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https://apnews.com/article/entertainmen ... c8f52e29cdLeaked records open a ‘Pandora’ box of financial secrets
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE and JONATHAN MATTISE
an hour ago
Hundreds of world leaders, powerful politicians, billionaires, celebrities, religious leaders and drug dealers have been hiding their investments in mansions, exclusive beachfront property, yachts and other assets for the past quarter-century, according to a review of nearly 12 million files obtained from 14 firms located around the world.
The report released Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists involved 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries. It’s being dubbed the “Pandora Papers” because the findings shed light on the previously hidden dealings of the elite and the corrupt, and how they have used offshore accounts to shield assets collectively worth trillions of dollars.
The more than 330 current and former politicians identified as beneficiaries of the secret accounts include Jordan’s King Abdullah II, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, Czech Republic Prime Minister Andrej Babis, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso, and associates of both Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The billionaires called out in the report include Turkish construction mogul Erman Ilicak and Robert T. Brockman, the former CEO of software maker Reynolds & Reynolds.
Many of the accounts were designed to evade taxes and conceal assets for other shady reasons, according to the report.
“The new data leak must be a wake-up call,” said Sven Giegold, a Green party lawmaker in the European Parliament. “Global tax evasion fuels global inequality. We need to expand and sharpen the countermeasures now.”
Oxfam International, a British consortium of charities, applauded the Pandora Papers for exposing brazen examples of greed that deprived countries of tax revenue that could be used to finance programs and projects for the greater good.
“This is where our missing hospitals are,” Oxfam said in a statement. “This is where the pay-packets sit of all the extra teachers and firefighters and public servants we need. Whenever a politician or business leader claims there is ‘no money’ to pay for climate damage and innovation, for more and better jobs, for a fair post-COVID recovery, for more overseas aid, they know where to look.”
The Pandora Papers are a follow-up to a similar project released in 2016 called the “Panama Papers” compiled by the same journalistic group.
The latest bombshell is even more expansive, porting through nearly 3 terabytes of data — the equivalent of roughly 750,000 photos on a smartphone — leaked from 14 different service providers doing business in 38 different jurisdictions in the world. The records date back to the 1970s, but most of the files span from 1996 to 2020.
In contrast, the Panama Papers culled through 2.6 terabytes of data leaked by one now-defunct law firm called Mossack Fonseca that was located in the country that inspired that project’s nickname.
The latest investigation dug into accounts registered in familiar offshore havens, including the British Virgin Islands, Seychelles, Hong Kong and Belize. But some of the secret accounts were also scattered around in trusts set up in the U.S., including 81 in South Dakota and 37 in Florida.
Some of the initial findings released Sunday painted a sordid picture of the prominent people involved.
For instance, the investigation found advisers helped King Abdullah II of Jordan set up at least three dozen shell companies from 1995 to 2017, helping the monarch buy 14 homes worth more than $106 million in the U.S. and the U.K. One was a $23 million California ocean-view property bought in 2017 through a British Virgin Islands company. The advisers were identified as an English accountant in Switzerland and lawyers in the British Virgin Islands.
There was no immediate comment from Jordan’s Royal Palace.
The details are an embarrassing blow to Abdullah, whose government was engulfed in scandal this year when his half brother, former Crown Prince Hamzah, accused the “ruling system” of corruption and incompetence. The king claimed he was the victim of a “malicious plot,” placed his half brother under house arrest and put two former close aides on trial.
U.K attorneys for Abdullah said he isn’t required to pay taxes under his country’s law and hasn’t misused public funds, adding that there are security and privacy reasons for him to have holdings through offshore companies, according to the report. The attorneys also said most of the companies and properties are not connected to the king or no longer exist, though they declined to provide details.
Blair, U.K. prime minister from 1997 to 2007, became the owner of an $8.8 million Victorian building in 2017 by buying a British Virgin Islands company that held the property, and the building now hosts the law firm of his wife, Cherie Blair, according to the the investigation. The two bought the company from the family of Bahrain’s industry and tourism minister, Zayed bin Rashid al-Zayani. Buying the company shares instead of the London building saved the Blairs more than $400,000 in property taxes, the investigation found.
The Blairs and the al-Zayanis both said they didn’t initially know the other party was involved in the deal, the probe found. Cherie Blair said her husband wasn’t involved in the purchase, which she said was meant to bring “the company and the building back into the U.K. tax and regulatory regime.” She also said she did not want to own a British Virgin Islands company and that the “seller for their own purposes only wanted to sell the company,” which is now closed.
A lawyer for the al-Zayanis said they complied with U.K. laws.
Khan, the Pakistani prime minister, is not accused of any wrongdoing. But members of his inner circle, including Finance Minister Shaukat Fayaz Ahmed Tarin, are accused of hiding millions of dollars in wealth in secret companies or trusts, according to the journalists’ findings.
In a tweet, Khan vowed to recover the “ill-gotten gains” and said his government will look into all citizens mentioned in the documents and take action, if needed.
The consortium of journalists revealed Putin’s image-maker and chief executive of Russia’s leading TV station, Konstantin Ernst, got a discount to buy and develop Soviet-era cinemas and surrounding property in Moscow after he directed the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Ernst told the organization the deal wasn’t secret and denied suggestions he was given special treatment.
In 2009, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis put $22 million into shell companies to buy a chateau property in a hilltop village in Mougins, France, near Cannes, the investigation found. The shell companies and the chateau were not disclosed in Babis’ required asset declarations, according to documents obtained by the journalism group’s Czech partner, Investigace.cz.
A real estate group owned indirectly by Babis bought the Monaco company that owned the chateau in 2018, the probe found.
“I was waiting for them to bring something right before the election to harm me and influence the Czech election,” Babis tweeted in his first reaction to the report.
The Czech Republic parliamentary election is being held on Friday and Saturday.
“I’ve never done anything illegal or wrong,” Babis added.
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Liedtke reported from San Ramon, California, and Mattise reported from Nashville, Tennessee. Associated Press writers Karel Janicek in the Czech Republic, Frank Jordans in Berlin, Josef Federman in Jerusalem, John Rice in Mexico City, Kathy Gannon in Islamabad, Pakistan, and Felicia Fonseca in Phoenix contributed to this report.
Com falta de peças, produção de veículos cai 24,8%, no pior outubro em 5 anos
Segundo associação de montadoras, crise de fornecimento só deve acabar em 2023; segmento de carros de passeio teve o pior mês em 20 anos
Eduardo Laguna, O Estado de S.Paulo
08 de novembro de 2021 | 12h14
A falta de componentes eletrônicos nas linhas de montagem se traduziu no mês passado no pior outubro na produção de veículos em cinco anos. No total, 177,9 mil unidades foram montadas, entre carros de passeio, utilitários leves, caminhões e ônibus, segundo balanço divulgado nesta segunda-feira, 8, pela Anfavea, entidade que representa as montadoras. Desde outubro de 2016, quando foram fabricados 177,6 mil veículos, não se via volume tão baixo para o mês.
Na comparação com o mesmo mês de 2020, a queda foi de 24,8%. Embora o resultado tenha sido 2,6% superior ao de setembro, a atividade segue comprometida na indústria de veículos pela falta de peças, tendo como maior gargalo a insuficiência de componentes eletrônicos, um problema global.
Para a associação, as dificuldades no fornecimento de componentes eletrônicos devem se estender ao longo de todo o ano que vem, revisando um prognóstico que, até então, apostava em normalização até meados de 2022. “Estávamos considerando estabilização a partir do segundo semestre de 2022, porém temos uma atualização indicando que isto só deve acontecer em 2023. Portanto, 2022 continuará sendo um ano de grandes desafios na questão da entrega de semicondutores ao setor automotivo”, disse o presidente da Anfavea, Luiz Carlos Moraes.
A previsão tem como base um acompanhamento periódico que vem sendo feito pela consultoria Boston Consulting Group (BCG) e que agora estima em mais de 5 milhões de unidades o total de veículos que deixarão de ser produzidos no mundo inteiro no ano que vem em razão da falta de componentes eletrônicos. A regularização completa do abastecimento de semicondutores, o item que para as fábricas de carros, não deve acontecer antes de 2023, segundo conclusão do estudo.
Segundo Moraes, o setor faz esforços para encerrar 2021 com número melhor de produção para atender o mais rápido possível os pedidos. Entre os principais clientes, a intenção é entregar mais de 70 mil carros para as locadoras nos últimos dois meses do ano, fechando o ano com um total de 400 mil veículos ao setor, de onde partiram as maiores reclamações públicas pela longa fila de espera.
A crise no abastecimento, no entanto, piorou com a paralisação dos caminhoneiros na semana passada, ao dificultar a retirada de peças no porto de Santos, podendo levar a novas interrupções de produção nas montadoras num momento em que elas não conseguem recompor estoques, hoje suficientes para apenas 17 dias de venda, com menos de 100 mil veículos nos pátios de concessionárias e fábricas.
Mais afetadas pela escassez de componentes eletrônicos, as linhas de carros de passeio tiveram no mês passado o pior outubro em produção dos últimos 20 anos. As fábricas de caminhões também são afetadas, mas, por consumirem semicondutores em menor escala, conseguem administrar a situação com menos prejuízo, tanto que neste ano a produção no segmento está sendo a maior desde 2013.
No acumulado desde janeiro, a diferença na produção em relação a 2020 é positiva, com alta de 16,7%, num total de 1,83 milhão de veículos produzidos. Porém, a própria Anfavea não descarta a possibilidade de esse crescimento cair para a casa de um dígito até o fim deste ano.
Vendas também em queda
Com a falta de carros nas concessionárias, as vendas de veículos recuaram 24,5% em relação a outubro do ano passado, para 162,3 mil unidades - também o menor resultado para o mês em cinco anos. Frente a setembro, as vendas subiram 4,7%, mas a base de comparação aqui é fraca, já que o mês anterior a outubro é o pior do ano até agora.
De janeiro a outubro, as vendas de veículos somaram 1,74 milhão de unidades, alta de 9,5% no comparativo com 2020, porque o choque da chegada da pandemia entre os meses de abril e junho do ano passado foi pesado. Ainda assim, a Anfavea adianta que essa diferença também deve ser reduzida até dezembro, com chance de o ano fechar no vermelho.
Do lado das exportações, que somaram 29,8 mil veículos no mês passado, o balanço das montadoras mostra queda de 14,6% frente a outubro do ano passado. Contra setembro, houve alta de 26,1% nos embarques, e no ano o total exportado chega a 306,8 mil, 26,8% acima dos dez primeiros meses de 2020.
Para completar, a Anfavea informa que a indústria de veículos fechou 410 vagas de trabalho em outubro, empregando no fim do mês 102,6 mil pessoas.
