
Bahamas Company Registry Leaked - samizdis
https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/25/mafia-logic/#ddosecrets
======
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[https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/25/mafia-
logic/#ddosecretsin](https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/25/mafia-
logic/#ddosecretsin) human-readable form:

Bahamas Company Registry leaked

The Distributed Denial of Secrets project publishes leaks that reveal
corruption, particularly leaks that undo financial secrecy. They have just
released their latest dump: Project X-Ray, a leak of scanned the Bahamas
Company Registry.

[https://xray.ddosecrets.com/](https://xray.ddosecrets.com/)

These are scanned documents – 135,166 in all – that reveal the directors and
officers of shell companies, many of them used to hide the looted wealth of
poor nations, or funds hidden away by corrupt "businesspeople" evading taxes,
or just plain criminals.

They're looking for help transcribing the contents of these records so they
can be made fully searchable. Many of these companies are matrioshke grifts,
numbered owned by other numbered companies in other notorious secrecy
jurisdictions from New Zealand to Delaware.

A previous dump revealed the contents of the Cayman National Bank and Trust, a
favored cutout for Russian oligarchs.

[https://data.ddosecrets.com/file/Sherwood/](https://data.ddosecrets.com/file/Sherwood/)

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> These are scanned documents – 135,166 in all – that reveal the directors and
> officers of shell companies, many of them used to hide the looted wealth of
> poor nations, or funds hidden away by corrupt "businesspeople" evading
> taxes, or just plain criminals.

Aren't they also going to end up revealing the accounts of dissidents and
"Freedom Fighters" who bank in the Bahamas because otherwise their
authoritarian governments would take their money and kill them, and they can't
open accounts in first world banks because their country is on the naughty
list?

It seems strange to me that so many people are on board with privacy most of
the time, but when it comes to financial privacy anybody who doesn't want
their government to know which books they buy is somehow a villain.

~~~
arminiusreturns
>It seems strange to me that so many people are onboard with privacy most of
the time, but when it comes to financial privacy anybody who doesn't want the
government to know which books they buy is somehow a villain.

This is a failure of government to protect it's peoples from supra-nationalist
oligarchs who abuse various economic shell and tax avoidance friendly nations
systems in order to abuse their country of origin (or country of profit
origin). This is not at all about "what books they buy" and to say so is poor
form and intellectually disingenuous.

That said, you may be right that some innocents may get wrapped up in this,
but I would venture this example you've pulled out of your hat is an extremely
small percentage of who would be revealed.

To be honest the biggest problem I have is that we've become so normalized to
this kind of shit that hardly anything happens from the revelations. Just look
at the Panama papers for example, besides a journalist or two getting
assassinated because of it, nobody was held to account. Combine that with
things like Epstein's lack of prosecution and later assassination and what I
see is the overton window moving to normalize corruption as a required
pragmatic approach to power such that most people will openly admit the rule
of law simply doesn't apply to the elite.

This, therefor, is hacktivism of the finest kind imho. The people standing up
for themselves when even their own governments won't. Any potential fallout
relating to innocents I would place at the feet of those governments who
failed to do their job, and not the hacktivists who reveal the truth because
of that failure.

 _For those of you interested in the topic of offshore funny money, check out
the following excellent documentary. The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second
Empire_

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np_ylvc8Zj8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np_ylvc8Zj8)

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> This is a failure of government to protect it's peoples from supra-
> nationalist oligarchs who abuse various economic shell and tax avoidance
> friendly nations systems in order to abuse their country of origin (or
> country of profit origin). This is not at all about "what books they buy"
> and to say so is poor form and intellectually disingenuous.

This is about governments abusing the boogyman of supranational oligarchs to
justify subjecting their entire populations to surveillance of what books they
buy, and everything else about their lives which can be deduced from their
financial records.

Buying books, contraception, a Grindr subscription, it's not any of their
business.

> I would venture this example you've pulled out of your hat is an extremely
> small percentage of who would be revealed.

I would venture that supranational oligarchs are an extremely small percentage
of who would be revealed, because there really aren't that many supranational
oligarchs. And in many cases the ones who do exist aren't obviously the bad
guys -- a lot of "oligarchs" with offshore accounts have them because they're
on Putin's list, but being on Putin's list is as often an indication of good
guy behavior as bad guy behavior.

> Just look at the Panama papers for example, besides a journalist or two
> getting assassinated because of it, nobody was held to account

It's because leaking their names was never the thing preventing them from
being held to account. You don't think the US government has the intelligence
capacity to learn their names on their own?

They don't get prosecuted because the information has to come in a way that it
would hold up in court, or because they're politically connected, or because
they're politically connected in another country which your country needs to
maintain a relationship with. It was never because the government can't figure
out who they are. So revealing the names does nothing against the real bad
guys, but it still gets people murdered who were using those accounts because
they're vulnerable and _not_ politically connected.

~~~
arminiusreturns
> This is about governments abusing the boogyman of supranational oligarchs to
> justify subjecting their entire populations to surveillance of what books
> they buy, and everything else about their lives which can be deduced from
> their financial records.

Did the government participate in this leak? I didn't see anything that
indicated this was a gov operation.

> Buying books, contraception, a Grindr subscription, it's not any of their
> business.

Again, straw men. One, this is just a registry of who owns the companies. This
isn't financial data. Two, if it was, there is a vast difference between we
want to know what books a person is buying and hey that b/millionaire has been
using the Bahamas to move millions of dollars in shady ways. Just as banks
have to do suspicious activity reports if you deposit more than 10k or deposit
large sums in a structured way that indicates suspicion, but them looking at
your purchase data is at the same time considered a privacy violation. Don't
get me wrong I'm against massive surveillance of the genpop, but that is not
even close to what is going on here.

> I would venture that supranational oligarchs are an extremely small
> percentage of who would be revealed, because there really aren't that many
> supranational oligarchs. And in many cases the ones who do exist aren't
> obviously the bad guys -- a lot of "oligarchs" with offshore accounts have
> them because they're on Putin's list, but being on Putin's list is as often
> an indication of good guy behavior as bad guy behavior.

I'm not sure how much you know about the offshore world but that simply
doesn't match everything I know about it (which is admittedly little, but some
is first hand). Don't get too hung up on the one particular demographic I
focused on. There are a lot of shady entities using offshore banking, not just
"the oligarchs". Your attempt to whitewash being an oligarch of the particular
Russian type because Putin doesn't like them is laughable.

> It's because leaking their names was never the thing preventing them from
> being held to account. You don't think the US government has the
> intelligence capacity to learn their names on their own? They don't get
> prosecuted because the information has to come in a way that it would hold
> up in court, or because they're politically connected, or because they're
> politically connected in another country which your country needs to
> maintain a relationship with. It was never because the government can't
> figure out who they are. So revealing the names does nothing against the
> real bad guys, but it still gets people murdered who were using those
> accounts because they're vulnerable and not politically connected.

You are partially correct, in that the rule of law doesn't seem to apply to
the uber-wealthy, but that doesn't mean the people don't deserve to know who
the shady cats are even if the gov does nothing. All of the reasons you state
are obvious and exactly why this was done via hacktivism and not via some
international banking regulation ala Switzerland when they changed their laws.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Did the government participate in this leak? I didn't see anything that
> indicated this was a gov operation.

Innocent people wouldn't be using Bitcoin or accounts in the Caymans or
whatever if you could walk into a US bank (or a Walmart) with $100 in cash and
walk out with a $100 prepaid debit card without being required to give anyone
a name or social security number.

> One, this is just a registry of who owns the companies. This isn't financial
> data.

This is registry data on people published with the intent to force them back
into using the system that gives up their financial data.

> Two, if it was, there is a vast difference between we want to know what
> books a person is buying and hey that b/millionaire has been using the
> Bahamas to move millions of dollars in shady ways.

I agree! So then why does the system that allegedly exists only to prevent
moving millions of dollars require the system to know what books a person is
buying? Shouldn't that system only apply to high dollar value accounts?

> There are a lot of shady entities using offshore banking, not just "the
> oligarchs".

But then what are we getting from publishing a list which is some bad guys and
some good guys? Being on the list doesn't prove you're a bad guy, so what are
people supposed to do with it? Some kind of indiscriminate mob justice?

Whereas if you have some evidence that a specific person is a bad guy then
publish that and not an indiscriminate list of names.

------
Nyr
How ironic: ddosecrets.com is actually registered via a Bahamian company.

------
draugadrotten
SQL error when saving a record, 0000-00-00 in end date (there was no end date
in the document)

~~~
justinclift
Yeah, same here. Can't really help them until they've worked out the problems
with data input. :(

~~~
fuzzfactor
The drop-down mouse-select calendars themselves are nonideal.

They require that you select full Y,M,D in that order even though random
choice is implied and possible.

If you try to enter DEC 31 1999 you get 2020-12-31 [0] before there is a
chance to select the 1999.

If you notice that situation, then try to correct only the year, there is
complete failure to update the data entry field, correctly or otherwise.

Not every century can have the most advanced UI/UX.

.

[0] this date is illogical because it is in the future and in the future it
will not be possible to party like it's 1999.

Any date subsequent to the date of the database snapshot should not be
admitted into the field.

------
samizdis
> They're looking for help transcribing the contents of these records so they
> can be made fully searchable.

\- the "they" in this case is The Distributed Denial of Secrets project.

~~~
cmdshiftf4
Considering the retaliation over the panama papers, and how nothing was done
about that, I would be very reluctant to get involved.

~~~
lazyasciiart
Do you mean something on top of the journalists and newspapers being
threatened/sued?

~~~
cmdshiftf4
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-
bomb...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-bomb-kills-
panama-papers-journalist)

------
itsspring
Can we just link to the source instead of this political rant?

------
batmaniam
Is there a way to download the raw data?

~~~
ache7
Here you can find the link:
[https://www.ddosecrets.com/data/north_america](https://www.ddosecrets.com/data/north_america)

------
throwawaysea
What is up with the comic villain caricature of conservative ideology that
appears further down in this post?

~~~
TaylorAlexander
The author (who I love!) is a leftist (like me!) and probably some kind of
communist (like me). He believes that human lives are more important than
property rights. From that perspective, people on the right who do not believe
that seem like heartless murderers who care more about profit than the people
they depend on for their well being.

So to a leftist, many far right conservatives feel a lot like comic book
villains! Of course it goes the other way too, but that makes sense to me.

Feel free to ask me questions about this ideology if you'd like. You may also
find this video worthwhile:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Bd_H8Cyago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Bd_H8Cyago)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _to a leftist, many far right conservatives feel a lot like comic book
> villains_

Your arguments might carry more weight if you saw those with opposing
viewpoints as more than caricatures.

What you’re describing as “far right” is a sizeable fraction of America. If
your views are, out the door, anathema to them, I’m going to de-prioritise
them—they’re politically nonviable.

I don’t think your views are nonviable. The language, however, makes the whole
package so.

~~~
ganstyles
> I’m going to de-prioritise trying to understand them—they’re politically no
> viable.

imho lack of political viability should not be sufficient to not prioritize
trying to understand something. For example, I don't think ideologies like
Anarchism are politically viable, but do think understanding such ideologies
is important to forming a solid base of knowledge upon which to base my actual
positions.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
> I don't think ideologies like Anarchism are politically viable

why not?

~~~
ganstyles
I was thinking about the USA specifically, but I think it applies generally
that despite some of its interesting tenets, very few people support it.
Without at least some critical mass of supporters, ideally at least a
plurality, it has no chance of becoming supported enough to place people in
office and is thus not politically viable.

