01-11-2009, 08:10 PM
Jan Klimkowski Wrote:America's onshore tax haven....
Quote:Obama faces criticism as US state tops secrecy table
Delaware named as world's most secret financial location
Nick Mathiason The Observer, Sunday 1 November 2009
Delaware in the US is officially the world's most secret financial location. The finding will embarrass President Barack Obama as the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Bill he supports comes before Congress this week.
In the first ever detailed ranking of 60 of the world's financial hubs, published today, Delaware was found wanting in 11 out of 12 secrecy indicators. London was also ranked in the top five most secretive jurisdictions.
The east coast state of Delaware, home to half of all America's quoted companies, fails to place on public record details of trusts, company accounts and, crucially, the identity of beneficial owners – the people who receive the profits. It also allows companies to relocate to other countries, leaving minimal trace.
The opaque nature of Delaware is seen as America's weak link in its fight against tax evasion, the financing of terrorism and drug money laundering. Both the FBI and the Financial Action Task Force, the high-level international body set up to combat money laundering and terrorist finance, have repeatedly expressed concern at the way some US companies use the state as a base from which to operate under their radar.
John Christensen, director of the Tax Justice Network and one of the authors of the report, said: "Secrecy is a core feature of the global financial system. Jurisdictions compete with each other to provide it, in order to attract financial flows. But this comes at a price. Financial secrecy provides cover for money laundering, tax evasion and avoidance, insider trading, terrorist financing, embezzlement, Ponzi schemes, illicit financial flows, fraud and much more."
Delaware's assistant secretary of state, Rick Geisenberger, told the Observer that companies did not choose the state for secrecy but for the sophistication of its judicial system. He admitted that Delaware was under pressure to amend beneficial ownership disclosure laws.
The revelations will heighten calls for the US to get its own house in order before clamping down on tax havens. The Stop Tax Haven Abuse Bill, which seeks to deter the use by Americans of tax havens, is attracting intense opposition from US business interests.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/...-tax-haven
Dick Starnes once told me a lovely story about RFK's attitude to Cornpone (LBJ), the punchline of which concluded with RFK interjecting - on the possibility of Landslide undergoing an epiphany on Vietnam - "It's never going to happen." And it's unlikely when it comes to Obama, the elite puppet, & Delaware, for reasons set out below:
Quote:“Late one windy spring afternoon in 1971 a small group of men gathered unobtrusively in a plush suite at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel. The host for the evening was Professor Harry Howe Ransom of Vanderbilt University, author of The Intelligence Establishment…He was then doing research for another book on the subject and had invited the others for drink and dinner, hoping to gather some new material from his guests…Someone brought up the CIA’s use of front companies.
‘Oh, you mean the Delaware corporations,’ said Robert Amory, Jr., a former Deputy Director of the CIA. ‘Well, if the agency wants to do something in Angola, it needs the Delaware corporations.’
By ‘Delaware Corporations’ Amory was referring to what are more commonly known in the agency as ‘proprietary corporations’ or, simply, ‘proprietaries.’ These are ostensibly private institutions and businesses which are in fact financed and controlled by the CIA. From behind their commercial and sometimes non-profit covers, the agency is able to carry out a multitude of clandestine activities…Many of the firms are legally incorporated in Delaware because of that state’s lenient regulation of corporations…”
Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, (NY: Dell, Feb 1975), Chapter 5, “Proprietary Organizations,” pp.146-7.