Murdoch

[Magda Hassan]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5724[/ATTACH]

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has blasted an $880 million hole in the federal budget after winning a long-running battle with the Tax Office over deductions.

The huge windfall, revealed in the US group's accounts a week ago in New York, was at a time when Murdoch's newspapers were critical of the budget and called for deep cuts, MacroBusiness reports.
The drama over the payout, one of the largest cash payments made by the Tax Office, played out behind the scenes during the federal election.
The ATO had refused to allow the deduction, which relates to a 1989 restructure within Mr Murdoch's media empire in which no money changed hands.
News Corp defeated the ATO in the Full Federal Court in July and the money began flowing to the company over the Christmas break.
The payout represents a significant proportion of the $16.8 billion deterioration in the federal budget announced by Treasurer Joe Hockey in December. It all but wipes out $1.1 billion in savings announced by Mr Hockey when he unveiled the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook on December 17.
Hockey did not mention the payout at the time, instead blaming the budget's fiscal deterioration'' on a softer economic outlook, downgraded exports forecasts and the previous Labor government.

[Magda Hassan]

The Australian Treasurer will not comment on the existence of a $880 million prenuptial agreement between Mr Murdoch and his foprmer wife Wendi Deng.

[Magda Hassan]

Rupert Murdoch's empire receives $882m tax rebate from Australia

Payment revealed by News Corp in US likely to reignite debate over how much tax is paid by international corporations


Martin Farrer

• theguardian.com, Monday 17 February 2014 14.00 AEST
  
• Rupert Murdoch delivers the 2013 Lowy lecture in Sydney.
  

Rupert Murdoch's media group received a $882m tax rebate from Australia last year in a revelation that is likely to reignite the debate over how much tax is paid by international corporations.
The payment by a "foreign tax authority" was revealed in accounts published by News Corporation in the US earlier this month and related to a $2bn claim by News Corp for historic losses on currency transactions by its Australian subsidiaries.
The payment was estimated to be worth $600m to News Corp but the final figure grew to $882m after interest charges.
It was one of the the biggest single factors in the multi-billion dollar federal budget blowout announced by Australian treasurer Joe Hockey in December.
The Australian Tax Office wanted to challenge the claim but was overruled by the Federal Court of Appeal in July last year, the Australian Financial Review reported on Monday.
The refund amounted to one of the largest ever faced by the ATO but a decision over whether to appeal against the ruling came amid the build-up to the federal election with News Corp's Australian titles launching a series of attacks on the then Labor government.
The ATO decided not to appeal the case after consideration by "senior officers and after seeking legal opinion".
"All decisions on whether to appeal a court decision are made by senior technical officers. Careful consideration is given to a range of factors, including the costs to all parties of proceeding and the importance of the particular case to clarifying the law for the benefit of the wider community," an ATO spokesman said.
"The ATO seeks external legal counsel opinion on the prospects of success for an appeal before making a decision.
News Corp reported in its half yearly accounts published on 6 February that "a foreign tax authority'' paid $882m which included the original tax and interest.
"The Company previously filed refund claims for certain losses in a foreign jurisdiction that had been subject to litigation.
"In the first quarter of fiscal 2014, the foreign tax authority determined that it would not appeal a favorable court ruling received by the company in July 2013 and therefore, a portion of the uncertain matter was resolved."
Although the paper loss on the currency transactions involved the Australian businesses and dated back to 1989, the tax refund was paid to Murdoch's newly created entertainment business 21st Century Fox under the terms of the split of the empire last year, the accounts said.
The Australian Treasury was forced to include the sum in its December budget update which forecast a deficit for this fiscal year of $47bn a $17bn increase on earlier forecasts.
This led the AFR to calculate that the News Corp payment was the "single biggest factor in the budget deterioration" in the four months between August and December.
Announcing the blowout, Hockey warned Australians to expect spending cuts. The deficit was "not sustainable" and that "doing nothing is not an option for Australia".

News Corp declined to comment.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/fe...CMP=twt_fd

[Magda Hassan]

UK still covering up for Murdoch.

The British Government has suppressed the release of secret documents relating to Rupert Murdoch's dealings with a French-Australian conman and KGB operative four decades ago.
The British Cabinet Office, which includes Prime Minister David Cameron, last week blocked the release under British freedom of information laws of a security classified file dealing with the Australian political controversy known as "The Iraqi money affair".
The affair nearly cost Gough Whitlam the leadership of the Labor Party, but ended with the newspaper proprietor paying the former prime minister a massive defamation settlement.
Rupert Murdoch, 1977.

The British file, created in early 1976 by the office of former British Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson is entitled "Claim by Rupert Murdoch (businessman and media magnate) that Gough Whitlam (Australian Prime Minister 1972-1975) was asked by Iraq about dealings between the USA, Syria, Israel and Egypt".
According to the Cabinet Office, declassification of the file nearly four decades later would still "have an adverse effect on and severely damage" Britain's relations with several countries.
The National Archives has advised Fairfax Media that the Cabinet Office took the view that "the possible damage to UK interests is significant and of a high degree of likelihood".
Bill Hartley and Gough Whitlam in 1976

The British decision is surprising given that the National Archives of Australia has released a large number of records relating to the affair, a controversy focused on Whitlam's unsuccessful attempt to secure a massive political donation from the Iraqi Baath Party to fund Federal Labor's 1975 election campaign.

At the urging of a prominent left-wing member of Labor's federal executive, Bill Hartley, Whitlam agreed to use a French-Australian businessman and anti-Israeli publisher, Henri Fischer, as an intermediary to raise funds from Arab governments.
Soviet intelligence records released in Britain last year have now revealed Fischer was a KGB operative, codenamed "Kirk".
According to notes by the former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin, Fischer approached the Soviet embassy in Canberra in 1970 and "a secret trip to Moscow was organised for him where he spoke of American corporations secretly funding the anti-Soviet operations of various organisations in the USA and other countries".
At the time the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation detected Fischer's clandestine contact with Ivan Stenin, the senior KGB officer in Canberra, but a subsequent counter-espionage investigation proved inconclusive.
However, ASIO later found that Hartley, a strident political advocate for Palestine, was paid thousands of dollars by the Iraqi intelligence service which then worked closely with the KGB.
Fischer travelled to Baghdad in November 1975 with a letter of introduction written by Whitlam and returned to Australia with two Iraqi officials who met the Labor leader in the week before the December federal election.
Fischer, then in financial difficulty, subsequently stole $US500,000 (more than $2.8 million in today's value) that the Iraqis transferred to a Hong Kong bank with the intention that the businessman would launder it to help pay off Labor's campaign debts.
To protect himself Fischer moved to muddy the waters by contacting Murdoch at News Corporation's London headquarters and leaking what he described as the "major scandal" of Whitlam's dealings with the Iraqis.
Murdoch's notes of meetings with Fischer in February 1976, which he later passed to the Australian government, state that "Fischer told me that two Iraqi officials had come to Australia the chief of Iraqi Intelligence together with a personal emissary of the dictator [Saddam Hussein] … [The] Arabs had asked for top-secret information on the Kissinger-Rabin and Kissinger-Assad talks, that Whitlam had arranged for them to receive this ... Fischer also alleged that Whitlam gave them reassurances relating to [strongly pro-Israel ACTU president Bob] Hawke's prospects in the Labor Party".
Murdoch's subsequent reporting in The Australian newspaper generated a political furore that nearly cost Whitlam the Labor leadership, but the News Corporation chief overreached when his newspapers reported Fischer's unsubstantiated claim that the Iraqi money had been received by the Labor Party when in fact it had not.
Fischer's claim that Whitlam agreed to provide the Iraqis with secret information on Middle East peace talks was also a fabrication. The still secret British file shows that this allegation, which was not immediately made public, also found its way to the British government either via Murdoch or the Australian government.
The British Cabinet Office says the still secret file contains "unsubstantiated claims" involving several countries.
Murdoch eventually settled a defamation action by Whitlam for what was reported at the time as a "six figure sum".

http://www.smh.com.au/national/rupert-mu...43fr7.html