AMY GOODMAN: Here on Democracy Now!, I'm Amy Goodman with Juan González.
Our guest is Jon Swaine, senior reporter for The Guardian, where he’s part of the team
that is publishing stories on the Paradise Papers.
One of his new stories, “The seven Republican super-donors who keep money in tax havens.”
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Could you talk about that, Jon?
JON SWAINE: Sure.
I think one example from this story that is a particularly interesting case about money
in politics today is this guy Warren Stephens.
He’s not that well known.
He’s not your Kochs, the Adelsons, who are household names perhaps.
But he’s very important.
He gives a lot of money to Republican candidates.
And what we found is he is the hidden co-owner of a payday lending company that is being
sued by the federal government for allegedly exploiting customers, for overcharging them
with loans, for deceiving them on how much their loans would cost.
And unbeknownst to all of us, he’s been a co-owner of one of these companies while
backing Republicans who are seeking to bring down the regulator, the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau, that is taking this company to court.
You know, it’s a clear conflict.
And before this leak arrived, we just didn’t know that he was involved in it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what about the major Democratic donor, as well, who’s Simons?
JON SWAINE: So, James Simons—we talked about Robert Mercer.
James Simons took over, as you said, as head of Renaissance Technologies—Robert Mercer
took over from James Simons at that hedge fund.
James Simons founded it.
And what we found in this leak is that since the '70s he's been building a trust fund,
a private wealth fund, in Bermuda, which is this tax haven in the Atlantic Ocean.
It’s worth at least $8 billion, probably quite a lot more.
And it’s been accumulating wealth year after year without facing any U.S. taxes.
And, you know, he is now saying he’s going to use most of it to give to charity, which—fine,
but most people, when they give money to charity, they’ve already paid their taxes, right?
And so, I think people view this as proof that for the super-rich, for the ultra-wealthy,
there’s a kind of completely different set of laws and of practices.
that are out of reach for most people.
AMY GOODMAN: One of the filings leaked in the Paradise Papers shows how an attorney
for Renaissance Technologies founder James Simons asked Bermuda’s Supreme Court to
hold hearings on restructuring his trust in private, in order to prevent the Simons name
from being listed in the public docket.
The lawyer writes, quote, “There has always been very great sensitivity as regards even
the remotest possibility of publicity of the wealth of Mr Simons and his family.
Mr Simons himself is exceptionally private,” he wrote.
The Guardian also reports Simons has publicly called for higher taxes on Americans he has
termed “rich guys like me.”
So you have these two political guys, James Simons, founder of Renaissance Technologies
in Stony Brook, Long Island, right near the university there, and Robert Mercer, who took
over from him.
Now, according to BuzzFeed, it’s Simons that has convinced Robert Mercer to step back
because he’s demoralizing the entire company for supporting the white nationalists and
Milo Yiannopoulos and Breitbart News.
And so Mercer has stepped back.
But you’ve got these guys covering the spectrum, supporting the various parties, and all—but
what they have in common is their offshore tax havens.
JON SWAINE: I think that’s right.
And I think it actually speaks to why a lot of people on the left are disenchanted with
sort of mainstream Democratic politics.
This is a guy who gave $11 million to Priorities USA, the sort of major super PAC that backed
the Clinton campaign.
He’s given millions more to other Democrats, to the Senate Democratic fund and to the House
Democratic fund.
And yet, as you say, he is storing billions of dollars offshore.
And I think, as you said, it covers the spectrum to an extent, but it’s the sort of the mainstream
spectrum of U.S. politics, and it’s why I think a lot of liberals are disenchanted
with these mainstream Democrats.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I wanted to ask you about the two Russian state institutions with
close ties to Putin who were investing in Facebook and Twitter, but also through a business
associate of Jared Kushner.
JON SWAINE: That’s right.
So we knew the man you mentioned.
His name’s Yuri Milner.
He’s a Russian tech investor, and he also invests in a Jared Kushner company here in
the U.S. What we didn’t know is that a couple of his investments, in Facebook and in Twitter,
were funded by Russian state banks, essentially.
One of them is a bank.
One of them is a sort of investment vehicle for the Russian government.
And this is more—this is more information that came out of the Paradise Papers leak.
Twitter has a—had an investment of $191 million funded by VTB Bank in Moscow, which
has close links to Russian intelligence.
Facebook had a billion-dollar investment funded by Gazprom, which is an oil and gas company
in Russia, but it has a sort of financial arm, as well.
And we didn’t know any of this before these leaks sort of showed us the way to find these
investments.
AMY GOODMAN: So talk more about Apple, Facebook, Twitter, and what you found in the Paradise
Papers.
And then lay out what these papers are and what this Appleby company is.
The front page of the Times today is a picture of Madonna, Bono and the queen of England.
And it’s the Paradise Papers that links them all.
JON SWAINE: Appleby is the company at the center of this whole thing.
They’re a legal and accounting services firm.
They have offices in Bermuda, in the Isle of Man, in tax havens all around the world.
And what they do is basically they get paid by corporations and wealthy people to find
the most tax-efficient, as they say, areas to put their money.
And the people who do this range from, as you say, the royal family in the U.K. to celebrities
like Madonna to corporations like Apple, all of them paying very expensive lawyers and
very expensive advisers to find the new tax loophole, essentially, around the world for
them to park their funds.
Apple, you know, one of the most popular, ubiquitous companies of our time, parking
tens of billions of dollars offshore rather than just bringing it into the U.S. and paying
taxes on it, you know, they’re a U.S. organization.
They have employees using public services in California.
They’re an American corporation, and yet they decide that they’re going to park all
this money offshore.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Appleby, the company from which many of these documents come, has
insisted that it’s reviewed the allegations and is comfortable that there’s nothing
illegal that has occurred here.
What about this issue of whether there’s anything illegal happening in all of these
exposés of the Paradise Papers?
JON SWAINE: You know what?
They’re probably right, that probably the lion’s share—there may be a few cases
around the edges—the lion’s share of this is going to be legal, because this is the
system that is in place, where these loopholes, these offshore vehicles and all these sort
of systems and schemes are within the law.
But as I say, they are the most—the newest, sort of cleverest ways of exploiting the system.
And these kinds of systems are just out of reach for normal people.
Most people just get paid and pay their taxes.
They can’t find expensive lawyers to find them kind of clever loopholes in Bermuda or
the Cayman Islands to just save a bit more money here, a bit more money there.
And so, yeah, they’re right.
As far as they’re concerned, they’ve done nothing wrong.
This is what they do, if you like.
AMY GOODMAN: We just have a minute to go, but your colleague, Ed Pilkington, at The
Guardian has a new report out today, “From Harvey Weinstein to Shakira, the Celebrities
with offshore interests: Martha Stewart, Madonna and Nicole Kidman are among those named in
leaked Paradise Papers documents.”
What about Harvey Weinstein?
JON SWAINE: So, Harvey Weinstein turns out to have been involved in a offshore scientific
research company.
It’s a strange company where several sort of well-known people seem to have put money
in.
I think it’s now ended, but, as you said, this just shows what a range of people involved
in this whole thing, from political influence to royals to celebrities like Madonna and
Harvey Weinstein, all involved in putting money offshore, away from the IRS.
AMY GOODMAN: And what that means is the lack of investment in infrastructure, in social
services in the United States and other countries around the world.
JON SWAINE: I think that’s right.
And I think that’s what really concerns people when they read these stories.
You know, times are tough.
Wages have been stagnating for decades for the average worker.
There’s this sort of backlash against the system, which we see with Brexit and with
Trump and all these movements.
And actually, perhaps part of that is because the money that could be going into improving
things for most people, improving public services, improving basic infrastructure in the country,
is being moved offshore.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Jon Swaine, we want to thank you for being with us.
We will link to all your pieces.
He is a reporter for The Guardian, part of the team publishing stories on the Paradise
Papers.
A very happy birthday to Kieran Krug-Meadows!
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