Panama Papers

[seemslikeadream]

fuck the Panama Papers ...I want D.C. Madam names!

[Project Willow]

fuck the Panama Papers ...I want D.C. Madam names!

Yes!

[Nordic]

tick ... tock ... tick ... tock ...

any day now, those Western names, western bankers, western billionaires connected to Soros, Deutsche, Goldman, HSBC, will appear ...

any day now ...

tick ... tock ...

...and then what?

Americans will think it over and decide: "well gosh, that's what I want to do with my money when I finally win the Powerball. So it's okay! After all, they all clearly worked VERY HARD to EARN that money."

[seemslikeadream]

'Seriously Sinister': Foremost Bank Whistleblower Says CIA Behind Panama Papers
Former UBS banker questions why all the names that have surfaced from tax evasion leak 'are the direct quote-unquote enemies of the United States'
byLauren McCauley, staff writer

While many observers have questioned why the Panama Papers leak has largely focused on the economic corruption of obstensible U.S. adversaries, such as associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin and relatives of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a notable tax evasion whistleblower has come forward with what he believes is a plausible answer.

"The CIA I'm sure is behind this, in my opinion," said former UBS banker Bradley Birkenfeld, who in 2005 blew the whistle on the Swiss banking giant, which lead to a U.S. government investigation into massive fraud and bank-enabled tax evasion.

"The very fact that we see all these names surface that are the direct quote-unquote enemies of the United States—Russia, China, Pakistan, Argentina—and we don't see one U.S. name. Why is that?" Birkenfeld asked during an exclusive interview with CNBC on Tuesday. "Quite frankly, my feeling is that this is certainly an intelligence agency operation."

The so-called Panama Papers, which were made public on April 3rd, exposed massive, international tax evasion by some of the world's wealthy and powerful. And while popular anger led to the resignation of at least one world leader, Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, and spurred a global investigation, the United States has remained remarkably unscathed.

"If you've got NSA and CIA spying on foreign governments they can certainly get into a law firm like this," Birkenfeld said, referring to the global firm Mossack Fonseca, from which the 11.5 million documents were taken. "But they selectively bring the information to the public domain that doesn't hurt the U.S. in any shape or form. That's wrong. And there's something seriously sinister here behind this."

As for the revelations that UK Prime Minister David Cameron, a U.S. ally, personally intervened to protect tax havens while he profited from his father's offshore trust, Birkenfeld chalks that up to "collateral damage," according to CNBC.

On Tuesday, organized crime prosecutors raided the Panama City headquarters of Mossack Fonseca among other subsidiaries reportedly to "obtain documentation linked to the information published in news articles that establish the use of the firm in illicit activities."

Birkenfeld also said while working for UBS he knew of Mossack Fonseca, but that the firm was just a bit player in the vast global tax evasion network with "Panama operating as a conduit to the Swiss banks and the trust companies to set up these facilities for clients around the world."

With the spotlight on those individuals who were connected to this one firm, the economic corruption of the rest of the world continues to fly under the radar.

"Mossack Fonseca is no bad apple; it is just one small part of a much deeper problem," declared the UK-based anti-corruption group Global Witness on Wednesday. Indeed, as the group previously pointed out, "the problem of tax havens and shell companies...is a big and homegrown issue in the U.S."

As the Guardian recently reported, "in 2015, in a ranking of tax havens most attractive for those looking to hide assets, the U.S. came in third."

"What was Panama’s ranking?" the newspaper writes. "It was ten spots behind the U.S., at 13."

[MacCruiskeen]

Selling England (and Wales) by the pound

IN September 2015 Private Eye created an easily searchable online map (see below) of properties in England and Wales owned by offshore companies. It reveals for the first time the extent of the British property interests of companies based in tax havens from Panama to Luxembourg, and from Liechtenstein to the South Pacific island of Niue. Most are held in this way for tax avoidance and often to conceal dubious wealth.

[...]

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/registry

[stefano]

To the posters who think Soros was behind this leak as well as the Maidan protests - I'm not following his dastardly plan so well here. Why was Poroshenko in the Panama papers? Because that definitely played into Geert Wilders's hands and helped him win the Dutch referendum vote not to ratify the partnership agreement with the Ukraine, giving a boost to the kind of nationalist party that is our last rampart against Soros-funded nation-death.

What am I missing, Sounder?

[stefano]

Targeting Cameron as intentional? - - - - From that perspective, it looks more like the pig whisperer is being unceremoniously offloaded.

What's weird - about Cameron's inclusion - is that Michael Ashcroft is also there. Or was! Just checked and he's no longer on the ICIJ site... Looks like he was removed. That's even more weird.

[Sounder]

Stefano wrote...

To the posters who think Soros was behind this leak as well as the Maidan protests - I'm not following his dastardly plan so well here. Why was Poroshenko in the Panama papers? Because that definitely played into Geert Wilders's hands and helped him win the Dutch referendum vote not to ratify the partnership agreement with the Ukraine, giving a boost to the kind of nationalist party that is our last rampart against Soros-funded nation-death.

What am I missing, Sounder?

I guess fairness in framing, first off. I do not think that Soros was behind this leak, as he is a cog in a much larger system. As mentioned earlier; I tend to think that Monsanto and Big Pharma are more influential deep-state actors here with NED types assigned to do the PR.

Stuff like this;

If you get an error message, a less corrupted version may be here;

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=37655&start=660

[seemslikeadream]

Inside Panama Papers: Multiple Clinton connections

Some donors to Clinton foundation used the Panamanian law firm for offshores

Connections come from the more than 40 years Bill and Hillary Clinton have spent in public life

Clinton criticized those exposed in the Panama Papers, some looking to hide their wealth
Gabrielle Fialkoff, who worked for Hillary Clinton, is listed as a shareholder of UPAC Holdings Ltd, a British Virgin Islands offshore company incorporated in June 2012.

Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra, a major donor to the Clinton Foundation, was appointed director of UrAsia Energy Ltd, a British Virgin Islands offshore company in May 2005. In this photo, Giustra speaks alongside former President Bill Clinton during a news conference to announce the Clinton Foundation's launching of a new sustainable development initiative in Latin America in New York on June 21, 2007. Chinese billionaire Ng Lap Seng, who was at the center of Democratic fundraising scandal when Bill Clinton was president, is listed as a shareholder of two British Virgin Islands companies. In this photo, Ng, center, leaves federal court with his attorney Benjamin Brafman, right, after he was released on bail in connection with a U.N. bribery scheme in New York on Oct. 26, 2015. Gabrielle Fialkoff, who worked for Hillary Clinton, is listed as a shareholder of UPAC Holdings Ltd, a British Virgin Islands offshore company incorporated in June 2012.

Hillary Clinton recently blasted the hidden financial dealings exposed in the Panama Papers, but she and her husband have multiple connections with people who have used the besieged law firm Mossack Fonseca to establish offshore entities.

Among them are Gabrielle Fialkoff, finance director for Hillary Clinton’s first campaign for the U.S. Senate; Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining magnate who has traveled the globe with Bill Clinton; the Chagoury family, which pledged $1 billion in projects to the Clinton Global Initiative; and Chinese billionaire Ng Lap Seng, who was at the center of a Democratic fund-raising scandal when Bill Clinton was president. Also using the Panamanian law firm was the company founded by the late billionaire investor Marc Rich, an international fugitive when Bill Clinton pardoned him in the final hours of his presidency.

The ties are both recent and decades old, not surprising for the Democratic presidential front-runner and her husband, who have been in public life since the 1970s.

Each is listed in the massive leak of data from Mossack Fonseca, a law firm with expertise in registering offshore companies, which can have legitimate business purposes, but can also be used to evade taxes and launder money. Several heads of state were found in the leak, leading to the departure of the leader of Iceland and investigations in several other countries.

McClatchy Newspapers and about 350 other journalists working under the umbrella of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists have searched an archive containing more than 11.5 million Mossack Fonseca documents, including passports, financial records and emails. After a series of articles earlier this month revealed how business owners and politicians used offshores, authorities raided the law firm’s offices in Panama. The law firm has denied all accusations of wrongdoing.

Hillary Clinton condemned what she called “outrageous tax havens and loopholes that super-rich people across the world are exploiting.”

“Now, some of this behavior is clearly against the law, and everyone who violates the law anywhere should be held accountable,” she said, speaking at the AFL-CIO convention recently. “But it’s also scandalous how much is actually legal.”

The Clintons themselves do not appear to be in Mossack Fonseca’s database, nor does it appear that their daughter, Chelsea, or her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, who co-founded a hedge fund, are listed. But Bill and Hillary Clinton’s connections to people who have used offshores is fuel for her Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders.

Clinton has struggled throughout her campaign to show that she can relate to working Americans, while Sanders has cast her as a wealthy out-of-touch Washington insider who has accepted hefty paychecks for speeches and received millions of dollars in campaign contributions from those tied to big businesses. Her connection to the Panama Papers, even if indirect, could magnify that perception.


Sanders said Clinton’s support of a free-trade agreement between the U.S. and Panama – one that he claims has allowed the wealthy to avoid paying taxes – should disqualify her from being the Democratic nominee for president.

“I don’t think you are qualified if you supported the Panama free trade agreement, something I very strongly opposed, which has made it easier for wealthy people and corporations all over the world to avoid paying taxes owed to their countries,” Sanders said recently.

To be sure, a long life in politics has allowed the Clintons to accumulate relationships to wealthy people and businesses across the globe.

One such connection is to Jean-Raymond Boulle, a one-time diamond miner from the volcanic island nation of Mauritius whose company was once based in Bill Clinton’s hometown of Hope, Ark. In the mid 1990s, Boulle was listed as a director of Auk Limited, a British Virgin Islands offshore company, and Gridco Limited, a Bahamas offshore company.

After two meetings with Boulle, Bill Clinton, then-governor of Arkansas, signed legislation allowing his company to engage in exploratory mining in the state. Later, Boulle and his wife attended Clinton’s first inauguration. Boulle’s company did not respond to a message.

“Obviously there’s no wrongdoing – it’s a question of perception and values,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. “They’ve been in public life so long; when you enter that sphere you have these connections.”

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon declined to answer specific questions about her connections but referred to Clinton’s earlier comments that criticized the behavior last week. Bill Clinton’s office and the Clinton Foundation declined to comment.

Also among the Clinton connections is Fialkoff, now a senior adviser to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and director of the city’s Office of Strategic Partnerships. She, her brother, Brett, and her late father, Frank, are listed as shareholders of UPAC Holdings Ltd, a British Virgin Islands offshore company incorporated in June 2012.

Gabrielle Fialkoff said in an email that she has “no knowledge” of the company and referred questions to her brother.

Brett Fialkoff, who serves as chief operating officer at his family’s business, Haskell Jewels, a New York-based designer, marketer and distributor of costume jewelry, initially told McClatchy he didn’t know why his family would be in the documents. Later, he said that someone must have opened an account in their names.

Still, later, he said he set up an offshore company to export accessories from China to the United States. The documents indicate the company’s files are registered in Beijing.

But, he said, he abandoned the new business to give more attention to his family’s jewelry company. He said there’s no money in any bank account overseas and declined to provide details about his compliance with U.S. tax laws.

“I have news for you: There is no money,” he said in a phone interview. “We’re not like Vladimir Putin, trying to hide money.”

The most recent Mossack Fonseca information of December 2015 shows the company remains active, registered on behalf of the Fialkoffs in the British Virgin Islands by a Hong Kong-based consulting company on June 6, 2012. Brett Failkoff acknowledged the company is still “legally alive” but said it does not – nor has it ever – conducted any business.

Gabrielle Fialkoff, a longtime friend of de Blasio, was finance director for Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, which de Blasio managed. After serving as Haskell’s president and chief operating officer, she chaired de Blasio’s inauguration and led New York’s unsuccessful bid to host the Democratic National Convention in 2016.

She has been a regular donor to Democratic candidates, including Clinton, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in politics. She also donated between $250 and $1,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Her father donated to Clinton as well. Her brother contributed money to Republicans, including presidential candidates Ben Carson and Rand Paul.

Another connection is Giustra, the director of UrAsia Energy Ltd, a British Virgin Islands offshore company registered in May 2005.

The company wanted to “conduct uranium exploration, development, production and marketing operations and related activities in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan,” according to a draft of the shareholders’ agreement.

UrAsia, based in British Columbia, Canada, finalized a deal in September 2005 to buy uranium mines for $500 million in Kazakhstan, according to published reports.

The deal came after Giustra joined Bill Clinton in Kazakhstan for the launch of a Clinton Foundation health initiative and dined with him and Kazakhstan’s president, among others. The timing prompted questions about whether Bill Clinton played any role in the agreement. Giustra denied that, saying it came after months of negotiations.

The following year, Giustra, who is also involved in filmmaking and founded Lionsgate Entertainment, made a donation of more than $30 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to published reports.

In total, Giustra has committed $100 million to the foundation, according to at least one report, though foundation records don’t give an exact amount, saying only that he is one of the largest individual donors giving more than $25 million. In 2007, he started an affiliated charity that bears his name and initially kept its donors secret despite a 2008 agreement between the Clintons and the Obama administration to make public foundation contributors.

Bill Clinton has flown around the globe on Giustra’s plane, sometimes with him, including to Kazakhstan.

Messages left for Giustra on his cell phone and by email and at several of his companies were not returned.

Former fugitive billionaire Marc Rich’s name doesn’t appear in the Panama Papers, but his company does. The Bahamas offshore Industrial Petroleum Limited was registered in 1992, established by the commodities firm Glencore International in Switzerland, inactivated in 2001.

The allegations against Rich, who died in 2013, ranged from tax evasion to trading with Iran despite bans to selling oil to South Africa’s apartheid government. He fled to Switzerland in 1983, but before the pardon, his ex-wife Denise made a $450,000 donation to Clinton’s presidential library in Little Rock.

Rich’s business partners appear in the data too. And they also give generously to the Clinton Foundation.

Sergei Kurzin, a Russian engineer and investor, appears in a draft shareholders agreement in partnership with Giustra in the British Virgin Islands offshore UrAsia Energy Ltd. Kurzin worked closely with Rich in the 1990s looking for opportunities in the former Soviet Union when it was opened to mining and oil investment.

Kurzin, who has given the Clinton Foundation between $50,000 and $100,000, appears in the Panama Papers as the director and chairman of various oil companies. Kurzin was also a partner in the uranium deal involving Giustra.

In a 2009 interview with Forbes, the British-Russian dual citizen boasted of giving generously to a Clinton-Giustra initiative, noting: “I wrote a check for a million dollars. I don’t think you can call it a small amount.”

Messages left for Kurzin were not returned this weekend.

Also in the Panama Papers is Ronald Chagoury, who along with brother Gilbert leads the Chagoury Group, a Nigerian family-run construction business. The brothers were associated with Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha, who died in 1998, and did business with Glencore and Rich, according to news reports.

Ronald Chagoury appears in the Panama Papers as the main shareholder of Echo Art Ltd. in the British Virgin Islands.

In 2009, the Chagoury Group pledged $1 billion in coastal erosion projects to the Clinton Global Initiative, an offshoot of the foundation, according to the initiative's website.

The Chagoury Group is building Eko Atlantic, a peninsula city adjacent to Lagos that will be reclaimed from the Atlantic Ocean. The company’s website cites the Clinton Global Initiative’s praise for it as an “environmentally conscious city” under construction.

Gilbert Chagoury’s ties to the Clintons stretch back years. He has given to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns and has donated between $1 million to $5 million to Clinton Foundation, foundation records show. In 2003 he organized a trip to the Caribbean where Bill Clinton was paid $100,000 for a speech.

Messages left for the Chagourys were not returned this weekend.

Another businessman in the Panama papers, Ng, is listed as a shareholder of two British Virgin Islands companies – South South News International Group Ltd in May 2010 and GOLUCK Ltd. in 2004.

He leads a real estate development company in Macau, China, and is one of the world’s wealthiest people. He was accused in 1996 of sending more than $1.1 million to a Little Rock restaurant owner who then contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic National Committee, according to a 1998 Senate committee investigation.

The restaurant owner, Charlie Trie, pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws. Ng was not charged. Another congressional report criticized Ng and others for failing to cooperate during the investigation.

Published reports say Ng visited the White House 10 times from 1994 to 1996, had his photograph taken with Bill and Hillary Clinton, sat beside Bill Clinton at an event at a Washington hotel, and rode in an elevator with Hillary Clinton.

Last year, Ng was charged with bribing a United Nations official and lying about what he was doing with $4.5 million in cash he brought into the U.S. over two years. Investigators say instead of spending it at casinos or on art, antiques or real estate, he used the money for bribes as he sought investments in Antigua and China. Another man listed in the same criminal complaint is president of the New York-based South South News, the same name of the British Virgin Islands company.

Ng’s lawyer, Kevin Tung, has said that his charges are based on a misunderstanding. Tung, Benjamin Brafman and Hugh Mo, two others who are or have represented Ng, did not respond to requests for comment.

In 2011, Sanders predicted in a Senate speech that the Panama trade deal would make it easier for the wealthy to hide their cash in Panama.

“I wish I had been proven wrong about this, but it has now come to light that the extent of Panama’s tax avoidance scams is even worse than I had feared,” he said in a statement earlier this month.

Hillary Clinton had opposed the deal in 2008 when she was running for president. But later, as secretary of state, she helped push the agreement through Congress. Her supporters, however, say that the trade pact did not open the door to additional tax evasion.

A Democrat-controlled Senate approved the trade deal. In October 2012, then-Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., lauded the deal’s “strong language to crack down on tax evasion and money-laundering in Panama.”

Both Clinton and Sanders have vowed to go after Americans who try to hide their wealth.

Clinton said she would shut down what she called the private tax system for the wealthy while Sanders has said he would end the trade deal with Panama within six months and investigate U.S. banks, corporations and individuals stashing their cash in Panama to avoid taxes.

“We’re going after all these scams and make sure that everyone pays their fair share here in America,” she said. “I’m going to hold them accountable, and we’re going to have a special effort to track all these resources wherever they might lead.”

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/panama ... rs-n557246

IRS Urges Americans: Come Clean Now, Before We Read Panama Papers

U.S. officials revealed to NBC News that they have taken part in two global meetings about the Panama Papers to plan how to use the huge trove of leaked documents to catch criminals — and urged Americans to come clean now before illegal activity is discovered.

Last week's discussions in Paris and Washington between IRS and Treasury officials and their counterparts from around the world are the first evidence of U.S. involvement in the growing international coalition eager to analyze and use the data about more than 214,000 offshore companies listed by Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

In a statement to NBC News, the IRS acknowledged participating in a "special project meeting" of JITSIC, the Joint International Tax Shelter Information and Collaboration network, about the papers in Paris last week.

The IRS also encouraged any U.S. citizens and companies that may have money in offshore accounts to contact the agency now before any possible illegal activity on their part is identified. According to media reports, the documents contain information on potentially thousands of U.S. citizens and firms that have at least an indirect connection to offshore accounts affiliated with Mossack Fonseca. Many other firms provide similar services, and the Treasury Department estimated last year that more than $300 billion dollars of illicit proceeds are generated in the United States annually, with criminals using such companies here and abroad to launder funds.

"People hiding assets offshore should recognize the continued changes and progress in the international tax arena," the IRS said. "More than ever, their best option remains to come forward voluntarily and participate in the IRS Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program."

The 11.5 million confidential documents, leaked to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, provide detailed information about how criminals, corrupt heads of state, celebrities and others have for decades been using secret hideaways in tax havens to launder money, evade taxes and hide other suspected criminal behavior.

Earlier, U.S. federal agents and prosecutors told NBC News that they had begun to mobilize in an effort to obtain and use the Panama Papers to bolster existing criminal investigations and prosecutions and to launch new ones.

The JITSIC meeting took place Wednesday at the Organisation (cq) for Economic Co-Operation and Development, and brought together senior tax officials from more than 40 countries. They discussed "opportunities for obtaining data, co-operation and information-sharing in light of the 'Panama Papers' revelations," the OECD said in a statement.

IRS officials said they could not discuss who participated and what, specifically, was discussed. But in its statement to NBC News, the IRS described the meeting as "productive and timely" and said "governments around the world are working together cooperatively" to respond to the information released in the Panama Papers, with JITSIC playing a coordinating role.

"We will be closely monitoring the situation along with our international tax administration partners as we determine what steps to take to ensure compliance with U.S. tax laws and meet our shared global interests," the IRS added.

On Thursday, senior Treasury officials discussed the leaked documents - and the need for more information sharing and a crackdown on tax evasion - in gatherings that were part of the annual "spring meeting" in Washington of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, according to a senior Treasury official.

After those meetings, bankers and finance ministers from the world's 20 largest economies sent a warning to tax havens saying they would ramp up efforts to punish governments that continue to hide billions of dollars in offshore accounts.

"We need to act to deal with tax shelters and the problem of international tax system permitting havens to develop," U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Friday.

Mossack Fonseca has denied any wrongdoing, saying it worked within existing laws and guidelines to help its clients set up legal accounts and that it was not aware of those accounts being used for illegal or illicit activities.

[JackRiddler]

Michael Hudson contextualizes:

counterpunch.org

Panama and the Criminalization of the Global Finance System

by Sharmini Peries

Within a week the 11 million documents called the Panama papers, published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, has become a household name. The documents are connected to the Panama law firm Mossack Fonsesca that helped establish offshore accounts for some of the wealthiest and most powerful leaders to launder money and evade taxes.

On Tuesday the police in Panama raided the Mossack Fonseca law firm to search for more documents linked to illicit activities. But what are they expecting to find, since we have already known for some time now that offshore accounts are being used to evade taxes by the banking sector, essentially white-collar crooks, at institutions such as Credit Suisse and others? But who is really behind the creation of these mechanisms and loopholes for tax evasion?

Economist Michael Hudson says Panama was created as a tax haven by certain sectors of our economy for this purpose. Hudson is a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and he’s a former balance of payments economist for Chase Manhattan bank. He is the author of many books, and the latest among them is Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy.

Michael, let’s begin with a short history of the creation of Panama and how it was bought from Colombia by the United States, and its relevance today vis-a-vis the Panama papers.

HUDSON: Well, Panama was basically carved off from Colombia in order to have a canal. It was created very much like Liberia. It’s not really a country in the sense that a country has its own currency and its own tax system. Panama uses U.S. dollars. So does Liberia.

The real story didn’t come out in the Panama papers. Reporters naturally focused on criminal people laundering money. But Panama wasn’t designed to launder money. It was designed to launder earnings – mainly by the oil and the gas industries, and the mining industry.

Panama and Liberia were long noted as having “flags of convenience.” Oil tankers and mineral ships would register themselves under the flags of Panama or Liberia, or some other country that used the U.S. dollar, not its own local currency.

I first found out about this about 40 years ago, when I was doing a study of the balance of payments of the oil industry. I went to Standard Oil, whose treasurer walked me through their balance sheet. I said, I can’t figure out whether Standard Oil and the other oil companies make their money at the producing end of oil, or at the distributing end of refining and selling it. And he said, “We make our earnings right here in New York, in the Treasurer’s office.” I asked what he meant He explained: “We sell the oil that we buy from Saudi Arabia or the Near East at very low prices to the tanker company that’s registered in Panama or Liberia.” They don’t have an income tax in their country, because they’re not a real country. The oil companies then sell the crude oil to downstream distributors in the United States or Europe – at a very, very high markup.

The markup is so high that there’s no room for profit to be made at all in refineries or gas stations selling the oil. So the oil companies don’t pay the tax collector in Europe anything. They don’t pay the American government an income tax either. All their earnings are reported as being made in the tankers, which are registered in countries that don’t tax income.

I told him that I had looked at the balance-of-payments reports from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Bulletin. I see here’s Europe, here’s Latin America, here’s Africa and Asia. I can’t find where the profit remittances are.

He told me to look at the very last line on the right hand of the country tables. It’s called “International.” I asked whether all these countries in Europe and elsewhere were international. He explained to me that “International” was a special category for what was really part of the United States abroad. They’re the offshore banking centers – Panama, Liberia, et cetera.

So I found out that basically Panama, and hence Panamanian companies, were set up initially to register oil tankers and mineral ships in order to give the appearance of taking all of their profits on the transporting the oil, or the copper or other minerals, from third world countries to the United States and Europe.

The United States went along with this. This made the oil industry tax exempt really since the 1920s. When the income tax was created in 1913 or 14, it was intended to capture economic rents. But the big rent extractors, oil and gas and minerals, got away with avoidance.

PERIES: Michael, you indicated in one of your articles that you were approached by a State Department operative in 1967. Tell us more about that experience.

HUDSON: It was from a former State Department person who had gone to work for Chase. The problem that America had in the 1960s
2KillingTheHost_Cover_rulewas the Vietnam War. The entire balance-of-payments deficit of the United States in the 1950s and the ‘60s, right down to the early ‘70s, was military spending abroad. Either the dollar was going down or the United States had to sell gold. That’s what finally led Nixon to take the dollar off gold in 1971. But for many years the United tried to fight against doing that.

So the State Department came to Chase, and said, we’ve got to figure out some way of getting enough dollars to offset the military deficit. They found the way to do it. It was to make the United States the new Switzerland of the world. I was asked to make a calculation of how much criminal capital there is in the world. How much the drug dealers made, how much the criminals all over made, how much the dictators secreted away. How much goes to Switzerland, and how can U.S. banks get this criminal money in the United States?

The end result was that the U.S. Government went to Chase and other banks and asked them to be good American citizens and make America safe for the criminals of the world, to safeguard their money to support the dollar in the process.

Earlier, Chase had been asked to create a bank in Saigon so that the army and other people wouldn’t have to use French banks, which sent it back to France, where it ended up with General De Gaulle cashing it in for gold, Chase said, okay, we will help set up banks.

Other banks did this not to evade the law, not to break the law initially, but to be good citizens and attract crooked capital from all over the world. The same thing happened with the British West Indies – the Cayman Islands. They had declared their independence, but in order not to be a real country, in order to attract flight capital to England, they rejoined the empire as a colony so that they could serve as money laundering intermediaries. The idea was to have all of this money come to the United States or its ally Britain.

All this context can easily be traced. If you look at the money that goes into Panama and other offshore banking centers in the Caribbean, none of this money stays in Panama. It becomes “U.S. liabilities to Panama,” or other banking centers – mainly to U.S. bank branches in these regions.

PERIES: Michael, there is a question I want to ask you. Over the next few days there has been many questions raised about why there are not many Americans or even Canadians named in the leaked documents. Some speculate that this is because in the U.S. they don’t need tax havens, because it is one. States such as Nevada, Wyoming, and South Dakota are considered the new Switzerland of tax evasion. Explain how the process works, because all this is interlinked.

HUDSON: You usually have not only one or two, but often three or four centers in a “veil of tiers.” The idea is not to put money into the United States directly. Imagine you’re a Russian kleptocrat, or a Ukrainian kleptocrat, and you want to take a billion dollars and keep it safe. You’re not going to put it directly into a Delaware corporation, or a Wyoming corporation. The money is going to end up there. But if you put it right in, then the U.S. Government and the bank would say, “Wait a minute. Here is the president of Ukraine with a billion dollars, right in our banking system.”

So what you have to do is launder the money. Likewise with the Colombian drug cartel. They’re not going to put the Colombian drug cartel balance in a Delaware bank under their name. It has to go through a lot of stages. The money goes out of the Ukraine and out of Russia into Latvia, primarily via the banks of Riga. I’ve met with individuals in Riga, Americans who provide the service of setting up maybe 30 companies for the money launderer. They will send the money, say, to the British West Indies. From the British West Indies it’ll go to Panama. And then it’ll go from Panama, already being concealed, to end up in a Delaware corporation at the end of the line.

You can look in the balance-of-payments statistics and you can find liabilities of bank branches in Panama or the British West Indies or whoever, owed to the U.S. head office. You can look and see how much American stock, how many American bonds, how many American bank deposits all come from these islands. The magnitude is so enormous that this is what has been supporting the dollar.

Congress is right behind this. In the 1960s it recognized that basically, criminals are the most liquid people in the world. They don’t want to tie down their money and property, because property can be seen, it’s visible. Finance in the balance of payments reports is called “Invisibles.” If you’re a criminal, you want to have your finance invisible in order to keep it safe. And the safest investment is U.S. Treasury bonds.

So there was an argument in Congress in the 1960s: Do we want to have 15% tax withholding on the Treasury bonds, especially to foreigners? It was pointed out that most foreigners who hold Treasury bonds actually are criminals. So Congress said, we need criminal money. We are not going to withhold criminal taxes. We’re going to make crime tax-free. We’re going to tax American industry, we’re going to tax American labor, but not foreign criminals, because we need their money. So we’re not going to withhold what they hold through their fiduciary accounts in Delaware, which was the main at that time, or New York, or London branches of U.S. banks. The London branches of U.S. banks were the single major depositors and source of revenue of growth in the 1960s for Chase, Citibank and others. They were called eurodollars. The eurodollars flowing into these branches were very largely from drug dealing and arms dealing, and third world dictators in Africa and other places.

So under U.S. pressure, the international banking system was set up to facilitate the money laundering of drug capital. The reason the Americans and the Canadians were not particularly noteworthy in the law firm’s records is the Panamanian law firm’s records was that its role was to set up money laundering for foreigners, to conceal their means of getting money. But the oil industry doesn’t conceal it. The oil industry declares all of the income it gets, and the mining industry declares all the income that it gets from the Panamanian shipping companies, from the Liberian shipping companies. But because Panama and Liberia don’t have an income tax, there’s no tax liability for this. It’s stolen fair and square from the tax collector, just like California Senator Hayakawa said America had stolen Panama fair and square from Colombia.

PERIES: Wow. The big question here in all of these discussions and leaks is what are the solutions to this problem, and is it attainable at all?

HUDSON: Well, the solution is to tax companies on their worldwide earnings. If you know that a U.S. company like Standard Oil, Exxon now, makes X billion dollars earnings, you simply rule that it doesn’t matter whether you declare these in Panama or the United States. We’re going to treat the income that you declare from your Panamanian shipping company as if it is earned in the United States, and we’re going to tax it at the U.S. rate.

However, this explains why there’s not going to be a solution to money laundering. If you would solve the money laundering problem and tax companies and their worldwide earnings, you would tax Apple on all the income that it makes tax exempt in Ireland by using Ireland as a tax avoidance center, you would take on the largest vested interests in the United States – oil, gas and monopolies.

I don’t think any politician is strong enough to attract campaign contributions from these main contributors and at the same time really push to tax them. They’re going to go after the little guy who is trying to walk through the loopholes that the oil industry created a century ago. But it’s hard to go after the little guy and the small tax evaders without catching the big fish. And the big fish are the biggest corporations in the United States.

That’s why the problem is not going to be solved. It won’t be solved largely because the United States wants to support the dollar by attracting all of this crooked money, just like England wants to support sterling by making itself the flight capital center for all of the biggest criminals in the world, from the Russian kleptocrats to African dictators and Asian money launderers.

The whole financial system basically has been criminalized in the process of being militarized, to subsidize the fact that countries like the United States and Britain have heavy military budgets. This is how they finance their military budget – with money laundering by the world’s criminal class. The byproduct is to leave the largest companies tax exempt, from Apple to Exxon, right down the line.


This is an edited transcript from an interview on the Real News Network.

[Burnt Hill]

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4fi6ck/we_are_the_investigative_journalists_who_worked/

We are the investigative journalists who worked on the Panama Papers AMA!

journalistsubmitted an hour ago * by SZ_investigativ

Hello Reddit,

over a year ago, an anonymous source contacted the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and submitted encrypted internal documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that sells anonymous offshore companies around the world.

Ultimately, SZ acquired about 2.6 terabytes of data, making the leak the biggest that journalists had ever worked with. The source wanted neither financial compensation nor anything else in return, apart from a few security measures. The Süddeutsche Zeitung decided to analyze the data in cooperation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). In the past 12 months, around 400 journalists from more than 100 media organizations in over 80 countries have taken part in researching the documents.

We are three of them, and very happy to finally be able to talk about the work we did in the last year!

For further information on the Panama Papers: http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/en

Answering your questions today:
•Frederik Obermaier, Investigative Reporter, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Twitter: @f_obermaier
•Bastian Obermayer, Investigative Reporter, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Twitter: @b_obermayer
•Vanessa Wormer, Data Journalist, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Twitter: @Remrow

Proof: https://twitter.com/SZ_Investigativ/sta ... 57?lang=de

If you have information for us, please contact us at investigativ[at]sz.de or via our PGP Key: http://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=get&se ... D8CC45D096

One small favor before we start: Due to legal matters and in order to protect our source, we might not be able to answer all of your questions. But we’ll try our best to give you a look behind the scenes and tell you how we worked on the Panama Papers.

EDIT: Frederik has to leave now but Bastian and Vanessa are still here to answer your questions!

[seemslikeadream]

Panama Trade Agreement: Was Tax Evasion The Point All Along?
APRIL 19, 2016
Dave Johnson
Dave Johnson
The Bush administration negotiated the Panama free trade agreement without addressing Panama’s bank and corporate secrecy. Panama has little to “trade” with the U.S., so maybe leaving secrecy out of the agreement wasn’t an accident; it was the point. It provided a stamp of legitimacy and protections for “investors” moving their money to Panama.

Panama Trade Agreement

The Panama–United States Trade Promotion Agreement, negotiated by the Bush administration, was finalized by the Obama administration and went into effect in 2012. The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) website promotes the agreement as removing “barriers to U.S. services, including financial services.” It removed some duties and tariffs on U.S. exports and phased out others, like agricultural goods and technology products. It provided “protections” for U.S. “investors.”

Panama gave up revenue collected on imports. So what did Panama get in exchange? And why did the U.S. really put all that effort into negotiating a special “trade” agreement with one small country?

Warnings

During the debate over the agreement Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pointed out one problem. He began with this question: “No one can legitimately make the claim that approving this free trade agreement will significantly increase American jobs. Then, why would we be considering a stand-alone free trade agreement with Panama, tiny little country?”


Answering his own question, Sanders went on:

“Well, it turns out that Panama is a world leader when it comes to allowing wealthy Americans and large corporations to evade U.S. taxes by stashing their cash in offshore tax havens. And the Panama free trade agreement will make this bad situation much worse. Each and every year, the wealthiest people in our country and the largest corporations evade about $100 billion in U.S. taxes through abusive and illegal offshore tax havens in Panama and in other countries. So, according to Citizens for Tax Justice — and I quote — “A tax haven… has one of three characteristics: It has no income tax or a very low-rate income tax; it has bank secrecy laws; and it has a history of non-cooperation with other countries on exchanging information about tax matters. Panama has all three of those. … They’re probably the worst.”

Panama had “no income tax or a very low-rate income tax; it has bank secrecy laws; and it has a history of non-cooperation with other countries on exchanging information about tax matters.”

Sanders was far from alone with these warnings. At the time Public Citizen wrote of the Panama agreement:

A long list of labor, consumer, environmental, faith, family-farm and other organizations oppose the Panama FTA because of the agreement’s actual NAFTA-replicating terms.

However, the problems with the notion of a U.S. FTA with Panama extend beyond what is contained in the pact’s text. Despite Panama’s status as one of the world’s top venues for tax evasion and money laundering, the FTA does not remedy Panama’s problems with tax evasion and money laundering. In fact, if the Panama FTA were adopted, it would make these matters of bipartisan concern worse.

During the 2012 election, after the agreement went into effect, Public Citizen wrote this about the effects of the agreement:

“…the pact restricts U.S. policies now available to counter tax evasion by U.S. firms and wealthy individuals who move their money to Panama. The pact also empowers firms incorporated in Panama, including offshored U.S. corporations, to use international tribunals to demand U.S. taxpayer compensation over U.S. policies, such as anti-tax-evasion measures, that the firms claim undermine their “reasonable expectations.”

With this treaty, people moving money to Panama would be given special protections. The U.S. government would provide its stamp of approval to a country that helps wealthy people and companies in the U.S. and around the world evade taxation and disguise corporate ownership.

Those were the warnings.

Were Tax Evasion And Corporate Secrecy The Point Of The Panama Agreement?

Ending Panama’s bank and corporate secrecy was not a part of the Bush administration’s “trade” negotiations with Panama. A last-minute “side agreement” with the Obama administration did nothing to fix the problems. The agreement actually restricted the ability to do anything about Panama’s bank and corporate secrecy.

Since this was the main effect of the agreement – regardless of how it was sold to us – maybe that was the point all along.

Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, writes about this in “Panama, Trade Agreement Promises & The TPP” at The Huffington Post:

An actual review of the data … shows that the FTA seems to have incentivized more tax haven activity in Panama, not less.

… the [Panama Papers] firm increased its use of Panama to shelter its clients’ assets at the very time that the trade pact talks were gearing up. … the firm began to shift to Panama as a prime tax haven venue in 2003, the year the Bush administration notified Congress it intended to start FTA negotiations. By the time talks were formally launched in 2004, the firm’s use of Panama had doubled. When the pact was concluded in 2006, the Panama number had tripled.

Wallach explains how the free trade agreement (FTA) with Panama consolidated that country’s position as a place for the wealthy and corporations to go to evade taxes and transparency:

The standard U.S. FTA model forbids limits on inflows or outflows of capital, providing security for those seeking to stash funds offshore. It also provides additional foreign investor protections that have been interpreted to require signatories to compensate an investor if the government changes policies, for instance its secrecy and tax haven laws, on which investors relied in making investments.

Tax evasion and corporate secrecy, maybe that was the point all along.

It is time to reform our country’s entire trade policy process. The result of our trade policies so far are tax evasion; jobs shipped out of the country; companies empowered to threaten workers with moving their jobs out of the country, too, if they ask for raises and benefits; corporations granted special courts with which to overrule regulations and protections …

So far it looks like the point of the whole game is helping the wealthy and corporations evade the borders of our democracy. So far it looks like maybe that was the point all along.

[seemslikeadream]

The Invisibility of U.S. Oligarchs: The Case of Penny Pritzker

Posted on Apr 20, 2016

By Sam Husseini



U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. (Zixi Wu / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

This post originally ran on Sam Husseini’s website.

Other countries, not the U.S., have oligarchs apparently.

Billionaire and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker came and went to the National Press Club with hardly a tough question on Monday—see video and PDF.

I’d submitted several questions, but first a word on the choreography of the event: Virtually every “news maker” event I recall seeing at the Press Club had the speaker at the head table which is on a stage a few feet up, speaking at a podium. This event, it was just her and the moderator, Press Club President Thomas Burr on two cushy chairs on the stage, with the “head table” below them. Whether this was to elevate the two of them, save her the trouble of having prepared remarks, a new thing, an attempt to cast the billionaire in a more casual light—inspired by Davos type events—I don’t know. But it was weird.

Speaking of choreography, on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue around the same time, several hundred people were arrested at the Capitol Building as part of the “Democracy Spring” and “Democracy Awakening” actions. It seemed odd to me, protests happening, with “arrests” as part of a very planned action, aimed in part against money in politics, while the very personification of big business advocacy in government received virtually no scrutiny.

It’s not just her job, or that she and her family is incredibly rich. It’s that Pritzker enriched herself by crashing a bank with sub-prime loans, causing 1,400 people to lose their savings. In addition, a relation of hers was mentioned in the Panama Papers. So while so many were breathlessly reporting on associates of official bad guys like Putin being mentioned in the Panama Papers, hardly a soul noted the Pritzker connection. Finally, and perhaps most incredibly, Forbes several years ago did an investigation in to the Pritzker family and found that they set up shell companies decades ago in ways that would be illegal now. It’s in a sense not just oligarchy, it’s aristocracy. A newly rich person can’t do what they’ve done, according to Forbes. [See a summery off each of these issues, based on investigations by Tim Anderson, Dennis Bernstein, Stephane Fitch and McClatchy.]


And off shore shell companies were in the news of late. Oxfam just released a report claiming: “Tax dodging by multinational corporations costs the U.S. approximately $111 billion each year and saps an estimated $100 billion every year from poor countries” [PDF]. A prior report from the Tax Justice Network would seem to indicate that this was a severe under estimate. That found that as of 2010, the super-rich are hiding at least $21 trillion in accounts outside their home countries [PDF].

I’d at least expected a mild question about off shore activity—and figured she’d talk about how the Obama administration is allegedly now making moves to stop tax inversions.
But there was nothing about any of this. At the news maker event, I wrote a question on a card on the nub of the issues at play, was something like this: “A relation of yours—Liesel Pritzker Simmons—is mentioned in the recently released Panama Papers. Do you have comment on the extent of off shore shell companies—especially given your family uses them through grandfather clauses in ways that would not be legal for anyone new now?”


That didn’t get asked, nor did several I’d submitted in an email prior to the to the Press Club president by email:

The Pope—and Bernie Sanders—talk about a “moral economy”—that it’s inherently unjust if a very few individuals and families have enormous wealth while billions on the planet have virtually nothing. Your family of course is enormously wealthy—What do you think of that? (for overview, “Panama Papers: Pritzkers, American Oligarchs”.)

You have been charged with crashing Superior Bank in Chicago with a subprime mortgage scheme, resulting in 1,400 people losing their savings. How do you respond to these charges? (”Obama’s Subprime Conflit” and Bloomberg “Pritzker’s Superior Bank Subprime Losses Blemish Resume”)

Do you argue that your massive fundraising efforts for Obama in 2008 and 2012 had nothing to do with him appointing you as Sec of Commerce? (See from Public Campaign “Penny Pritzker, Not Just an Obama Donor.”)

The name of Liesel Pritzker Simmons appears in the recently released Panama Papers, a relative who sued much of the rest of the family for allegedly trying to cheat her. But what’s perhaps notable about your family, as Forbes has written, is that you set up shell companies decades ago and thus can do things because of grandfather clauses that are not legal any more. Is that moral?

Forbes—which estimates your net worth at 2.3 billion—had specific questions for you for—

* ‘Tell us from the very, very beginning: What led to your being paid $53.6 million in “consultant” income by your family’s offshore trusts in 2012?

* ‘Did your family’s carve-up finally produce significant tax payments?

* ‘Why are you your own biggest debtor?

* ‘Why is even your house in an LLC?

* ‘How do you rack up $250,000 on an American Express card?’

—

On trade issues and the TPP—how do you respond to—

Zahara Heckscher, a breast cancer patient and writer: “If ratified, the TPP would lock in monopolies for certain new medicines, biological medicines that help people like me stay alive. Monopolies allow drug companies to increase prices dramatically, and high prices decrease access.”


Lori Wallach of Public Citizen: “The aggregate U.S. goods trade deficit with Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners is more than five times as high as before the deals went into effect, while the aggregate trade deficit with non-FTA countries has actually fallen.”

Manuel Pérez-Rocha of the Institute for Policy Studies—who has argued that NAFTA has pushed many Mexicans to migrate to the US since it has become an “engine of poverty in Mexico” since it has gutted family farming in Mexico, as wells as mom and pop stores, and indigenous industry.

The questions that did get asked were fairly pedestrian and quite friendly: “Can you give us your perspective on the trade and trade agreements, in particular, and any fears about possible trade wars that have been talked about? ... What is the Commerce Department doing with the U.S. and international partners to combat the cyber threat to the United States businesses? ... Intellectual property of U.S. businesses in many forms; music, movies, have been stolen and stolen frequently. How much does this cost American businesses? [Prizker: ‘I don’t have the exact number in front of me.’] ... Do you believe that China is manipulating its currency to gain a trade advantage, and do you see any other countries doing that?” The toughest question was probably “We’ve added nearly $10 trillion to the U.S. debt in the last seven, eight years. Is this a ticking time bomb for the U.S. and the global economy?” See video and PDF.

The last question was: “I understand you are a marathon runner. I would like to know, and our audience, I think, would like to know, what is the secret for training for a marathon?”

It turned out Pritzker didn’t have to run from much in her appearance at the Press Club.

[Ziggin' and a Zaggin']

fuck the Panama Papers ...I want D.C. Madam names!

With all due respect, ... NO! I don't give a rat's ass about marital cheating. I do care about tax cheats though when it means that the "rest of us" have to pay more taxes because the ultra-rich don't pay any.