Are the UK and EU royal families of Jeffrey Epstein's organized crime syndicate, Russia, and the family of Osama bin Laden fraudsters, members of ongoing organized crime, or defenders of the faith?

THE UK/EU ROYALS ARE SELF-PROCLAIMED DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH, WHICH MEANS ABIDING BY THE 10 COMMANDMENTS, THE WORD OF GOD, CANON LAW, AND PAPAL BULL OF THE POPES, WHICH DECIDES WHO CAN RULE

The UK/EU "royals" are self-proclaimed "defenders of the faith", "In his 1994 documentary with Dimbleby, Charles said that, when king, he wished to be seen as a "defender of faith", rather than the British monarch's traditional title of Defender of the Faith, in order to respect other people's religious traditions.^[254] This attracted controversy at the time, as well as speculation that the coronation oath may be altered.^[255] He stated in 2015 that he would retain the title of Defender of the Faith, whilst "ensuring that other people's faiths can also be practised", which he sees as a duty of the Church of England.^[256] Charles reaffirmed this theme shortly after his accession and declared that his duties as sovereign included "the duty to protect the diversity of our country, including by protecting the space for faith itself and its practice through the religions, cultures, traditions, and beliefs to which our hearts and minds direct us as individuals."^[239]" [2] 

A spectacular and cleverly-engineered public relations statement -- no doubt -- but do the UK/EU royals live up to that statement, or is the same deceit or bearing false witness in order to steal or covet in violation of the Christian faith they've made themselves the defenders of?

What do their victims, if any, have to say that might shed some light on the UK/EU "royal" family's ability to truthfully-fulfill this "duty" to defend judeo-Christian faith?

DID HIGHLY RESPECTED SPOTIFY EXECUTIVE, BILL SIMMONS, PUBLICLY-SPECIFY THAT "PRINCE" HARRY AND MEGHAN MARKLE ARE "LAZY FUCKING GRIFTERS" -- BUT IS THIS THE FIRST TIME THE UK OR EU ROYAL FAMILIES OF JEFFREY EPSTEIN, RUSSIA, AND THE BIN LADEN FAMILIES HAVE ENGAGED IN GRIFTER BEHAVIOR, AND WHAT EXACTLY IS A GRIFTER?

Highly respected Spotify Executive, Bill Simmons, did specify this summer that "prince" Harry and Meghan Markle were "lazy fucking grifters", and also specified "I wish I had been involved in the ‘Meghan and Harry leave Spotify’ negotiation. ‘The Fucking Grifters.’ That’s the podcast we should have launched with them,” Simmons said on his podcast, the Bill Simmons podcast. “I have got to get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try and help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories … Fuck them. The grifters.” [3][4][5]

As we continue to pursue an investigation into Charles III's "duty" to defend Judeo-Christian faith -- what exactly is a "grifter"?

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a grifter is "someone who gets money dishonestly by tricking people". [6]

Similarly, per Oxford Dictionary, a grifter is "a person who tricks people into giving them money, etc." [7]

Interestingly, per Cambridge Dictionary, a fraudster is "someone who gets money by deceiving people". [8]

Furthermore, fraud is defined by Oxford Dictionary as a crime, "the crime of cheating somebody in order to get money or goods illegally". [9]

Exactly how much did Harry and Markle allegedly or comparatively defraud or dishonestly trick Spotify into giving them through dishonest, grifter, deceit, fraud, and/or trickery? 

According to the UK Guardian, Harry and Markle dishonestly, defrauded, deceived, grifted, or tricked Spotify out of a value between about $20 million and $29.1 million USD. [10]

Per Cornell Law, "Fraud is both a civil tort and criminal wrong. In civil litigation, allegations of fraud might be based on a misrepresentation of fact that was either intentional or negligent.  For a statement to be an intentional misrepresentation, the person who made it must either have known the statement was false or been reckless as to its truth.  The speaker must have also intended that the person to whom the statement was made would rely on it.  The hearer must then have reasonably relied on the promise and also been harmed because of that reliance. 

A claim for fraud based on a negligent misrepresentation differs in that the speaker of the false statement may have actually believed it to be true; however, the speaker lacked reasonable grounds for that belief. 

A promise that goes unfulfilled may give rise to a claim for fraud only under particular circumstances.  For example, in California law, a false promise is only fraudulent if the promisor intended both not to perform on the promise and also that that the promisee would rely on the promise; and, the promisee must have reasonably relied on the promise and been harmed as a result of that reasonable reliance.  When the promise was made as part of a contract, most states forbid a plaintiff from recovering under both contract law and tort law.

Lastly, opinions are not usually actionable as fraud except under very specific circumstances defined by either the common law or statutes in each state.  In California, for example, a jury may be instructed that an opinion can be considered a representation of fact if it is proven that the speaker “claimed to have special knowledge of the subject matter” that the listener did not have; OR that the representation was made “not in a casual expression of belief, but in a way that declared the matter to be true;” OR if the speaker was in a position of “trust and confidence” over the listener; OR if the listener “had some other special reason to expect” the speaker to be reliable.  Once the jury decides that an opinion qualified as a misrepresentation of fact under the circumstances, the plaintiff must still demonstrate all of the other elements of an intentional or negligent misrepresentation already described, such as reasonable reliance and resulting harm.

In criminal law, fraud usually takes very specific forms, such as bankruptcy fraud, credit card fraud, or healthcare fraud. California law, for example, also recognizes distinct crimes for check fraud, access card fraud, insurance fraud, and making false financial statements.  Some criminal fraud statutes might be classified under laws forbidding larceny, others under forgery, and others as a crime covered by laws regarding a specific industry, like insurance or banking laws.  Suspicions of criminal fraud should be reported to law enforcement authorities." [11]

Per Cornell Law, "Grand larceny is a crime defined as larceny of property worth more than the given state’s statutory requirement. The minimum property value for grand larceny often ranges between $100 and $1000." [12]

Per Cornell Law, larceny is "A crime at common law.  The illegal taking of the property of another with intent to deprive the owner thereof." [13]

Per Cornell Law, "Conspiracy is an agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act, along with an intent to achieve the agreement's goal." [14]

Are Harry and Markle two or more people? Check, yes they are. Did Harry and Markle conspire to engage in grand larceny by dishonestly making false, misleading, deceptive, tricky, or grifter statements to take or get money or payment or a contract from Spotify? How would I know? I'm not a lawyer, judge, nor jury member considering the same. But it sure seems like Bill Simmons is implying something similar.

UpRights News wasn't able to find that Spotify's executive retracted his statement, and separately, Harry and Markle -- who similar to Trump -- sue others for defamation, in this case haven't sued Spotify's executive for publishing those statements, which he was bold to make if he had no evidence able to prove "the grifting".  

Is this "defender of the Judeo-Christian faith" duty kind of behavior? Let's examine what the 10 Commandments by God dictate to monarchs in our exploration of the same.

WHAT DO THE 10 COMMANDMENTS OF GOD SAY ABOUT DECEIVING OR LYING AND STEALING OR COVETING?

The following is a print screen of a tabulation of different versions and interpretations of the 10 Commandments of God, and where different versions and interpretations exist because God is perfect, as is the world of "God's perfect design". [15]

Because there are different or competing versions of the 10 Commandments, instead of one perfect set of Commands we should have each been born with in God's perfect world, the references we make to the same below this table include more than one Commandment reference for single commands.

The 1st and 2nd Commandments by God are pretty clear, and collectively specify only one God exists, and doesn't name the UK/EU monarchs (plural) as the one God, to debunk any notion that monarchs outrank God. 

The 4th/5th Commandments by God are also very clear, specifying to honor thy father and mother, and where violating any of the other 10 Commandments clearly dishonors God's Commandment of honoring thy father and mother, who it is assumed would be dishonored if their children violated Commandments by God, the creator of the entire universe.

The 6th/7th Commandment specifies thou shall not commit adultry.

The 7th/8th Commandment specifies thou shall not steal.

The 8th/9th Commandment specifies thou shall not bear false witness (thou shall not lie, deceive, defraud, nor trick).  

Did Harry and Markle bear false witness, lie, deceive, defraud, trick, and/or grift in a dishonest manner, to be able covet, steal, grift, and/or receive money from Spotify, based on the statements of Spotify' executive?

If they did, then did the UK/EU royal family fulfill their stated "duty" to defend Judeo-Christian faith?

If they did, then the answer would be no. The UK/EU royal family would not have fulfilled their duty to defend the Judeo-Christain faith, and thus would have lied in this case, if they violated the Commandment of God, and where in this case, those their family may have lied to include UK Commonwealth and/or US taxpayers, in order to get, take, or benefit from the same after committing to the "duty" to protect the Judeo-Christian faiths.

If they violated the 10 Commandments of God, this of course would be an additional example of grifting behavior by the same family, specifically claiming or implying to claim that in exchange for taxpayer dollars, the "royal" family would "defend the faith" in a dutiful manner.

ARE THERE ANY OTHER EXAMPLES, INCIDENCES, OR ALLEGATIONS OF THE UK/EU ROYALS ENGAGING IN ANY OTHER GRIFT?

According to CNN, "prince" Charles, now Charles III, had a charity that was investigated for being involved in an "honors-for-cash" conspiracy involving Saudis. [16][17]

Similarly, each "princes" Harry and William, the sons of Charles, have been implicated in their own charity scandal, where funds were exchanged between them [18]

Separately, Harry and Markle were exposed as having "received" $3 million in public funds that they allegedly were not entitled to, and which became a scandal, which they had to repay, and yet as Harry comes from one of the richest families on Earth, the funds came from the public, instead of being loaned to him from his family, bank, or paid for by the extreme wealth of his family, who allegedly own as many as 15 commonwealth countries or parts thereof.[19]

Separately, The Cut, reported that "prince Charles" received over a million dollars in "bags of cash" and/or "suitcases of cash" from Saudis, and/or others, and at least one "donation" by the family of none other than Osama bin Laden, who along with the Saudi government, planned and executed the criminal conspiracy to murder thousands of Americans on September 11, 2001, and where that conspiracy was aided by Russia, who drew air defenses for the Eastern United States towards Alaska, creating the window of opportunity for the Saudis and bin Laden family to murder Americans, and where the role of Russia doing the same is rarely discussed in the context of all of their other attacks on the US. [20][21][22] 

According to the BBC, "prince" Michael of Kent was selling access to the Kremlin, led by child trafficker, Vladimir Putin, after Russia's aggression in Ukraine began, where raped children and women were being trafficked from.[23][24]

Putin's Russia "engineered" Jeffrey Epstein's Donald Trump into office, but not before meeting with the Trump family at Trump Tower to plot how to traffic children from Russia to the Trump Organization, and where once engineered into power, Trump wouldn't release evidence regarding 9/11 to the victims of 9/11, which implicated the Saudis, who then financed Trump's family (Jared Kushner, married to Jeffrey Epstein's named Ivanka Trump) over $2 billion and separately financed Donald Trump's LIV golf venture -- the subject of several investigations.[25][26][27][28][29][30][31]

Similarly, according to additional investigative journalism reporting, the former King of Spain fled Spain after being accused of corruption with the Saudis.[32]

Is this defender of the faith behavior by the UK "royals", Russians, or Saudis? Is this sort of behavior the kind of behavior that fulfills a duty to defend Judeo-Christian faith, or even Islamic faith, or is this the total opposite of the same in violation of these faiths? Are these additional examples of ongoing grifting or much worse? Could Hollywood invent better super villains?

ARE THERE ANY OTHER VIOLATIONS OF THE 10 COMMANDMENTS, GRIFTS, LIES, FRAUDS, FORGERIES, MISREPRESENTATIONS, OR THE LIKE BY THE ENGLISH, BRITISH, UK, AND/OR EU ROYALS THAT MIGHT BE EMPLOYED BY THEM TO GET, TAKE, STEAL, DEFRAUD, USURP, GRIFT, AND/OR TAKE POSSESSION OF ROYAL TITLES, LANDS, TAXPAYER FUNDS, AND/OR ANY OTHER BENEFIT, AND IF SO, WHAT ARE SOME OF THESE ALLEGATIONS?

The UK royals, Saudis, Jeffrey Epstein, Putin orbit, and Trump orbit show up in the Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Pandora Papers, and FinCen Files money laundering and tax evasion leaks, in the context that after Russia engineered their boy Trump into office along with Brexit candidates, the UK Commonwealth and US were arguably among the largest offshore tax avoidance/evasion destination for billionaires and multimillionaires.

"Other offshore shell company transactions described in the documents do seem to have broken exchange laws, violated trade sanctions or stemmed from political corruption, according to ICIJ reporters. For example:

• Uruguay has arrested five people and charged them with money-laundering through Mossack Fonseca shell companies for a Mexican drug cartel.^[28]
• Ouestaf, an ICIJ partner in the investigation, reported that it had discovered new evidence that Karim Wade received payments from DP World (DP). He and a long-time friend were convicted of this in a trial that the United Nations and Amnesty International said was unfair and violated the defendants' rights. The Ouestaf article does not address the conduct of the trial, but does say that Ouestaf journalists found Mossack Fonseca documents showing payments to Wade via a DP subsidiary and a shell company registered to the friend.^[29]
• Swiss lawyer Dieter Neupert has been accused of mishandling client funds and helping both oligarchs and the Qatari royal family to hide money.^[30]"[33]

It is important to note that among Trump Tower tenants, beyond Russia's GRU's Paul Manafort, Novartis' Michael Cohen, and the UK royals' SCL's Cambridge Analytica's Kellyann Conway, that "Qatar Airways, owned by the Qatari government, has rented commercial space in the tower since at least 2008,^[155] a fact that news media outlets noted when one of Trump's executive orders, EO 13769, suspended immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries, but not from Qatar.^[156][157]", in the context that Trump has repeatedly been accused of using Trump properties to launder money for Russia(ns) and/or others.

Similarly, "Donald Trump, his wife Melania, and their son Barron maintain a three-story residence on the penthouse floors.^{[17][47][169]} The tower was their primary residence^[170][171] until October 2019.^[172] The Trump Organization offices are on the 25th and 26th floors,^[11][153] and there is a private elevator between the penthouse and Trump's office.^[170] Angelo Donghia provided the original black-and-white, brass-and-mahogany design for the penthouse,^[173] which was later replaced with a gold-and-Greek-column design after Trump reportedly saw the more lavish house of Saudi businessman Adnan Khashoggi.^[170] In a 1984 article in GQ magazine, Trump's first wife Ivana said the first floor of the penthouse had the living, dining, and entertainment rooms and kitchen; the second floor had their bedrooms and bathrooms as well as a balcony over the living room; and the third had bedrooms for the children, maids, and guests.^[174] ...

Past tenants include Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, the ex-president of Haiti who died in 2014,^[179] who was discovered to have lived in a $2 million apartment on the 54th floor in 1989, when public records in Haiti showed that he had forgotten to pay his bills.^[180] The singer Michael Jackson rented an apartment on the 63rd floor during the 1990s.^[181] The composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, known for musicals such as Cats, moved out of his 59th and 60th floor apartment in 2010 after 17 years of stating his intention to do so.^[182][183]

Prince Mutaib bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, reportedly lived on an entire floor in the tower.^[155]

Chuck Blazer, the former president of CONCACAF, rented two apartments on the 49th floor. One of these apartments, a $6,000-per-month suite, was occupied mainly by his cats, while Blazer lived in an adjoining $18,000-per-month apartment.^{[13][154][185]} The apartments and office space were described as part of an "extravagant" lifestyle that ultimately resulted in Blazer being apprehended and becoming an FBI informant in a corruption investigation against association soccer organizations worldwide, including CONCACAF and FIFA.^[185]

José Maria Marin, former president of the Brazilian Football Confederation, had been living in a $3.5 million apartment.^[186] In 2018, he was sentenced to a jail term of four years for FIFA-related corruption charges. After serving 80% of his sentence, he was released in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States because of his advanced age and deteriorating health and placed under house arrest at his apartment.^{[13][169][187]}

... Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who lived in the tower when he was Trump's campaign manager,^[169] agreed to forfeit his Trump Tower condo in September 2018, as part of a plea deal made during the Special Counsel investigation of Russian ties to the 2016 election.^[190]"[34]

Returning to the Panama Papers, "While no standard official definition exists, The Economist and the International Monetary Fund describe an offshore financial center, or tax haven, as a jurisdiction whose banking infrastructure primarily provides services to people or businesses who do not live there, requires little or no disclosure of information when doing business, and offers low taxes.^[41][42]

"The most obvious use of offshore financial centers is to avoid taxes", The Economist added.^[41] Oxfam blamed tax havens in its 2016 annual report on income inequality for much of the widening gap between rich and poor. "Tax havens are at the core of a global system that allows large corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid paying their fair share," said Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, "depriving governments, rich and poor, of the resources they need to provide vital public services and tackle rising inequality".^[43]

International Monetary Fund (IMF) researchers estimated in July 2015 that profit shifting by multinational companies costs developing countries around US$213 billion a year, almost two percent of their national income.^[44] Igor Angelini, head of Europol's Financial Intelligence Group, said that shell companies "play an important role in large-scale money laundering activities" and that they are often a means to "transfer bribe money".^[45] Tax Justice Network concluded in a 2012 report that "designing commercial tax abuse schemes and turning a blind eye upon suspicious transactions have become an inherent part of the work of bankers and accountants".^[46]

Money-laundering affects the first world as well, since a favored shell company investment is real estate in Europe and North America. London, Miami, New York, Paris, Vancouver and San Francisco have all been affected. The practice of parking assets in luxury real estate has been frequently cited as fueling skyrocketing housing prices in Miami,^[47][48][49] where the Miami Association of Realtors said that cash sales accounted for 90% of new home sales in 2015.^[50] "There is a huge amount of dirty money flowing into Miami that's disguised as investment," according to former congressional investigator Jack Blum.^[51] In Miami, 76% of condo owners pay cash, a practice considered a red flag for money-laundering, as of 2016.^[51] Analysis from Redfin in 2022 found that 31.9% of houses were purchased with cash across the 39 largest metropolitan areas in the US.^[52] This is higher than the sub 25% cash purchase rate as seen during the purchase of the panama papers.^[52]

Real estate in London, where housing prices increased 50% from 2007 to 2016, also is frequently purchased by overseas investors.^[53][54][55] Donald Toon, head of Britain's National Crime Agency, said in 2015 that "the London property market has been skewed by laundered money. Prices are being artificially driven up by overseas criminals who want to sequester their assets here in the UK".^[55] Three quarters of Londoners under 35 cannot afford to buy a home.^[55]

Andy Yan, an urban planning researcher and adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia, studied real estate sales in Vancouver—also thought to be affected by foreign purchasers—found that 18% of the transactions in Vancouver's most expensive neighborhoods were cash purchases, and 66% of the owners appeared to be Chinese nationals or recent arrivals from China.^[56] Calls for more data on foreign investors have been rejected by the provincial government.^[57] Chinese nationals accounted for 70% of 2014 Vancouver home sales for more than CA$3 million.^[58] On June 24, 2016 China CITIC Bank Corp filed suit in Canada against a Chinese citizen who borrowed CN¥50 million for his lumber business in China, but then withdrew roughly CA$7.5 million from the line of credit and left the country. He bought three houses in Vancouver and Surrey, British Columbia together valued at CA$7.3 million during a three-month period in June 2014.^[59]"

Initial reports identified five then-heads of state or government leaders from Argentina, Iceland, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates as well as government officials, close relatives, and close associates of various heads of government of more than forty other countries. Names of then-current national leaders in the documents include President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates, Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, and the Prime Minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson.^[93]

Former heads of state mentioned in the papers include:

• Argentinian president Mauricio Macri who was president from December 2015–December 2019. Moreover, the moral problem, the oppositers reclaimed illegality because he never put this in his patrimonial declarations. For one of the official source of Panama papers: "Macri's official spokesman Ivan Pavlovsky said that the Argentine president didn't list Fleg Trading Ltd. as an asset because he had no capital participation in the company. The company, used to participate in interests in Brazil, was related to the family business group. "This is why Maricio Macri was occasionally its director," he said, reiterating that Macri was not a shareholder."^[95][96]
• Sudanese president Ahmed al-Mirghani, who was president from 1986–1989 and died in 2008.^[93][97]
• Former Emir of Qatar Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani owned Afrodille S.A., which had a bank account in Luxembourg and shares in two South African companies. Al Thani also held a majority of the shares in Rienne S.A. and Yalis S.A., holding a term deposit with the Bank of China in Luxembourg. A relative owned 25 percent of these: Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, Qatar's former prime minister and foreign minister.^[98]

Former prime ministers:

• Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili of Georgia^[99]
• Pavlo Lazarenko of Ukraine^[93]
• Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a former vice president of Iraq, owned property through Mossack Fonseca shell companies registered in Panama and the British Virgin Islands, for security reasons following an assassination attempt, according to his spokesperson, who added that any income from the properties was reported and taxes paid "promptly and on time".^[100]
• Ion Sturza of Moldova.^[101]
• Ali Abu al-Ragheb of Jordan.^[102]

The leaked files identified 61 family members and associates of prime ministers, presidents and kings,^[103] including:

• the brother-in-law of China's paramount leader Xi Jinping^[93]
• the son of former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak^[93]
• children of former prime minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif^[93]
• children of Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev^[93]
• Clive Khulubuse Zuma, the nephew of former South African president Jacob Zuma^[104]
• Nurali Aliyev, the grandson of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev^[93]
• Mounir Majidi, the personal secretary of Moroccan king Mohammed VI^[93]
• Kojo Annan, the son of former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan^[93]
• Mark Thatcher, the son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher^[105]
• Juan Armando Hinojosa, the "favourite contractor" of Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto.^[93]
• Spanish Royal Family: Infanta Pilar, Duchess of Badajoz and her son Bruno Gómez-Acebes, Iñaki Urdangarín, Amalio de Marichalar, and people close to the family like the mistress of former King Juan Carlos I, Corinna Larsen.^[93]

Other clients included less-senior government officials and their close relatives and associates, from over forty countries.^[93]

Over £10 million of cash from the sale of the gold stolen in the 1983 Brink's-Mat robbery was laundered, first unwittingly and later with the complicity of Mossack Fonseca, through a Panamanian company, Feberion Inc. The company was set up on behalf of an unnamed client twelve months after the robbery. The Brinks money was put through Feberion and other front companies, through banks in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Jersey, and the Isle of Man. It issued bearer shares only. Two nominee directors from Sark were appointed to Feberion by Jersey-based offshore specialist Centre Services.^[106] The offshore firms recycled the funds through land and property transactions in the United Kingdom.^[106] Although the Metropolitan Police Service raided the offices of Centre Services in late 1986 in cooperation with Jersey authorities, and seized papers and two Feberion bearer shares, it wasn't until 1995 that Brink's-Mat's solicitors were finally able to take control of Feberion and the assets.^[106]

Actor Jackie Chan is mentioned in the leaked documents as a shareholder in six companies based in the British Virgin Islands.^[107]

Law firms play a central role in offshore financial operations.^[46] Mossack Fonseca is one of the biggest in its field and the biggest financial institutions refer customers to it.^[7] Its services to clients include incorporating and operating shell companies in friendly jurisdictions on their behalf.^[108] They can include creating "complex shell company structures" that, while legal, also allow the firm's clients "to operate behind an often impenetrable wall of secrecy".^[32] The leaked papers detail some of their intricate, multilevel, and multinational corporate structures.^[109] Mossack Fonseca has acted with global consultancy partners like Emirates Asset Management Ltd, Ryan Mohanlal Ltd, Sun Hedge Invest and Blue Capital Ltd on behalf of more than 300,000 companies, most of them registered in the British Overseas Territories.

Leaked documents also indicate that the firm would also backdate documents on request and, based on a 2007 exchange of emails in the leaked documents, it did so routinely enough to establish a price structure: $8.75 per month in the past.^[110] In 2008, Mossack Fonseca hired a 90-year-old British man to pretend to be the owner of the offshore company of Marianna Olszewski, a US businesswoman, "a blatant breach of anti-money laundering rules" according to the BBC.^[111]

See also: Office of Foreign Assets Control, Due diligence, Know your customer, Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering, Politically exposed person, Economic sanctions, and International sanctions

The anonymity of offshore shell companies can also be used to circumvent international sanctions, and more than 30 Mossack Fonseca clients were at one time or another blacklisted by the US Treasury Department, including businesses linked to senior figures in Russia, Syria and North Korea.^[112]

Three Mossack Fonseca companies started for clients of Helene Mathieu Legal Consultants were later sanctioned by the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Pangates International Corporation was accused in July 2014 of supplying the government of Syria with "a large amount of specialty petroleum products" with "limited civilian application in Syria". The other two, Maxima Middle East Trading and Morgan Additives Manufacturing Co, and their owners Wael Abdulkarim and Ahmad Barqawi, were said to have "engaged in deceptive measures" to supply oil products to Syria.^[113]

Mossack Fonseca also ran six businesses for Rami Makhlouf, cousin of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, despite US sanctions against him.^[114] Internal Mossack Fonseca documents show that in 2011 Mossack Fonseca rejected a recommendation by their own compliance team to sever ties to Mr. Makhlouf. They agreed to do so only months later. The firm has said it never knowingly allowed anyone connected with rogue regimes to use its companies.^[112]

Frederik Obermaier, co-author of the Panama Papers story and an investigative reporter at the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, told Democracy Now: "Mossack Fonseca realised that Makhlouf was the cousin, and they realised that he was sanctioned, and they realised that he's allegedly one of the financiers of the Syrian regime. And they said, 'Oh, there is this bank who still does business with him, so we should still keep with him, as well'."^[115]

HSBC also appeared to reassure Mossack Fonseca not only that it was "comfortable" with Makhlouf as a client but suggested there could be a rapprochement with the Assad family by the US. Makhlouf is already known to be a long-standing client of HSBC's Swiss private bank, holding at least $15 million with it in multiple accounts in 2006.^[116] The Panamanian files also show HSBC provided financial services to a Makhlouf company called Drex Technologies, which HSBC said was a company of "good standing".^[116]

DCB Finance, a Virgin Islands-based shell company founded by North Korean banker Kim Chol-sam^[117] and British banker Nigel Cowie,^[118] also ignored international sanctions and continued to do business with North Korea with the help of the Panamanian firm. The US Treasury Department in 2013 called DCB Finance a front company for Daedong Credit Bank and announced sanctions against both companies for providing banking services to North Korean arms dealer Korea Mining and Development Trading Corporation,^[117] attempting to evade sanctions against that country, and helping to sell arms and expand North Korea's nuclear weapons programme. Cowie said the holding company was used for legitimate business and he was not aware of illicit transactions.^[118]

Mossack Fonseca, required by international banking standards to avoid money-laundering or fraudster clients, is, like all banks, supposed to be particularly alert for signs of corruption with politically exposed persons (PEP), in other words, clients who either are or have close ties to government officials. However they somehow failed to turn up any red flags concerning Tareq Abbas even though he shares a family name with the president of Palestine, and sat on the board of directors of a company with four fellow directors the firm did deem PEP because of their ties to Palestinian politics. Yet Mossack Fonseca actually did and documented due diligence research, including a Google search.^[119]

Mossack Fonseca has managed more than 300,000 companies over the years.^[108] The number of active companies peaked at more than 80,000 in 2009. Over 210,000 companies in twenty-one jurisdictions figure in the leaks. More than half were incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, with others in Panama, the Bahamas, the Seychelles, Niue, and Samoa. Mossack Fonseca's clients came from more than 100 countries. Most of the corporate clients were from Hong Kong, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Panama, and Cyprus. Mossack Fonseca worked with more than 14,000 banks, law firms, incorporators, and others to set up companies, foundations, and trusts for their clients.^[120] Some 3,100 companies listed in the database appear to have ties to US offshore specialists, and 3,500 shareholders of offshore companies list US addresses.^[121] Mossack Fonseca has offices in Nevada and Wyoming.^[122]

The leaked documents indicate that about US$2 trillion has passed through the firm's hands.^[123] Several of the holding companies that appear in the documents did business with sanctioned entities, such as arms merchants and relatives of dictators, during the time that the sanctions were in place. The firm provided services to a Seychelles company named Pangates International, which the US government believes supplied aviation fuel to the Syrian government during the current civil war, and continued to handle its paperwork and certify it as a company in good standing, despite sanctions, until August 2015.^[114]

More than 500 banks registered nearly 15,600 shell companies with Mossack Fonseca, with HSBC and its affiliates accounting for more than 2,300 of the total. Dexia and J. Safra Sarasin of Luxembourg, Credit Suisse from the Channel Islands and the Swiss UBS each requested at least 500 offshore companies for their clients.^[120] An HSBC spokesman said, "The allegations are historical, in some cases dating back 20 years, predating our significant, well-publicized reforms implemented over the last few years."^[124]

Foundations firms 'offshore' customers through banksHeadquartersBankNumber of
foundations LuxembourgExperta Corporate & Trust Services (100% subsidiary of BIL)1,659 LuxembourgBanque J. Safra Sarasin – Luxembourg S.A.963 United Kingdom

 GuernseyCredit Suisse Channel Islands Limited918 MonacoHSBC Private Bank (Monaco) S.A.778 SwitzerlandHSBC Private Bank (Suisse) S.A.733 SwitzerlandUBS AG (subsidiary Rue du Rhône in Genebra)579 United Kingdom

 JerseyCoutts & Co Trustees (Jersey) Limited487 LuxembourgSociété Générale Bank & Trust Luxembourg465 LuxembourgLandsbanki Luxembourg S.A.404 United Kingdom

 GuernseyRothschild Trust Guernsey Limited378 SpainBanco Santander119 SpainBBVA19

In response to queries from the Miami Herald and ICIJ, Mossack Fonseca issued a 2,900-word statement listing legal requirements that prevent using offshore companies for tax avoidance and total anonymity, such as FATF protocols which require identifying ultimate beneficial owners of all companies (including offshore companies) before opening any account or transacting any business.

The Miami Herald printed the statement with an editor's note that said the statement "did not address any of the specific due diligence failings uncovered by reporters".^[125]

On Monday, April 4, Mossack Fonseca released another statement:

The facts are these: while we may have been the victim of a data breach, nothing we've seen in this illegally obtained cache of documents suggests we've done anything illegal, and that's very much in keeping with the global reputation we've built over the past 40 years of doing business the right way.

Co-founder Ramón Fonseca Mora told CNN that the reports were false, full of inaccuracies and that parties "in many of the circumstances" cited by the ICIJ "are not and have never been clients of Mossack Fonseca". The firm provided longer statements to ICIJ.^[126]

In its official statement April 6,^[127] Mossack Fonseca suggested that responsibility for any legal violations might lie with other institutions:

approximately 90% of our clientele is comprised of professional clients ... who act as intermediaries and are regulated in the jurisdiction of their business. These clients are obliged to perform due diligence on their clients in accordance with the KYC and AML regulations to which they are subject.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Jürgen Mossack said: "The cat's out of the bag, so now we have to deal with the aftermath."^[128]

He said the leak was not an "inside job"—the company had been hacked by servers based abroad. It filed a complaint with the Panamanian attorney general's office.^[129]

On April 7, 2016, Mossack resigned from Panama's Council on Foreign Relations (Conarex),^[130][131] even though he was not officially serving at the time.^[132] His brother Peter Mossack still serves as honorary Consul of Panama, as he has since 2010.^{[133][134][135][136]}

On May 5, 2016, Mossack Fonseca sent a cease and desist letter to the ICIJ in an attempt to stop the ICIJ from releasing the leaked documents from the Panama Papers scandal.^[137] Despite this, the ICIJ released the leaked documents on May 9, 2016.^[138][139]

In March 2018, Mossack Fonseca announced it would close down due to damage caused by the Panama Papers scandal.^[140]

In October 2019, The Laundromat, a movie based on the events of the Panama Papers was released on the streaming service Netflix. Prior to this, Mossack and Fonseca issued a lawsuit^[141] in aim of preventing the release, citing defamation and potential damage to their rights of a fair trial by jury, should one begin.^[142] On July 17, 2019, the judge, based in Connecticut, refused the injunction citing lack of jurisdiction, and ordered the case be transferred to Los Angeles, California.^[143][141]

At 5:00 am on April 3, as the news first broke, Ramón Fonseca Mora told television channel TVN he "was not responsible nor he had been accused in any tribunal".^[144]

He said the firm was the victim of a hack and that he had no responsibility for what clients did with the offshore companies that they purchased from Mossack Fonseca, which were legal under Panamanian law.^[144] Later that day, the Independent Movement (MOVIN)^{[note 1]} called for calm, and expressed hope that the Panamanian justice system would not allow the culprits to go with impunity.^[144]

By April 8, the government understood that media reports were addressing tax evasion and not attacking Panama. The then-president Varela met on Wednesday April 7, with CANDIF, a committee of representatives from different sectors of the Panamanian economy which includes the Chamber of Commerce, Chamber of Industry and Agriculture, the National Lawyers Association, the International Lawyers Association, the Banking Association and the Stock Exchange, and entered full crisis management mode.^[146] On the same day he announced the creation of a new judiciary tribunal and a high-level commission led by Nobel Prize Laureate Joseph Stiglitz. There were accusations that foreign forces were attacking Panama because of Panama's "stable and robust economy".^[147]

Isabel Saint Malo de Alvarado, then-Vice President of Panama, said in an op-ed piece published April 21 in The Guardian that then-President Juan Carlos Varela and his administration have strengthened Panama's controls over money-laundering in the twenty months they had been in power, and that "Panama is setting up an independent commission, co-chaired by the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, to evaluate our financial system, determine best practices, and recommend measures to strengthen global financial and legal transparency. We expect its findings within the next six months, and will share the results with the international community."^[148]

However, in early August 2016, Stiglitz resigned from the committee because he learned that the Panamanian government would not commit to making their final report public. He said that he had always "assumed" that the final report would be transparent.^[149]

On April 8, then-President Varela denounced France's proposal to return Panama to a list of countries that did not cooperate with information exchange.^[150] Minister of the Presidency Alvaro Alemán categorically denied that Panama is a tax haven, and said the country would not be a scapegoat.^[151] Alemán said that talks with the French ambassador to Panama had begun.^[151]

On April 25, a meeting of the Panamanian and French finance ministers resulted in an agreement under which Panama will provide information to France about French nationals with taxable assets in the country.^[152][153]

The Minister of Economy and Finance of Panama, Dulcidio de la Guardia, formerly an offshore specialist at Mossack Fonseca competitor Morgan & Morgan, said the legal but often "murky" niche of establishing offshore accounts, firms and trusts make up "less than half a percentage point" of Panama's GDP. He appeared to suggest that the publication of the papers was an attack on Panama because of the high level of economic growth that the country had shown.^[154]

Eduardo Morgan of the Panamanian firm Morgan & Morgan accused the OECD of starting the scandal to avoid competition from Panama with the interests of other countries.^[155] The Panama Papers affect the image of Panama in an unfair manner and have come to light not as the result of an investigation, but of a hack, said Adolfo Linares, president of the Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture of Panama (Cciap).^[156]

The Colegio Nacional de Abogados de Panama (CNA) urged the government to sue.^[157] Political analyst Mario Rognoni said that the world perceives Panama as a tax haven. The government of then-President Juan Carlos Varela might become implicated if he tries to cover up for those involved, Rognoni said.^[158]

Economist Rolando Gordon said the affair hurts Panama, which has just emerged from the greylist of the FATF, and added that each country, especially Panama, must conduct investigations and determine whether illegal or improper acts were committed.^[159]

Panama's Lawyers Movement called the Panama Papers leak "cyber bullying" and in a press conference condemned it as an attack on the 'Panama' brand. Fraguela Alfonso, its president, called it a direct attack on the country's financial system.

I invite all organized forces of the country to create a great crusade for the rescue of the country's image.

The law firm Rubio, Álvarez, Solís & Abrego also reacted and in a press release said that "In recent decades Panama has been in the most important financial and service centers of Latin America and the entire world. As a result, all kinds of attacks on our service system have been attempted."^[160]

Offshore companies are legal, said Panamanian lawyer and former controller of the republic Alvin Weeden; illegality arises when they are used for money laundering, arms smuggling, terrorism, or tax evasion.^[161]

On October 19, 2016, it became known that a government executive had spent 370 million U.S. dollars in order to "clean" the country's image.^[162]

On October 22, 2016, during a state visit to Germany, Varela told journalist Jenny Pérez, of Deutsche Welle that there had been "progress" in transparency and many agreements to exchange tax information, and that tax evasion was a global problem. Asked about his ties with Ramón Fonseca Mora, managing partner of the firm Mossack Fonseca, he acknowledged that he is a friend.^[163]

The Procuraduría de la Nación announced that it would investigate Mossack Fonseca and the Panama papers.^[164] On April 12, the newly formed Second Specialized Prosecutor against Organized Crime raided Mossack Fonseca and searched their Bella Vista office as part of the investigation initiated by the Panama Papers. The Attorney General's office issued a press release following the raid, which lasted 27 hours,^[165] stating that the purpose was "to obtain documents relevant to the information published in news articles that establishes the possible use of the law firm in illegal activities".^[166] The search ended without measures against the law firm, confirmed prosecutor Javier Caraballo of the Second Prosecutor Against Organized Crime.^[167]

On April 22 the same unit raided another Panama location and "secured a large amount of evidence".^[165]

The Municipality of Regulation and Supervision of Financial Subjects [not the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF)] initiated a special review of the law firm Mossack Fonseca to determine whether it had followed tax law. Carlamara Sanchez, in charge of this proceeding, said at a press conference that the quartermaster had come to verify whether the firm had complied since April 8 with due diligence, customer knowledge, the final beneficiary and reporting of suspicious transactions to Financial Analysis Unit (UAF) operations. She said that Law 23 of 2015 empowers regulation and supervision and said some firms had been monitored since late last year with special attention after the Panama Papers, and noted that the law carries fines $5,000 to $1 million or even suspension of the firm.^[168]

The ICIJ investigation of Mossack Fonseca was reported to the Public Ministry. Samid Dan Sandoval, former candidate for mayor of Santiago de Veraguas (2014), filed the legal action against the journalists and all those who had participated. He said the project name damaged the integrity, dignity and sovereignty of the country and that the consortium would have to assume legal responsibility for all damage caused to the Panamanian nation.^[169]

A Change.org petition requested the ICIJ stop using the name of Panama as in the Panama Papers. The request said the generally-accepted name for the investigation "damage(d) the image" of Panama.^[170]

Attorney General of Panama Kenia Isolda Porcell Diaz announced on January 24, 2017, that she was suspending the investigations against Mossack Fonseca because it filed an appeal for protection of constitutional rights before the First Superior Court of Justice of Panama and requested that he deliver all the original documents to issue a judgment.^{[171][172][173][clarification needed]}

Mossack and Fonseca were detained on February 8, 2017, on money-laundering charges.^[174]

In March 2018, Mossack Fonseca announced that it would cease operations at the end of March due to "irreversible damage" to their image as a direct result of the Panama Papers.^[175]

Former South African president Thabo Mbeki, head of the African Union's panel on illicit financial flows, on April 9 called the leak "most welcome" and called on African nations to investigate the citizens of their nations who appear in the papers. His panel's 2015 report^[176] found that Africa loses $50 billion a year due to tax evasion and other illicit practices and its 50-year losses top a trillion dollars. Furthermore, he said, the Seychelles, an African nation, is the fourth most mentioned tax haven in the documents.^[177]

On April 22, 2016, Australia said it would create a public register showing the beneficial, or actual, owners of shell companies, as part of an effort to stamp out tax avoidance by multinational corporations.^[178]

The Australian Taxation Office has announced that it is investigating 800 individual Australian taxpayers on the Mossack Fonseca list of clients and that some of the cases may be referred to the country's Serious Financial Crime Task Force.^[179] Eighty names match to an organized crime intelligence database.^[180]

Leaked documents examined by the ABC "pierced the veil of anonymous shell companies" and linked a Sydney businessman and a Brisbane geologist to mining deals in North Korea.^[181] "Rather than applying sanctions, the Australian Government and the ASX seem to have allowed a coach and horses to be ridden through them by the people involved in forming this relationship, corporate relationship with one of the primary arms manufacturers in North Korea," said Thomas Clark of the University of Technology Sydney.^[181]

David Sutton was director of AAT Corporation and EHG Corporation when they held mineral licenses in North Korea and did business with Korean Natural Resources Development and Investment Corporation, which is under United Nations sanctions, and North Korea's "primary arms dealer and main exporter of goods and equipment related to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons, responsible for approximately half of the arms exported by North Korea."^[181] The geologist, Louis Schurmann, said British billionaire Kevin Leech was key to putting the deal together.^[181] Leaked documents also reveal the involvement of another Briton, Gibraltar-based John Lister.^[181] According to ABC, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was aware of these mining deals, which had also been brought up in the Australian Senate, but nobody ever referred the matter to the Australian Federal Police.^[181]

On May 12, 2016, the names of former Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull, and former Premier of New South Wales Neville Wran, were both found in the Panama Papers, due to the pair's former directorship of the Mossack Fonseca-incorporated company Star Technology Systems Limited. Turnbull and Wran resigned from these positions in 1995, and the Prime Minister has denied any impropriety, stating "had [Star Technology] made any profits—which it did not regrettably—it certainly would have paid tax in Australia."^[182]

Media initially reported that the Panama Papers lists 500 entities created under the jurisdiction of the Cook Islands, population 10,000, almost as many as Singapore, whose population is 5.7 million.^[183] After the Winebox affair, the Cook Islands gave New Zealand jurisdiction over tax matters.^[184]

New Zealand's Inland Revenue Department said that they were working to obtain details of people who have tax residence in the country who may have been involved in arrangements facilitated by Mossack Fonseca.^[185] Gerard Ryle, director of the ICIJ, told Radio New Zealand on April 8, 2016, that New Zealand is a well-known tax haven and a "nice front for criminals".^[186] New Zealand provides overseas investors with foreign trusts and look-through companies. New Zealand government policy is to not request disclosure of the identity of either the settlor or the beneficiaries of the trust, and thus the ownership remains secret, and as a consequence, thus hiding the assets from the trust-holder's home jurisdictions. These trusts are not taxed in New Zealand. These trusts can then be used to acquire and own New Zealand registered companies, which become a vehicle by which the trust owners can exercise day to day control over their assets. These New Zealand-registered companies can be designed not to make a profit using loans from tax havens and other profit shifting techniques: the result being tax free income with the general respectability that has typically been associated with companies registered in New Zealand.

Prime Minister John Key responded May 7 to John Doe's remark that he had been "curiously quiet" about tax evasion in the Cook Islands by saying that the whistleblower was confused and probably European. While the Cook Islands use New Zealand currency, "I have as much responsibility for tax in the Cook Islands as I do for taxing Russia." New Zealand does represent the Cook Islands on defence and foreign policy, but not taxation, he said.^[187]

In distancing New Zealand from the Cook Islands, Key ignored the close ties between the two countries and the crucial role New Zealand had in setting up the Cook Island taxation system.^[188]

Mossack Fonseca approached Niue in 1996 and offered to help set up a tax haven on the tiny South Sea island. The law firm drafted the necessary legislation, permitting offshore companies to operate in total secrecy. They took care of all the paperwork, the island got a modest fee for each filing, and it seemed like quite a deal, even if they were required by law now to provide all banking paperwork in Russian and Chinese as well as English.^[189]

Soon the filings almost covered the island's year budget. The US government however made official noises in 2001 about laundering criminal proceeds and Chase Bank blacklisted the island and Bank of New York followed suit. This caused inconvenience to the population so they let their contract with Mossack Fonseca expire and many of the privacy-seekers on the banking world moved on.^[189] Some did stay however, apparently; the Panama Papers database lists nearly 10,000 companies and trusts set up on Niue, population 1200.^[183]

Many recently created shell companies were set up in Samoa, perhaps after Niue revised its tax laws. The Panama Papers database lists more than 13,000 companies and trusts set up there. Samoa has a population of roughly 200,000.^[183]

On May 27, 2015, the US Department of Justice indicted a number of companies and individuals for conspiracy, corruption and racketeering in connection with bribes and kickbacks paid to obtain media and marketing rights for FIFA tournaments. Some immediately entered guilty pleas.^[190]

Among those indicted were Jeffrey Webb and Jack Warner, the current and former presidents of CONCACAF, the continental confederation under FIFA headquartered in the United States. They were charged with racketeering and bribery offenses. Others were US and South American sports marketing executives who paid and agreed to pay well over $150 million in bribes and kickbacks.^[190]

On December 12, 2014, José Hawilla, the owner and founder of the Traffic Group, the Brazilian sports marketing conglomerate, waived indictment and pleaded guilty to a four-count information charging him with racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Hawilla also agreed to forfeit over $151 million, $25 million of which was paid at the time of his plea.^[190]

Torneos & Traffic (T&T) is a subsidiary of Fox International Channels since 2005^[191] (with investments since 2002) and is the same company involved in corrupt practices in the acquisition of rights to major South American soccer tournaments.^[192][193]

Many individuals mentioned in the Panama Papers are connected with the world governing body of association football, FIFA, including the former president of CONMEBOL Eugenio Figueredo;^[194] former President of UEFA Michel Platini;^[195] former secretary general of FIFA Jérôme Valcke;^[195] Argentine player for Barcelona Lionel Messi; and, from Italy, the head manager of Metro, Antonio Guglielmi.^[194] "

Accordingly, there is an overlap between families named in the client book of child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, with those associated with the child sex trafficking ring of NXIVM, also overlapping with the tenants of Trump Tower, also overlapping with Russia, GOP, and Trump conspiracy in 2016 to interfere with US and UK Commonwealth elections, also overlapping with the UK royals' SCL's Cambridge Analytica's Kellyann Conway of Trump Tower, also overlapping with GRU's Paul Manafort, who was the business partner of NXIVM's Roger Stone, also overlapping with tax avoidance, tax evasion, money laundering, and/or other international scandals linked to Panama Papers.

The interesting thing about researching some of these people is that some of them live(d) with one another, some are related to one another, and many are regularly being implicated in different types of business ventures together, organized crimes, and/or international scandals requiring government investigations and prosecutions.

For example, Trump turns up in the Panama Papers and FinCen File money laundering, tax evasion, and/or tax avoidance investigations, as do his financiers, as do associates of Russia, Trump campaign and administration officials, Jeffrey Epstein's criminal orbit overlapping with NXIVM, along with the UK royals, Saudis, Qataris, organized crime, global terrorism financiers, and/or others in a manner that becomes hard to ignore after a while, because the same people, families, organizations, and countries keep being named on lists associated with major international scandals and/or organized crimes. 

Here it is important to note that not everyone named in some of these leaks is part of an ongoing organized crime syndicate, and where everyone is innocent of any allegations unless proven guilty, which is exceedingly hard to do, as the world has seen with Prince Andrew and Donald Trump, despite witnesses coming forward and specifying they furthered crimes, in both their cases accused of sex crimes against children coordinated by Jeffrey Epstein, neither having been prosecuted for the same despite victims coming forward.

Turning now to the Paradise Paper, "The Paradise Papers are a set of over 13.4 million confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investments that were leaked to the German reporters Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer,^[1][2] from the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.^[3] The newspaper shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists,^[4] and a network of more than 380 journalists. Some of the details were made public on 5 November 2017 and stories are still being released^{[as of?]}.

The documents originate from the legal firm Appleby, the corporate services providers Estera and Asiaciti Trust, and business registries in 19 tax jurisdictions.^[5] They contain the names of more than 120,000 people and companies.^[6] Among those whose financial affairs are mentioned are, separately, AIG,^[7] Then-Prince Charles^[8] and Queen Elizabeth II,^[9] President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos, and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross.^[10]

The released information resulted in scandal, litigation, and loss of position for some of the named, as well as litigation against the media and journalists who published the papers."

According to the papers, Allergan (the manufacturer of Botox), Allianz, Apple Inc., Facebook, Global Vantedge, McDonald's, Nike, Inc., Siemens, The Walt Disney Company, Twitter, Uber, Walmart, and Yahoo! are among the corporations that own offshore companies.^[20][21] According to The Express Tribune, "Apple, Nike, and Facebook avoided billions of dollars in tax using offshore companies."^[22]

Among the Indian companies listed in the papers are Apollo Tyres, the Essel Group,^[23] D S Construction, Emaar MGF, GMR Group,^[24] Havells,^[25] Hinduja Group,^[26] the Hiranandani Group,^[27] Jindal Steel,^[28] the Sun Group^[29] and Videocon.^[30]

Main articles: Leprechaun economics and Ireland as a tax haven

A great deal of the company's intangible property was exposed around the time of an internal Apple Inc. reorganization of three Irish subsidiaries. The company's 2015 gross domestic product showed a 26% increase, and close to $270 billion of intangible assets suddenly appeared in Ireland as the year began – more than the entire value of all residential property in the country. This may indicate that Apple took advantage of a tax incentive known as a capital allowance, which gives Irish companies generous tax breaks for buying intangible property – essentially intellectual property like patents. In other words, Apple (some suggest) transferred them to a subsidiary located in Ireland for the tax incentives, and didn't have to pay any tax on the transaction in Bermuda either, on the value it declared on the property when it sold them to itself.^{[citation needed]}

Following a 2013 US Senate investigation, which featured testimony by CEO Tim Cook, Ireland announced that henceforth Irish companies would be required to declare tax residency somewhere in the world. Apple had been paying a lower rate of corporate taxes in Ireland in a so-called sweetheart deal. This attracted the attention of EU regulators as many multinationals were doing the same thing. As the tax break in the Netherlands came to a scheduled end, Apple's law firm, Baker McKenzie, researched island tax havens, asking Appleby officials in numerous jurisdictions to confirm "that an Irish company can conduct management activities ... without being subject to taxation in your jurisdiction." Two of the subsidiaries moved to Jersey and took intellectual property with them.^{[citation needed]} The third is receiving tax breaks in Ireland for buying Apple IP from another Apple subsidiary.^{[citation needed]}

The Jersey Financial Services Commission (JFSC) issued a statement regarding Apple on 7 November 2017.^[31] The JFSC confirmed that the two Apple subsidiaries referred to by the media are not Jersey-registered companies and their understanding is that Apple funds relating to these entities have not been remitted to or held in the Island.

The JFSC states that it has not seen any of the documentation that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) claims to hold following the Appleby data breach. If the ICIJ possesses data of a criminal or regulatory nature which relates to business activities in Jersey then the JFSC requested that this information be shared with them and, if there is any evidence of regulatory wrongdoing, they would then investigate and take action if appropriate.

The Government of Jersey (States of Jersey) also issued a statement of similar effect on 7 November 2017.^[32]

The jurisdiction of Jersey has recently been independently assessed as fully compliant with international regulatory guidelines on tax transparency.^[33]

The EU, under the leadership of Jean-Claude Juncker, threatened to sue Ireland over its tax deals, although Juncker himself had approved similar tax deals in his own country, Luxembourg. Apple paid all of its taxes in Ireland as required by that country, so Ireland is appealing the EU decision. HP, Nike, Microsoft and others use the same tax arrangements in Ireland, Luxembourg and other countries, but Apple is frequently cited as a media example.^[34] Irish companies are required to pay taxes in Ireland, but if they convince authorities that they are "managed and controlled" from abroad, the companies may win an exemption.

As of November 2017, Apple held $252 billion offshore.^[35] However, Apple has previously publicly stated that it reinvests post-tax earnings (generated outside the US) into the global economy via investment funds held offshore.

Germán Efromovich, founder of Synergy Group, is linked to an offshore conglomerate used for the aerocommercial holding business with ramifications in Bermuda, Panama, and Cyprus. Efromovich used a Panamanian offshore that hid more than 20 firms located in tax havens. The conglomerate was used by Synergy Group's subsidiary Avianca Holdings in the purchase of MacAir Jet, now Avianca Argentina, an aircraft company owned by Macri Group, for an amount of $10 million, allowing Avianca to make headway in the low-cost carrier business in Argentina. The Argentine government accepted the offshores as a financial guarantee to assign air routes to Avianca. The whole operation of assigning air routes was investigated by the Argentine federal justice system in a case called "Avianca" in which the President of Argentina Mauricio Macri and other officials were imputed.^[36]

A Kremlin-owned firm, VTB Bank, put $191 million into DST Global, an investment firm part of Mail.ru Group and was founded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, which used it to buy a large share of Twitter in 2011. A subsidiary of the Kremlin-controlled Gazprom funded an investment company that partnered with DST Global to buy shares in Facebook, reaping millions when the social media giant went public in 2012. Twitter similarly went public in 2013. The US government sanctioned VTB in 2014 because of the Russian military intervention in Crimea, but DST Global had by then sold its stake in Twitter. Four days after the Facebook IPO, a DST Global subsidiary sold more than 27 million shares of Facebook for approximately $1 billion.^[37]

In 2009, Glencore, an Anglo–Swiss multinational commodity trading and mining company, loaned $45 million to Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler in exchange for his help with officials of the Democratic Republic of Congo in negotiations over a joint venture with state-owned Gécamines at the Katanga copper mine.^[38][39]

One of the Katanga board members was Glencore major shareholder Telis Mistakidis, a former employee whose stock options made him a billionaire in the IPO. Glencore, which had effectively taken over Katanga, agreed to vote for the joint venture. The loan document specifically provided that repayment would be owed if agreement was not reached within three months. Gertler and Glencore each have denied wrongdoing. Appleby had worked for Glencore and its founder Marc Rich on major projects in the past, even after his indictment in 1983.^[40][41] Rich was indicted in the United States on federal charges of tax evasion and making controversial oil deals with Iran during the Iran hostage crisis.^[42] He received a controversial presidential pardon from U.S. President Bill Clinton on 20 January 2001, Clinton's last day in office.^[43]

A separate ICIJ project found that tax auditors in Burkina Faso accused a Glencore subsidiary of deducting from its taxes "fictitious" payments to other Glencore subsidiaries, and of selling the zinc from its mine (to another Glencore company) in unrefined form to minimize its revenue. Its CEO told shareholders before this that it expected a spike in demand, which did materialize. The mine is owned by Nantou Mining SA, which is owned by Merope Inc, a Bermuda shell company set up by Appleby with directors provided by the firm. Glencore sold Merope in April 2017 but before that it was 100% owned by Glencore Finance (Bermuda) Ltd, which was, according to a document from the Paradise Papers leaks, 100% owned by Glencore Group Funding Ltd of the United Arab Emirates, an entity in turn 100% owned by Swiss firm Glencore International AG, itself a wholly owned subsidiary of Glencore plc, registered in Jersey.^[44]

Documents were also discovered discussing Glencore's desire to keep its substantial stake in SwissMarine a secret, and that although the subsidiary's annual report showed revenues of $1.9 billion in 2014, Glencore did not mention the subsidiary in its disclosures to the London Stock Exchange or in any other public filing because, it said, it did not consider this a significant investment.^[45]

The Australian branch of Glencore has been demonstrated to have carried out some $25 billion in cross-currency interest rate swaps, complex financial instruments the Australian Taxation Office suspects of being used to avoid paying taxes in Australia.^[46] The Australian High Court recently held that documents revealed in the Paradise Papers leak could be used by the Australian Taxation Office to assess Glencore's tax obligations, despite legal privilege.^[47]

Appleby documents detail how Nike boosted its after-tax profits by, among other maneuvers, transferring ownership of its Swoosh trademark to a Bermudian subsidiary, Nike International Ltd. This transfer allowed the subsidiary to charge royalties to its European headquarters in Hilversum, Netherlands, effectively converting taxable company profits to an account payable in tax-free Bermuda.^[48] Although the subsidiary was effectively run by executives at Nike's main offices in Beaverton, Oregon – to the point where a duplicate of the Bermudian company's seal was needed – for tax purposes the subsidiary was treated as based in Bermuda. Its profits were not declared in Europe and came to light only because of a mostly unrelated case in US Tax Court, where papers filed by Nike briefly mention royalties in 2010, 2011 and 2012 totaling $3.86 billion.^[48] Under an arrangement with Dutch authorities, the tax break was to expire in 2014, so another reorganization transferred the intellectual property from the Bermudian company to a Dutch commanditaire vennootschap or limited partnership, Nike Innovate CV.^[49]

Dutch law treats income earned by a CV as if it had been earned by the principals, who owe no tax in the Netherlands if they do not reside there. One in six dollars of foreign profit earned by US multinationals was earned, at least on paper, through a Dutch CV subsidiary. Companies with similar structures include Tesla, Inc., NetApp and Uber.^[48]

Appleby managed 17 offshore companies for Odebrecht, a Brazilian conglomerate, and at least one of them was used as a vehicle for paying bribes in Operation Car Wash. Some of these offshore companies are publicly known to operate for Odebrecht in Africa and be involved in bribes.^[50] Among those involved in the operation who also are named in the papers are Marcelo Odebrecht, Brazilian businessman and former Odebrecht' CEO, his father Emílio Odebrecht and his brother Maurício Odebrecht.^[51]

Appleby and various banks in the Isle of Man, including Conister Bank which is owned by Arron Banks and Jim Mellon, had business with PokerStars and its founders, Mark Scheinberg and his father Isai Scheinberg, until it was sold for $4.9 billion in 2014 to The Stars Group, formerly known as Amaya. PokerStars and its founders were pursued by the US Department of Justice for allegedly money laundering billions until they negotiated a settlement on 31 July 2012.^[52] The Stars Group along with its former member of board of directors Wesley Clark and former CEO David Baazov also did business with Appleby. In March 2016, David Baazov and other executives were charged by Canadian regulators with multiple securities fraud charges related to the acquisition of PokerStars.^[53][54]

Saadi Yacef, freedom fighter, author, and politician, appears in the Papers in connection with a trust in the Cayman Islands, along with a former energy minister, the family of a former foreign minister and their South Pacific holdings.^[55]

An opposition party, UNITA, called for an investigation into alleged diversions from the country's sovereign wealth fund.^[55] Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais, a close associate of the son of former long-term president José Eduardo dos Santos, has invested over $2 billion from the country's sovereign wealth fund in Mauritius, according to Appleby documents.^[56] In a 20-month period he was paid over $41 million in management fees, and invested much of the money in his own projects.^[57]

The Supreme Court of Mauritius later froze 91 bank accounts associated with Bastos as part of an inquiry into his investments for the Angolan sovereign wealth fund, and suspended the licenses of seven investment companies linked to Bastos' Quantum Global.^[58]

Ibrahim Mahama, brother of former president of Ghana John Mahama, registered a company in the Isle of Man to hold the registration for his private jet, according to Appleby documents. Mahama, the CEO of Engineers & Planners Company Limited, is also under investigation for allegedly issuing bad checks. In 2016, Ghanaian authorities took his company to court for allegedly not making social security payments. The case was later settled.^[59] Ghanaian Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta was identified as a co-director of an offshore company with outgoing president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Sally Kosgei, member of parliament 2008–2013 and minister of agriculture 2010 to March 2013, owned a million-dollar flat near Harrods in London through an offshore she told Appleby was funded by her flower-export company.^[60]

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is listed in the Paradise Papers

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is listed in the papers as a director of the Bermuda company Songhai Financial Holdings Ltd. a subsidiary of Databank's finance, fund management and investment company Databank Brokerage Ltd., from April 2001 until September 2012.^[61] The Ghanaian Minister for Finance and Economic Planning, Ken Ofori-Atta, was a co-founder of Databank and a co-director, with Johnson Sirleaf, of Songhai Financial Holdings.

Aliko Dangote, Africa's richest man with an estimated wealth of 12.1 billion, is also mentioned.^[62] President of the Nigerian Senate Bukola Saraki is listed in the papers as a director and a shareholder of Tenia Ltd., a company established in the Cayman Islands in April 2001.^[63]

Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa is listed as beneficiary, along with his daughter, of a trust which holds the Seychelles-based Katonga Investments Ltd. Katonga gave as its source of income Enhas Uganda, another Kutesa-owned company criticized in a parliamentary committee as part of a privatization it said had been "manipulated and taken advantage of by a few politically powerful people who sacrifice the people's interests".^[64] Kutesa was also president of the United Nations General Assembly in 2014–2015.

Kutesa told the Daily Monitor he had never done anything with the company.^[55]

Jim Watkins, owner of known Neo-nazi recruitment image board 8Chan, is listed in the papers.^[65]

India[edit]Actor Amitabh Bachchan is listed in the Paradise Papers

India ranks 19th out of the 180 countries represented in the data in terms of the number of names. In all, there are 714 Indians in the tally, including noted political leaders^[66] like Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha,^[67][68][69] notable names like actor Amitabh Bachchan (a shareholder in a Bermuda-based digital media company), Dr Ranjan Pai of Manipal Group,^[70] former Member of Parliament of the Rajya Sabha Vijay Mallya.

The papers revealed that Mallya sold United Spirits to Diageo in 2013, which it later approached London-based law firm Linklaters to restructuring the group structure created by Mallya. With three other subsidiaries based in the UK, United Spirits was allegedly involved with diverting funds amounting to $1.5 billion.^[71]

By July 2021, the Government of India identified undeclared assets worth of about ₹246 crore (equivalent to ₹275 crore or US$34 million in 2023) following the investigation.^[72]

Two children of deceased former president and dictator Suharto, Tommy and Mamiek, in addition to opposition party leader Prabowo Subianto (Suharto's former son-in-law) and businessman-turned-opposition politician Sandiaga Uno, are listed in the papers. The Directorate General of Taxes released a statement that they will follow up the information provided on Indonesian taxpayers.^[73][74]

Former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama

Former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is listed in the papers.^[75] The Bermuda-incorporated company, Hoifu Energy Group, is listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong and appointed Hatoyama honorary chairman in 2013 because of his "amicable relationship" with the oil industry, a sector in which Hoifu planned to expand. The principal shareholder of the company was Hui Chi Ming. Neil Bush, brother of George W. Bush, was a director (deputy chairman) of the company.^[64][76]

Former Minister of Oil and Gas Sauat Mynbayev is listed as an original shareholder of Meridian Capital Ltd.^[77] Former BTA Bank Chairman Mukhtar Ablyazov is documented for his ownership of Cayman Island-registered CFJ Star Trust, which may have been used in his alleged embezzlement and mismanagement of $10 billion of BTA money.^[78] The embezzlement is one of the largest cases of financial fraud in history.^[79]

Former Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz is listed in the papers, having set up a trust called the Antarctic Trust owned by a Delaware corporation.^[80] Aziz, a former Citibank executive, told the ICIJ he had set the trust up for estate planning purposes and that the funds had come from his employment at Citibank. An internal Appleby document raised concerns about warrants issued for him in connection with the killing of a local leader. Aziz dismissed both the murder charge and the allegations of financial impropriety.^[64]

Alfred Gusenbauer was head of the Social Democratic Party of Austria from 2000 to 2008 and Austria's chancellor from January 2007 to December 2008. He is listed as a director for Novia Management, a Maltese company listed as a shareholder in Novia Funds Sicav Plc, also Malta-based, which includes among its other shareholders Tal Silberstein [de], who was arrested in 2017 with Beny Steinmetz on charges of money laundering, then released. Silberstein had served as Gusenbauer's campaign advisor.^[64]

The French filmmaker Jean-Jacques Annaud is listed in the papers. As a result of the investigation, according to his lawyer, the filmmaker informed French tax authorities in the month preceding the release of the papers about his offshore holdings.^[81]

Mareva Grabowski is listed in the Paradise Papers. She is married to Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who later became Prime Minister of Greece. She owns 50% of an offshore company, Eternia Capital Management in the Cayman Islands. This match is verified in Appleby and on listed in Cayman records on 30 March 2010.^[82]

In total, 2.829 Greek names are listed in the papers, including several prominent businesspeople.^[83][84]

Bono is named in the papers

U2 lead singer Bono is listed in the papers^[85] as an investor in a Lithuanian shopping centre via a Malta-based company.^[86]

Antanas Guoga, a Member of the European Parliament, is named in the papers.^[87]

Ana Kolarević, sister of the former Montenegrin Prime Minister and President Milo Đukanović, who was in power from 1991 to 2016, is listed in the Paradise Papers.^[88]

Nenad Popovic, Serbian Minister for Innovation and Technology and owner of the Russian conglomerate ABS Electro has a residence in a wealthy Zürich suburb, known for its tax shelters. The residence application and tax returns were initiated by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which handles offshore companies owned by Popovic. Those entities were also implicated in money laundering and tax evasion accusations, explicitly mentioned in the Paradise Papers.^[89]

In Spain, the first political authority that appears is the former mayor of Barcelona Xavier Trias,^[90] artist José María Cano and billionaire Daniel Maté.^[91] Businessman Juan Villalonga, CEO of Telefónica 1996 to 2000, registered two companies in tax havens.

Quantum Global Group, an investment bank owned by Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais, managed the Angolan wealth fund invested in seven investment funds in Mauritius and received an annual fee of 2 percent to 2.5 percent of capital under management per year.^[93]

The sons of Turkey's former prime minister, Binali Yıldırım, are listed in the papers. The sons, both doing maritime business, officially set up two companies in Malta, to avoid high Turkish tax rates.^[94] Both of the companies are registered under the names of the two sons, with the older son Erkam Yıldırım having more shares than the younger son Bülent Yıldırım in both companies. Companies, named Hawke Bay Marine Co. Ltd.(founded in 2004) and Black Eagle Marine Co. Ltd.(founded in 2007) are seen as "active" in the available detailed data.^[95]

The brothers sued journalist Pelin Ünker and the newspaper Cumhuriyet in 2018 after they published the revelations. Cumhuriyet reported that one of the companies shared an address with a company that won a $7 million government contract. In January 2019 a Turkish court sentenced Ünker to thirteen months in jail for "defamation and insult", and separately fined the newspaper for "insult". The prison sentence was overturned on appeal due to a statute of limitations, although the fine was allowed to stand.^[96]

Lord Sassoon president of the international Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering

The papers show that the Duchy of Lancaster, a private estate of Queen Elizabeth II, held investments in two offshore financial centres, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. Both are British Overseas Territories of which she is monarch, and nominally appoints governors. Britain handles foreign policy for both islands to a large extent, but Bermuda has been self-governing since 1620. The Duchy's investments included First Quench Retailing off-licences and rent-to-own retailer BrightHouse.^[98] Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn posited whether the Queen should apologize, saying anyone with money offshore for tax avoidance should "not just apologise for it, [but] recognise what it does to our society". A spokesman for the Duchy said that all of their investments are audited and legitimate and that the Queen voluntarily pays taxes on income she receives from Duchy investments.^[99]

The papers also show that in June 2007, the Duchy of Cornwall, a possession of Prince Charles, invested $113,500 in Sustainable Forestry Management,^[97] a Bermuda-based carbon credits trading company run by Hugh van Cutsem.^[100]

Four weeks after the Duchy of Cornwall purchased shares in Sustainable Forestry Management, Prince Charles made a speech criticising the European Union Emission Trading Scheme and the Kyoto Protocol for excluding carbon credits from rainforests, and called for change.^[101]

James Meyer Sassoon, the 2007 president of the international Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering,^[64][102] said that his $236 million trust^[103] revealed in the papers had been established years before by his grandmother with funds that had not been earned in the UK and therefore were not subject to tax there. He said he had first disclosed the trust when he joined the Treasury in 2002, where he was Commercial Secretary from 2010 to 2013.^[104]

An article published by the ICIJ detailing the use of ambiguous VAT policies on the Isle of Man highlights the $27 million Bombardier Challenger 605 private jet that sir Lewis Hamilton registered there, apparently to become eligible for a $5.2 million VAT refund.^[105]

The BBC also noted questions about investments by Conservative Party donor Michael Ashcroft and Farhad Moshiri, owner of Everton Football Club.^[99]

After reporting began, Appleby sued The Guardian and the BBC on 18 December 2017 for breach of confidence as it sought copies of the documents.^[106] A confidential settlement between the three companies was reached on 4 May 2018. In a joint statement, the companies stated the vast majority of documents in the leak were not legally privileged, that the Guardian and the BBC explained to Appleby which documents were used in their reporting, and that the Guardian and the BBC had done this without compromising their journalistic integrity.^[107]

Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is named in the papers.^[108]

Gennadiy Trukhanov, mayor of Odesa with Russian and Greek citizenships is named as part of a crime gang.^[109]

Jonathan Kolber, former CEO of Koor Industries and the beneficiary of the Kolber Trust and son of former Canadian senator Leo Kolber, who set the fund up in 1991, is named.^[110]

Dan Gertler, Israeli billionaire businessman in natural resources and the founder and President of the DGI (Dan Gertler International) Group of Companies appears in 120 documents regarding his relationship with Glencore.^[110]

Queen Noor of Jordan is listed in the papers as the beneficiary of two trusts registered in Jersey.^[111] One of the trusts, the Valentine 1997 Trust, was valued at more than $40 million in 2015, and its income is to be paid to the queen during her lifetime. The trust also owns property in southern England adjacent to Buckhurst Park, Sussex. The other trust, the Brown Discretionary Settlement, is the beneficial owner of a Jersey-incorporated investment holding company with assets worth c. $18.7 million in 2015.

Prince Khaled bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, a former deputy minister of defense for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is given as the owner of at least eight companies in Bermuda between 1989 and 2014, some of them apparently formed for purposes of owning yachts and airplanes.^[64]

Rami Makhlouf, reportedly Syria's wealthiest man, is listed in the papers.^[112]

Canada[edit]Former Prime Minister of Canada Jean Chrétien

Three former Canadian Prime Ministers are named in the Paradise Papers: Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin, and Brian Mulroney.^[113] According to the papers, Stephen Bronfman, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's adviser and close friend, a Liberal Party fundraiser credited with putting Trudeau into office, moved millions of dollars offshore for former Liberal Party Senator Leo Kolber.^[114] The offshore maneuvers may have avoided taxes in Canada, the United States and Israel, according to experts who reviewed some of the 3,000-plus files detailing the trust's activities.^[4]

Former president José María Figueres sat on the board of energy company Energia Global International, along with his brother and Timothy Phillips. The company was bought in 2001 by Enel SpA, an Italian power company, for $73 million, plus $37 million in debt cancellation. Figueres resigned from the board that year, at the annual EF meeting in Davos. He was also CEO of World Economic Forum from 2000 to 2004, and resigned as a result of allegations he called "unfounded" about $900,000 in consulting fees from a French telecommunications firm.^[64]

According to the files, trade union leader and politician Joaquín Gamboa Pascoe had investments worth $15.5 million; other mentioned politicians are Pedro Aspe Armella, Alejandro Gertz Manero, and officials from PEMEX. High-profile Mexicans in the files include billionaire Carlos Slim,^[115] priest Marcial Maciel known as "the greatest fundraiser of the modern Roman Catholic church",^[115] and Ricardo Salinas Pliego.^[115] In an interview with Proceso, Alejandro Gertz Manero Attorney General of Mexico and formerly National Security Secretary, denied all knowledge of the company, of which he was vice-president, and which was started by his brother, its president.^[64]

United States[edit]The leaked documents revealed that Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross holds stakes in businesses connected to sanctioned Russian oligarchs, which he did not disclose during his confirmation hearings.

According to the papers, then United States Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross holds stakes in businesses which deal with Russian oligarchs Leonid Mikhelson and Gennady Timchenko, who are subject to U.S. sanctions,^[10] as well as Russian president Vladimir Putin's former son-in-law, Kirill Shamalov.^[116] When reporters working on the Paradise Papers contacted Ross concerning his stake in Navigator Holdings, he did not deny the tie, but the day before his response became public he shorted the stock and apparently made a profit after the stock price dropped 4% after the story appeared.^[117]

Other members of the Trump administration that appear in the documents include former United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former director of the National Economic Council Gary D. Cohn.^{[4][116][118]} Offshore ties of more than a dozen Trump advisers, Cabinet members and major donors appear in the leaked data.^[119]

Tillerson, while CEO of Exxon Yemen, was a director of a company with a joint venture agreement with a Yemeni state-owned company. He sued when Yemen ended the joint venture and turned over operations to a Yemeni company, and lost. He was still a company director and the offshore company was still active as recently as 2015.^[120]

The documents also revealed that, between 2009 and 2011, Russian state organizations with ties to Putin pursued large investments in Facebook and Twitter via an intermediary—Russian-American entrepreneur Yuri Milner, who befriended Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg^[121] and was a business associate of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law.^[122]

American singer Madonna, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, American billionaire George Soros, founder of Open Society Foundations,^[123] and former NATO supreme commander in Europe General Wesley Clark are also named in the papers.^[124]

This list includes some of President Donald Trump's foremost donors, who together funneled nearly $60 million to organizations supporting his campaign and transition. They include casino magnate Sheldon Adelson; resort owner Steve Wynn; hedge fund managers Robert Mercer and Paul Singer; and private equity investors Tom Barrack, Stephen Schwarzman, and Carl Icahn.

Prominent Democratic donors also appear in the law firm's files. Questions have arisen about Democratic Party donor Penny Pritzker's compliance with federal ethics rules. She had pledged to divest from more than 200 firms when she was confirmed as President Barack Obama's commerce secretary in 2013, but records show that she transferred assets to a company owned by her children's trusts, which shared the same address as her office.^[125]

The late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein also figures in the Paradise Papers, as chairman from at least 2000 to 2007 of a Bermudan-registered company, Liquid Funding, Ltd., partially owned by Bear Stearns.^[126]

Economist Gabriel Zucman and his colleagues estimate that 63% of foreign profits made by American multinational corporations are stored in subsidiaries and offshore accounts, depriving the country of about $70 billion in tax revenue each year.^[127]

Argentine Finance Minister Luis Caputo managed at least two offshore wealth funds.^[128] Neither firm, the Cayman Islands–based Alto Global Fund, nor its Miami-based parent company Noctua Partners LLC, were listed in Caputo's financial disclosure statement, a statement that all public officials and candidates for office are required to make.^[128] Caputo is a first cousin of local industrialist and construction tycoon Nicolás Caputo [es], best friend of Argentine President Mauricio Macri. He told Argentine members of the ICIJ team that "it was an investment fund for friends and family."^[128] The funds, opened in 2009 and with over $100 million under management, remained under Caputo's management until December 2015, when Macri named him Finance Secretary, a post upgraded to Finance Minister this January.^[128]

Argentine Energy Minister Juan José Aranguren managed two offshore companies, Shell Western Supply and Trading Limited and Sol Antilles y Guianas Limited, both subsidiaries of Royal Dutch Shell. One is the main bidder for the purchase of diesel oil by the current government through the state owned CAMMESA (Compañía Administradora del Mercado Mayorista Eléctrico).^[129]

According to the papers, Argentine hotelier and real estate developer Alan Faena was director and CEO of half a dozen companies in the Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands. Faena also appears with bank accounts in Luxembourg and the Isle of Man, linked to different hotels and real estate projects in Puerto Madero. In the offshore firms he was associated with different investors such as Soviet-born British-American businessman Leonard Blavatnik; American billionaire J. Christopher Burch and his brother Robert Burch; American business and media executive John Augustine Hearst; and French designer Philippe Starck.^[130]

Agriculture Minister Blairo Borges Maggi is mentioned in the papers.^[64] His company, Amaggi & LD Commodities,^[131] was first registered about five months after Maggi ended a term as governor of Mato Grosso. Maggi told Brazilian outlet Poder360 [pt] that he was not a direct beneficiary of the company and he had never received money from it.

Henrique de Campos Meirelles, the former Brazilian Minister of Finance, told Poder360 that he does not report income from his Sabedoria Foundation because it was set up to perform charitable functions after his death and therefore he receives no income from it.^[64]

Alsacia-Express [es], which runs the debt-ridden public transit system of Santiago, holds assets in a Bermuda bank, according to the Appleby documents.^[132]

Colombia[edit]Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos

President of Colombia (2010–2018) Juan Manuel Santos is mentioned in the investigation. He was part of two offshore societies.^[133]

The singer Shakira, while living in Barcelona, is a resident of the Bahamas and sends her authors' rights revenue to Malta.^[134] In June 2019, she admitted no wrong doing, paid $16.4 million in taxes that she owed, and in July 2021 a Spanish judge ruled that her tax-evasion case will go to trial.^[135]

In the United Kingdom, the public reaction to the Paradise Papers has been relatively muted compared to similar leaks in the past, such as the Panama Papers.^[136] Possible reasons include the absence of overt illegality in the information; most media sources are careful to point out that the schemes in the Paradise Papers are generally lawful.^[137] A statement on behalf of Queen Elizabeth confirmed that the Royal Estate paid full UK tax on her offshore investments.^[138] Other public comments by notable popular public figures who appeared in the Papers may also play a part; Bono stated "I've been assured by those running the company that it is fully tax compliant, but if that is not the case, I want to know as much as the tax office does, and so I also welcome the audit they have said they will undertake."^[139] Jack Peat of The London Economic has suggested that much of the media has ignored the story of the Paradise Papers because those media organisations are owned by individuals implicated in the papers, such as Daily Telegraph owners David and Frederick Barclay, Daily Mail owner Jonathan Harmsworth, and The Sun and The Times owner Rupert Murdoch.^{[140]" [36]}

Accordingly and again, some of the same names involved in major international scandals appear herein also, linked to families directly involved with 9/11, the merged or overlapping child sex trafficking rings of Jeffrey Epstein and NXIVM, the 2016 Russian elections fraud/interference in the US and UK, known money laundering schemes, key Trump administration officials, the UK royals, Russian oligarchs linked to the 2016 elections interference in the US linked to Jeffrey Epstein's Mark Zuckerberg and Yuri Milner's Facebook (and where Milner is another business partner of Jared Kushner financed by the Saudis), family members of child trafficker Vladimir Putin, the 2021 attempts to keep Trump in power, the Qanon movement, but not limited to the same.

Next turning to the Pandora Papers leak,  "In total, 35 current and former national leaders appear in the leak, alongside 400 public officials from nearly 100 countries and more than 100 billionaires.^[14] As per laws of tax, some of the activities were legal but could not be justified. Some files were showing the date of 1970, but they were actually created between the years 1996 to 2020. The data included 130 billionaires listed by Forbes, over 330 politicians, celebrities, members of royal families and religious leaders. Among those names are former British prime minister Tony Blair, Chilean president Sebastián Piñera, former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta, Montenegrin president Milo Đukanović, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Qatari emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, United Arab Emirates prime minister and Dubai ruler Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Gabonese president Ali Bongo Ondimba, Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati,^[15] Ecuadorian president Guillermo Lasso, family members of former Argentine president Mauricio Macri and his spin-doctor, Ecuadorian Jaime Durán Barba,^[16][17][18] and Cypriot president Nicos Anastasiades.^[19][20] More than 100 billionaires, 29,000 offshore accounts, 30 current and former leaders, and 336 politicians^[21] were named in the first leaks on 3 October 2021.^[1][11]

King Abdullah II of Jordan is one of the main figures named in the papers, with documents showing he had invested over US$100 million in property across the UK and the US; they included houses in Malibu, California,^[22] Washington, D.C., London and Ascot.^[23][24] A UK company controlled by Cherie Blair was shown to have acquired a £6.45 million property in London by purchasing Romanstone International Limited, a British Virgin Islands company; had the property been acquired directly, £312,000 would have been payable in stamp duty. Tony Blair's name appears in a statement of joint income for the associated mortgage.^[25]

The papers also reveal how an office block owned by Azerbaijan's ruling Aliyev family was sold to the Crown Estate, the sovereign's public estate, for £66 million in 2018, netting the Aliyevs a £31 million profit. Another office block worth £33 million was sold to the family in 2009, and was gifted to the son of Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev, Heydar.^[5] According to Las Vegas Sun, "Members of the inner circle of Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan are accused of hiding millions of dollars in wealth in secret companies or trusts".^[26] Supporters of former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko accused his successor Zelensky, who came to power on an anti-corruption campaign, of tax evasion.^[27] Elsewhere, close associates of Russian president Vladimir Putin, like Svetlana Krivonogikh and Gennady Timchenko, were revealed to have secret assets in Monaco, and Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš, who had campaigned on promising to crack down on corruption and tax evasion, did not declare the use of an offshore investment company in the purchase of eight properties, including two villas, in Mougins on the French Riviera for £12 million.^[5][28][29] As a result of the Pandora Papers, more information emerged about Russia-linked, allegedly Kremlin-linked, donations to the Tories.^[30] Uhuru Kenyatta was also mentioned, despite being quoted in 2018 as stating, "Every public servant's assets must be declared publicly so that people can question and ask – what is legitimate?"^[11] Kenyatta and six members of his family have been linked to 13 offshore companies.^[31] The leaked list also includes transnational criminal organization leaders, such as Raffaele Amato, boss of the Amato-Pagano clan, a clan within the Camorra, dedicated to international drug trafficking. Amato used a shell company in the UK to buy land and real estate in Spain.^[32][33][34]

Other global names mentioned include Shakira, who was incorporating new offshore entities while going on trial for tax evasion; model Claudia Schiffer; Indian cricket player Sachin Tendulkar; Indian billionaire Anil Ambani; fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi’s sister Purvi Modi; Alexandre Cazes, the founder of the dark web site AlphaBay, used to deal in illegal drugs; Pakistani finance minister, Shaukat Fayaz Ahmed Tarin, and several of family members of Pakistan's top generals; and the CEO of Channel One Russia, Konstantin Ernst. Miguel Bosé, Pep Guardiola and Julio Iglesias are also named.^{[35][36][37][38][39][40]}"[36]

Additional names can be found here, and include Russians close to Putin, the crime syndicate of Jeffrey Epstein, the former corrupt King of Spain, known organized crime members, the President of Ukraine, many heads of state, money launders, big companies, and others.

Now turning to the FinCen Files leaks naming the orbit, financiers, and money launderers allegedly involved with Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, and others, specifically, but not limited to "JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of New York Mellon" as involved in money laundering.^[1] BuzzFeed News also criticizes the United States government for not forcing the banks to stop this activity.^[1] BuzzFeed and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists have also reported that American Express, Bank of America, Bank of China, Barclays, China Investment Corporation, Citibank, Commerzbank, Danske Bank, First Republic Bank, Société Générale, VEB.RF and Wells Fargo as being involved in the SARs.^[1][13][10] The ICIJ noted 62% of the leaked filings involved Deutsche Bank, with at least 20% involving addresses in the British Virgin Islands.^[10]

Prominent individuals highlighted in the leaks include former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Iranian-Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab, Malaysian businessman Jho Low, and alleged Russian organised crime boss Semion Mogilevich.^[2][14]

Other reporting on national connections to the FinCEN Files includes Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's reporting on HSBC^[15][16] and coverage by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.^[17][18]

It was reported that US$167 million of possibly dirty money flowed through two Australian banks: Macquarie Group (US$123 million) and Commonwealth Bank (US$44 million).^[20]

The Indian Express reported that Jindal Steel and Power was flagged by Deutsche Bank for money laundering.^[21]

The SARs, with additional investigations by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, also provide further details on the scheme employed by Reza Zarrab to evade economic sanctions on Iran, and its links with the Magnitsky tax fraud and other Russian money laundering schemes.^[22]

In Macau, the Macau News Agency (MNA) reported that 62 transactions involving more than US$68.2 million that flowed to or from four banks in Macau between 2000 and 2017 were flagged as potentially suspicious money-laundering transactions. The banks included Bank of China, Banco Nacional Ultramarino, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (Macau), and HSBC Macau. All these transactions were processed through three American-based financial institutions, that filed SARs with FinCEN by the China Investment Corporation, The Bank of New York Mellon and Standard Chartered.^[23]

In Malaysia, the Malay Mail reported that several international banks had been flagged in numerous suspicious transactions involving fugitive Malaysian businessman Low Taek Jho, involving 103 transactions worth US$2.53 billion. The banks involved included Citibank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, and the Bank of New York Mellon. Jho allegedly played a role in being the main person in the laundering of proceeds from the government unit 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).^[24]

Also reported by the Malay Mail, that several leading Malaysian banks and international banks with their Malaysian subsidiaries had been flagged by FinCEN in 23 suspicious transactions with over US$4.88 million entering and US$13.38 million leaving the country. The banks included Public Bank Berhad, AmBank, HSBC Bank Malaysia, Alliance Bank Malaysia Berhad, United Overseas Bank, CIMB Bank, and Standard Chartered. The flagged transactions going in and out of these Malaysian banks involved overseas accounts in countries including Afghanistan, Latvia, Poland, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the United States.^[25]

In the Philippines, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) reported that the files shows that two Philippine remittance agents Philrem Service Corp. (Philrem) and Werquick Inc. sent more than $1 billion of what were deemed suspicious wires from 2012 to 2016, that were coursed through their foreign currency accounts held at Philippine banks Banco de Oro (BDO), Metrobank and Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC). Philrem and RCBC were involved in the illicit transfer of stolen funds from the Bangladesh Bank in 2016.^[26]

It was also reported that overseas proceeds from a sextortion scheme that were sent by wire transfer into U.S. banks amounting to more than $400,000 into the accounts of a certain Philippine criminal syndicate led by Charvel Yap Rebagay. His company, Digital Minds and its call centers offices across the Philippines were raided by the Philippine National Police and Interpol in 2014 for sextortion activities. Rebagay is still a wanted fugitive.^[27]

In Japan, the files also revealed a consulting firm for the Tokyo Olympic 2020 bid committee paid $370,000 to Papa Massata Diack, son of former International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) President and International Olympic Committee (IOC) Lamine Diack that were coursed through Black Tidings, a consulting firm based in Singapore, received a total of $2 million from the bid committee paid into a bank account in the city-state in July and October 2013 and later transferred to Diack's Citibank account.^[28][29] Diack was jailed for corruption and breach of trust by a Paris district court earlier in 2020.^[30]

It was reported that the Turkish bank Aktif Bank was a financial facilitator for Wirecard and was alleged to have laundered money for the Taliban.^[31]

The Central Bank of the UAE failed to act on SARs related to evading sanctions in Iran.^[32]

The files showed new details related to the Danske Bank money laundering scandal.^[33]

ICIJ and Deutsche Welle report that Germany's Deutsche Bank accounted for 62% of the leaked SARs.^[34][10] Deutsche Welle further notes that Deutsche Bank was responsible for $1.3 trillion worth of suspicious transactions, even after hundreds of millions in fines for violating US sanctions.^[34] BuzzFeed News also reported that the files revealed Deutsche Bank was a major source for money laundering for organised crime, terrorists and drug traffickers.^[35]

In Ireland, The Irish Times reported of a Dublin business called International Overseas Services Group (IOS), an international company services operation, whose office in Riga, Latvia, helped clients from Russia and the former Soviet Union establish secret accounts with Estonian and Latvian banks, with United Kingdom LLP shell companies formed back in the 1990s. The FinCEN documents show 646 of 2,100 Scottish and English company SARs are linked to this Irish company, the largest number of any such entity. As for his relationship to money laundering, the company founder likens himself to the innocent seller of a criminal getaway car.^[36]

The files revealed that US banks have notified their authorities of around $160 million that has gone through the partly state-owned DNB group. The transactions via DNB took place mainly from 2015 to 2017. Some transfers date back to 2008.^[37][38]

A report by the BBC suggests that the FinCen Files reveal that the United Kingdom bank HSBC was involved in numerous illegal money transfers.^[39] At the time, HSBC was subject to a deferred prosecution agreement for the laundering of $881 million on behalf of the Sinaloa and Norte del Valle cartels.^[2] The files also describe how Barclays Bank laundered money on behalf of Arkady Rotenberg, a close associate of Vladimir Putin, who is under sanctions for his involvement in the Ukrainian crisis.^[40] The BBC further notes that the UK is judged a "higher risk jurisdiction" due to the number of the country's companies appearing in SARs.^[3]"[37]

The Times of Malta reported that €647m worth of transfers by Afren into Electrogas were flagged as suspicious.^[41]

Accordingly, this leak implicates those involved in the 2016 Russian engineering of Trump, GOP, and/or Brexit candidates, organized crime, money launderers, GRU's Paul Manafort, associates of Vladimir Putin, the crime syndicate of Jeffrey Epstein/NXIVM, and financiers of the Nazis in WWII.

Returning, "defenders of the faith" with Christ and God always in the hearts and minds, or ongoing and overlapping organized crime syndicates?

HAVE THE UK/EU ROYALS HISTORICALLY-BEEN WHAT SPOTIFY'S BILL SIMMONS SPECIFIED ARE "LAZY FUCKING GRIFTERS"?

Did Henry Bolingbroke kill Richard II in order to usurp the thrones of England and deny Henry Beaufort his rights to the thrones, lands, and benefits of the thrones of England?

Richard II was starved to death in a dungeon after Henry Bolingbroke, who was not allowed by the ruler of England to become the King of England, violated Romans 13 and other laws, including treason law, to falsely self-proclaim himself a legitimate monarch of English thrones, when he wasn't. Is this an example of a defender of the faith? [38]

Were Richard III and Edward IV "royal bastards" born out of adultery, and thus can any deceptive royal claims to receive money or any other benefit from the thrones of England based on the same be legitimate? Are these additional examples of defenders or violators of the Abrahamic religions and faiths? [39][40]

Did the family of Henry Beaufort and Alice Fitzalan each have a greater retrospective claim during the period of Henry VII, or thereafter, than the family of Margaret Beaufort? If so, would Henry VII's retrospective claim to the thrones of England be a grift? Would he be an example of a defender of the faith? Could any royal claim based on the inferior claims of royals relative to other royals confer legitimacy thereafter? [41]

Was the House of Habsburg/Hapsburg built on forged royal claims in Privilegium maius, and if so can any royal claim based on the Habsburg/Hapsburg claim be legitimate? Is this an example of a grift? Is this another example of a violator and not defender of the Abrahamic faiths? [42]

Did the forged House of Habsburg/Hapsburg descend from Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne's original royal families, and if not, can any royal claim based on the Habsburg/Hapsburg claim be legitimate just because their organized crime syndicate had the laws changed to specify the same? Is this an example of a grift? Is this another example of a violator and not defender of the Abrahamic faiths? [42]

If someone steals your grandfather's cup from your home, and keeps it at their home, is it their cup, or did they simply steal your grandfather's cup, and is it still your cup?

Applied to a bank, if a bank robber robs a bank and brings the cash to their home, is it their cash, or is it the bank's and/or depositor's cash? Once the bank robbers are caught, do they get to keep the cash because it is theirs, or is the cash returned to the bank, because it wasn't their cash, even if they kept the same in their home, seizing the same by force?

It is clear that the cash isn't theirs and that if caught, they have to give it back, and so if someone steal's your grandfather's cup, it isn't their cup, even if they stole it by force. It's your cup in their possession, even if they write on a piece of paper, or have others do the same, specifying the cup is theirs, because they stole it by force.

And all of the same is in perfect alignment with the word of God, and where anything to the contrary is rejecting the word of God, in order to embrace the opposite values, teachings, and commandments of God. And so anything to the contrary of the word of God, in order to embrace the opposite values, teachings, and commandments of God -- is embracing the values, teachings, and commandments by default of Satan?

But Satan is known as the Great Deceiver, so what could Satan possibly have in common with these dutiful defenders of the faith?

WHAT DOES ROMANS 13 SAY ABOUT FOLLOWING THE LAW TO SERVE GOD, IN ORDER TO DEFEND GOD'S LOVE, AND ARE THE DUTIES OF RULERS AND THE LAW, OR DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH, TO DEFEND LOVE IN THE NAME OF GOD?

A close analysis of the Bible , arguably "the word of God", defines the nature of the "faith" the UK/EU royals are allegedly "defending".

In the context that the Pope is the ruler of the monarchs and the guardian of Canon Law governing the eligibility of monarchs -- per Romans 13,

"All of you must yield to the government rulers. No one rules unless God has given him the power to rule, and no one rules now without that power from God. ² So those who are against the government are really against what God has commanded. And they will bring punishment on themselves. ³ Those who do right do not have to fear the rulers; only those who do wrong fear them. Do you want to be unafraid of the rulers? Then do what is right, and they will praise you. ⁴ The ruler is God’s servant to help you. But if you do wrong, then be afraid. He has the power to punish; he is God’s servant to punish those who do wrong. ⁵ So you must yield to the government, not only because you might be punished, but because you know it is right.

⁶ This is also why you pay taxes. Rulers are working for God and give their time to their work. ⁷ Pay everyone, then, what you owe. If you owe any kind of tax, pay it. Show respect and honor to them all."

⁸ Do not owe people anything, except always owe love to each other, because the person who loves others has obeyed all the law. ⁹ The law says, “You must not be guilty of adultery. You must not murder anyone. You must not steal. You must not want to take your neighbor’s things.”^[a] All these commands and all others are really only one rule: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”^[b] 10 Love never hurts a neighbor, so loving is obeying all the law." [43]

More broadly, no one is above the law, because "all of you must yield to government rulers", which includes former legitimate rulers who created those laws "all of you must yield to", and which doesn't include rulers or laws that weren't legitimate, now tangled in one "hot mess" within both the US and the UK/EU, because of generations of illegitimate rulers changing laws and installing loyalists, who in turn make their own illegitimate law, in a manner that wouldn't be that hard to untangle.

Easily achieved by simply voiding all of the conduct of anyone or any administration who wasn't eligible to usurp power, and who used the same to make any change to any government, including installing others illegitimately, whose conduct would also have to be voided, because they were legitimately installed either. It sounds harder than it actually would be, as proving the illegitimate source of any conduct would simply negate or void that conduct, and any evidence to the contrary, fruits from the poisonous tree.

Here it is important to note that the Pope and Canon Law was/were and/or is/are the ruler and/or laws concerning who could and who could not be a monarch in Europe -- which monarchs had to abide by per Roman 13, and be ruled by, in order to be legitimate rulers themselves, and from that biblical legal perspective, God was the ultimate ruler, the Pope the ruler of monarchs, and the monarchs the ruler of some people.[44]

The same was known and practiced by the monarchies for thousands of years, until grifter Henry VIII, who it is proven by his maneuvering and deceit, violated Carolingian, Salic, and other laws, some like Magna Carta, which were written forever as specified.[45][46][47]  

God and not man is the ultimate ruler of others per the Bible -- which was one of the founding arguments of the Protestant Reformation's Martin Luther and/or Henry VIII -- the spiritual and/or founder of the Protestant Church of England the UK/EU royals claim to be the "defenders of the faith" for, respectively -- but originally-based on the need for Henry VIII to unlawfully-keep his family in power when he couldn't produce male heirs with his first wife, and so he violated the laws of God and Cannon Law (as did Henry IV) and took more than one wife, killing others (as did Henry IV kill others), also a violation of God's laws -- and so God's law and Canon law required the end of Henry IV/VIII's reign(s) and succession from them -- violated by Henry VIII in violation of Romans 13, who formed the Church of England to keep himself and his family in power against God's will as specified in the New and Old Testaments).[48]

Taking a step back, the forged royal Habsburg family is who stoked both sides of the Protestant Reformation, based on the central premise that Jesus not man was leader of Christians, and once they used their forged royal influence to stoke both sides of the Protestant Reformation based on this central premise, they married the illegitimate Tudor family who were successors to illegitimate monarch Henry IV, and by Henry VIII, this family made themselves the leaders of the Protestant church in England. [49]

Said differently, the Habsburg grifters advanced the deceit of the intent of the Protestant Reformation, not limited to Jesus being the only leader of Christians, only to marry the Tudor-linked grifters, who then proclaimed themselves the leaders of the leaderless Christians (not including Christ, who was supposed to be their only leader), resulting in the ultimate grift, a religion where monarchs were also leaders of the church, with no separation of church and government, as dutiful defenders of that faith. This of course is the very nature of cult of personality-resurrected imperial cults, whose leaders force those they oppress into worshiping them, in this case for hundreds of years. [50][51][52]

Then for hundreds of years they converted others by force or death to that faith, and now hundreds of years later, this is the worldview of millions of people, who subscribe to illegitimate royals being the defenders of their weaponized faith, which is exactly how imperial cults work, and this self-serving worship of (often illegitimate) fake monarchs is as old as the pyramids.

And now any attempt to help or rescue these people out of this/these ongoing cult(s) of personality of the Tudor-Habsburg family somehow makes a collective "enemy" of anyone trying -- which is a common dynamic created by cult leaders -- who specify that only they know "the truth", only they can "save you", and that all other information that doesn't fit their self-serving narrative is "fake news" -- and anyone trying to help or rescue cult-influence people out of the cult are "enemies", who need to be "destroyed", "murdered" -- along with anyone who tries to hold the cult leaders responsible -- who cult leaders accuse of being "radicals" trying to "destroy OUR country", requiring "civil war", book burning, criminalizing librarians, attacks and overhauls of education systems (which includes radical "genital checks" on children who need to go to the bathroom) -- often in the name of Jesus or God -- except Jesus and God are the most powerful entities in the universe, who created the universe, and compose the entire universe. As the creators of the entire universe, God and Jesus don't need spec-of-dust humans on Earth to save them. The promise is that they are going to save us from all of this evil, not vice versa.

Again, this is where deception serves grifters, who need to rally a "critical mass" of followers to stay in power, perpetuate the grift, obstruct justice for those advancing the grift, and to revise history of all of the same, and to evade historical, criminal, and civil prosecution and liability.

The entire universe (God/Jesus) isn't counting on human specs of dust on some random rock in space to save God (the entire universe). That's crazy pants tinfoil hat cult reasoning. That's giving specs of dust way too much credit and control for all of the power across the entire universe, across all space and all time. That's making specs of dust more powerful than God and Jesus, the creator of the entire universe.

We're simply not that important is a reasonable inference, even if we really, really want to believe we are -- crazy pants thinking. 

Having researched the nature of cults and their leadership, there is a really easy way to tell if an organization and its leaders form a cult, and that's when they preach one thing, or preach a set of values or laws, but regularly do the exact opposite themselves -- so for example, to preach the values of Jesus and Christians, but then to embrace and facilitate the exact opposite values of Jesus -- by default the values of Satan or evil, if Jesus and God are the embodiment of love, law, forgiveness, sharing, caring, charity, and other altruistic values.

More simply, cult of personality types and imperial cults have a two-tiered system, one they expect everyone else to follow, and one where the leaders and preachers of the same get to violate the norms, laws, values, and teachings they oblige others to follow, often "manufacturing" themselves above the law as their own judges, much like SCOTUS and Trump have done in the past few years, which isn't that different from a monarchy or oligarchy of monarchs, who demand that others follow laws they refuse to follow.[52][53]

All of the same historically ends very poorly for those who try and pull the same on large populations like in America, who eventually see through their deceptions as both Jeffrey Epstein's, Russia's, and the Saudi's Trump and UK royals have been experiencing over the last few years, with lawsuit after lawsuit, exposed scandal after exposed scandal, investigation after investigation, and indictment after indictment -- which of course they posture as being victims of, despite being the offenders.

Often the same results in their overthrow, imprisonment, and/or their execution, without or outside of the law, for example as a result of their treason, or in the case of forged Arch Duke Ferdinand, an assassination.[59]

The faith in the legitimacy of the English monarchy -- which was lost and rendered illegitimate many different ways, by violating many of the different 10 Commandments, 7 Deadly Sins, laws for succession, and/or the word of God -- is seemingly what the "Defender of the Faith" protects in England -- faith in their legitimacy as the truest English monarchs -- in the face of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt of their illegitimacy, is a reasonable inference based on the readily available evidence found.

For those who would argue the UK/EU monarchy are the legitimate "rulers" specified in Romans 13 -- the same would have to be true -- which is uncertain in the UK/EU, due to the likes of the forged royal claims of the Habsburg family in Privilegium maius, used as the forged legal basis for their thus forged "elevations", and then there are all of the "royal bastards" who have been elucidated, specifically Richard III, Edward IV, and then there is the unlawful usurping of the thrones by those the UK/EU royals claim give them the legal right to be rulers, and then there are the others who allege they have superior claims to the thrones of the UK/EU. Then there is the alleged superior claim of Henry Beaufort over his sister and her daughter Joan and Margaret. Then there a host of other laws of royal succession that were established, including forever, that challenge their royal claims. 

Accordingly, it isn't entirely clear that, and maybe even doubtful that, the UK/EU royals are legitimate rulers, especially false if those who "crafted" the laws to make them the rulers, were not legitimate rulers themselves, resulting in laws or evidence that are fruits from poisonous trees of forgery, infidelity, treason, sedition, insurrection, and regicide, stare decisis, a priori, and a fortiori. 

If they aren't the legitimate or truest English royals usurping the English, British, UK Commonwealth, and/or EU thrones, then is all of the same an ongoing grift involving many other organized crimes to keep the grift going?

And if so, are the UK and EU royal families of Jeffrey Epstein's organized crime syndicate, Russia, and the family of Osama bin Laden fraudsters, members of a global ongoing organized crime syndicate, or are they dutiful defenders of the faith?

Did the English, British, UK, and/or EU royals and/or their predecessors further colonization, slavery, oppression, any war, murder, theft, and/or deception, in violation of the 10 Commandments of God, at any time? Arguably, more than any other family or syndicate on Earth, they did.

A good example of the same is the freemason traitor king, the Habsburg's Edward VIII, who conspired to betray the citizens of his country, leaking allied intelligence to the Habsburg's WWI military asset, Hitler, who then used that intel in WWII to defeat France, to further the conspiracy of the Habsburg freemason Edward VIII, specifically to bomb Britain into submission, as had been done before by their proxies in WWI. And why this deception? To continue to reap the benefits of thrones, lands, titles, and tax dollars a fair bit of evidence suggests they are not duly more eligible than others for.

Have we learned from our mistakes?

Of course not, which is why the US and other countries now share intel with the same UK/EU royal families, syndicates, or their proxies, via Five Eyes and other intelligence networks. [60]

And why? To defeat the evil Russians, Saudis, and the like, who they have secretly sold access to and keep receiving bags of cash from. Another grift? Fake enemies used to manufacture more fake wars to divert more taxpayer funds into their organized crimes syndicates?

Thereafter, with UK film crews from Jeffrey Epstein's "princes" Andrew's, Charles', Harry's, and William's UK, were embedded in the Trump family and separately embedded in the insurrection, an insurrection where the Proud Boys founder, from Jeffrey Epstein's "princes" Andrew's, Charles', Harry's, and William's Canada, crossed the US border, and then organized to overthrow the United States to make Jeffrey Epstein's and Russia's Trump a monarch of America, based on "big lies" told by Trump, for which he is now being prosecuted for, having violated the law of rulers and God.

And the result of sharing intel with the crime syndicate of Jeffrey Epstein via Five Eyes and other intelligence networks?

Jeffrey Epstein's UK royal family's SCL's Cambridge Analytica conspired with Russia's child trafficker, Vladimir Putin, to overthrow the United States by "engineering their boy" Jeffrey Epstein's Donald J. Trump into office along with the GOP and Brexit candidates, which collectively allowed them all to unlawfully-seize, usurp, and abuse more power, is a reasonable inference, which they are now using to attack --

(1) America; 

(2) the American rule of law; 

(3) the American economy; 

(4) the American supply chains; 

(5) the American education system; 

(6) the American political infrastructure; 

(7) the American minimum wage; 

(8) the American tax or income-generating system; 

(9) the American "safety net" or social programs;

(10) the American interest rates for lending;

(11) the manufacturing of price gauging and American inflation with ongoing interest rate hikes;

(12) the American unions for healthcare workers, police, fire, and/or trades people;

(13) the American military and their promotions;

(14) the American intelligence network and its top secret documents and operatives;

(15) the American Abrahamic and Judeo-Christian values; 

(16) the American culture; 

(17) the American Dream; and/or 

(18) resulting in some of the highest execution rates of American law enforcement and its citizens 

-- a full-spectrum attack on the United States by the ongoing organized crime syndicate of Jeffrey Epstein/NXIVM child sex trafficking rings, also linked to Russia's Putin's government raping and sex trafficking children from Ukraine.

Dutiful defenders of the faith, Christian values, and the word of God -- or more examples of "lazy fucking grifters" part of a resurrected imperial cult "engineering" a two-tiered privatized socialists system -- now under multiple indictments and investigations for ongoing conspiracies to overthrow the US, UK, and/or EU (again)?

SOURCES AND ATTRIBUTES

[1] https://unsplash.com/@markusspiske

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_III

[3] https://pagesix.com/2023/06/16/spotify-meghan-and-harry-are-lazy-f-king-grifters/

[4] https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/19/media/prince-harry-meghan-spotify-bill-simmons-intl-scli/index.html

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jun/19/spotify-executive-calls-harry-and-meghan-grifters-after-podcast-deal-ends

[6] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/grifter

[7] https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/grifter

[8] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/fraudster

[9] https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/fraud?q=fraud

[10] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jun/16/prince-harry-and-meghans-multimillion-dollar-deal-with-spotify-to-end

[11] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fraud

[12] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/larceny

[13] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/grand_larceny

[14] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/conspiracy

[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments

[16] https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/16/uk/met-police-investigation-cash-for-honours-intl-gbr/index.html

[17] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/16/uk-police-launch-investigation-into-prince-charles-charity

[18] https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/21/prince-harrys-charity-reported-watchdog-290000-grant-william-13017175/

[19] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/royals-harry-meghan-repay-3m-public-funds-used-renovate-their-n1239475

[20] https://www.thecut.com/2022/08/prince-charles-accepted-money-from-bin-ladens-bags-of-cash.html

[21] https://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-government-911-new-documents-direct-connection-bayoumi-mihdhar-2022-5?op=1

[22] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_government_operations_and_exercises_on_September_11%2C_2001

[23] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57042823

[24] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court_arrest_warrants_for_Vladimir_Putin_and_Maria_Lvova-Belova

[25] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/russias-prigozhin-admits-interfering-us-elections-2022-11-07/

[26] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Tower_meeting

[27] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/11-attacks-trump-documents-victims-families-ag-barr-a9469251.html

[28] https://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-government-911-new-documents-direct-connection-bayoumi-mihdhar-2022-5?op=1

[29] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/jared-kushners-saudi-money-merits-doj-scrutiny-former-trump-lawyer-says/ar-AA1cnwDn

[30] https://epsteinsblackbook.com/names/ivanka-trump

[31] https://www.golfdigest.com/story/liv-golf-trump-doj-investigation-2023

[32] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/8/3/spains-former-king-to-leave-the-country-amid-corruption-claims

[33] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers

[34]  https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trump+tower+tenants&atb=v363-3__&ia=news

[35] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Papers

[36] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_Papers

[37[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FinCEN_Files

[38] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_of_England

[39] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30281333

[40] https://www.royalhistorygeeks.com/tag/was-edward-iv-son-of-a-french-archer/

[41] Royal pedigree of Abigail Adams as found in the U.S. Library of Congress

[42] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privilegium_Maius

[43] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=romans+13&atb=v363-3__&ia=web&iax=about

[44] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII

[45] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_dynasty

[46] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salic_law

[47] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta

[48] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII

[49] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII

[50] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_of_Worms#Edict_of_Worms