Panama Papers

[David Guyatt]

More evidence of US complicity in this hack suggested by the below Bloomberg article: "launder your money sir?" Visit my brand new Casino in Reno.

American exceptionalism and the rules of the game:

One Rule to Guide Them
One Rule to Find Them
One Rule to Bring Them All
And In the Darkness Bind Them

The World's Favorite New Tax Haven Is the United States

Moving money out of the usual offshore secrecy havens and into the U.S. is a brisk new business.

Jesse Drucker JesseDrucker
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January 27, 2016 5:01 AM GMT
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Shifting money from offshore secrecy havens to the U.S. has become a brisk business for Rothschild & Co. One Turkish client is moving assets from the Bahamas to Nevada.

Illustration: Steph Davidson

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Last September, at a law firm overlooking San Francisco Bay, Andrew Penney, a managing director at Rothschild & Co., gave a talk on how the world's wealthy elite can avoid paying taxes.
His message was clear: You can help your clients move their fortunes to the United States, free of taxes and hidden from their governments.
Some are calling it the new Switzerland.


Featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, Feb. 1, 2016. Subscribe now.
Photo Illustration: Justin Metz for Bloomberg Businessweek; Reno: Matt Licari/Gallerystock
After years of lambasting other countries for helping rich Americans hide their money offshore, the U.S. is emerging as a leading tax and secrecy haven for rich foreigners. By resisting new global disclosure standards, the U.S. is creating a hot new market, becoming the go-to place to stash foreign wealth. Everyone from London lawyers to Swiss trust companies is getting in on the act, helping the world's rich move accounts from places like the Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands to Nevada, Wyoming, and South Dakota.
"How ironicno, how perversethat the USA, which has been so sanctimonious in its condemnation of Swiss banks, has become the banking secrecy jurisdiction du jour," wrote Peter A. Cotorceanu, a lawyer at Anaford AG, a Zurich law firm, in a recent legal journal. "That giant sucking sound' you hear? It is the sound of money rushing to the USA."
Rothschild, the centuries-old European financial institution, has opened a trust company in Reno, Nev., a few blocks from the Harrah's and Eldorado casinos. It is now moving the fortunes of wealthy foreign clients out of offshore havens such as Bermuda, subject to the new international disclosure requirements, and into Rothschild-run trusts in Nevada, which are exempt.
The U.S. "is effectively the biggest tax haven in the world" Andrew Penney, Rothschild & Co.
The firm says its Reno operation caters to international families attracted to the stability of the U.S. and that customers must prove they comply with their home countries' tax laws. Its trusts, moreover, have "not been set up with a view to exploiting that the U.S. has not signed up" for international reporting standards, said Rothschild spokeswoman Emma Rees.

Others are also jumping in: Geneva-based Cisa Trust Co. SA, which advises wealthy Latin Americans, is applying to open in Pierre, S.D., to "serve the needs of our foreign clients," said John J. Ryan Jr., Cisa's president.
Trident Trust Co., one of the world's biggest providers of offshore trusts, moved dozens of accounts out of Switzerland, Grand Cayman, and other locales and into Sioux Falls, S.D., in December, ahead of a Jan. 1 disclosure deadline.
"Cayman was slammed in December, closing things that people were withdrawing," said Alice Rokahr, the president of Trident in South Dakota, one of several states promoting low taxes and confidentiality in their trust laws. "I was surprised at how many were coming across that were formerly Swiss bank accounts, but they want out of Switzerland."




Why the Wealthy Are Moving Their Money Into the U.S.
Rokahr and other advisers said there is a legitimate need for secrecy. Confidential accounts that hide wealth, whether in the U.S., Switzerland, or elsewhere, protect against kidnappings or extortion in their owners' home countries. The rich also often feel safer parking their money in the U.S. rather than some other location perceived as less-sure.
"I do not hear anybody saying, I want to avoid taxes,' " Rokahr said. "These are people who are legitimately concerned with their own health and welfare."
No one expects offshore havens to disappear anytime soon. Swiss banks still hold about $1.9 trillion in assets not reported by account holders in their home countries, according to Gabriel Zucman, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Nor is it clear how many of the almost 100 countries and other jurisdictions that have signed on will actually enforce the new disclosure standards, issued by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a government-funded international policy group.
There's nothing illegal about banks luring foreigners to put money in the U.S. with promises of confidentiality as long as they are not intentionally helping to evade taxes abroad. Still, the U.S. is one of the few places left where advisers are actively promoting accounts that will remain secret from overseas authorities.

Illustration: Steph Davidson
Rothschild's Reno office is at the forefront of that effort. "The Biggest Little City in the World" is not an obvious choice for a global center of capital flight. If you were going to shoot a film set in Las Vegas circa 1971, you would film it in Reno. Its casino hotels tower above the bail bondsmen across the street, available 24/7, as well as pawnshops stocked with an array of firearms. The pink neon lights at casinos like Harrah's and the Eldorado still burn bright. But these days, their floors are often empty, with travelers preferring to gamble in Las Vegas, an hour's flight away.
The offices of Rothschild Trust North America LLC aren't easy to find. They're on the 12th floor of Porsche's former North American headquarters building, a few blocks from the casinos. (The U.S. attorney's office is on the sixth floor.) Yet the lobby directory does not list Rothschild. Instead, visitors must go to the 10th floor, the offices of McDonald Carano Wilson LLP, a politically connected law firm. Several former high-ranking Nevada state officials work there, as well as the owner of some of Reno's biggest casinos and numerous registered lobbyists. One of the firm's tax lobbyists is Robert Armstrong, viewed as the state's top trusts and estates attorney, and a manager of Rothschild Trust North America.
The trust company was set up in 2013 to cater to international families, particularly those with a mix of assets and relatives in the U.S. and abroad, according to Rothschild. It caters to customers attracted to the "stable, regulated environment" of the U.S., said Rees, the Rothschild spokeswoman.
"We do not offer legal structures to clients unless we are absolutely certain that their tax affairs are in order; both clients themselves and independent tax lawyers must actively confirm to us that this is the case," Rees said.
The managing director of the Nevada trust company is Scott Cripps, an amiable California tax attorney who used to run the trust services for Bank of the West, now part of French financial-services giant BNP Paribas SA. Cripps explained that moving money out of traditional offshore secrecy jurisdictions and into Nevada is a brisk new line of business for Rothschild.
"There's a lot of people that are going to do it," said Cripps. "This added layer of privacy is kicking them over the hurdle" to move their assets into the U.S. For wealthy overseas clients, "privacy is huge, especially in countries where there is corruption."
One wealthy Turkish family is using Rothschild's trust company to move assets from the Bahamas into the U.S., he said. Another Rothschild client, a family from Asia, is moving assets from Bermuda into Nevada. He said customers are often international families with offspring in the U.S.
For decades, Switzerland has been the global capital of secret bank accounts. That may be changing. In 2007, UBS Group AG banker Bradley Birkenfeld blew the whistle on his firm helping U.S. clients evade taxes with undeclared accounts offshore. Swiss banks eventually paid a price. More than 80 Swiss banks, including UBS and Credit Suisse Group AG, have agreed to pay about $5 billion to the U.S. in penalties and fines.
"I was surprised at how many were coming across that were formerly Swiss bank accounts, but they want out of Switzerland"
Those firms also include Rothschild Bank AG, which last June entered into a nonprosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice. The bank admitted helping U.S. clients hide income offshore from the Internal Revenue Service and agreed to pay an $11.5 million penalty and shut down nearly 300 accounts belonging to U.S. taxpayers, totaling $794 million in assets.
The U.S. was determined to put an end to such practices. That led to a 2010 law, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or Fatca, that requires financial firms to disclose foreign accounts held by U.S. citizens and report them to the IRS or face steep penalties.
Inspired by Fatca, the OECD drew up even stiffer standards to help other countries ferret out tax dodgers. Since 2014, 97 jurisdictions have agreed to impose new disclosure requirements for bank accounts, trusts, and some other investments held by international customers. Of the nations the OECD asked to sign on, only a handful have declined: Bahrain, Nauru, Vanuatuand the United States.
"I have a lot of respect for the Obama administration because without their first moves we would not have gotten these reporting standards," said Sven Giegold, a member of the European Parliament from Germany's Green Party. "On the other hand, now it's time for the U.S. to deliver what Europeans are willing to deliver to the U.S."
The Treasury Department makes no apologies for not agreeing to the OECD standards.
"The U.S. has led the charge in combating international tax evasion using offshore financial accounts," said Treasury spokesman Ryan Daniels. He said the OECD initiative "builds directly" on the Fatca law.
For financial advisers, the current state of play is simply a good business opportunity. In a draft of his San Francisco presentation, Rothschild's Penney wrote that the U.S. "is effectively the biggest tax haven in the world." The U.S., he added in language later excised from his prepared remarks, lacks "the resources to enforce foreign tax laws and has little appetite to do so."
Firms aren't wasting time to make the most of the current environment. Bolton Global Capital, a Boston-area financial advisory firm, recently circulated this hypothetical example in an e-mail: A wealthy Mexican opens a U.S. bank account using a company in the British Virgin Islands. As a result, only the company's name would be sent to the BVI government, while the identity of the person owning the account would not be shared with Mexican authorities.
The U.S. failure to sign onto the OECD information-sharing standard is "proving to be a strong driver of growth for our business," wrote Bolton's chief executive officer, Ray Grenier, in a marketing e-mail to bankers. His firm is seeing a spike in accounts moved out of European banks"Switzerland in particular"and into the U.S. The new OECD standard "was the beginning of the exodus," he said in an interview.
The U.S. Treasury is proposing standards similar to the OECD's for foreign-held accounts in the U.S. But similar proposals in the past have stalled in the face of opposition from the Republican-controlled Congress and the banking industry.
At issue is not just non-U.S. citizens skirting their home countries' taxes. Treasury also is concerned that massive inflows of capital into secret accounts could become a new channel for criminal money laundering. At least $1.6 trillion in illicit funds are laundered through the global financial system each year, according to a United Nations estimate.
Offering secrecy to clients is not against the law, but U.S. firms are not permitted to knowingly help overseas customers evade foreign taxes, said Scott Michel, a criminal tax defense attorney at Washington, D.C.-based Caplin & Drysdale who has represented Swiss banks and foreign account holders.
"To the extent non-U.S. persons are encouraged to come to the U.S. for what may be our own tax haven' characteristics, the U.S. government would likely take a dim view of any marketing suggesting that evading home country tax is a legal objective," he said.
Rothschild says it takes "significant care" to ensure account holders' assets are fully declared. The bank "adheres to the legal, regulatory, and tax rules wherever we operate," said Rees, the Rothschild spokeswoman.
Penney, who oversees the Reno business, is a longtime Rothschild lawyer who worked his way up from the firm's trust operations in the tiny British isle of Guernsey. Penney, 56, is now a managing director based in London for Rothschild Wealth Management & Trust, which handles about $23 billion for 7,000 clients from offices including Milan, Zurich, and Hong Kong. A few years ago he was voted "Trustee of the Year" by an elite group of U.K. wealth advisers.
In his September San Francisco talk, called "Using U.S. Trusts in International Planning: 10 Amazing Feats to Impress Clients and Colleagues," Penney laid out legal ways to avoid both U.S. taxes and disclosures to clients' home countries.
In a section originally titled "U.S. Trusts to Preserve Privacy," he included the hypothetical example of an Internet investor named "Wang, a Hong Kong resident," originally from the People's Republic of China, concerned that information about his wealth could be shared with Chinese authorities.
Putting his assets into a Nevada LLC, in turn owned by a Nevada trust, would generate no U.S. tax returns, Penney wrote. Any forms the IRS would receive would result in "no meaningful information to exchange under" agreements between Hong Kong and the U.S., according to Penney's PowerPoint presentation reviewed by Bloomberg.
Penney offered a disclaimer: At least one government, the U.K., intends to make it a criminal offense for any U.K. firm to facilitate tax evasion.
Rothschild said the PowerPoint was subsequently revised before Penney delivered his presentation. The firm provided what it said was the final version of the talk, which this time excluded several potentially controversial passages. Among them: the U.S. being the "biggest tax haven in the world," the U.S.'s low appetite for enforcing other countries' tax laws, and two references to "privacy" offered by the U.S.
"The presentation was drafted in response to a request by the organizers to be controversial and create a lively debate among the experienced, professional audience," Rees said. "On reviewing the initial draft, these lines were not deemed to represent either Rothschild's or Mr. Penney's view. They were therefore removed."

I am moire convinced than ever that the purpose of this had several threads to it. One was to damage enemies, and another was to eventually destroy offshore tax havens so that hot money would thereafter stream into the US to support the dollar in the future currency wars.

[David Guyatt]

Cameron, anxious to deflect attention from his outright lies last week about his offshore tricks is to announce a new law to criminalize company's who fail to stop their "staff" "facilitatating" tax evasion. The key sentence in his latest announcement is:

"That is why we will legislate this year to hold companies who fail to stop their employees facilitating tax evasion criminally liable,"

According to my reading of this the new law is almost meaningless. Firstly, wealthy tax evaders will simply switch to using a foreign company to facilitate tax evasion because the British government will have no jurisdiction over them. Secondly, what exactly does he mean by criminally liable to companies "who fail to stop their employees"? Does this mean that company directors and owners remain free to facilitate tax evasion? The choice of words he has used was clearly chosen with care, and in my interpretation it simply means that the flunkies who evade tax will be criminalized, but directors, owners and the wealthy will not be.

Hit by Panama row, UK's Cameron announces new tax evasion law in 2016

Sunday, April 10, 2016 REUTERS

• Demonstrators hold placards during a protest outside Downing Street in Whitehall, central London, Britain April 9, 2016. REUTERS/Neil Hall
  
  
• Britain's Prime Minister, David Cameron, addresses the Conservative Spring Forum in central London, Britain April 9, 2016. REUTERS/Kerry Davies/Pool
  
  
• Britain's Prime Minister, David Cameron, addresses the Conservative Spring Forum in central London, Britain April 9, 2016. REUTERS/Kerry Davies/Pool
  

LONDON (Reuters) British Prime Minister David Cameron will say on Monday that new legislation making companies criminally liable if employees aid tax evasion will be introduced this year, as he seeks to repair the damage from a week of questions about his personal finances.
Cameron published tax records on Sunday to try and defuse criticism over his handling of the fallout from the Panama Papers, in which his late father was mentioned for setting up an offshore fund.
After four carefully worded statements in four days, Cameron bowed to pressure and admitted that he had benefited from selling his share in his father's fund in 2010. He recognized on Saturday that he had mishandled the disclosure.
Cameron is leading efforts to persuade British voters to stay in the European Union in a June 23 referendum that the polls suggest will be tight, and the tax row has raised concerns among the "in" camp that their cause may have been damaged.
The prime minister will attempt to regain the upper hand when he appears in the House of Commons later on Monday.
"This government has done more than any other to take action against corruption in all its forms, but we will go further," Cameron will say, according to advance excerpts of his statement circulated by his Downing Street office.
"That is why we will legislate this year to hold companies who fail to stop their employees facilitating tax evasion criminally liable," he will say.
The plan had already been announced by finance minister George Osborne in March 2015, but previously the commitment was to introduce the legislation by 2020, Downing Street said.
The decision to speed up that particular measure is unlikely to satisfy Cameron's many critics in opposition parties and in some campaign groups that say Britain already has the tools it needs to crack down on tax evasion but lacks the will.
The government rejects that, saying it has brought in more than 2 billion pounds ($2.8 billion) from offshore tax evaders since 2010 and has established a registry of company beneficial ownership information due to become public in June this year.
The furor over his own finances has come at a particularly bad time for Cameron, who is due to host a global anti-corruption summit in London on May 12.
He has also been struggling with deep divisions in his Conservative Party over EU membership, and the government has been embarrassed by a senior minister's resignation, a u-turn on welfare cuts and a crisis in the British steel industry it has failed to resolve.

[Magda Hassan]

Does this mean that company directors and owners remain free to facilitate tax evasion? The choice of words he has used was clearly chosen with care, and in my interpretation it simply means that the flunkies who evade tax will be criminalized, but directors, owners and the wealthy will not be.

But of course. Can't do that to his true constituency.

[David Guyatt]

An interesting article from Counterpunch on how the Panama Papers may have been used to usher in a cashless society so that people's savings can be more easily purloined in bail-ins (and negative interest rates) to save the skins of banks that have brought about their own ruin through greed.

Note the postscript at the end of the article...

APRIL 12, 2016

The War on Savings: the Panama Papers, Bail-Ins, and the Push to Go Cashless

by ELLEN BROWN

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The bombshell publication of the "Panama Papers," leaked from a Panama law firm specializing in shell companies, has triggered both outrage and skepticism. In an April 3 article titled "Corporate Media Gatekeepers Protect Western 1% From Panama Leak," UK blogger Craig Murray writes that the whistleblower no doubt had good intentions; but he made the mistake of leaking his 11.5 million documents to the corporate-controlled Western media, which released only those few documents incriminating opponents of Western financial interests. Murray writes:

Do not expect a genuine expose of western capitalism. The dirty secrets of western corporations will remain unpublished.
Expect hits at Russia, Iran and Syria and some tiny "balancing" western country like Iceland.

Iceland, of course, was the only country to refuse to bail out its banks, instead throwing its offending bankers in jail.
Pepe Escobar calls the released Panama Papers a "limited hangout." The leak dovetails with the attempt of Transparency International to create a Global Public Beneficial Ownership Registry, which can collect ownership information from governments around the world; and with UK Prime Minister David Cameron's global anti-corruption summit next month. According to The Economist, "The Panama papers give him just the platform he needs to persuade other governments, and his own, to turn their tough talk of recent years into action."
The Daily Bell suspects a coordinated global effort linked to the push to go cashless. It's all about knowing where the money is and who owns it, in order to tax it, regulate it, "sanction" it, or confiscate it:

Without privacy, authoritarianism flourishes because it is impossible to build and expand private networks that would act as a deterrent . . . . A worldwide transparency regime virtually guarantees abuses and corruption from those in power.

This is a reason why the "cashless society" idea is such a bad one. When no one is able to use cash, financial histories will be easily available via electronic bank records.
Michael Snyder of InvestmentWatchBlog.com also links the Panama Papers with the push to go cashless:

. . . [W]ith this Panama Paper leak and all its pre-conditioning against tax havens, people aren't realizing yet that very soon, once Negative Interest Rates and Bail-Ins are being openly discussed and prepared for implementation, the whole tax haven or tax dodger discussion in the media will quickly switch from talking about corrupt billionaires and shell companies half way around the world, and instead will be talking about something much closer to home . . . .
In my strong opinion this whole thing is all part of the coming capital control war, which ties directly in with the coming transition to a biometric digital currency, the implementation of Negative Interest Rates, the rollout of large scale systemic bail-ins, and the demonization and eventual criminalization of physical assets that are outside of direct taxation control (which again would be done using the pre-conditioned guise of "tax havens", with physical precious metals and physical cash being the main targets).

War on Corruption or War on Savers?
What we may be witnessing here is the 1% going after the 10% of people who, according to German researcher Margrit Kennedy, do not need to borrow but are "net savers." Today the remaining 90% are "all borrowed up." Either they are unwilling to borrow more or the banks are unwilling to lend to them, since they are poor credit risks. Who, then, is left to feed the debt machine that feeds the 1%, and more specifically the 0.001%? The power brokers at the top seem to want it all, and today that means going after those just below them on the financial food chain. The challenge is in squeezing money from people who don't need to borrow. How to legally confiscate their savings?
Enter bail-ins, negative interest, all-digital currencies, and the elimination of "tax havens."
Bail-ins allow the largest banks to gamble with impunity with their depositors' money. If the banks make bad bets and become insolvent, they can legally confiscate the deposits to balance their books, through an "orderly resolution" scheme of the sort mandated in the Dodd-Frank Act.
Negative interest is a fee or private tax on holding funds in the bank.
Eliminating cash prevents the bank runs that these assaults on people's savings would otherwise trigger. Money that exists only as digital entries cannot be withdrawn and stored under a mattress.
Exposing tax havens shows the predators where the money is and who has title to it, facilitating its confiscation and preventing the funding of massive rebellions against confiscation.
Orchestrated at Davos
That could help explain those coordinated developments we've been seeing across the central-bank-controlled world, proliferating particularly after the January summit of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where the global elite gather to discuss the hot economic issues of the day.
According to one Morgan Stanley attendee, a notable topic this year was the need for "a rapid introduction of a cashless society so that even more negative deposit interest rates could be introduced in Europe to offset likely secular stagnation." With the use of physical cash curtailed, J.P. Morgan estimates the European Central Bank could ultimately bring interest rates as low as negative 4.5%.
"Secular stagnation," the official justification for negative interest, means a chronic shortfall in demand: not enough money chasing goods and services. Today virtually all money is created by bankswhen they make loans; and when old loans are paid off, new ones must be taken out to maintain the money supply. Central banks have traditionally dropped interest rates to stimulate this continual borrowing, but interest rates have now effectively been pushed to zero. The argument is that they can be pushed below zero but only if cash withdrawals, and hence bank runs, are not an option.
That is the argument; but as Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, observes:

The notion is that the economy's poor economic performance is not due to the failure of economic policy but to people hoarding their money. The Federal Reserve and its coterie of economists and presstitutes maintain the fiction of too much savings despite the publication of the Federal Reserve's own report that 52% of Americans cannot raise $400 without selling personal possessions or borrowing the money.

In an article titled "Exposing the Hidden Agenda of Davos 2016", Zerohedge reports on a flurry of activity during and after Davos related to the push to go cashless. But stimulating demand may just be the cover story for something darker behind this orchestrated effort.
Rescuing the Economy or the Banks?
Of greater concern at Davos than "secular stagnation" was the imminent insolvency of some major banks. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writing in January from Davos, quoted William White, former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements, who warned:

The situation is worse than it was in 2007. Our macroeconomic ammunition to fight downturns is essentially all used up.
. . . European banks have already admitted to $1 trillion of non-performing loans: they are heavily exposed to emerging markets and are almost certainly rolling over further bad debts that have never been disclosed.
The European banking system may have to be recapitalized on a scale yet unimagined, and new "bail-in" rules mean that any deposit holder above the guarantee of €100,000 will have to help pay for it. [Emphasis added.]

It seems the War on Cash is being waged, not to stimulate the economy, but to save the lucrative private banking scheme at all costs. Quelling the riots likely to result from the mass confiscation of deposits could also underly the heightened push for a global "security state" and for those "anti-corruption" measures designed to determine where the money is and who owns it.
Postscript: Bail-ins under the new 2016 European Recovery and Resolution Directive began officially today, April 10, in Austria. Ominously, it was in Austria that a major bank bankruptcy triggered the Great Depression in 1931.

[David Guyatt]

In the following Guardian story IMF chief Christine Lagarde (you remember how she got the top IMF job when Frenchman, Dominque Strauss-Kahn, was ruined in a sex scandal that was almost certainly a setup to get rid of him from being the IMF director - see HERE) puts her weight behind calls for a UN global tax body. In the event that such a UN body and such a tax is imposed, and I suspect it will be in due time, it becomes yet another important brick in the US plan for a New World Order utterly dominated by the US.

I can think of nothing more appalling than a world utterly dominated by the USA that is so committed to accruing the wealth of the world in the hands of just a few men and women (itself an old Rhodes-Milner kindergarten plan dating back a century of more) and rendering the rest of us to virtual voiceless and mindless slavery.

Imagine a US Thousand Year Reich? It's unthinkable. But it's getting closer by the day.

IMF chief talks Panama Papers fallout: time to 'think outside box' on global tax

[URL="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/11/panama-papers-imf-christine-lagarde-global-tax#img-1"]
[/URL] I think it's an area where we all have to think outside the box because there are too many boxes in that tax field and thinking outside the box might be of great interest,' said Christine Lagarde. Photograph: Richard Drew/APDavid Smith, Washington correspondent
Monday 11 April 2016 23.28 BSTLast modified on Tuesday 12 April 2016 01.19 BST

The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said it is time to "think outside the box" on global tax but warned that a proposal by Oxfam to establish a UN global tax body faces huge obstacles.
The British-based charity first put the idea forward last year, arguing that powerful countries write the rules on tax and take advantage of loopholes and offshore tax havens. It suggested that an independent entity could give everyone rich and poor an equal say.
The issue is now back in the spotlight after the Panama Papers leak exposed how the elite conceal their wealth and prompted Barack Obama to call for international tax reform to ensure that "everyone pays their fair share".
During a discussion at the World Bank's global parliamentary conference in Washington on Monday, British MP Stephen Twigg asked for reactions to the Oxfam proposal of an intergovernmental UN tax body.

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Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, replied that she had not seen it but acknowledged: "I think it's an area where we all have to think outside the box because there are too many boxes in that tax field and thinking outside the box might be of great interest."
She warned, however, that nation states would be unwilling to surrender their tax powers to the UN.
"We need to be aware of the massive hurdles and obstacles along the way because taxation for the last century or so has been defined, conceptualised, designed, implemented on a purely territorial sovereign basis. And if anything, levying taxation is considered as an attribute of sovereignty, and anything that takes away from that is going to be very strongly opposed by many countries in the world, many forces."
Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, was even more sceptical, comparing the tendency of creating new bodies to that of constantly adding extensions to holiday houses in America's Cape Cod region. "I think we have to be very careful about thinking the solution to a problem is to add on another institution," he told the gathering of international MPs.
"If you're going to add another UN institution it will require some chunk of ODA [official development assistance], we have to be realistic about where ODA is going. Official development assistance is at about $135bn, $140bn, it's been at that level for a very long time now it's not grown. I do not see your parliaments rushing to have a competition to increase taxes and increase your tax base so you can give more aid. I don't see that happening."

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This year many countries are using their ODA to pay for their own internal refugee problems instead of sending it abroad, Kim added, contending that the World Bank is already working to make taxes fairer and reduce illicit financial outflows.
The annual conference at World Bank and IMF headquarters hosts 200 parliamentarians from more than 100 countries as well as leaders from civil society and other organisations. Ahead of global economic figures due this week, Lagarde offered a cautious assessment.
"The good news is that there is recovery, there is growth," she said. "The bad news is that there's a little less than we had hoped and that particular growth is fragile and is exposed to potential risks. Those potential risks are probably stronger, higher on the horizon than what we had thought a year ago."

She identified a Chinese slowdown, lower commodity prices, monetary volatility leading to capital outflows from emerging countries to safe havens such as the US and Japan and the refugee crisis as risk factors.
Then there are "almost self-induced political risks", such as the possibility of the UK leaving the European Union which, she warned, "clearly would create not only major uncertainty but certainly have dark consequences which we are in the process of studying and figuring out".

[Magda Hassan]

Yes, the thought of a 1,000 year US Reich is nauseating nightmare material and not to be entertained for a second. They want us to think it is too much trouble to get these corporations under control. I don't think it is at all. I do expect major resistance and fight back but fuck them.

[David Guyatt]

Yes, the thought of a 1,000 year US Reich is nauseating nightmare material and not to be entertained for a second. They want us to think it is too much trouble to get these corporations under control. I don't think it is at all. I do expect major resistance and fight back but fuck them.

"Too much trouble" to get the greedy, rapacious bastards under control is enough to make us all heave, eh, Maggie. The facts are that the US and most other western governments are under the total control and direction of the 1% wealthy oligarchs - and so placing them in a fair tax status is not going to happen. Tax is for the poor and middle classes only, in order to subsidize the ruling elite -- and tax "loopholes" are created for the moneybags to avoid paying tax.

[David Guyatt]

UBS Whistleblower, Bradley Birkenfeld, joins those now damning the Panama Papers as a CIA covert operation

Swiss Bank Whistleblower Claims Panama Papers Was a CIA Operation

Michael Krieger | Posted Tuesday Apr 12, 2016 at 11:11 am

Bradley Birkenfeld is the most significant financial whistleblower of all time, so you might think he'd be cheering on the disclosures in the new Panama Papers leaks. But today, Birkenfeld is raising questions about the source of the information that is shaking political regimes around the world.
"The CIA I'm sure is behind this, in my opinion," Birkenfeld said.
From the CNBC article: Swiss Banker Whistleblower: CIA Behind Panama Papers
Last Friday, I published a post titled, Was the Panama Papers "Leak" a Russian Intelligence Operation? Here's some of what I wrote:

Initially, this seemed to be a theory worth exploring, but in the following days I've come to a far different conclusion. The primary divergence between what I currently believe and what Mr. Murray proposed is that I do not think the leaker was a genuine whistleblower motived by the public interest. I think the leaker was working on behalf of a sophisticated intelligence agency.
The fact that we seem to know nothing about "John Doe" concerns me. Say what you will about Edward Snowden, but he came out publicly shortly after his whistleblowing and offered himself up for the world to judge. His life, career and personality have been put on full display, and each and every one of us has had the opportunity to decide for ourselves whether his motivations were noble and pure or not.
With the Panama Papers' "John Doe" we are given no such opportunity, and in fact, the whole thing reads very much like a script concocted by some big budget intelligence agency. Once I started coming around to this conclusion, the obvious choice was U.S. intelligence; given the lack of implications to powerful Americans, the clownishly desperate attempts to smear Putin, and the appearance of Soros, USAID, Ford Foundation, etc, linked organizations to the reporting.
So for someone who already thinks the whole Panama Papers story stinks to high heaven, a CIA link to the release seems obvious; but is it too obvious? Perhaps.
At this point, I want to make something perfectly clear. I do not profess to know the "real story" behind the Panama Papers. The truth is, nobody knows, except for John Doe and the people he was working for (or with). The only thing I feel fairly confident about is that the story we are being fed is not the real story. The more I read and reflect upon the very minor consequences of the leak thus far, the more I become convinced this was a geopolitical play by a powerful intelligence agency. At first, I assumed it was U.S. intelligence, but Mr. Gaddy puts forth a compelling theory. If this was the work of the CIA, it was an extremely sloppy and obvious hit job. On the other hand, if this was the work of Putin for the purposes of blackmail, it's one of the most ingenious chess moves I've ever seen played on the global stage.

The main point I was trying to hammer home with that post was the fact that I did not believe the Panama Papers was an altruistic act of heroic whistleblowing, but that it was an intelligence operation. I went on to say that I thought the notion it was a Russian job was plausible merely because if it was indeed a CIA operation (as I initially suspected), we would have to accept that the agency is mind-bogglingly sloppy and clownish. Nevertheless, according to notorious Swiss bank whistleblower, Bradley Birkenfeld, this is the work of the CIA.
CNBC reports:

Bradley Birkenfeld is the most significant financial whistleblower of all time, so you might think he'd be cheering on the disclosures in the new Panama Papers leaks. But today, Birkenfeld is raising questions about the source of the information that is shaking political regimes around the world.
Birkenfeld, an American citizen, was a banker working at UBS in Switzerland when he approached the U.S. government with information on massive amounts of tax evasion by Americans with secret accounts in Switzerland. By the end of his whistleblowing career, Birkenfeld had served more than two years in a U.S. federal prison, been awarded $104 million by the IRS for his information and shattered the foundations of more than a century of Swiss banking secrecy.

In an exclusive interview Tuesday from Munich, Birkenfeld said he doesn't think the source of the 11 million documents stolen from a Panamanian law firm should automatically be considered a whistleblower like himself. Instead, he said, the hacking of the Panama City-based firm, called Mossack Fonseca, could have been done by a U.S. intelligence agency.
"The CIA I'm sure is behind this, in my opinion," Birkenfeld said.

Birkenfeld pointed to the fact that the political uproar created by the disclosures have mainly impacted countries with tense relationships with the United States. "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 said. "Quite frankly, my feeling is that this is certainly an intelligence agency operation."
Asked why the U.S. would leak information that has also been damaging to U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, a major American ally, Birkenfeld said the British leader was likely collateral damage in a larger intelligence operation.
"If you've got NSA and CIA spying on foreign governments they can certainly get into a law firm like this," Birkenfeld said. "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."

This just further confirms my belief that this whole "leak" isn't what we are being told. This is the work of an intelligence agency working on behalf of a particular government, not on behalf of the public.
Don't be duped.

[David Guyatt]

Purloined from Maggie... :-)

from RT

Panama Papers: Spy agencies widely used Mossack Fonseca to hide activities

Published time: 12 Apr, 2016 13:22

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© Rodrigo Arangua / AFP




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Intelligence agencies from several countries, including CIA intermediaries, have abundantly used the services of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca to "conceal" their activities, German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) says, citing leaked documents.
TrendsPanama Papers

Both "secret agents and their informants have used the company's services," wrote the newspaper, which earlier this month published online materials based on 11.5 million documents from the Panamanian law firm. It has been called the largest leak on corruption in journalistic history.
"Agents have set up shell companies to conceal their activities," the Munich-based newspaper reported, adding that there are CIA mediators among them.
According to SZ, Mossack Fonseca's clients also included some of those involved in the so-called Iran-Contra affair, in which several Reagan administration officials secretly facilitated arms sales to Iran in the 1980s in order to secure the release of US hostages and fund Nicaragua's Contra rebels.
Read more
Who's funding this?' CIA & MI5 whistleblowers question credibility of Panama Papers coverage
The Panama Papers also claim to reveal that some "former high-ranking officials of the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, Colombia and Rwanda" are listed amongst the company's clients. Among them was Sheikh Kamal Adham, the former Saudi intelligence chief, who according to SZ, was "one of the CIA's key intermediaries in the 1970s" in the Middle East region.
The Panama leak claims to expose the offshore holdings of 12 current and former world leaders and provides data on the financial activities of 128 other politicians and public officials from different countries. Newspapers around the globe had plenty of world leaders to choose from, from President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko to King Salman of Saudi Arabia and the late father of British Prime Minister David Cameron.
With high-profile figures on the menu, the majority of the international media rushed to accuse Vladimir Putin of corruption, even though neither he nor any members of his family were mentioned in the Panama Papers leak.

Last week WikiLeaks tweeted that the US government and American hedge-fund billionaire George Soros allegedly funded the Papers to attack Putin. According to the international whistleblowing organization, the US government's funding of such an attack appeared to be a serious blow to its integrity.
Read more
Crowds march in London to demand Cameron resignation following Panama Papers leak (IMAGES)
One former CIA officer told RT that the fact that the Western media has been unanimously using the Russian leader as the "face" of the Panama Papers leak can be explained by one simple look at the organizations behind these news outlets.
"Everyone in corporate press is controlled by corporations that profit on wars and have an interest in creating tensions all these people in the Western press, like the Guardian, are blackening Putin [for being] a designated villain here. Curiously, his name is not in these documents," Ray McGovern said, adding that it was "a major mistake made by the leaker" to hand the documents over to the corporate media, instead of leaking them to trusted independent journalists.

There were many raised eyebrows particularly over little mention of the exposed offshore dealings of UK Prime Minister David Cameron's late father. Last week the British PM admitted that he benefited from shares in an offshore trust set up by his father. Cameron, who is facing outrage over revelations concerning his private finances, told ITV that he had received £300,000 (about $420,000) in inheritance from his father, who died in 2010. Yet he claimed that he didn't know whether any of that money came from an offshore source. A massive protest gathered in front of PM David Cameron's residence at 10 Downing Street on Sunday, calling for his resignation.

[David Guyatt]

It seems that Thierry Meyssan agrees with my analysis about the Panama Papers (apologies for banging my drum, folks - but it's rare I can do so) being a tool to close down all tax havens in the world other than those permitted by the US. However, whereas I saw it as wholly for the benefit of the US to act as the haven of last resprt in order to draw the wealthy of the world to convert their assets to dollars with the ulterior aim of supporting dollar hegemony, Meyssan sees four different nations being the recipients of global hot money, namely USA, UK, Israel and the Netherlands.

Intriguingly, Meyssan considers that the destablization of Greece and Cyprus to have been an Obama administration operation designed to ensure European capital flight to rush to find refuge in the safe and secure Anglo-American tax havens - a theory that makes considerable sense.

Why the «Panama Papers »?

by Thierry Meyssan

Contrary to what may appear to be the case, the «Panama Papers» campaign will not lead to restraining embezzlements of funds, nor to expanding liberties, but the exact opposite. The system is going to consolidate a bit more around the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United States and Israel, so that these and only these will control it. By violating the principle of equality before the Law and their professional ethics, the members of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists have put themselves at the service of the enemies of liberty and the defenders of Big Capital. The fact that they had pinned down in the process some crooks will not change anything. Explanations.

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | DAMASCUS (SYRIA) | 13 APRIL 2016 FRANÇAIS TÜRKÇE ESPAÑOL DEUTSCH ITALIANO فارسى PORTUGUÊS عربي ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΆ NEDERLANDS

The Romer Doctrine: To compel non Anglo Saxon tax havens to stop functioning and to destabilize the European Union until capital flows back to tax havens in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United States and Israel

The Economic Strategy of the United States

At the beginning of his mandate, President Obama appointed the historian Christina Romer to chair his Committee of Economic Advisers. This Professor at Berkeley University is an expert on the 1929 crisis. According to her, it was neither Roosevelt's New Deal nor the Second World War that permitted the US to come out of this recession; rather, an influx of European capital from 1936, escaping the «rise of dangers ».This is the basis on which Barack Obama drove his economic policy. First, he took action to close all tax havens that were not under the control of Washington and London. Then, he organized the destabilization of Greece and Cyprus, so that European capital takes refuge in Anglo-Saxon tax havens.It all began in Greece, in December 2008, with demonstrations after a policeman murdered a teenager. The CIA transported busloads of trouble-makers from Kosovo in order to disrupt a demonstration and to set up the beginning of chaos [1]. The Treasury Department could then confirm that Greek capital was leaving the country. The experience being conclusive, the White House decided to immerse this fragile State into a financial and economic crisis that challenged the very existence of the Euro Zone. As predicted, every time we wonder if Greece will be ultimately kicked out of the Eurozone or if the EuroZone will be wound up, some European Capital makes a [mad] dash for an available tax haven, invariably British, American and Dutch. In 2012, another operation was mounted against a Cypriot tax haven. All bank accounts above 100,000 euros were confiscated. It was the first and only occasion, in a capitalist economy, that one witnessed this type of nationalization [2].During the last eight years, we have been present at a number of G8 and G20 meetings which have established all sorts of international rules, supposedly to avert tax evasion [3]. However, once everyone had adopted these rules, the United States - and to a lesser extent Israel, the Netherlands and the United Kingdomdispensed with them.

Tax Havens

Each tax haven has its own legal regime - in general, absurd.Currently, the major tax havens are the Independent State of the City of London (member of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), the State of Delaware (member of the United States) and Israel. However for sure, other tax havens exist, notably British ones. For a start, there are the islands of Jersey and Guernsey (member of the Duchy of Normandy and as such placed under the authority of the Queen of England without being either a member of the United Kingdom or the European Union), Gibraltar (a Spanish territory whose landed property is English and which the United Kingdom occupies illegally); even Anguilla, the Bermudas, the Cayman Islands, Turks, the Virgin Islands or Montserrat. Some of them are also tied to Holland: Aruba, Curaçao or Sint Maarten.A tax haven is a «free zone» rolled out to cover the entire country. However, in the collective imagination, a free zone is indispensable to the economy, whereas a «tax haven» is a calamity. However, the two are co-terminous. Of course, some businesses abuse free zones to avoid paying taxes and others abuse tax havens. However this is no reason to challenge the existence of these provisions that are vital to international trade.In their war against non Anglo-Saxon tax havens, the United States has notably struck blows against Switzerland [4]. This country had developed tight banking secrecy allowing the small fry to conduct transactions unbeknown to the big players. By forcing Switzerland to abandon its banking secrecy, the United States has expanded its mass surveillance of economic transactions. In this way, they can easily deceive the competition and sabotage the action of the small fry.For ten years, Forbes listed Fidel Castro as the world's wealthiest Head of State. Today it is admitted that this was pure propaganda but Forbes has never apologized.

The «Panama Papers»

It is in this context that Washington has provided Süddeutsche Zeitung 11 500 000 computer files hacked from the fourth law firm in the world instructed to establish offshore companies. As this intelligence gathering is a crime, the alleged «whistle-blowers» who carried it out, have remained anonymous. Although Washington has first carefully sifted out the files and excluded first, all those relating to US nationals or businesses and then probably those related to its close allies. The fact that some of its alleged allies that are in a tricky position with the Obama Administration feature in these documents, a case being President Petro Porochenko - confirms to us that they have just been dropped by their powerful protector.While Panama is a Spanish-speaking State and Süddeutsche Zeitung a German publication, the Spies have named the stolen files in English: «The Panama Papers ».Incidentally, the architects of this carabistouille try to persuade us that all men that rebel against Washington would be robbers. For example, we remember the campaigns mounted against Fidel Castro, accusing him of being a drug trafficker and Forbes listing him among the world's most wealthy [5]. After observing the difficult living conditions of the Castro Family in Cuba, I ask myself how can anyone mount such a lie. It would follow that the new secret magnates would be Vladimir Putin, Bachar el-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad however their frugality is legendary.This propaganda against political adversaries, is simply the tip of the iceberg. The important point is the future of the international financial system.

Violation of Journalists' Ethics

Süddeutsche Zeitung is part of an International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), an association that specializes not in investigative journalism as its name would lead us to think, but in denouncing financial crimes.In republican societies, Justice must be the same for all. But the ICIJ, that has already published more than 15 million computer files since its establishment, has never harmed the interests of the United States. Therefore it certainly cannot claim that its actions are prompted out of concern for justice.Furthermore, from the republican principles of our society flow obligations for journalists. These have been formalised in the Munich Charter in 1971 by all the professional trade unions in the Common Market, later extended to the rest of the world by the International Federation of Journalists.I perfectly understand that this text imposes limits that on occasion are difficult to abide by. Indeed, some years ago I was among those that considered it useful to be able to occasionally violate it. But experience proves that by violating it, we open the door to other violations that boomerang against the citizens.The journalists of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists have not posed the ethical question. They have accepted working on documents that have been stolen and sorted out, without the slightest opportunity to verify their authenticity.The Munich Charter stipulates that journalists will only publish information whose origin is known; that they will not suppress essential information nor will they alter texts and documents; finally that they will not use dishonest methods to obtain information, photographs and documents. Fully aware of these three requirements, they have violated them and this should bar them from professional bodies and bring about the removal of the directors of the BBC, France-Télévisions, NRK, and why not Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (the radio of the CIA which is also itself a member of the Consortium of Journalists).This is not the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists' first case. It was this body which in 2013 had published 2.5 million computer files stolen from 120 000 offshore companies. Then, it is it that had revealed, in 2014, contracts signed between multinationals and Luxembourg in order to profit from a preferential tax regime. And it was the one that revealed, in 2015, the accounts of the British Bank HSBC in Switzerland.We suspect that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is financed by a number of organizations linked to the CIA, such as the Ford Foundation and the George Soros Foundations. This latter example is the most interesting: members of the ICIJ do not take the view that Mr Soros's money comes from the CIA, but from his financial speculations to the detriment of the people. This would render it more acceptable.The fundamental principle of republican societies: legitimacy requires Justice being applied equally to all (article 6 of the Declaration on Human Rights and Civil Rights of 1789). But, after its establishment, the ICIJ abstains from uncovering crimes committed by the US. Through this failure to act, it is contributing to growing injustices.

No More Resistance without non Anglo-Saxon tax havens

That the Hezbollah holds companies and secret accounts in Panama and elsewhere comes as no surprise. In a recent article, I raised the issue of the Lebanese Résistance auto-financing without having to depend on Iranian subsidies. The complex financial montage to which it has surrendered will have to be completely reconstructed, to avoid Lebanon becoming once again the victim of its Israeli neighbours.That President Ahmadinejad has established offshore companies to bypass the embargo of which his country was the victim and to sell oil is not only no crime but is completely to his credit.That the Makhlouf family, cousins of President el-Assad, has used a financial montage to by-pass the illegal embargo by Western powers and to permit Syrians to eat during five years of aggressive war is also completely legitimate.What will be the outcome of this vast outpouring? First the reputation of Panama is destroyed and it will take many years to resurrect. Then, petty criminals that have systematically abused the system will be prosecuted, while a number of honest traders will have to justify themselves at length before the courts. But contrary to appearances, those who breathe life into this campaign will ensure that nothing has changed. The system will thus remain in place, but from now on will have to function to the sole benefit of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United States and Israel. While believing that they are defending their liberties, those who will have participated in this campaign will have in reality reduced.