was $1.2tn in offshore wealth assets held in Singapore and Hong Kong in 2012.

They have benefited in part from a global crackdown on overseas tax evasion, which has put pressure on traditional tax havens such as Switzerland.

Swiss banking secrecy has come under scrutiny following several tax evasion scandals.

A US congressional report released in February accused Swiss private bank Credit Suisse of helping more than 22,000 American citizens hide their wealth and evade taxes.

It is one of 14 banks under investigation by US authorities over allegations of aiding tax-dodgers.

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Chinese oil giants make use of offshore shell companies in Caribbean

China's cash haven in the British Virgin islands – the key points
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EU Offshore Secrets

Swiss bank accused of helping clients evade US taxes

Gibraltar tries to lure London hedge fund bosses with promise of low taxes

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100 of UK's richest people concealing billions in offshore tax havens

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Accountancy firms 'use knowledge of Treasury to help rich avoid tax' – MPs

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