The Pandora Papers: How the world of offshore finance is still flourishing | Four Corners

this is a story about a parallel universe where the super rich hide eye-watering amounts of money around the world we're talking about presidents we're talking about prime ministers we're talking about rock stars we're talking about porn stars and people that have been convicted of crimes all over the world their methods are usually highly guarded secrets but hidden in an elaborate paper trail they're now exposed for all to see it's a shell game they hide the assets they hide the income they hide the real beneficial owners to unscramble these incredible structures that you find it takes a really long time the keepers of these secrets are lawyers and accountants who work through a global network of trusts and shell companies based in tax havens around the world without checks gatekeepers have carte blanche and are able to ride roughshod over the financial landscape with no questions really asked and no accountability they pay the fine and then it's just business as usual i think some of the best money is to be made if you're willing to turn a blind eye to who you're dealing with and where their money might have come from i think there's very good money to be made sadly you have a handful of people who loot the resources of a country imagine the good that could have been done with five billion dollars the roads the infrastructure schools medicine education healthcare all of that could have been all of that was taken away by a handful of people the private fortunes of the rich famous and sometimes infamous are concealed through lucrative financial holdings and expensive real estate and australia has become a prime destination for them to stash their cash [Applause] i think the outrage that would be expressed by australians if they knew that corrupt money was buying their local jewels in the crown and competing against locals at auctions i think they'd be they'd be furious about that in real terms that means that your children or yourself might be going to buy a property and when they're at auction there could be a person there in a suit looking very very sharp and legitimate but they could be a proxy acting for a foreign kleptocrat or a politically exposed person [Music] tonight on four corners we investigate how politicians criminals and the super wealthy move millions through a parallel economy open only to those who can afford it and we reveal how an australian accountant made a fortune helping high-risk clients keep their riches away from prying eyes [Music] our investigation begins in singapore this glittering island financial hub is an ideal place to set up complex business structures the corporate tax rate of 17 has always been traditionally much lower than other foreign jurisdictions so that's attractive to companies that want to go set up business there and pay less tax and of course if you're going to go to the effort of setting up a headquarter in a country like singapore and you're a big multinational firm and you're involved in profit shifting activities and a whole range of other things that are certainly immoral and unethical then what you're going to also demand from the singapore government a layers of regulations to hide your identity and what you're doing it's actually a recipe for setting themselves up for scandals for the last 40 years singapore has been home to a little little-known business run by an australian accountant named graham briggs [Music] he set up his company asia city here in the 1980s today it's a global business with clients on every continent it's one of the largest offshore service providers in the world it's actually run by an australian man they have all sorts of legitimate clients big banking big banks big accountancy firms asia city essentially sets up offshore companies for people who want privacy asia city is part of a growing industry of professional wealth managers helping the super rich manage their cash [Music] it's lawyers accountants investment advisors you know so anyone who helps with the private equity venture capital fund real estate agents all of them are gatekeepers and when we use the term gatekeepers it really is these are the individuals that are meant to guard the financial system because they have the expertise they have the know-how to navigate the nitty-gritties of what is otherwise a very complex system to navigate what we've found when we've looked into it is that individual entities that are providing these services for them in isolation it's hugely profitable so you know there's the ongoing advice there's the fees of setting up these structures there's a trailing revenue model because you're continually managing these structures so for those individual businesses that are active in this space it's hugely profitable asia city prides itself on trust and discretion keeping the confidential information of its high-profile clients secret now an anonymous source has leaked millions of internal documents from asia city and 13 other offshore providers to media around the world through the international consortium of investigative journalists it's interesting that we're seeing somebody who no one's ever heard of you're talking about graham briggs an accountant somebody who's you know gone to singapore built a business and now he's the center of what will be i think a political storm around the world graham briggs is a 75 year old grandfather with a taste for the finer things in life he owns a multi-million dollar mansion on a vineyard in the mornington peninsula [Music] frame lives in victoria he collects art he likes fine wine particularly italian wine he also collects japanese fountain pens so he's somebody with expensive tastes but he also mixes with people from all over the world very wealthy important clients but also some people who are very high public figures the leak reveals graham briggs amassed a 62 million dollar fortune that includes more than 10 million dollars in real estate a four million dollar rare pen collection and 400 dollars worth of fine wine like the fortunes of those he's managed much of graham briggs's wealth is held through a complex offshore company and trust structure one of the trends that's emerging in the documents in the pandora papers is the fact that this offshore world lobbies behind the scenes it lobbies governments to allow the offshore world to take place so graham was particularly involved in turning samoa into a tax haven [Music] the island nation of samoa is a tiny speck in the ocean halfway between new zealand and hawaii [Music] graham briggs was one of the first to realize samoa's potential over two decades ago he spruked himself as an expert consultant to the government on offshore finance [Music] he set up an asia city office in the nation's capital just down the road from the regulator she was one of the first to bring that type of business here to samoa and i understand that he did have a say in advising on the original legislation i met him once in fact i met him during one of the reviews of samoa in accordance with the asia-pacific group on anti-money laundering one of their reviews of samoa back in 2014 that was when i first met mr graham briggs he seems very personable he's not very tall short curly haired gray aussie it may not look like a global finance hub but there's tens of thousands of international companies based here one for every three residents the genesis was i think it was trying to find other sources of income that were legitimate and legal for a small island nation with very limited natural resources that that's basically the genesis of it it's a tax haven that's been criticized for its lack of transparency and has been blacklisted by the european union since 2017. in the good old days when there was a bit more wild west so to speak there was no regulation around and so it was easier to incorporate a company and as such the risks for things going wrong and things being used for untoward purposes was probably higher in the early years of the industry [Music] it's a tax haven which means it doesn't impose tax on a lot of income earned by people in that jurisdiction and it was very popular for australians because before we had a regime which taxed people on their foreign income if earned through a foreign entity so if i put a foreign company in samoa and that foreign company earned income outside samoa it wasn't taxed in samoa and it wasn't taxed in australia hence the benefit of having a tax haven in the middle for those who consider these sorts of arrangements they're not clever or sexy or harmless i think the victims when people don't pay taxes is every day australians the millions of of taxpayers who do the right thing who declare their income pay their employees and have fair competition against other business [Music] the leaked documents show asia city kept a confidential list of its highest risk clients known as peps so pep is an acronym for politically exposed persons and it's referring to people who held senior government positions they may be politicians they may be heads of state-owned enterprises or heads of government departments and they may be foreign or domestic the reason they are singled out and considered high risk is because people who are in those positions have in the past availed themselves of the opportunity to commit corruption offences [Music] the documents reveal hundreds of millions of dollars of asia city's clients money has been plowed into the booming sydney property market two luxury apartments in this city tower were purchased by a sri lankan thirukuma nadesen whose wife is a member of the country's ruling rajapaksa family he's currently facing corruption allegations the ownership of the apartments was hidden using a shell company registered in samoa and managed by asia city australia is seen as an easy place to park your money if you're a criminal if you're corrupt if you want to launder money more australians out there more battlers who are trying to buy their first home are going to be competing in an increasingly unaffordable market against potential potential billionaires or tycoons in foreign countries some of them involved in corruption in another secretive offshore setup managed by asia city a singaporean company called bright ruby resources spent nearly 300 million dollars on two office towers in sydney's cbd and bought sydney's iconic hilton hotel in 2015 for 442 million dollars documents in the league reveal the six layers of companies and trusts between bright ruby and its ultimate owner chinese steel billionaire duchwon hua one of asia city's highest risk clients he really become quite famous in 2008 why he become the second richest man in china according to the whoring list which is kind of similar to our afr rich list in fact there was a bit of a story about you know he fought off to become the richest man in china he actually i think persuaded attitude to change that because in china it's always not a great idea to become the richest billionaire because a lot of things tend to happen to them after they top the rich list controversy has dogged dushwang since he admitted to a close court in china in 2010 that he'd bribed a rio tinto executive millions of dollars he admitted to paying one of a real tinto employee about 9 million in us dollars as a bribe to secure some iron ore were you surprised when he admitted to paying bribes but then wasn't prosecuted you know why i think it kind of uh you can almost seen as um one of his american legal dramas you know he he become agreed to become key witness in a way that he probably was granted immunity from the prosecution you know in a particular case four rio tinto employees including australian stern who was sentenced to years in prison over the scandal do went unpunished and went on to make billions the leaked documents show du chuang hua's history of bribery was recorded in asia city's files along with his political connections to the chinese communist party that makes him a politically exposed person by definition by the anti-money laundering standards i'm not surprised that someone like mr duke can buy the hilton hotel through it through a structure that perhaps hides the fact that he's behind it you have this russian dolls sort of arrangement where opaque and offshore structures are used to conceal ownership and it becomes very difficult for an australian bank for instance to unwind that ownership structure when we don't have things like a beneficial ownership register to show who are the ultimate people sitting behind these corporate vehicles [Music] in this picturesque corner of northwest tasmania another asia city client brought up farmland using a secretive offshore trust and company structure how the money came in was that a canadian executive had a fund in bermuda the bermudan fund advanced the money to a singaporean company which acquired the australian dairy fund but when you look at the ownership on paper the singaporean company is owned by the trustees two trustees of two respective trusts in the isle of man [Music] asia city files reveal the source of funds for the purchase came from canadian stephen de heinrich who was a director of international oil giant atx petroleum [Music] we are an international oil and gas exploration and production company in 2007 two senior adax executives admitted to bribing a former nigerian oil minister for lucrative contracts de heinrich made a fortune after the company was sold for 7 billion us dollars petroleum maximizing value for all the tasmanian farms were sold back to local owners this year for nearly double the purchase price does the australian government really know who owns property in australia no probably not and it's one of the advantages of having opaque structures like like companies they they're both um again they give an air of legitimacy that's owned by a foreign company so it must be okay uh but then you get a string of companies and then you'll get companies who are owned by nominees and nominees aren't often declared or there will be companies who are controlled not by their shareholders but by their creditors and so it's hard to actually pick where the control is actually coming from green senator peter wish wilson sat on a recent senate inquiry into foreign ownership he says it raised serious questions about the foreign investment review board's ability to properly monitor the flow of money into australian property see arguably an estimated billions of dollars flow into australian real estate that's dirty money and that money pushes up house prices it makes houses less affordable for your average australian and it's certainly not good enough that the government knows there are flaws in our legislation there are exemptions that need to be removed or loopholes is probably a better word for it that need to be removed yet they drag their feet in doing this now what that means is in real terms that means that uh you know your children or yourself might be going to buy a property and when they're at auction there could be a person there in a suit looking very very sharp and legitimate but they could be a proxy acting for a foreign kleptocrat or a politically exposed person now because there's no regulation of any of the gatekeepers in that transaction chain that poses a huge risk to australia and i think the you know the outrage that would be expressed by australians if they knew that corrupt money was uh buying their local jewels in the crown and competing against locals uh at auctions um yeah i think i think they'd be they'd be furious about that [Music] the secrets of companies like asia city rarely become public unless someone decides to take the massive risk of leaking confidential documents the source want two things first of all a source wanted anonymity i presume for safety reasons and the second thing is that i was told that he wanted to make these documents available to governments all over the world and this was the best way of doing it by going to journalists jared ryle has spent the last decade chasing the secrets of the super rich through tax havens around the world i keep coming back this has to have public interest we're not interested in someone's private affairs but when we're looking at these records we're not looking at private affairs we're looking at things that should be made public i think what it shows really is that there is a shadow economy a shadow world out there that we are not aware of and that this is a world that is enriching the people who are already rich [Music] he's coordinating a team of more than 600 journalists from international media partners including four corners who have spent months analyzing more than 11 million documents asia city is just one of 14 service providers in the league when you're looking at a secret world you obviously have to get information from that secret world to really understand it i think all of the leaks we've had in the past have only given us a small window into this world but here we have 14 separate windows and i think that's what's allowing this to be different um from anything we've done before because it's allowing this breadth of of information we're able to see how the world really works how this parallel universe really works in a way we've never been able to before inside the pandora papers are files on politicians world leaders and former leaders and their secret wealth jordan's king abdullah ii who bought luxury homes worth up to 100 million us dollars through secret offshore companies czech prime minister andre babish who secretly used shell companies to buy a french chateau and kenya's president uhuru kenyatta whose family secretly owned offshore assets worth more than 30 million us dollars we're talking about myanmar generals we're talking about people associated with robert mugabe over in in zimbabwe and we're also looking at some other african figures people that have been convicted are accused of money laundering or even worse crimes [Music] some of asia city's clients have been on the radar of authorities for years in 2014 asia city was instructed to freeze the assets of one of its high-risk clients the order was obtained by the u.s department of justice fbi agent deborah la provot was chasing massive amounts of cash plundered by a former nigerian president president obacha died in 1998 and it's alleged that during his presidency he stole embezzled extorted just shy of five billion dollars so in 2012 the fbi and the department of justice got together and we started to investigate these funds and what we found is there was a network of individuals that were not only helping president abacha get his hands on these funds mostly in cash but then those funds had to be moved out of nigeria [Music] in 2010 asia city set up offshore trusts for a longtime associate of the president nigerian politician abubakar atiku bagudu it was later alleged in court documents that the pair had systematically embezzled public funds worth billions of dollars asia city kept bagudu on as a client regardless once uh in 2013 when it became very public that mr bagudu was listed in the u.s complaint they could have said you know what there's enough here that causes us pause so we're going to go ahead and close this account or you know request that you're no longer our customer that didn't happen the fbi is still hunting more than 170 million us dollars frozen in trust accounts linked to bagudu bagudu denies any wrongdoing and is contesting the freezing order it is extremely frustrating and again it comes back to these known havens right whether it was venouatu singapore cayman switzerland at the time you have a handful of people who loot the resources of a country whether it's oil-rich nigeria or oil-rich south sudan a resource-rich congo and yet a frequently a great percentage of the population is living below the poverty level imagine the good that could have been done with five billion dollars in nigeria in in the late 90s the roads the infrastructure schools medicine education health care all of that could have been all of that was taken away by a handful of people [Music] russia is one of the world's most high risk and high reward financial destinations it was a lucrative source of clients for graeme briggs and asia city one of the people that briggs cultivated was herman griff a former putin minister and head of a russian state-owned bank that was later sanctioned by the us and australia so the meeting occurred in a cafe in moscow in february 2015 between graeme briggs the head of asia city and herman graf who was a senior well politically exposed person in russia and they were meeting to discuss the structure that asia city had set up for human graff and the fact that he was going to use this structure in his post government role or his post-government life so the fact that the bank that herman griff is heading up is uh is being sanctioned i think is significant asia city helped set up an offshore network for hermann greth and one of his old government colleagues putin's former deputy chief of staff karil androsov he spoke to four corners from singapore where he's now a fund manager yes i met graham uh at the very beginning i met graham uh i think at the months of incorporation of the fund because for me it was important who will be the administrator of the fund and what is the attitude of this company the fact that they're russian isn't necessarily a red flag but the fact that they were russian politically exposed persons and that some of them had had allegations of corruption around them some of them were very closely linked to the the russian government senior levels of the russian government and then seeing large volumes of money being moved in a circuitous pattern that is a distinctive red flag [Applause] the leaked documents revealed that karil androsov received a mysterious 25 million us dollar bonus payment from a russian businessman with rumored links to organized crime asia city failed to keep track of millions of dollars of transactions in the complex russian structures [Music] money laundering expert john chevas has reviewed the documents it's worth noting that these weren't insignificant amounts of money we were talking about 25 million dollars at a time for some of these transactions there were this circuitous transactions between these three uh these three three people whether they were conducting those transactions themselves or whether someone was conducting them on their behalf they didn't appear to have any legitimate economic reason for some of these transactions that were occurring the transactions of asia city's russian clients were later investigated by the singaporean regulator which delivered a damning report well they found that the asia cities anti-money laundering systems were very very lacking they were lacking in many ways they suggested that the policies and processes weren't in place and that's those policies and processes that were in place weren't being followed properly there's been a lot of criticism and drosoph categorically denied that any of his commercial dealings are in any way improper or unlawful he told four corners he continues to work with asia city besides i know they still have a license and as long as they have licensed they are liable to operate i don't know details of this case and i don't know the substance we keep business in some of the aspects and we stop business in some of the other aspects but i don't think that it's connected with with this case that monetary authority of singapore announced against them last year the monetary authority of singapore fined asia city 1.1 million dollars for failing to adequately monitor its high-risk clients and multiple and in some cases systemic lapses in anti-money laundering controls you have to ask yourself why is somebody in this business why is somebody running a trust company out of singapore where they've been found to be delinquent in their um vigilance to fight anti-money laundering and terrorism financing so you know i could only say that i would i'd have to question he he knows what his company's doing i i would want to know has anything changed since they were audited and um and fined the fine was so minimal i mean it's less than a slap on the wrist revenue authorities around the world the big revenue authorities are aware of the scale of the what the professional enablers do and the scope of their reach so they formed various joint task forces to try to combat hidden income hidden assets and the whole camouflaging of beneficial ownership by the enablers australian authorities have been trying to track offshore tax evasion for years in 2006 the ato launched the biggest tax fraud investigation in australia's history it was dubbed project we can be so project wickenby was i guess the first time that we brought together a multi-agency focus on offshore tax evasion we raised well over a billion dollars in liabilities in tax that wasn't paid and additional penalties my name is banda v-a-n-d-a girl g-o-u-l-d one of its targets was a sydney accountant who was a client of asia city his name is vandergold and i'm presently at um long bay corrective center at the jail van de gould spoke to four corners from prison he was arrested on tax fraud charges in 2013. i was at home i was i was um i think uh doing some exercise on the exercise bike um and i mean i i was you know and then we had all these commonwealth police came in and sort of did a raid at the house van der gould met graeme briggs in the mid-80s and began doing business with him in the early 90s i met graeme briggs and we got chatting and having a chat to him wasn't a very long call just discussion and then subsequently he took it upon himself to make contact with me you know when you talk to him he's a you know genuinely decent sort of human being asia cities samoa office had come up with a lucrative new product it was pitched as a samoan superannuation scheme briggs wrote to gould explaining how it worked western samoa has no taxation treaty with australia therefore it offers complete exemption from all forms of income tax and provides absolute secrecy and confidentiality gould put his clients money into asia city's offshore super funds because essentially their office provided all the support staff so they actually established the super fund they got the lawyers to actually prepare the deeds they got um every transaction that was entered into um they were you know integral to to those transactions [Music] asia city's samoan super scheme had a brilliant twist [Music] clients were able to access their money before they retired via loans from the super fund well the temptation for tax if you want to avoid it is to set up a samoan fund have your employer settle some money on it and then the income of the samoan fund the theory was it was not taxable in australia so the the income of the fund can be earned tax free and similar but if you want to get it back to australia that we did have rules that like all super funds that if you got a payment on death disability a certain age being reached or retirement you were taxable on it so the answer is don't get a payment for any of those reasons rather get a loan loans in any any form of tax jurisdiction are taxable so if i loan you money you're not taxable on the amount i give you it's not income it's not a gain you haven't benefited or you've just borrowed from me so in this case they simply the samoan fund would loan the money back to the australian resident but the tax office had some questions about samoan super schemes in 2010 it issued a public warning saying the schemes were being used to conceal income or assets and that so-called loans from them may be a sham what we would do in those sorts of arrangements is ask some questions well if this is truly a commercial loan for example where are the documents that sit behind that loan what interest rates are being paid show us where your repayments are going what have you invested that in and often whether these whether these arrangements are purely non-commercial they're unable to answer those sorts of questions the taxpayer alert just is like a siren that says we're watching it didn't change the law the taxpayer alert just highlighted that the tax office was aware that these that certain people were doing certain things gould's tax fraud charges were eventually dropped but he was later jailed for perverting the course of justice for coaching a witness to lie gould's clients were ordered to pay back more than 300 million dollars to the ato my job is to actually help taxpayers who get through the labyrinth of the australian tax act in the most effective way and if one of the most effective way means they reduce their taxes well well so so be it i don't think there's any morals in it [Music] the leaked documents show graham briggs was questioned by australian authorities while they investigated van der gul's samoan operation brics was never charged or accused of criminal conduct van de gold still supports him no no i mean i was going to have any hard feelings against against you know graham but um you know just watch this space god will ultimately vindicate me i think that the first thing to always bear in mind is that most people do the right thing and there's nothing illegal with holding money offshore provided that it's declared to the tax office and most people do do the right thing [Music] while graeme briggs has retired to his vineyard outside melbourne asia city continues to do business in tax havens around the world in a statement asia city said we are committed to the highest business standards including ensuring that our operations fully comply with all laws and regulations in each jurisdiction in which we operate the regulatory and industry landscape has evolved over the course of our 45 year history and we have worked diligently to comply with prevailing regulations through this passage of time the problem with the offshore world is that it's up to the um it's up to these service providers to regulate themselves there are rules that are set down by governments but there's no one government overseeing it there's no sheriff here and so when you're living in this sort of parallel universe where there are no there is actually no government oversight to speak of it's very important that these firms follow the rules in 2016 the original panama papers leak caused global outrage about offshore secrecy the federal government committed to a beneficial ownership register which would force the true owners of corporate structures to be disclosed it still hasn't happened we've been campaigning for at least five years now to get a public beneficial owners register australians have a right to know who is buying uh their their land uh their sovereign wealth uh their future um i'm not going to get into any arguments about whether foreign investment is good or bad but bloody hell our laws should be good accountants and lawyers who do a lot of the a lot of set up a lot of these structures for illicit funds aren't required to even make provide any detail to uh regulators around who is the ultimate beneficial owner of the of this particular investment um there's no real reason for that except for that these industries like the accounting profession and the legal profession have lobbied very ferociously in canberra this reticence to set up a beneficial ownership registry therefore undermines the efforts of australia's allies to actually plug the problem and check the problem but what happens is if you allow the trend to continue and you allow the country to be to essentially be a destination for illicit wealth that buys up land buys up real estate when you start becoming a destination for criminal money and ill-gotten money there's a question of what other problems are you bringing in with it as well is it going to be just the money because it's never just the money [Music] it's estimated up to a tenth of the world's wealth is parked in offshore financial centres costing governments hundreds of billions of dollars in lost tax revenue each year there's increasing calls for australia to strengthen regulations governing this parallel world we are woefully behind the times so of all the financial action task force members around the world that haven't complied with all of the obligations around gatekeeper professions that's the us china and then you're talking about countries like madagascar and then on that list of countries you have australia so we've really dropped the ball in this area look at most lawyers accountants and other professionals do do the right thing it is relatively easy to be tempted to get involved in offshore tax arrangements my message to them is that don't facilitate lying cheating and stealing from other australians you will soon find yourself over your head in these arrangements they're not clever they're not harmless they victimize the entire australian society [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 377,393

Rating: 4.860105 out of 5

Keywords: abc news, documentaries, long-form journalism, Pandora Papers, Investigation, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, tax haven, finance, offshore finance, tax, data leak, Panama Papers, 4corners, Four Corners, whistleblower, Samoa, Australia, Russia, secrets, wealth, accounting, offshore tax, taxpayer, trusts, shell company, accountability, Elise Worthington, Gerard Ryle, real estate, Australian real estate, Canada, mining, bribery, economy, Asiaciti, politically exposed, politics

Id: 4kPLpZN3I3A

Length: 42min 34sec (2554 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/thebolts]

On my list. Many are claiming what they do by hiding assets isn’t technically illegal (King of Jordan & Prime minister of Lebanon), which is true.

But hiding large assets while your people back home are poor and suffering also speaks volumes. Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s ok.

I’m hoping articles and documentaries focus on this when reporting.

And we shouldn’t be focusing just on political leaders but on “loved” celebrities as well (lahem.. Shakira…).

[u/ki4clz]

Sauce:

https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/

[u/LAlakers4life]

MEMBER WHEN THEY CAR BOMBED THE PANAMA PAPERS REPORTER...

[u/MidSolo]

That reflection effect got real old real fast.

[u/ogringo88]

There was an interview on NPR with a billionaire a few years ago. I remember they were trying to ask him questions and he wouldn't really give straight answers. The only thing he kept saying was "You don't understand, someday they're going to drag us of our yachts and kill us."

They know we know and they know we are angry. But they don't care, they'll keep pushing it as long as they can go. Don't get complacent, they're time is coming.

[u/dub-fresh]

if you still believe that the only thing between you and the American Dream is hardwork, just watch this to understand how unfair the system is to folks that don't have the $ to make the rules.

[u/Part_timeprophet]

The political and ruling class is losing their right to mandate . The people have had enough . This isn’t good ..

[u/0rd0abCha0]

'People say they want the truth, but they don't want the hassle,

'cause then they'd have to overthrow the castle'

To paraphrase Method Man

[u/masta_rabbit]

Morgan Freeman voice

And then, just like last time, nothing happened.