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By Candace Clement/Free Press
The details of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to destroy net neutrality are out. And they’re even worse than expected. Our lawyers and policy experts are reviewing the reports and gathering details about Pai’s plan. This is our first read on the most important details you need to know about this proposal. We will update this post as new details emerge.
The FCC plan will:
Posted on November 23, 2017
By The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
Today in the Paradise Papers: How Africa and Asia covered the Paradise Papers.
Dear Steve,
Welcome back! Today, we have an update on how our project has been reported in Asia and Africa. In Asia, there has been a slew of billionaires, political leaders and tycoons caught up in the millions of files. In Africa, the coverage has exposed some of the continent’s most powerful politicians and companies.
We’ve also gone one-step further after adding close to 25,000 entities to our Offshore Leaks Database last week. Now, we’ve compiled all the documents we used during our reporting of the Paradise Papers project that we can make public.
Until next week!
Amy Wilson-Chapman
ICIJ’s Community Engagement Editor
Posted on November 22, 2017
By Indivisible Chicago
Illinois voter data is still at risk of misuse and hacking, after the Illinois State Board of Elections failed Monday to approve a motion to exit the controversial Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck program. The vote broke down along partisan lines, with four Republican members voting to stay in the flawed program while four Democratic members voted to leave.
The four who voted to stay were appointed by Governor Bruce Rauner, who in March announced a major state cybersecurity initiative.
Crosscheck is a national voter verification program operated by Kansas election officials. It collects voter registration information from participating states and “crosschecks” the data to find duplicate registrations. Recent research by Indivisible Chicago has exposed numerous security flaws and raised questions about how the data is used.
Posted on November 21, 2017
By Liz Willen/The Hechinger Report
A few days after headlines exploded about yet another university president suspending Greek life activities after yet another hazing death, a group of college presidents sat around a dinner table expressing concern about bad behavior at fraternities.
But somehow, they couldn’t help singing their praises as well.
Fraternities foster a sense of belonging. Their members do community service and care about social welfare. They boost retention and graduation rates. They raise money for charity and provide vast alumni job networks. They add value to the college experience. It’s wrong to generalize from a few bad actors.
These rationalizations for Greek life on campus came up during last week’s annual gathering of presidents of mostly large public universities and journalists at the Penn Club, organized by Arizona State University. Guests included Louisiana State President F. King Alexander, who presides over a campus reeling from the death last month of 18-year-old freshman Maxwell Gruver.
Over dinner, LSU President Alexander noted that he’d immediately suspended Greek life after Gruver’s death and set up a task force to study it, but at the time, he’d made sure to add a supportive statement: “Many of our Greek organizations represent all that is good about our university.”
At the dinner, he acknowledged that “there are bad actors . . . but I know what good [fraternities] do and I value what they do. You can’t generalize and say Greeks aren’t doing good things.”
It’s getting harder to appreciate the good. Reports of the events leading to Gruver’s death at LSU are sickening: During a night of drinking at the Phi Delta Theta house, which has since been shuttered by the national chapter, Gruver was reportedly ordered to recite the Greek alphabet, pelted with hot sauce and mustard and forced to chug hard liquor if he messed up.
Gruver died at a nearby hospital with a blood alcohol level of .495, more than six times the legal intoxication level in most states. Ten students have since been charged with hazing at LSU, and one with negligent homicide. Two more fraternities have since been suspended for infractions, six have been removed from campus and seven are on some form of probation.
Posted on November 20, 2017
By The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
Today in the Paradise Papers: You can explore thousands of Paradise Papers files!
Dear Steve,
It’s finally here! Today, we give you access to the first lot of Paradise Papers data with thousands of new records added to our Offshore Leaks Database.
Don’t forget – tell us what you find!
The secrecy of the offshore world was also highlighted by the revelation of an Isle of Man trust fund linked to Nelson Mandela. The trust existed in near-total secrecy until 2015, when lawyers representing Mandela’s estate tried to wrest control of its million-dollar bank accounts.
Meanwhile, in Europe, members of the EU have been urged to clamp down on tax avoidance schemes. Experts from the United Nations also said law firms facilitating tax avoidance should assume their responsibility.
The ICIJ team.
P.S. Database projects like this and our investigations are labor intensive and rely on innovative technology. ICIJ is fully funded by donations of all sizes. You can help us deliver another project like this one by making a donation today.
Posted on November 17, 2017
By The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
Today in the Paradise Papers: New data!
Dear Steve,
Our work is not done yet, and we’re back today with more fresh stories for you.
Today we released a story on another offshore law firm found in the Paradise Papers data – Asiaciti. The hundreds of thousands of leaked documents from the firm reveal the practices of the ultra-wealthy and the unremarkable.
In exciting news, we’ll also release the first round of data from the Paradise Papers – adding it to our Offshore Leaks Database – this Friday.
Our journalists have also been reporting on the world’s growing wealth inequality with Credit Suisse finding the top 1 percent – who are also the biggest users of offshore services – now hold 50.1 per cent of global wealth.
We also broke the news that U.S. Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, would divest from Navigator Holdings after we revealed his Russian business ties.
We’ll be back in touch on Friday!
The ICIJ team.
Posted on November 16, 2017
By Jake Johnson/Common Dreams
In the United States, the 400 richest individuals now own more wealth than the bottom 64 percent of the population and the three richest own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent, while pervasive poverty means one in five households have zero or negative net worth.
Those are just several of the striking findings of Billionaire Bonanza 2017, a new report published Wednesday by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) that explores in detail the speed with which the U.S. is becoming “a hereditary aristocracy of wealth and power.”
Posted on November 9, 2017
By Jon Queally/Common Dreams
Some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people woke up Monday to discover that some of their best kept secrets – how they hide their vast wealth and avoid paying taxes – are now being read about in newspapers across the world after the release of a trove of offshore legal and banking documents were leaked to journalists and published Sunday as a joint project called the “Paradise Papers.”
First obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, the documents were then shared with scores of journalists and researchers associated with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media organizations, including the New York Times, BBC, and the Guardian.
“There is this small group of people who are not equally subject to the laws as the rest of us, and that’s on purpose,” said author and financial expert Brooke Harrington in response to the new insights about how these elites secretly manage their wealth.
Posted on November 7, 2017
By Alec MacGillis/ProPublica
From early in the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump swore he’d do away with the so-called carried-interest loophole, the notorious tax break that allows highly compensated private-equity managers, real estate investors and venture capitalists to be taxed at a much lower rate than other professionals.
“They’re paying nothing, and it’s ridiculous,” Trump said in August 2016. “These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky.” They were, he concluded, “getting away with murder.”
Posted on November 6, 2017
By Claire Allbright/Texas Tribune
Federal lawmakers on Wednesday released samples of 3,000 Facebook ads purchased by Russian operatives during the 2016 presidential campaign. The ads conveyed the wide range of influence Russian-linked groups tried to enact on Americans – but one set of ads in particular hit close to home here in Texas.
Last year, two Russian Facebook pages organized dueling rallies in front of the Islamic Da’wah Center of Houston, according to information released by U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican.
Heart of Texas, a Russian-controlled Facebook group that promoted Texas secession, leaned into an image of the state as a land of guns and barbecue and amassed hundreds of thousands of followers. One of their ads on Facebook announced a noon rally on May 21, 2016 to “Stop Islamification of Texas.”
A separate Russian-sponsored group, United Muslims of America, advertised a “Save Islamic Knowledge” rally for the same place and time.
Posted on November 2, 2017
