The Panama Paper Scandal

The Bank Secrecy Act requires businesses to keep records and file reports that are determined to have a high level of usefulness in criminal, tax, and regulatory matters. The documents filed by business under the Bank Secrecy Act requirements are greatly used by law enforcement agencies, both domestic and international to identify, detect and deter money laundering whether it is in extension of a criminal enterprise, terrorism, tax evasion or other illegal activity (Fritsch et al,

The Tweed Ring Scandal in New York City occurred in the 1850s and was an elaborate scheme that brought the U.S economy to the brink of collapse. It all started with mastermind William "Boss" Tweed. Tweed came from humble beginnings, he started to gain political power as a New York City firefighter. In 1853, he was elected to serve on the U.S. House of Representatives. His main concern while in office were state and local affairs, his main focus being New York City. As a senator, Tweed craved power and did whatever he could to get it. He assembled a group of democrat elites together to carry out his plan for power and riches. His plan was to use monetary bribes and political positions to win personal support and assemble his own little

In the years leading up to 1971, America saw the rise of a new president, Richard Nixon elected in 1968, who would ultimately become one of the most infamous men in American history. This was coupled with the rising resistance against the Vietnam War, resistances like the Kent State shooting in 1970 and the 1967 march to the pentagon. Overall, this was a pivotal time in wartime America to keep moral high among citizen in order for the government to have the support to finish out the war in Vietnam. However, Nixon was soon faced with a leak inside the government that captivated the nation. In 1971, the Pentagon Papers were published in the New York Times. The Pentagon Papers were a classified study by the United States Government officially

The Iran Contra affair is historically defined as the “Reagan administration scandal that involved the sale of arms to Iran in exchange for its efforts to secure the release of hostages in Lebanon and the redirection of the proceeds of those sales to the Nicaraguan Contras.” As the Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries, known as the Contras, began their efforts to retaliate against the Socialist Sandinista Regime, American government forces stepped in to support the Contra cause in a hope to support the world-wide elimination of Communism. To understand the entire history of the scandal, many individuals, groups, policies, and deals must be researched and put together to tell the complete history of the Iran Contra affair.

There were many people that were involved in the Tweed Ring scandal, but William “Boss” Tweed and Thomas Nast were the most important. William “Boss” Tweed started his journey to power in the 1940s as a volunteer fire fighter.

In class, we discussed the Iran-Contra Affair involving Ronald Reagan. However, we did not go in depth about public opinion, George H.W. Bush’s involvement, or how people feel about it today. This paper will seek to continue this topic. For example, the Iran-Contra polls showed that most Americans did not believe Regan’s cover stories, yet there was never a push for him to pay the political price, which would ultimately have been impeachment. Thus this paper will further attempt to understand the mindset of people that allowed these events to occur with little penalty.

The Iran-Contra Affair took place during the Reagan Administration. It started with The Cold War and the clash between two different belief systems and countries that refused to work together. The U.S. being a capitalism giant, attempted to intervene and prohibit the spread of Communism. This Clash started after World War II when the US disagreed during a Conference held in the Summer of 1945. This conference discussed whether the Soviet Union could take possession of Poland. Due to this disagreement, President Truman suspended the Lend-Lease Act

In 1992, George H.W. Bush ran for President for a second time, this time though, something was different. More information linking Bush to the Iran Contra Affair of the Reagan Administration had become public, and the news media was beginning to make the connections. In one of the first articles released regarding his involvement in 1992, the author, Walter Pincus, began to openly criticize Bush for his deception. Pincus, who wrote a lot about Bush and his involvement, explains that “In the almost six years since the scandal surfaced, records and testimony from congressional and legal proceedings reveal that Bush, while vice president, watched Iran-Contra unfold from a front-row seat in the White House.” (Pincus, Walter, 1). Pincus is

During the Iran-Contra affair the public, as well as congress, were left in the dark about a deal was made with the enemy country of Iran to sell weapons to them to aid in their war with Iraq. Once sold the Profit were given to the Contras in Nicaragua. I will be arguing that advertising dollars, using the military as a source, and flak were used to skew the public’s perception of how the affair took place.

KPMG was one of the biggest accounting firms in the 90’s that with a lucrative end, would serve wealthy companies using forged revenues in order to avoid taxes. The accountants that worked for the firm were expected to meet certain quotas. Consequently, instead of trying to run an honest business they were trying to maximize the sales using all kinds of dishonest marketing approaches. KPMG employees used foreign banks as well as bogus law firm statements to preserve a legitimate business running. This accounting firm manipulated financial data of clients, costing the internal revenue service over 2.5 billion in lost tax revenue

During this week Panama Papers was the hottest topic in class as well as in media around the world. Specially, if we look at the numbers in this case they are shocking. The type of people involved in this fraud are people who we trust and handover them a political power. An anonymous source provided this information to German media. This scam involves top political leaders and influential people around the world. As of now, 11.5 million documents have been revealed. Around 140 political leaders around the world are involved in this scam. The most important thing is 400 journalists and 100 media institutions are working on this issue. Therefore, it will be hard for all these politicians to pin point a particular person or institution and bully

It would be convenient to start this research paper by stating that corruption is a challenge mainly for businesses in developing countries and that it is unrelated to the current affliction of the economy in the United States. It would also be convenient to claim corruption has declined in America as a result of awareness raising campaigns and the numerous anti-corruption laws. But none of those aforementioned statements would be true. Corruption is not the exception, but rather the rule in today’s business practices. In 2004, Daniel Kaufmann, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution and former director at the World Bank, calculated an index of "legally corrupt" manifestations which is defined as the extent of undue influence

Just at the beginning of this month, on April 3, a gigantic leak of documents called the Panama Papers was published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Obtained from a global law firm based in Panama called Mossack Fonseca, the Panama Papers are documents that contain 11.5 million records from the past 40 years and include details on more than 214,000 offshore entities connected to people, ranging from political figureheads to criminals, in more than 200 countries and territories. The reason this is such a prime example of a leak is because the Panama Papers reveal everything about offshore tax havens and, as director of ICIJ said in a CNN article on the topic, "'The offshore world really only has one product and that is secrecy and when you take away that product they don't have anything for sale". This means that the leak shattered the secrecy of Mossack Fonseca's offshore industry, therefore possibly destroying the entire industry in itself.

Since the phenomenon of globalization, companies that decided to broaden their horizons have to face multiple challenges and their management functions need some adaptations. While going abroad, companies may become concerned with the subject of corruption that makes the business with foreign countries even more complicated. Even if there is a willingness to fight and reduce the corruption across the world, companies must be aware that this subject exists and must take it into account while dealing with foreign companies, their efforts to understand and adapt to local corruption influencing their success of

It isn’t uncommon for international governments to seize control of a business if they determine it is their best interest to do so. However, there is an opposite example: In June 2010 Kyrgyz authorities nationalised two commercial banks Asia Universal Bank (AUB) and Manas bank specializing on loans. AUB lost $480mln. EBRD financed the representative of the Global witness (UK) who investigated illegal financial transactions including the withdrawal of funds to offshore companies and money laundering. A large-scale investigation has revealed that billions later appeared in the accounts of offshore companies outside Kyrgyzstan, including UK, were transferred through AUB. Approximately 10% of the state’s assets left the bank through international wire transfers. The interim government was forced to nationalize AUB and divide its assets into two separate banks.