What’s News In This Story?
This interview is part of the “Tomorrow Lives Here” Conversation Series presented by Miami Business School.
WATCH:
–A veteran of venture capital, Heitor Gonçalves has been at the center of multiple corporate mergers and turnarounds.
–Gonçalves also worked multiple strategic roles for Anheuser-Busch InBev.
–He is now at Restaurant Brands International (the multinational who runs Burger King and Popeyes).
–Based in Miami, Gonçalves spoke to Miami Business School Dean John Quelch about the biggest challenges to a successful corporate merger and the biggest differences between the beer and restaurant industries.
RISE NEWS is South Florida’s digital TV news network. Sign up for our awesome email newsletter to make sure you never miss a story!
Have a news tip about this topic or something completely different? Send it to [email protected]
What Do You Think?
-
What Are The Panama Papers And Why Should Young People Care?
You’ve probably been hearing a lot about something called the Panama Papers in recent days.
That’s because on Sunday morning The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media organizations announced the largest data leak in the history of journalism.
The leak contained 2.6 terabytes of information with over 11.5 million files that identified corruption amongst some of the top political figures in the world. It’s larger than the Wikileaks leak in 2010 or what Edward Snowden brought to light in 2013.
Now, what is in the leak exactly?
Mossack Fonseca is a law firm which specializes in the creation of shell companies and offshore accounts. It’s where the rich stash their ill-gotten or legally obtained earnings from their governments. These accounts are completely legal and can be used to protect their assets from raids or simply for inheritance reasons and estate planning.
However, there are other common reasons for stashing money in a offshore company, such as money laundering, dodging sanctions, and avoiding taxes.
The firm is based out of Panama but runs a worldwide operation.
On their website they claim to have a global network with 600 people working in 42 countries. It has franchises around the world.
It operates in tax havens including Switzerland, Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands, Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man.
Mossack Fonseca has their fingers dipped in many questionable pies. From Africa’s diamond trade, the international art market, to dealing with Middle Eastern royals and Russian oligarchs.
Data. It will get ya bro. Photo Credit: www.cwcs.co.uk/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
The firm rejects that it has ever been involved with dirty money.
“Recent media reports have portrayed an inaccurate view of the services that we provide and, despite our efforts to correct the record, misrepresented the nature of our work and its role in global financial markets,” a statement on the Mossack Fonseca reads. “These reports rely on supposition and stereotypes, and play on the public’s lack of familiarity with the work of firms like ours.”
FIFA:
FIFA, the international football association, an organization often connected to corruption and scandal, is also featured.
The leaked documents allegedly show that FIFA ethics committee member Juan Pedro Damiani, a Uruguayan lawyer, had business links with three men who have been indicted by U.S. officials on corruption charges: former FIFA vice president Eugenio Figueredo and father and son Hugo and Mariano Jinkis.
The latter two were convicted of paying bribes to obtain broadcast rights for soccer matches in South America. Documents show that Damiani’s law firm represented a company registered to Jinkis and seven others registered to Figueredo in a tax haven.
World Leaders:
Interestingly, the British government has been especially vocal against offshore companies in recent years, but Prime Minister David Cameron hasn’t come out of this squeaky clean. His late father is one of the names revealed in the leak.
It is not yet clear, if Cameron himself has financially gained from off shore accounts.
According to some of the reporting in the aftermath of the leak, Mossack Fonseca has helped Russian President Vladimir Putin hide $2 billion, setting up offshore banks under the name of two of his close acquaintances.
Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson resigned Tuesday after a large public outcry after he was named in the Panama Papers. Photo Credit: Control Arms/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
The now former Prime Minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, has also been implicated and was facing calls for his resignation as the public’s confidence in his leadership had been shattered.
He resigned on Tuesday, and is the first political casualty. Also listed are Iceland’s minister of finance, Bjarni Benediktsson, and Iceland’s Interior Minister, Olof Nordal.
China’s leaders have relatives who are named in the leak, propelling the government to limit local access to western media coverage of the leak and accusing them of being biased.
In a further twist, documents show Mossack Fonseca’s links to Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of the Syrian president, even though Washington imposed sanctions Makhlouf in 2008.
Though the firm is under no obligation to comply with US sanctions, it was legally bound to react to EU measures in 2011. It took until September of that year for the firm to finally resign from Makhlouf’s companies. By that time, Syria was in the middle of a genocidal civil war.
Other world leaders in the leak include Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq; Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine; and Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypt’s former president, just to name a few.
The list of questionable characters goes on, although it gets worse. It includes Ponzi schemers, drug kingpins, tax evaders, dictators and at least one jailed sex offender.
And that’s when it becomes unbearable. The sex offender was a U.S. businessman traveling to Russia to have sex with underage orphans. He signed papers for an offshore company while he was serving his prison sentence in New Jersey.
It’s notable that Mossack Fonseca is the fourth biggest provider of offshore services, meaning that if this much information is coming from this company, larger law firms with these same services must have shocking anonymous beneficiaries.
In reply to ICIJ questions about their methods, Mossack Fonseca said that backdating of documents “is a well-founded and accepted practice” that is “common in our industry and its aim is not to cover up or hide unlawful acts.” The company is extremely protective of their clients’ privacy.
Honestly, should we be surprised by this leak?
The exposé once again emphasizes the need for world financial reform. It shows that not only is the global tax system broken, but with so many world leaders involved, global governance itself is fractured too.
Due to this leak the ability of the super rich to hide their money may be made more difficult. But if government officials themselves are doing this, how are we meant to expect them to do anything about tax havens?
The storm may be about to arrive in the United States as well.
A reporter from the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung responded to tweets about the lack of names from the United States, by saying “Just wait for what’s coming.”
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in public affairs. You can write for us!
Cover Photo Credit: Jon Gosier/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
What Do You Think?
-
This University President Just Smacked Down Trump In An Amazing Email
University administrators are often criticized for not speaking up about issues that their students care about. But that is certainly not the case at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB).
There, university president Jay A. Perman has taken a forceful stance against President Donald Trump’s anti-science agenda.
In an email to the entire university community, Perman launched into the Trump administration’s “assault on science”.
UMB is a collection of graduate degree offering institutions including a world renowned School of Medicine.
Perman wrote the email in anticipation of the March for Science that will be taking place this weekend on April 22.
“The assault on science comes not only in the form of draconian budget cuts, but in ways meant to politicize science or intimidate those who undertake it,” Perman wrote. “The administration has issued gag orders on science agencies engaging in unsanctioned speech and sent letters to agency heads ordering that they identify scientists working on climate research. As a presidential candidate, Mr. Trump endorsed theories that have no basis in science — for instance, that vaccines are linked to autism or that climate change is a hoax.”
Maggie Davis, a law and policy analyst for the Center for Health and Homeland Security at UMB is supportive of Perman’s aggressive stance.
“I think it is an appropriate critique of budget priorities of the new administration, especially considering the hostility we have seen to researchers and scientists that work for agencies like NOAA and the EPA,” Davis said. “President Perman’s statement was clearly aimed at the policies promoted by the new administration and not President Trump as an individual, which I think is the best approach to have to build stronger support for robust funding of scientific research.”
You really should read Perman’s entire letter. It is something else.
“To the UMB Community:
I know many of you are planning to join the hundreds of thousands of people expected to march this Saturday in Washington, D.C., to celebrate — and defend — science. I thank you for lending your voice and your advocacy to this movement because, without a doubt, science needs defending these days.
President Trump’s budget proposal cuts 31 percent from the Environmental Protection Agency, slashes the Department of Energy’s basic science research program, and zeros out a program that supports early-stage research into technologies that could reduce our national dependence on fossil fuels. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which spends $32 billion a year on biomedical research — most of which goes to universities and medical schools across this country — would see a nearly 20 percent cut, bringing the agency’s budget to its lowest level in 15 years. By no means is it only science under attack: The president’s proposed budget eliminates the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The assault on science comes not only in the form of draconian budget cuts, but in ways meant to politicize science or intimidate those who undertake it. The administration has issued gag orders on science agencies engaging in unsanctioned speech and sent letters to agency heads ordering that they identify scientists working on climate research. As a presidential candidate, Mr. Trump endorsed theories that have no basis in science — for instance, that vaccines are linked to autism or that climate change is a hoax.
And so I stand with those who will march this weekend to defend science and the scientific method. It is the scientific method that teaches us how to ask questions, form hypotheses, and then — critically — test those hypotheses with rigorous and replicable experiments. It is this method that protects us against specious theories and unproved (and unprovable) “facts.”
As a physician, I know that it is because of science that diseases that were once widespread and incurable are now — within my own lifetime — eradicated or treatable. This is the science that some in Congress and in the White House want to cut, attempting to persuade the American people that the basic research undertaken in labs across this country doesn’t affect them. But it does, and powerfully. Every modern medical advancement that has saved patients in a physician’s care and relieved their loved ones of grief had its origins in the research lab.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, himself a physician, defended President Trump’s proposed $6 billion cut to the NIH budget by suggesting that these cuts would be carved out of the overhead costs that universities like ours incur in doing research — costs such as operating and maintaining the facilities in which the research is conducted. However, as any businessperson knows, this overhead isn’t frivolous. It’s exactly what enables our people to keep doing the research that builds the science that ultimately saves and enriches lives. And I propose that it is precisely these kinds of efforts that many Americans want their tax dollars to support.
UMB is educating the next generation of health care practitioners, scientists, researchers, and policy experts, the people who will one day solve the greatest challenges of human health and well-being. I take this responsibility to train tomorrow’s problem-solvers seriously, and I support all of you in your fight to preserve smart and humane science policy and investment.
The budget priorities of this administration do not reflect the America I know, an America strengthened by its science and scientists, by investments made in research that protects its people, advances its interests, and enlarges global cooperation. The shortsightedness we’ve seen over the last three months undoubtedly threatens science, but science will prevail. It always does.
Sincerely,
Jay A. Perman, MD
President”
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in the world. You can write for us.
Cover Photo Credit: University of Maryland, Baltimore/ Facebook
What Do You Think?
-
Nah, Tinder Doesn’t Have A Fake Profile Problem At All
Tinder, the very popular online dating app is known for its spam problem.
While (probably) millions of people use the app to get dates or meet people in their geographic area, a healthy percentage of Tinder accounts are not that human.
Prostitution rings, cam girls and porn websites have been known to pay top dollar to trick Tinder users into clicking on links and buying products.
“Some of the sites pay $6.00 per lead for a successful sign-up and up to $60 if a lead becomes a premium member,” security response manager Satnam Narang told the Guardian about the scams.
But for those who still refuse to believe that they could be cat-fished on Tinder, just keep scrolling.
Here at RISE NEWS, we did a little test and started swiping right in the name of journalism (and love or whatever).
We’re based in Miami and over the course of one day, we came across over 40 separate profiles that were almost identical.
It got a bit depressing. Like really depressing.
All of the fake profiles purport to be either 23 or 25 (because being 24 really sucks apparently). Most of them claimed to work in “communications” at vague sounding firms or at an area college (that was incorrectly identified as Miami University, which is in Ohio).
Each of the bios were nearly identical with the same message: “I love playing [sport name], [hobby], [hobby] and [some sort of activity] before sleeping.”
Here’s a very sad taste of what we found:
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6
#7
#8
#9
Let us know if you know someone in these pictures: [email protected]
#10
#11
#12
#13
#14
#15
#16
#17
#18
#19
#20
#21
#22
#23
#24
#25
Why are still looking at these?
But seriously, if you have any sort of tip about spammers or scammers on Tinder send us a email to [email protected]
#26
#27
#28
#29
#30
#31
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in public affairs. You can write for us!
What Do You Think?