> Deloitte Cyprus said it could not comment on the specific allegations because the documents were more than 20 years old and no longer accessible.<p>That's convenient.<p>Also, I received a similar response when inquiring about a financial account that had been overlooked (there are reasons, I'm not getting into it) for a couple of decades. "Can't help you. Too old for us to have records." Well, my records are printed documents. Why can't you tell me anything? Reminds me of when the USA government stole my money from a bank transfer claiming suspicion of whatever (my landlord had a Middle Eastern sounding name and it was the 2000s) and then said they had no record of it when I provided all the required documentation to recover it.<p>In both cases, unfortunately, I concluded that the odds are so stacked against me that I gave up. Convenient system if you're fabulously wealthy or a massive org (such as corporations and government).
Most institutions (especially financial) have strict document retention policies to protect themselves from situations like this. It's not shady – just a way of limiting liability.<p>At my first job I made the mistake of discovering a cache of old documents, documents that were far older than the company's seven-year document retention policy. The cache, being my discovery, meant I became the one responsible for destroying it. It was dozens on dozes of bankers boxes filled with documents that I had to de-spine before shredding.<p>You would have thought that the process was a chore but for me it was exhilarating. The slowness of the process gave me the opportunity to speed read through it all. There was nothing scandalous in there, but I became somewhat of a historian over many quiet nights.
Covering up for screwups so that they don't get in trouble is like the textbook definition of "shady"
> I became somewhat of a historian over many quiet nights<p>Please step into the shredder, sir.<p>It's not personal–it's just policy.
> It's not shady – just a way of limiting liability.<p>And storage costs.
> Most institutions (especially financial) have strict document retention policies to protect themselves from situations like this. It's not shady – just a way of limiting liability.<p>Yup. With every data breach, HN is full of (correct, imo) comments about how tech companies should treat private data as a liability and prune it aggressively.<p>You go look at mature businesses and you'll find that they do exactly this.
And less mature businesses that are in highly regulated industries, since they know nobody will fund them if they can’t prove they aren’t a legal timebomb. I’ve worked across clients in edtech, fintech, healthtech, aerospace, and in all of them making sure they didn’t die by regulation was present from early on. (Granted, places that don’t care about things like that don’t work with people like me.)<p>Edtech in particular tends to be pretty conscious of just never having the data in the first place. PII for minors is radioactive.
> It's not shady – just a way of limiting liability.<p>It's not euphemistic – just diplomatic phrasing.
I wouldn't go that far. If it's a legal practice, it's a legal practice. I can understand why a company would want to limit their liability over something that happened seven years in the past, even when they are confident that their procedures are both rigorous and in compliance with the law.<p>On the whole, I would say the problem isn't so much using language to whitewash the practice as the troublesome tendency to turn a blind eye until someone becomes persona non grata.
Please, this is quite literally why the policies exist. If you want to change the world, you must first accept it for what it is
In most jurisdictions there are retention policies defined in law. Companies, like almost anyone else in the world, will do the bare minimum necessary to meet the legal requirements because it doesn’t make sense to do more. They only incur expenses while exposing themselves to all kinds of liability.
"Its just how we commit crimes quietly"
Even in the year of 2026 not everyone is dumb enough to record themselves committing crimes and then brag about it online.
Organizations are not run by a single person. Imagine yourself as an investor into a large organization. Or you are invited to work as a CEO. You would definitely want to limit your own responsibility (in terms of financial losses or legal costs) when there are hundreds or thousands of people working together and anyone can make a mistake.<p>Of course you'd have compliance department to look over the processes to minimize the risk of mistakes and correct them ASAP (if you don't, you'd be liable for negligence and open yourself to a higher chance of failures). But since mistakes and miscommunication is inevitable anyway, you'd require hard limits in every obligation - in terms of time, money, scope etc.<p>Organizations that are not protecting themselves do not live long. And this principle has nothing to do with the nature of their activity.
Document retention policies are often constructed to require documents be discarded after a certain date.<p>Having a universal rule is about the only way to ensure decisions aren’t being made for other reasons and that they comply with your privacy standards.
The irony of these documents being (allegedly) backdated, and this response, is not lost on me.
Because the legal requirement is to keep those financial records for a maximum of 10 years? I'm sure it depends on jurisdiction, and the type of the document, but financial records generally 10 years in Europe.
Don't worry, if they think they can extract more money out of you, you can be sure they still keep the documents. Case in point my HSBC account which is officially closed since 2014 and they still try to contact me illegally.
What about financial accounts? I need to ping my accounts every X years or the company just keeps the money?
Depends on the jurisdiction. In the US, each state has escheatment[0] laws governing how untouched accounts are retired and how they may be subsequently claimed by their original owner. That process typically happens through a government agency rather than through the original company that held the account. But other parts of the world have other processes.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escheat#Transfer_agents_and_escheatment" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escheat#Transfer_agents_and_es...</a>
That doesn't seem logically related (though that doesn't mean it legally isn't). If there's a statement from last year saying that the account has x amount of money in it, then that's a document within the 10 year retention even if the last deposit was more than 10 years ago, so there's still a record that the account exists.
public accounting firms are, as a rule, generally loaded with people who aren't that capable (there are exceptions for sure)<p>I doubt they even knew what was going on
There should be a limit. You can’t expect me to keep a client’s records for two decades. For software development, I think 2 years is reasonable. Many industries already have proper (and mandatory) limits, usually somewhere in the 3-7 year range depending on the field (finance tends to be higher) and the country. Some countries, especially developing ones, have no bookkeeping rules at all.<p>But after 2 decades for a financial account, I'd assume any recovery as a gift rather than a right.
Oh, come on. HN complains about excessive data hoarding all the time. Now it's wrong to not hoard data? This is just another damned if you do, damned it you don't situation and, predictably, the outrage option is voted to the top.
Nice false equivalence.
Strong disagree. You want to keep track of how many times I go to the bathroom each day, and how much toilet paper I use each time? I complain about data hoarding. You're handling my <i>money</i>? You'd better not lose it, and you'd better keep accurate records, and you'd better keep them forever.<p>And in these specific cases, 20 years ago? They weren't handling stuff with computers 20 years ago? They didn't keep backups of that? (Another commenter notes a 10-year record keeping requirement in Europe, so in that case it may have legitimately been removed.)<p>But it's worse with the government. It wasn't 20 years ago, you just did it. And you don't have records? That's theft.
2013 is not 20 years old so those documents should be readily available.
Deloitte has got, I've heard (!), in their training material a section about integrity and how important it is to act ethically correct. Deloitte also does sh*t like this and - again, I've heard (!) - asks its employees to bill hours on projects they are not working on so that they can maximize profits at their clients expenses. Also elephants are pink.<p>How this company can proceed to exist is beyond me.<p>For legal reasons I must emphasize that this is hear-say and should not be trusted as facts. At least one statement is a lie. What you believe to be true is up to you.
Deloitte operates much more like a franchise network than a single multinational corporation. It's technically a network of independent, locally owned professional-services partnerships.<p>This one appears to be Cyprus - clearly the center of ethical business operations...
Is this a different structure from other large multinational consulting groups?
“Sorry, we can’t help you. Let me introduce you to my colleague from Cyprus who can...”
They had me watch some nonsense on integrity as part of the training.<p>All the while we were doing financial regulation software without any proper tests on the models being done outside of some spot checks.<p>And the idea of doing those was frowned upon :)<p>Lovely place.
Most corporations probably have those. They also have similar training about security, and yet. Software corporations have similar training about software engineering practices, and yet.
> about integrity and how important it is to act ethically correct<p>There's also a fine print at the bottom that says 'lolz'.
I'm sure the seniors had a blast producing that material. "...and then I told them - get this (*wheezes between laughs*) - we have to be <i>honest</i> ! Hah!"
Allegedly.<p>Don't open yourself up to charges of hilarity.
For what it’s worth, I’m not so sure there’s much of a difference in delivered value between the hours truthfully billed vs. fraudulently billed
"How this company can proceed to exist is beyond me."<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxd23UVID7k&list=RDGxd23UVID7k" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxd23UVID7k&list=RDGxd23UVID...</a>
I see their work product with some regularity. To say I'm not impressed would be a severe understatement and I really don't understand why companies keep hiring them.
They did a 'cloud strategy' for a previous client. There was a 'partner', numerous 'consultants', 7 figures US$ AFAIK.<p>It was mostly regurgitating the AWS published best practices on Deloitte letterhead. We all grumbled how "this was not a good use of money", but one of the senior folks from the line of business side said "you guys were going to basically do this anyway...now noone can say you picked the wrong strategy". Which, to be fair, was true.<p>So that's probably why companies keep hiring them.
I think the article explains why.
Sounds like every other corporation in America?
Every bank has exactly same stuff. Any new scandal adds another 1..X mandatory trainings for much of / all staff, usually quaterly recurring ones.<p>Things like escalate problems to correct teams, even where to (supposedly anonymously) whistleblow, but thats most probably 1 way ticket to unemployment office with a sife effect of appearing on some industry-wide even if local blacklist.<p>They are so predicrable I dont read accompanying materials anymore and usually just 1-shot final tests, maybe apart from stuff that I never touched nor heard of, that sometimes requires second go.<p>To sum it up - those trainings are not ultimate business guidelines. The more they veer on what to do in case of something bad/spicy happens, the more they are some court ordered result of some long legal battle and settlement&fine.
KPMG, E&Y, PWC, they're all the same because they have to compete with each other's dishonesty in order to both maximise profits and maximise <i>cough</i> tax savings <i>cough</i> for their customers.<p>There have been a couple of scandals in Australia, and yet they all remain part of 'the big four'. They're all tainted as fuck.
> How this company can proceed to exist is beyond me.<p>How can they <i>not</i> proceed. They are making money doing nothing and have no moral boundaries. And now we find out they have no legal boundaries either.
> How this company can proceed to exist is beyond me.<p>Isn't the whole point of these companies to rubberstamp shady things corporations are doing, so they can shed resposibility more easily when caught?
Standard corporate nonsense. Enron famously had integrity plastered across it's corporate walls as it's values when they got done for fraud.
Cyprus and Deloitte, why am I not surprised to see those names mentioned together in connection with alleged tax evasion?<p>For those who don't know, Cyprus is widely regarded as one of Europe's tax havens. And, of cause, Deloitte has offices there.
A while back there was a simple scheme available that allowed you to avoid taxes on the first few hundred thousand / million of taxes.<p>- You created an LLC in Cyprus and transferred some IP (usually a trademark) to it<p>- You licensed that IP to your LLC in an EU country for the amount that basically erased any profit that LLC made<p>- Cypriot LLCs were not taxed on non-Cyprus income<p>- Each of non-resident director (or board member, I don't remember) of a Cypriot LLC was not taxed on first 400k euro of income from those LLCs. Double taxation deals Cyprus had protected you from being taxed on that income back home.<p>I know this is no longer possible with Cyprus, but a variation of that is now happening with e.g. many EU clothing brands having their brand ownership transferred to Egyptian LLCs.
isn't this similar to what Apple and others are doing in Ireland?
I don’t think this is possible under the latest rules, especially in the EU. But a small firm could easily get bad advice and think it’s outsmarting the system. Right now in the EU, it’s either pay or leave completely.
They have dozens of offices in the UK and Germany, 13 in Netherlands, …<p>It hardly seems surprising (nor damning) to have one in Cyprus.
I wonder why Abramovich chose that office, some historical link to Cyprus no one has heard of?
Cyprus deliberately set out to make itself attractive to wealthy Russians in the 2000s and 2010s.<p>Various controversies relating to bailouts after the financial crisis, the rise of anti money laundering controls in the late 2010s, and the Ukraine invasion have severed many of the ties but Abramovich was just one of many to take advantage in the past.<p><a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/cyprus-is-losing-its-russia-and-confronting-existential-questions-about-its-economy/" rel="nofollow">https://www.politico.eu/article/cyprus-is-losing-its-russia-...</a> has a reasonable summary of how the relationship developed.
You might learn how tax havens work. Those of us familiar all went "Cyprus...shocker /s".<p>Deloitte Cyprus is a separate legal entity from all the other (separate, legal) Deloitte entities precisely so any consequences of tax evasion resulting from the...em...lax oversight in Cyprus don't impact all the other things called 'Deloitte'.
This isn't unique to Cyprus. Deloitte Global is specifically structured this way:<p>"The member firms are primarily organised on an individual country or regional basis and each operates within the legal and regulatory framework of its particular jurisdiction(s). They are separate and independent firms that have come together to practise under a common brand and shared methodologies, client service standards and other professional protocols and guidelines."<p><a href="https://www.deloitte.com/ce/en/about/governance/network-brand-alliances.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.deloitte.com/ce/en/about/governance/network-bran...</a>
It is literally impossible to operate in any other way. We call them multinational but they just own the child company or the brand. If you operate at any country, your "parent" is irrelevant.
I just know this will be thoroughly investigated, all responsible parties held accountable, and the proper countermeasures and applicable laws will be updated to punish and disincentivise this behaviour in the future. Just kidding.<p>Things change when the cost-benefit analysis moves. If you apply the law strictly and effectively, the behaviour will adjust.
I dunno. This all implies a level of central control that doesn't reflect how professional services firms operate. Mostly they're loose partnerships and local offices and partners have the significant discretion. Even legally they're mostly not structured as a global corporation but rather a loose association of legally distinct entities.<p>There's a tension between having a brand that reflects trust and institutional rigor and avoiding liability for the actions of partners in some far flung jurisdiction.
This article, possibly deliberately because you can read the subtext of exactly what happened with this story, conflates several things knowing that readers won't know the difference.<p>Transferring assets from Cyprus to BVI? Legal, there is no issue with doing this. What the journalist did, likely upon discovering this was legal, suggested that it was for tax purposes knowing that readers would assume this was illegal in some way...when it is not relevant.<p>An opinion was then acquired from a KC which, to a normal person, would read as confirmation that something suspect was going on but, if you have experience with this thing, says that in a completely different, unrelated context this would be illegal (it is a bit sad that we live in a world where a journalist will get an opinion from a KC and they will both conspire to produce something that is obviously intended to be misleading to readers).<p>Backdating asset transfer from Cyprus to BVI? Again, legal. The role of an auditor is not to provide advice on the legality of the transfer. All that happens is that they get some paperwork saying the assets were transferred two years ago, they go...yes, the paperwork is correct. If you think they should be doing anything else, you don't understand what an auditor is supposed to do.<p>What would be more questionable is if the transfer didn't actually happen two years ago but the auditor would have no way to know if that was the case. This would be easy to determine in other cases but in the case of personal property, there is no way to know.<p>What likely happened with the story though is that the journalist put in a lot of time, realised at some point that they didn't actually have any evidence (implicating the people they wished to implicate) so wrote the story that Deloitte were to blame. Will be quite interesting to see what happens next because at several points in the article the journalist uses words that do not describe the role of an auditor i.e. Deloitte was "advising on the falsification of records"...when they show an email which clearly shows that Deloitte did not do this (and again, generally, this is not what an auditor is supposed to be doing).
This publicity is probably an actual advertising campaign for them.
"Welcome to money laundering services. If you're a billionaire, press 1. For tax evasion services, press 2. If you're a commoner, fuck off right now".
The Big Four really like back-dating things to help their clients. But lying is difficult because the facts come with built-in consistency. Mother Nature ensures all her arithmetic lines up properly every single time like clockwork, but when you try to make stuff up you have to do all that work and not make any mistakes.<p>And so it's actually easier to spot this fraud than to conduct it. What you need is people willing to go look and people willing to prosecute it even though that's uncomfortable because these crooks always have powerful friends.<p>Ultimately the bigger problem is the Big Four themselves. They are obviously Too Big To Fail and three of them are based in a single place, London. I believe that the Paris MOU provides us a model for how to fix this in the medium term but I've seen no political will to even look at the problem, much less address it.
Repeat offenders?<p>Sanction Deloitte Cyprus: don't ever except any paperwork from them again.
"Sovereign state", my ass...
Wrist slapping in 3 .. 2 .. 1 ..
I read way too much of the comments before realizing this is not about Marina Abramovich hiding her gains from performance art in Cyprus...
This must be the first time someone important [0] has been involved in shady financial dealings. One of the joys of being in the internet era is we have much better visibility on the vast multinational web moving money around. We know that senior politicians are well aware of it because they use it to.<p>It would actually be reasonable if this was headline was news to Abramovich. I expect there are a bunch of standard services rendered to wealthy Russians and they just all use the same guy, who is known to get good results and no-one ever asks why. It is quite likely that there are a small group of fixers who maintain networks for certain geopolitical in-groups. They probably have excellent connections to people like Jeffery Epstein too. No surprise if the Russian circuit is actually flouting western law directly.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_named_in_the_Panama_Papers#Heads_of_state" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_named_in_the_Pa...</a>
Damnatio memoriae
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae</a>
And, nothing will happen. Did anything happen via Panama and Pandora paper leaks? Perhaps players with negligible political power to protect themselves were held accountable or selected by bigger fish to fall, but beyond those, nothing. The phenomenon is still happening and social collective action is continuously disrupted via no shortage of mechanisms. Wealth concentration is increasing and buying politicians was always a thing, but now it's publicly flaunted without recourse and they operate against what's good for the electorate interests openly--almost in spite.<p>I mean, the faltering ability to stir people to deal with Flock issue should be incredibly eye opening to what continuously slides under the radar for heinous activities that are not nearly as public facing or noticeably evident.
> Deloitte falsified documents<p>Isn't that their core business?
Wouldn't have happened if we used a blockchain.<p>It's not like we could also just have public access to these documents like some Nordic democracies so people could figure it out ahead of 20 years.
Something tells me the political ramifications here will be less than those of the next immigrant stealing a snickers.
Am I too cynical in reading this as an advertisement for Deloitte's services?
One would imagine you want your bankers doing just enough fraud and other illegal shit to build your money pile, just not enough of it to get caught.<p>I imagine most groups compete on exactly what they can get away with. The more money you can build for clients the more you can earn. If your competitor is getting away with more illegal shit than you then your clients will go to them.
To be honest, my first thought too!
It depends. How long is your yacht?
I know this is anecdotal but I remember anywhere you went in financial or political circles in 1990s London, everyone was falling over themselves about the nouveau riche from Russia and former Warsaw Pact countries investing. There were some who said it would drive up real estate prices and some upset about lack of oversight but they were looked at in the media and by politicians as kooky or close to it. Decades later - the Panama Papers, the Epstein files and articles like this and from that journalist killed in Malta exposing corruption.<p>Mind-boggling what people and corporations knew and did in the shadows while we cheered on and cheer on their holdings.
Not to be too forward, but whenever a company touches Cyprus we all know full well the only reasons are tax evasion or fraud.
Check out the comments in r/soccer if interested -<p><a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1x3vru3/deloitte_helped_in_falsifying_documents_to_evade/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1x3vru3/deloitte_he...</a>
Login walled
Remove the "old" and replace with "www".<p>Reddit changed recently to deter AI scraping so that to use "old", you needed to log in sometime in the past 6 months. The "old" lets you see all the comments while the 'new improved version' only lets you read comments to a shallow depth while inserting ads everywhere.
A classic story, as if there was nothing new
Interesting that everybody is going after Deloitte, but why are we giving Abramovich, a known Russian oligarch and close personal friend of Putin a pass? Shouldn't we be more upset about Abramovich evading taxes? Isn't he and his lawyers more to blame because I would assume they're the ones telling Deloitte to do it?<p>Seems to me there's a lot of misplaced outrage here.
Well one is already disliked as an associate of an active war criminal. That's a given. Evading taxes probably falls low on his list of actual crimes.<p>The other we expect to oversee these kinds of things. Considering they do accounting for a quarter of the worlds rich and largest businesses, this should raise alarms as to what else they're fudging.
Allegations, there was no trial or verdict.<p>An article like like this could be auto-generated with anybody's name.
If you're a UK media outlet accusing a Big Four accounting firm and a Russian billionaire of tax fraud and you've got it wrong, you can bet there will be a case filed incredibly quickly in the High Court.
Deloitte didn't deny it. The only possible interpretation of their statement is that they absolutely did do it, but they believe they can get away with it. Otherwise you'd just say "Deloitte doesn't falsify documents"
I get this is an unpopular opinion, but it’s even more important given the nature of the allegations. They “look bad” but it’s all accounting stuff in Cyprus, none of us know what’s actually legal here and what isn’t, it’s the BBC making insinuation about stuff to promote an investigative reports show or something they run.<p>I don’t want to defend anyone involved in the allegations, and don’t personally think they’re above shady business dealings, I just don’t like usual sensationalist “reporting” - essentially advertising like this and how people eat it up.
> Deloitte Cyprus said it "acts in compliance with applicable laws".<p>They obviously haven't done anything wrong then.
I'm not able to see the article - for some reason, the Beebs, a division of the British government, wants me to subscribe to see their coverage - but how would this compare to Arthur Anderson and Enron?<p>If it's anything remotely similar, I don't see how Deloitte could be trusted to file one more tax return.
Put them out of business. There need to be consequences. The Big 4 auditors need to be severely humbled.
The amount of dirt Deloitte has on governments, it is surprising something like this even came out. Likely someone will lose their job and the whole thing will be kicked in the long grass.
The funniest part is that The Telegraph is simultaneously running articles on how the billionaires are leaving UK because of tax.
I think it's maybe time to consider charging those responsible with treason.
Do you want to have investments into London's real estate and football clubs or not? It takes sacrifices.
Totally fine without them.<p>Also real estate prices in London at the top of the market are going down and down now that the money pump of corrupt Russian money has been switched off.
If this isn't sarcasm, then something is wrong. If investments can't be done legally, then no they should not invest.
Indian fraud
They (the billionaire class) all have no shame.<p><a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014/" rel="nofollow">https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchfor...</a>
I thought this article was a parody for the first few paragraphs... that's how times have changed, I guess.<p>I couldn't agree with the guy more, when he says:<p>>> when workers have more money, businesses have more customers—and need more employees<p>But that seems to be exactly the sane logic that old Jeff Bezos is spending his life and his billions trying to find a hack around. I'm still not clear who Amazon's customers will be if everyone's unemployed and AI and robots have taken all the middle class jobs... oppressive governments, I guess.<p>Great piece, and thanks for posting it.
BREAKING NEWS: Water is wet
Am I the only one who can’t read the article because of the paywall? Since when does BBC paywall?
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Unsure why you're downvoted.<p>Making the relative comparison is useful in understanding what a shitshow is going on in the USA.<p>Back in the day, we used to think Abramovich was corrupt as fuck and very dodgy.<p>In 2026, I understand him to be a relative amateur ...
Maybe because it's not true? Selling early access to posts through Truth Social is worth $10-20 million a year (most estimates are they have 10-20 subscribers at 60-100k/month). And obviously no one is valuing that revenue stream at 50x or 100x earnings: it's expected to go away when Trump does, which, actuarially speaking, should be in the next ten years.
Well, I don't know if you can classify it as "amateur" when the others are corrupt in the wide open. They aren't even trying to hide anything.
It's like the post-Communist oligarchs are chess players in the game of capitalism and free market. Then Trump stands on the shoulders of giants.
They're being downvoted because Trump has more than a few supporters here.
Yeah, I have noticed that there are surprisingly many Trump supporters here given the international audience of the site.
The audience of this site is VCs, founders, wannabe founders, and a few wannabe VCs. They will do anything to get rich. Used to be you'd get rich by making useful software, now you get rich by corruption.
Do not assume people downvoting stuff about Trump because they support him. I downvoted it because I am sick of American politics being dragged into every discussion - in this case the evasion of UK taxes by a Russian oligarch being facilitated by Cypriot accountants.<p>I am interests in learning more about the oligarchs involved, and the accounts, and the tax evasion, but I am not interested in reading the same comments about Trump I have heard countless times before. If anyone has something new to say about Trump I am happy to read about it where it is relevant to the topic being discussed.
Many people will assume you like trump if you are sick of hearing about him and avoid the topic. İt seems to be a shibboleth with some ppl that you must spit a curse at the demon or you secretly like him.
Or if you dare critique any corruption on the opposite team as well. Binary thinking is fairly standard in all sectors of society.
I did not assume that. In this case Trump felt quite off-topic so I almost downvoted myself but I have seen many other threads where Trump supporters were plentiful, both in downvoting and posting comments.
I hate Trump, but I don't see how Trump's corruption is relevant to <i>this</i> discussion. Are we supposed to comment on every story about someone doing something bad with "Trump's even worse"?
Remember when a major bank turned out to have laundered billions for Mexican drug cartels and was fined only millions?<p>People would go to prison for crimes like these, but somehow companies get only a slap on the wrist. Whenever a company commits serious, blatant crimes like these, everybody who knew about it and didn't blow the whistle should be considered an accomplice and go to prison. And if it's big enough, or part of the MO of that company, it should be fined the entire value of the company. Nationalise it. Stuff like this should not be tolerated.