Panama in NZ? Overblown. [updated]

 

Radio NZ, NickyHager and Uncle Tom Cobley and all have prowled through the stolen Panama Papers at length and delivered several much-hyped reports and extensively researched stories (so thorough these “journalists” have even braved sites as diverse and exotic as LinkedIn and Facebook!) that inform us, in the end, after all the shouting, little more than we already knew.

That Mossack Fonsecca was in the business of setting up trusts.

So what?

That they have/had “an office in New Zealand” – “EXCLUSIVE - Panama Papers NZ - Mossack Fonseca is sending its clients to New Zealand for "wealth protection", and has set up an office in Auckland”! – which amounts to little more than one accountant here whose address, for the last three years, is gven as their registered office.

That he sets up trusts – as many accountants and lawyers do.

That many clients are – gasp – foreign!

That other law firms here setting up trusts lobbied government to stop the ability to set up trusts being diminished.

That this, somehow, according to the breathless reports of these “journalists,” trying to make something out of very little, puts NZ “at the heart of the Panama money-go-round” – or, in other words, that NZ is a place to which foreigners send their money to be kept safe.

So what?

Hardly world-shattering news. But since they have had reams of private paper dumped on them, you will hear these morsels on non-news talked up by the media – who have gone all-in on note very much --- for many more days to come.

If they have a king hit, they should bring it. But this stuff is just envy-ridden garbage.

Just another reason to keep your radios and TVs turned off.

UPDATES:

**

Opinion: Publishing the names of thousands of people who have dealt with Mossack Fonseca irrespective of wrongdoing is reckless, unfair, and worthy of Kafka’s The Trial, argues Ben Thomas.

** I searched and I searched, and I just couldn’t find NZ at all in the list of top 10 ‘tax havens’ mentioned …

… and the best Nicky Hager can pull out of his arse so so far is a bizarre reference to Elvis. Good times.