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Comment by tootie | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot of noise being made over the number of documents, but I'm not seeing anything actually interesting about this. Offshore banking has been extremely common for a very long time and isn't illegal in and of itself. The hidden funds need to be provably originating from from an illicit source.

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Ok, I'll bite. What do you think Vlad Putin's legit source is for his billions? His paycheck? Sometimes you don't have to know all the details. Somtimes the mere fact of a bank account with billions in it is enough to know, with certainty that a politician has his/her hand in the till and is a corrupt bastard.

I pick on Vlad, there's plenty more to choose from. Now the evidence exists to remove doubt from the accusation of corruption for, it would seem, a lot of politicians.

Jackie Chan - Wealthy movie star. Plenty of good explanations for why he'd engage in offshore banking with his very large, legitimately gained, fortune.

That's the difference.

Sorry for nitpicking, but: in Russian language Vlad is the short form for Vladislav, not Vladimir.

Really? I did not know that. I guess here the Vladimirs put up with the contraction to Vlad as they're among the barbarians. ;-) Good to know though, thanks.

plenty of Vladimirs go by Vlad. Source: used to live in Russia

Never heard that someone named Vladimir shortened their name as Vlad. Live in Russia for 30 years. Most of the times you can call Vladimir as Vova. If you tell that your name is Vlad, everyone will think that you are Vladislav.

I'm sure Putin's cash is ill-gained but I'm extremely doubtful it will be exposed in these docs. The NY Times has a story that he straight-up murdered a guy on American soil. That probably won't stick either.

> The NY Times has a story that he straight-up murdered a guy on American soil.

This seemed extremely unlikely to me, so I Googled it. If you mean this story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/us/mikhail-lesins-strange-...

it doesn't say anything even remotely like Putin straight-up murdered a guy (a scumbag who has spent his life associating with and/or making enemies of other scumbags) on American soil.

In fact it doesn't even straight-up say he was murdered at all, by anyone:

    The police [in the US] continue to treat Mr.
    Lesin’s as a natural death

and:

    Neither the F.B.I. nor the Justice Department
    has taken a role in the investigation [...] 
    suggesting that it was being investigated as 
    an untimely death but not a federal crime.

Alexander Litvinenko's death [1], on British soil, was definitely murder, though. According to the investigation, the Russian state was involved. Obviously, Putin didn't actually do the deed himself, but it seems more likely than not that he ordered it, or at least knew about the order.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvine...

Right -- No one disputes that Putin has been associated with all kinds of unseemly stuff. It's just that, at this juncture, there nothing beyond pure speculating tying him to Mikhail Lesin's untimely demise.

In other words: "He's a bad guy you know -- he's capable of anything" isn't, in my book, sufficient reason to believe that he was actually involved somehow.

That's where the actual journalism comes in.

Also, in some cases hiding money offshore is indeed illegal. One example that immediately comes to mind is for individuals holding public office in Iceland.

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