How The Wealthy Hide Billions Using Tax Havens

In 2016, 11.5 million files were leaked from Mossack Fonseca, the world's fourth largest offshore law firm.
2016年，全球第四大離岸律師事務所Mossack Fonseca洩露了1,150萬份文件。

These were called the Panama Papers. 
這些文件被稱為巴拿馬文件。

Hundreds of thousands of offshore entities and shell companies connected to over 200 countries and territories appear in the papers. 
成千上萬的離岸實體和空殼公司，其關係人可以追溯到到200多個國家和地區。

Prominent world leaders, politicians, business people and the super wealthy were exposed to have been using offshore accounts for tax avoidance and other purposes.
傑出的世界領導人，政治家，商界人士和超級富豪都曾使用海外賬戶來達到避稅和其他目的。
 
So, why should you care?
所以，為何要關心這個呢?

Every year, about 70 billion dollars that the US could be using for infrastructure, law enforcement, healthcare or education is missing. 
每年，美國可以用於基礎設施，執法，醫療保健或教育的700億美元不見了。

It's hidden deep within shell companies and anonymous entities in places like the British Virgin Islands.
它被深深藏在空殼公司和英屬維爾京群島等地的匿名實體中。

Now, let's back up.
現在我們先回頭看。

What exactly is a shell company anyway?
到底什麼是空殼公司?

Setting up a shell company is really quite easy.
要設立一個空殼公司是非常容易的。

You can go to a place like Panama, the British Virgin Islands or Delaware or Nevada and usually the places where you're doing it have tough laws, where they will not reveal who the beneficial owner is and they just layer on different aspects of anonymity.
你可以去巴拿馬，英屬維爾京群島或德拉威州或內華達州這樣的地方，通常可以這樣做的地方有嚴格的法律，他們不會透露誰是受益所有人，他們有分層的匿名制度。

So for example, you could have fake directors where you pay a little bit extra and someone pretends to be the public face of this company.
因此，舉例來說，你可能可以有一位假的董事，然後付出一點額外的費用，讓有人假裝成為這家公司的對外代表。

Just because you have a shell company does not mean necessarily that you're doing anything illegal.
擁有一家空殼公司並不一定意味著你正在進行任何非法的事情。

Say for example, you wanna have some business activities but you don't want certain
business partners to know what you're doing.
比如說，你想做一些商業活動，但你不希望讓某些你的商業夥伴知道你要做什麼。

The more normal one is some form of legal tax avoidance.
更常有的是某種形式的合法避稅。

I think that a lot of people in the US think that tax evasion and tax avoidance is something that happens in a far off place with palm trees and ocean breezes.
我認為美國很多人都認為逃稅和避稅是在要到遙遠的地方，有著棕櫚樹和海風的地方，所發生的事情。

And the reality is it's a big deal here.
但事實上這在美國事關重大。

The US Treasury estimates that something like 300 billion dollars a year is laundered through the United States.
美國財政部估計，每年3000億美元的資金將通過美國進行洗白。

Foreigners are coming in and buying up property with anonymous shell companies.
外國人進入美國利用空殼公司的名義來購買房產。

And some of that is perfectly legitimate but some of it is clearly money laundering and corrupt officials and other people using their cash to park it in property and making it impossible for the people who live there to afford it.
其中一些是完全合法的，但其中一些顯然是洗錢和腐敗的官員或其他人用他們的非法現金將其拿來購買房產，並使真正居住在那裡的人無法負擔得起高漲的房價。

You know, our government is claiming that it doesn't have enough money for infrastructure or for healthcare or for police or for education.
我們的政府聲稱它沒有足夠的資金用於基礎設施，醫療保健，警察或教育。

And at the same time, there's just huge amounts of tax avoidance and tax evasion going on through this secrecy world.
但與此同時，這個秘密世界正在進行大量避稅和逃稅。

Worldwide tax authorities have collected more than a half a billion dollars based on the Panama Papers leak.
根據巴拿馬文件的洩漏，全球稅務機關已經收回了超過5億美元的逃漏稅金。

Of the 214,000 entities identified in the Panama Papers, about one half of them are located in the British Virgin Islands.
在巴拿馬文件中確定的214,000個匿名實體中，約有一半位於英屬維爾京群島。

How did this tiny area become such a huge tax haven?
這個小地方是怎麼成為如此巨大的避稅天堂？

Mossack Fonseca is a Panama based law firm founded in 1977.
Mossack Fonseca是一家成立於1977年的巴拿馬律師事務所。

After instability in Panama was pushing clients away during the '80s, the firm discovered the British Virgin Islands were ripe new territory for anonymous shell companies.
在巴拿馬80年代不穩定的政局迫使客戶離開後，該公司發現英屬維爾京群島是匿名空殼公司的成熟新領域。

Their vision was to be McDonald's of the offshore system, right?
他們是想成為離岸系統中的麥當勞，對吧？

It was high volume, low cost and so they were going to pump out these anonymous shell companies and make them available to a wider audience.
這是一個高產值，低成本的生意，因此他們推出這些匿名空殼公司，並將其提供給更廣泛的受眾。

In the beginning, that's a great business model,right?
在起步時，這是一個很棒的經營型態，是吧？

Because all you're doing is you create this anonymous shell company, you give it a name, you don't care who actually is behind it, and you stick it in a folder and you forget about it until a year passes and it's time to invoice for the renewal. 
因為你正在做的就是創建這個匿名的空殼公司，你給它一個名字，你不用在乎它背後是誰，並且把它放在一個文件夾中，然後你就不管他了，一直到直到一年過去了再它拿出來更新發票。

Later on, there's more vetting.
直到後來，有更多的審查制度了。

Governments start to realize that these are being used by criminals and money
launderers and things like that and so they say, "We need more information."
政府開始意識到犯罪分子和洗錢者以及類似的東西正在使用這些東西，因此他們開始需要更多的有關資訊。”

And I asked Jurgen Mossack, "Did you ever see that wonderful "I Love Lucy" episode where she's in the chocolate factory", and she's trying to keep up with the conveyor belt and it's going faster and faster, and he said, "Yes."
我問了Jurgen Mossack，你有沒有看到那個美妙的電視劇“我愛露西”，在裡面她在巧克力工廠，正在努力跟上傳送帶，而傳送帶的速度越來越快，他說，”有“。

It was very much like that at a certain point.
這是一個很相似的情境。

So we know it's a big problem but how is this still happening?
我們知道這是個大問題，但為何他還在不斷發生？

There's a lot of bureaucratic inertia and timidity in the IRS for sure.
美國國稅局的確有很多官僚作風和不作為的慣性。

But another big part of it is that Congress has eviscerated the IRS.
但更大的原因在於國會已經掏空了IRS。

And they've starved it of funds, there's been a lot of retirements and so you've deliberately hobbled the IRS and made it impossible for them to go after this kind of tax evasion.
他們大量刪減IRS的預算，再加上大量的退休潮，這些阻礙使得IRS沒有任何多餘的經費來追查這些逃漏稅。

A lot of this information is being held in banks and in jurisdictions where they do not cooperate with US authorities easily.
很多這些相關的資訊都是在銀行和不願意與美國當局合作的司法管轄區內進行的。

The only way that the IRS can really figure out what's going on is through these leaks.
而這些洩漏讓IRS得以真正了解事情的真相。

And it's really these leaks in recent years that have allowed the IRS and the rest of the public to really get a vision of how this system works and how big it is, how all-encompassing.
近年來，這些漏洞確實讓美國國稅局和其他公眾真正了解了這個系統是如何運作的，還有它有多大，有多麼全面。

It's gonna take people being aware that the reality is we don't have to accept the austerity that is being forced on us.
人們會意識到現實上我們不必接受政府強加給我們的緊縮政策。

The Europeans are ahead of us on this because they got hit very hard after the financial crisis.
歐洲政府已經比我們早一步行動了，因為他們在經濟危機上摔得太慘重。

There were major cutbacks in multiple countries.
許多國家都出現了大幅的經費削減。

And so when these leak investigations started coming out and they found out that the mega wealthy amongst them were not paying their fair share, people got very upset about that.
因此，當這些洩密調查開始出現，並且他們發現其中的超級富有人沒有支付他們的應該支付的稅額時，人民對此感到非常不滿。

And it really hasn't penetrated in the United States quite as much but I suspect that it will in the future.
這個效應目前還沒有在美國盛行，但我合理懷疑未來的可能性。

 

Copyright Announcement: The above videos are  from the official Youtube channel of the organization. How The Wealthy Hide Billions Using Tax Havens https://www.youtube.com/user/businessinsider . The videos we selected are all publicly available on the official channel, and we do not own the copyright of these videos. Our work on Chinese translation for this film is free for the 1.2 billion audiences in Mandarin Chinese around the world to watch and learn SDGs and SROI advertising campaigns.