Miami Beach’s stoner gun-runner drama — now a Hollywood movie — shows up in Panama Papers

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Miami Herald

April 6, 2016 10:00 AM

Miami Beach’s stoner gun-runner drama — now a Hollywood movie — shows up in Panama Papers

Highlights
Three young guys won millions in Pentagon weapons contracts

They may have been a front for a blacklisted Swiss arms dealer

A player in their drama emerges in massive Panama Papers leak.

By Nicholas Nehamas
[e-mail]

The tale of how three young guys from Miami Beach won hundreds of millions in weapons contracts from the Pentagon has been turned into a Rolling Stone article, a book and a soon-to-appear Hollywood movie called War Dogs.

Efraim Diveroli, David Packouz and Alexander Podrizki sold aging weapons and ammunition originally from China and the former Eastern Bloc to America’s allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, all the while inhaling epic clouds of marijuana smoke. They were in their early 20s.

Now another player in the their drama, a Cypriot man named Charalambos “Pambos” Fellas, has appeared in a massive leak of documents obtained by the Miami Herald and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The never-before-seen records — called the Panama Papers — come from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that sets up offshore companies for the rich and powerful.

Fellas served as the director of an offshore company based in Cyprus, called Evdin, Ltd., that supplied weapons to the fledgling arms dealers in Miami Beach.


Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/miami-beach/article69256367.html#storylink=cpy

[Judi Lynn]

1. Miami Herald: County commissioners object to extra scrutiny over Miami money-laundering

April 5, 2016 6:53 PM

County commissioners object to extra scrutiny over Miami money-laundering

Highlights:

Symbolic resolution expresses “concerns” over Washington regulations that single out Miami-Dade and Manhattan

Rules require extra disclosure for cash purchases of at least $1 million in Miami-Dade

Two commissioners cite Miami Herald’s Panama Papers series in voting no

By Douglas Hanks
[e-mail]

Amid global attention on money laundering through Miami real estate, Miami-Dade commissioners made a request Tuesday to Washington: stop singling out Miami for scrutiny over money laundering.

In the symbolic resolution, commissioners officially “express concerns” about Treasury Department regulations singling out Miami-Dade and Manhattan as two areas requiring extra disclosure of buyers paying at least $1 million in cash for real estate. The Miami Herald cited the regulations in its recent “Secret Shell Game” series on the Panama Papers, a massive leak of documents tied to offshore shell companies that have been the subject of a global investigative report by journalists around the world.

Sponsor Sally Heyman had filed the item weeks ago, well before the series began on Sunday. She argued disclosure rules imposed on Miami-Dade and Manhattan in January should be spread to other luxe real estate markets up and down the coast. “I think full disclosure is good — for everybody,” she said.

Her district includes affluent condo towers on the county’s coast, and she said she’s seeing real estate agencies in Broward and Palm Beach try to siphon luxury business away from Miami with marketing that says: “Come buy our coastline, we don’t ask questions.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article70137892.html#storylink=cpy

[underpants]

2. Wow this is getting interesting