Some people think Panama is Paradise but not the law firm of Appleby.

Appleby has been described by one media outlet as “The company [Appleby] helps the rich and wealthy to avoid taxes, hide names and even supply directors for shell companies.

In a Press Release Appleby said:

“Recent media coverage, including the Panorama programme aired on 5th November, continues to focus on the offshore sector. The journalists do not allege, nor could they, that Appleby has done anything unlawful. There is no wrongdoing. It is a patchwork quilt of unrelated allegations with a clear political agenda and movement against offshore.

“We wish to reiterate that our firm was not the subject of a leak but of a serious criminal act. This was an illegal computer hack. Our systems were accessed by an intruder who deployed the tactics of a professional hacker and covered his/her tracks to the extent that a forensic investigation by a leading international Cyber & Threats team concluded that there was no definitive evidence that any data had left our systems. This was not the work of anybody who works at Appleby. Panorama stated they have nearly seven million of our documents. They also claimed to have sourced information from “publicly available documents”. The BBC website states that “the Paradise Papers contains 13.4 million documents”. It is plain that the source of documents is not confined to Appleby.”

To read the full release go to our story published today: “Paradise Papers: Appleby reaction to media coverage”.

We first had the Panama Papers that leaked the details of offshore investments into so called “Tax Havens”.

Now we have the Paradise Papers that is closer to our home.

Not even HM The Queen is exempt.

It was revealed last night (Sunday) £10million of her wealth was held in two offshore havens bermuda and, yes, the Cayman Islands.

Quite frankly, why there is so much fuss on this shows poor knowledge and fabricated outrage by the media and members of the UK Parliament.

The cash was invested by the Duchy of Lancaster estate, which provides the Queen with an income and handles investments for her £500million private estate.

Financial experts have said the investments were not illegal and there is no suggestion the Queen is not paying tax.

So why is this being blown up out of all proportion?

Even the UK’s Daily Mirror, not exactly a BLUE tabloid, said “there is no suggestion the Queen had any knowledge of the investments made on her behalf”.

What are the ‘Paradise Papers’ and why should you care?

I decided to get the answer to this question from outside the UK or the USA. So I went to the Aljazeera website. This is what they said:

Little more than a year after the “Panama Papers” leak, the “Paradise Papers” are shedding light on who is investing huge amounts of money in offshore tax havens.

What are the so-called Paradise Papers?

The leak is a trove of 13.4 million files taken mostly from the offshore law firm, Appleby.

The files were leaked to Suddeutsche Zeitung, the same German newspaper that took hold of the Panama Papers in April, 2016.

About 100 different media outlets worldwide are poring over the details.

“There’s a new global industry that caters to money that moves around the world,” Drew Sullivan, a journalist with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), told Al Jazeera. “This money moves through tax havens and it’s moved to evade taxes to hide assets, to steal money.

“It’s used by organised crime; it’s used by large businesses.”

Why should anyone care?

While, in most cases, putting your money offshore and outside of your country’s financial regulations is legal, many argue hiding from the tax man is unfair. Critics say governments have been slow to deal with it.

The amount of money involved is huge. Boston Consulting Group estimates $10 trillion are held in these offshore financial centres.

Most of us know them as tax havens, but few of us actually use them. That’s because around half of that $10 trillion sum is concentrated not in the rich, but in the mega-rich. Think 0.001 percent of households.

But it is more than inequality and a lack of fairness. The offshore financial system is incredibly secretive – enabling the wealthy and powerful to hide their dealings and break the law.

“It’s very difficult when somebody’s using five or six different offshore jurisdictions to get a true picture of what they’re really doing,” said Sullivan, a journalist with the ICIJ. “And countries need that because law enforcement is not easy to cross borders, but crime can cross borders.”

Leader of Britain’s Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn also criticised tax avoidance, promising that if his party wins the next election it would clamp down on tax havens and end loopholes.

Caroline Lucas, co-leader of the UK’s Green Party, tweeted: “Every year the political establishment try to play down tax avoidance and every year our public services suffer more cuts.”

On the situation in India, Twitter user @Memeghnad said: “Dear fellow Indians, #paradisepapers proves that the super-rich have no political ideologies or affiliation. Their ideology is pure greed.”

SOURCE: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/paradise-papers-care-171106084938087.html

I understand Cayman Islands Minister for Financial Affairs, Tara Rivers, is going to make a public statement on the Paradise Papers leaks and Cayman Islands role in it. I’m sure she is going to say Cayman has done nothing wrong.

Paradise is not a piece of paper here neither is it lost. It’s our home we call Paradise because that’s what it is.