The most massive leak of all time?

I estimate between 100 and 250 ES points ($100 billion and $250 billion) of laundered money is in the US stock market, not just real estate:


Panama Papers shine light on London real estate

The spotlight on the London property market as a destination for colossal sums of money has intensified after the so-called Panama Papers leak.

The documents — more than 11.5 million encrypted internal documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm — have led to various reports detailing the foreign ownership of multiple prime London properties, sparking fears that some multimillion-dollar deals are being financed with laundered money.

The U.K.'s Guardian newspaper — one of the teams that has been analyzing the documents — reported last week that around 2,800 Mossack Fonseca companies appear on a U.K. land registry list of overseas property owners dating from 2014. The Financial Times also reported that associates of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, had bought property in the capital. CNBC has not been able to independently verify the allegations.

The money-laundering process involves processing money from a criminal or sanctioned sources and shuffling it from country to country and company to company until its original source cannot be traced...

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/11/panama-papers-shine-light-on-london-real-estate.html
 
In Zurich during the early 70's my partner introduced me to a guy who specialized in forfait financing (an offshoot of accounts receivable lending) and lending to small foreign governments who had difficulty obtaining funds from larger and more established firms; his two best clients in both forfait and straight sovereign paper were North Korea and Yugoslavia. Over dinner one evening he said he had never been asked for a penny by a western bureaucrat yet had never done multiple pieces of business with a communist bureaucrat who didn't ask for a bribe.

Jeff was a guy who was where the rubber met the road and who really understood how his end of the world worked. My surprise wasn't that the communists asked to be greased but that the westerners never asked. Btw, he was an incredible trader who traded stocks from his office all day as he conducted his regular business. His volume was such that his rep at Merrill only handled his account and accumulated significant wealth from both commissions (not so cheap then) and following Jeff's lead. The other advantage of hanging out with Jeff (in addition to seeing how a truly exceptional mind worked) was that he only ate at great restaurants -- of which there were and are many in Zurich -- and no matter how hard you fought for the check you never got it.
 
Frederick Foresight said:
New and, perhaps more importantly, somewhat definitive. And, yes, I think it has Putin's attention:

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/...oney-network-tied-to-vladimir-putin-1.2595527
More...

The thing is, it might get attention in the west but in Russia, no-one dares to talk about this honestly (the journalist will end up dead, mysteriously killed by Chechens for no reason) and that's why he doesn't care as he rules the country with an iron fist.
Inside Russia the spin will probably be something like "fascist gay loving west makes up lies about our leader".
 
d08 said:
The thing is, it might get attention in the west but in Russia, no-one dares to talk about this honestly (the journalist will end up dead, mysteriously killed by Chechens for no reason) and that's why he doesn't care as he rules the country with an iron fist.
Inside Russia the spin will probably be something like "fascist gay loving west makes up lies about our leader".
More...
I suspect you're right. However, my guess (hope?) is that at some point a critical mass of in-your-face evidence will be presented that even the most nationalistic and ardent Putin fanboy will not be able to ignore or dismiss. As you pointed out, lone dissenters have been dealt with in the past. So what is evidently needed is a critical mass of incontrovertible evidence intersected by a critical mass of outraged dissenters, neither of which can be ignored or conveniently dispatched. With any luck, this Panama leak will serve as a small step in the general direction of that long journey. Perhaps not likely, judging by history, but let's hope.
 
Frederick Foresight said:
I suspect you're right. However, my guess (hope?) is that at some point a critical mass of in-your-face evidence will be presented that even the most nationalistic and ardent Putin fanboy will not be able to ignore or dismiss.
More...
More than 80% of the Russian population are living in small villages without toilet, no bathroom,no clean water, no internet. They are kept stupid and have no idea about what happens anywhere outside of their village. They live a horrible live. All news is manipulated. Prices went up enormously since the economic sanctions. Only wodka stayed cheap. Poetin ordered the price to stay low as drunk people are less difficult to manage. Nothing will change until Poetin will die and then the Russian billionaires will start to liquidate competition to jump in the vacuum and steal billions. Like they did in past with Chodorkovsky and a few dissidents in London.
Poetin can do anything he wants. Even people working close to him are scared to be killed.
 
Frederick Foresight said:
I suspect you're right. However, my guess (hope?) is that at some point a critical mass of in-your-face evidence will be presented that even the most nationalistic and ardent Putin fanboy will not be able to ignore or dismiss. As you pointed out, lone dissenters have been dealt with in the past. So what is evidently needed is a critical mass of incontrovertible evidence intersected by a critical mass of outraged dissenters, neither of which can be ignored or conveniently dispatched. With any luck, this Panama leak will serve as a small step in the general direction of that long journey. Perhaps not likely, judging by history, but let's hope.
More...

The media in Russia is controlled by the government, usually directly and sometimes indirectly ("we'll suspend your license if you air this").
Having lived around Russians, over 90% don't really pay any attention to foreign media and the tiny minority who does can be angry but they won't matter enough to make a difference.
Putin was smart to seize control of the local media as he knows Russians don't listen to any foreign sources and consider them all to be American puppets and so forth. He can continue ruling the country with little worry about becoming unpopular. The only threat is that the money will run out.

i am nobody said:
More than 80% of the Russian population are living in small villages without toilet, no bathroom,no clean water, no internet. They are kept stupid and have no idea about what happens anywhere outside of their village. They live a horrible live. All news is manipulated. Prices went up enormously since the economic sanctions. Only wodka stayed cheap. Poetin ordered the price to stay low as drunk people are less difficult to manage. Nothing will change until Poetin will die and then the Russian billionaires will start to liquidate competition to jump in the vacuum and steal billions. Like they did in past with Chodorkovsky and a few dissidents in London.
Poetin can do anything he wants. Even people working close to him are scared to be killed.
More...

It's not 80%, probably more like 30%. Even if you have all the modern comforts, it doesn't matter as the people don't think for themselves. They open their Russian news websites which feed them information about the evil west that wants to punish Russia and how Putin is doing everything to make Russia great again, then look at funny cat videos.

Russians have a history of worshiping dictators and psychopaths, nothing has changed.
 
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