Mossak Fonseca -- How's Business Today? Where are Their Clients Going

Update: 19 Oct 2016:  Not so good today either: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/10/27/panama-the-hidden-trillions/

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/13/mossack-fonseca-raided-offices-investigators-panama

Probably not so good today.  Not so good lately.  Its a business that does business with customers to make money.  Much of their business is about money.  If customers are fleeing then where are they going?  I expect they must go somewhere and hide their tracks in the stampede. The customers will continue to do business as usual....simply with a better business in the same business.

What the MF loses is another's gain?

Couldn't be a better situation for gaining more business by offering a better and more secure product unless it was planned.  Was it?  Professional Courtesy should dictate that one should not prey upon fellow professionals.  Perhaps lament their misfortunes that benefit a competitor but never cause them.  Where is the honesty in that.

Never let a good crises go unused.  Create one if it does not naturally happen.

What is bad for the MF is good for a competitor service provider.

Thinking bigger it may also be good for a financial services provider that wants to capture a market segment owned by all the entities in the narrow sector of providing the same services as MF.  That is even a bigger change in the way business is done.

The customers of MF are also customers of Banks.  Banks themselves as business entities establish offshore accounts for themselves.  Do banks do this in house or do they always go to entities like MF to get it done.?  Maybe banks want a bigger slice of the take?  If not officially in house operations then Bank owned (shell) subsidiaries.

How could that all be monitored? Trace where whatever relationship MF had with its client customers to a new relationship chosen by the client?

ICIJ had a year to set up the sting.  I hope they created a means to trace where the rats would run to when the lights are turned on.  It is called planning ahead.

There is the most obvious relationship between a given country's tax law (politicians too) and registering a business in that country.  MF chose the country of registration.  Also a bank resident in that country to handle the accounting?

I have the vaguest idea of how all this is structured.  That of course is the intent when the structure purpose is to evade taxes and hide the entities involved in the evasion.

Kind of like saying the purpose of crime is to get away with it for profit.

That I can understand.

This is a poignant observation: http://american-idle.newsvine.com/_news/2016/04/14/35396579-panama-papers-is-the-us-giving-mossack-fonseca-a-pass

"Police in Panama, El Salvador and Peru have raided the offices of Mossack Fonseca..............
public records show it has offices in the states of Nevada and Wyoming...... Yet neither state has conducted raids on Mossack Fonseca offices."

Maybe our laws for probable cause.  Seems like there should be some, any?.....Enough?

Perhaps in Nevada and Wyoming they know enough not to shoot themselves in the foot to send in the police. Maybe because there are too many clients at the door preventing them from breaking it down?

Maybe Nevada will send in the Swat Team?  http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21696997-thinking-investigating-firm-mentioned-panama-papers-read-keys

Business going to Hong Kong? https://johnib.wordpress.com/tag/mossack-fonsecas-hong-kong-offices/

China is getting all the jobs!