03/04/2016 The Papers

about his new book The Blade Artist in Meet The Author.

Hello and welcome to our look ahead to what the the papers will be

With me are Charlie Wells, the European features reporter of the

Wall Street Journal and John Rentoul, the chief political

commentator for The Independent. Front pains, The Guardian has the

story -- front pages then. That's not The Guardian. It's a two billion

trail of offshore deals that leads to President Putin. How the rich

hide their money, The I which we have already shown you. Splashes on

the Panama pages tax haven scandal and calls for Iceland's Prime

Minister to resign over his offshore accounts. British steel to rise from

the Ashes says The Telegraph. Leading on news of a possible buyer

for Tata's plant in Scunthorpe. The Daily

Mail says white -- says white British pupils are being overtaken

at school by children from other ethnic groups by the time they sit

their GCSEs. The FT leads on jitters in the

currency markets. The Independent's cover star is the jubilant West

Indies all-rounder celebrating victory against England in the final

of the T20 World Cup. This is what it's like, we make it

up as we go along! So, don't worry. Let's begin with

this coverage in many newspapers who were involved in this international

investigation into these papers which show how the rich and powerful

manage to hide their wealth. Here it is on The Guardian. A striking front

page. Exclusive it says, but exclusive shared by a few of the

rest of us. The secret 2 billion dollar trailful deals that lead to

Putin. Putin one of the leaders who are said to have been caught up in

this somehow. Yeah, it's a huge story this. The thing I can't get

over is it's all stems from a law firm, it sounds like something JK

Rowling made up. This is a very important story. As we speak the

Prime Minister of Iceland may or may not have resigned because of it. He

is under pressure. That's right. I think maybe it isn't surprising that

Vladimir Putin might have through associate lots of money in secret

somewhere. But it's very important we know as much as we can about it.

This is how tax evasion and tax havens are going to be curbed, if

people feel they can't actually hide their money safely, they'll have to

declare it and deal with it honestly. It shows how secretive

these arrangements are. Suspicions have been these things have been

taking place but now we are getting a sense of how it works. I am

interested to see how readers will respond to this story. A lot of us

in the UK are suspicious of this sort of thing. I want to know how

Russians are going to respond. In another story I came across Putin

was talking about offshore financing, this makes it seem he is

not taking part in that. The Russian economy is not doing so well

recently. I think if we have a leader who is hiding money, using

associate to put money in soern ways, or a musician who is

apparently his best friend who has been a proxy here. His daughter's

Godfather. Exactly. I want to see how the Russians respond. It will be

fascinating because Putin is so popular in Russia. Nothing seems to

get through his Teflon coating. Perhaps this will. It seems the way

some people manage to use these accounts is that they have money,

large sums of money, held in offshore companies. But when they

want to access it sometimes a firm will pay another person to access it

for them. You are drawing in even people who don't actually have

direct investments, if we can call them that, in these offshore...

These things are so complicated that a team of journalists have been

working on it for months. 400 I think all over the world. It's

extraordinary N a way the one slightly encouraging thing for

British politics that comes out of this is that our politics seems to

be relatively clean. I know David Cameron's father has been mentioned,

but it doesn't appear to have actually done anything wrong or

suspicious. British politicians, there are one or two retired

Conservative MPs and some peers, but generally our politics seems to come

out of this quite cleanly. Let's look at The I, how the rich hide

their money. The scale of the leak even makes the WikiLeaks or the

Edward Snowden disclosures... A lot of documents. The thing that I want

to know about, and I have seen people tweet being this, talking

about how offshore accounts are not necessarily illegal. I want to hear

more legal analysis as the story develops to see where some of the

laws were broken, if they were, or not, or if any sort of - if there

will be a push to make this more difficult. It's hard because it's so

international. A lot of these stories are focussed on, we are

connecting from Panama to Switzerland and how do you police

that? The Daily Telegraph has the story. World leaders caught in

offshore data leak. One of the ways in which they seem to do it is that

you borrow some money but you only pay back a dollar. And millions of

dollars disappear. Yeah, this is the problem with trying to deal with tax

evasion and havens, tax secrecy, is that if you can successfully keep it

secret, people don't know what you are doing. The British Government,

of which ever party, has promised to clamp down on this kind of thing,

make it more transparent but it's always going to be difficult because

people can move somewhere else in the world. Yes. There has been

moves, David Cameron's talked of wanting to clamp down on this but it

requires international effort. We see this not just with individuals

but companies, as well. How do you solve this? That will be interesting

to watch. Let's stay with The Telegraph. British steel to rise

from the Ashes. The focus this week has been on Port Talbot, the Tata

steel plant which is - it has an uncertain future. This time, though,

it's focussing on some little known investors who are coming to the

rescue it seems of Scunthorpe. Right. It's surprising. I think this

sort of latches on to an idea about what will the solution be? Will it

be some grand solution that solves the entire Tata problem or will it

be sort of piecemeal deals that come together helping regional areas? I

think that is all fine and well but it's scary if you want a factory

floor, not at this plant but in one of the others, you would be thinking

what's going to happen to me, how am I going - what's my future? These

are two brothers investing, not an inconsiderable sum of money in the

plant in Scunthorpe. You wonder whether they're going to have to

concentrate on a particular type of product. Yes, that's been the

thinking that the Government has been hinting at. There are elements

of the British steel industry which could be extremely profitable. My

problem with that is that Tata didn't think so and it's a good

well-run company. It's sunk ?6 billion into the British steel

industry and it's all gone. So, how does anybody else think they can

make a better job than they can? How would this be viewed from the

States? There are people here who think that we should be putting up

tariffs, protecting our industry. Right. As we know the United States

has enormous tariffs on cheap Chinese steel. I think it's over

200%, something like that, which is much more than in the EU or the UK

have. So, I think, you know, the US is also entrepreneurial and the

interesting thing about this story is entrepreneurs are stepping up to

save this plant and I wonder - I don't know, I wonder how it could

sort of turn around the Conservative embarrassment that's been happening

here. Obviously, the Tories seem to have been caught off-guard and were

criticised and will this heart-warming story turn that

around? I don't know. We have had Sajid Javid suggesting there may be

more the Government can do, if there is this suggestion of an Indian

buyer who might come in and help out. That's right. But as Charlie

says, the problem is that the Government has taken a very free

trade line on this and there's - and has been opposed to tariff barriers

against Chinese steel. It's probably going to have to soften that line, I

would have thought. Let's move on to The Times. Border chaos threatens

deal to deport migrants. Greece has no idea how many will be sent back.

Too few officials to carry out the plan. We were reporting that Turkey

says we are getting reception centres built. It takes time to do

these things. This is a story that's been running for sometime now, which

is that Greece is overwhelmed. All of the Greek officialdom is

overwhelmed by the sheer volume of numbers that it's having to deal

with in the refugee problem. It's not going to get any better this

year, I don't think. It's so challenging because you are forcibly

moving people from one country to another, taking them perhaps back to

a country they just spent thousands of pounds to get away from. I would

not be surprised to see stories coming up about conflicts. We read

about tiffs at a lot of camps and I wonder if that will continue. The

people in this resort in Turkey who are going to be the recipients of

the back who are sent people have been protesting too because they

recognise that they're not ready to receive them. That's right. That's a

taste of things to come, I suspect. The conflict there, as Charlie says,

the conflict of interest between different countries. Turkey wants

people who don't want to be in Turkey to go somewhere else. It

doesn't want to have them back. Turkey needs to get it right. It has

a part to play in this deal if it wants more favourable treatment when

it comes to the EU. At the national level. Local Governments in Turkey

are not going to be happy at all. Let's look at the FT. Fears mounting

in currency markets as EU referendum approaches.

The pound has been suffering a bit. That's right. This is not much of a

surprise. I think any time... Uncertainty! Any time there is

uncertainty a currency falls down and it's a test for how investors

and the international community views the economy in a particular

country. As we were talking about before, this could potentially be

good for British exporters because when the pound goes down it makes

exports cheaper for people abroad. Of course as an American this is

great for me because my dollar goes further, not that it goes all that

far, but I don't think this is much of a surprise. No. And I do think it

is in a sense it's good news because we in Britain have a real problem

with our export trade balance at the moment. The pound does need to go

down, I suspect. But what we don't like is the uncertainty, the

volatility because that can affect how a country's perceived for

potential investors, can't it? Absolutely. That only lasts until

23rd June. I don't know. Let's say the UK... It's not a long period.

Let's say the UK does leave and that's a new future, who knows

what's going to happen. There will be a lot of negotiating with

treaties. Banks take so long to determine where headquarters will

be. There would be continued uncertainty. There certainly would,

yeah. But I am all for a low pound. Daily Express, holiday bargains as

costs tumble. It's the opposite. We could be saving up to 40% on our

summer holidays, in particular, some countries. Where should we go?

Apparently the choice is Cyprus, Croatia, or Bulgaria. You know... I

will let you guys decide. Well, we will stick a pin in a map. As you

say, how can this be true too? Well, I think it's probably selective. Up

two back end of the brochure two back end of the brochure

holidays that aren't selling very well. They're cutting the costs of

food, drink and entertainment but whether you will like what you get

when you get there we don't know. Let's finish with The Independent.

We will just for a moment look at the cricket.

None of us particularly... We will pretend we know something about! We

know that the West Indies beat England in the final in the T20.

Sorry. A quick education in this game.

For Charlie's purposes, basically, the West Indies scored a lot of home

runs. The guy whacked the ball really hard and it went a long way.

It hit the bat and shot across the boundary without touching the

ground. That's the important bit. Sadly. The West Indies won. I did

promise to add a little extra on the bottom. Here is The Independent's

front page which we still get as if it is a newspaper but they're now

online but we are pleased to see it. Charities demand urgent action to

save homeless children. Tell us about this. This is an important

story. Not least for the people who fear that The Independent going

online will lose its value. We are completely committed to this kind of

story. This is all about councils moving families in social housing

out of their area and failing to provide information to the receiving

council about vulnerable children or vulnerable adults indeed. It is

causing a lot of problems and it's only going to get worse. Why is this

happening now particularly? Is it to do with the cuts to councils? Cuts

to councils, cuts to housing benefit, and the continuing problem

of high house prices in London. See, I said I would do what I could and

we did it. Your editor will be thrilled. That's The Papers. Charlie

and John will be back at 11. 30pm. Bar the doors so Charlie can't

leave! Up next, it's Meet The