Where the Rich Stash Their Cash

[Octafish]

Too bad our political leadership doesn’t understand the concept:

“Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”

That what U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote in 1904. The case was Campañía de Tabacos v. Collector.

I bet the wise Justice would consider tax-cheats un-American. Wonder how many politicians today would be brave enough to utter the thought?

Perhaps our cousins across the Atlantic might. There the Tax Justice Network in the U.K is monitoring this sort of thing. Thank goodness.

The following Guardian article explains why:


Where the rich stash their cash

Nick Mathiason on a new study that reveals the amazing wealth the super-rich hold in offshore tax havens - depriving governments of hundreds of billions of dollars - and the looming crackdown by the world's tax collectors

Sunday March 27, 2005
The Observer

Rupert Murdoch last week floated his family's £3.8 billion personal investment company in Bermuda - saving himself £522 million in taxes.

Bermuda was chosen because the media tycoon, who chairs News Corporation, wanted to avoid the taxman after his firm changed domicile from Australia to the United States recently. Just prior to the Bermuda float, Murdoch bought a 20-room, three-floor residence opposite Central Park in Manhattan for £22m. Days later he bought a house in Beijing.

SNIP…

These three examples demonstrate one essential fact: the rich can afford to minimise their tax bills, while the rest of us have to stump up. This weekend The Observer can exclusively reveal that the world's richest people are hiding an astonishing $11.5 trillion in tax havens.

SNIP…

But aid organisations are alarmed that money that should be used for building the infrastructure of the poorest countries is being hidden in havens by corrupt politicians and multinationals exploiting tax loopholes. Offshore companies are being formed at the rate of about 150,000 a year. Whereas in the Seventies there were just 25 tax havens, now there are at least 63, about half of them British protectorates or former colonies. Tax avoidance in Britain alone is estimated to cost the Treasury between £25bn and £85bn a year.

CONTINUED…

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1446130,00.html

Wow. $11.5 trillion is more than chump change. That'd solve the budget deficit and bring the world's poverty level down to zero. What would Ebenezer Scrooge say? Well...

Rupert Murdoch became a U.S. citizen in the early 1980s so he could own media properties, like the Chicago Sun-Times. When he bought that publication, its most illustrious columnist, Mike Royko, called him “The Alien” and jumped ship to work at the rival Chicago Tribune. Royko, as anyone who’s read him knows, was on to something.

Gee. What a surprise. Murdoch is a tax rat. Just like Bushler and the rest of the big wigs, most of which are in the GOP.

[papau]

1. US World Wide Tax approach would catch this - if enforced

Other countries do a tax on income generated by work in our country -

The US does a world wide with credit against US tax for tax paid to other countries.

I expect the end of the US world wide taxation approach to income taxation to be a Bush Tax simplification proposal in the near future - if he is unable to kill the FIT and replace with a 33% sales tax.

[Drifter]

2. Oh please ....

the right can't justify paying taxes to their own government, what makes you think that will pay for "world" taxes.

A company should not be allowed to do business in the US without pay their fair share of US taxes. PERIOD.

Cheers
Drifter

[lukasahero]

4. But they DO love to pay taxes to other countries

for three reasons: 1) those other countries rates are lower than those in the US 2) they get a dollar of US tax credit for every dollar they pay to tax in other countries and, in some cases, 3) the other countries are so happy to have them there doing business, that the taxes they do pay to those countries is reimbursed back to the company or individual.

Read "Perfectly Legal", I beg you.

[Octafish]

10. Brother papau: Let's not empty the vault. Let's see what's where.

These turds have been moving money offshore to avoid taxes. In addition to concentrating wealth and power in the hands of the few, the institutions they've created have helped them arm the world, sell dope to the world and impoverish the world. I'd like to see who's done what and how much. Then show the average American what's been done to them and just step back. That's when the fireworks will start.

If any FBI is interested...

General Articles
on Corruption and Money Laundering

http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/launder/general.htm

[papau]

11. I agree - indeed - wire transfers to excape tax should be illegal

World Wide income and assets are barely reported - and what we know about such wealth suggests it would finance - via a small tax on income - or an even smaller asset tax - just about all government.

The rich really have everything as the middleclass gets slimmed down

The old GOP crap that we must tax ourselves because there is just not enough "rich" money and income is bullshit.

If Clinton policies had continued the rich would still be very rich - but not as exposed as the only place on the planet with growing money piles.

Large error. I hope .... :-)

Rich Folks really did not learn from the French revolution (then again we non-rich did not really learn either as a few years after the French revolution the old families had their prior wealth back!).

[Warpy]

3. The man with the bloodiest hands over 9/11 may be Phil Gramm

because in 1996 he successfully blocked legislation that would have tightened banking regulations, closed money laundering conduits through offshore banks, and required a lot more accountability in all money transfers. It wouldn't have stopped Al Q, but it certainly would have shut off the funding the 9/11 conspirators were operating on and slowed down their other operations considerably, and that's the name of the game when you're dealing with terrorists.

Phil Gramm, horrified that it would shut down the money laundering conduits that Enron and other Texas cheats were using, called the legislation "fascist" and killed it in committee.

Just think, 3000 people might still be among us had Gramm not been so eager to coddle his contributors, those wonderful Texas tax cheats.

[donkeyotay]

6. Offshore banking, terrists, drug money... why don't we crack down?

Maybe it's partly because the 4th largest investor source for financing our debt is the Carribean. Hmmm. All that crime financing our stinking war and tax cuts. What a thought.

[Octafish]

14. Riggs Bank and Jonathan BUSH

Bush Family Evil Empire moves much money off shore. They even head banks that get in trouble for doing shady business...

Jonathan Bush and Riggs Bank

George W. Bush’s uncle Jonathan heads this investment firm that was bought out in 1997 by Washington-based Riggs Bank (see Carter Beese). He founded its subsidiary, J. Bush & Co., of which he is chair. Riggs Bank has a history of dubious money dealings. It maintained the accounts of the Russian bosses of CIA spy Aldrich Ames and owned a stake in the company that moved funds for outlaw Russian oil billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky (see Thomas Renyi). Federal regulators cited Riggs Bank in 2003 for violating money-laundering laws, which require banks to reports transactions of $10,000 or more. The bank failed to file these reports on tens of million of dollars worth of Saudi transactions that often exceeded $1 million apiece. The FBI has probed how tens of thousands of dollars from the Riggs bank account of Saudi Princess Haifa flowed to the families of two Saudi students who subsidized two Saudi terrorists involved in the September, 11th attacks. Princess Haifa, daughter of the late King Faisal, is married to Saudi Arabia’s U.S. ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. The Bush administration insisted on censoring sections of a 2003 Congressional report on the 2001 terrorist attack that dealt with Riggs accounts held by Saudis. Attorneys for September 11th victims subpoenaed this information in 2004. The U.S. Comptroller of the Currency listed Riggs as a “troubled institution” after the bank failed to act on 2003 regulatory orders to tighten anti-money laundering controls. Regulators are investigating if Riggs violated “know your customer” record laws with high-risk foreign customers including former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Federal prosecutors also are probing allegations that a former Riggs exectuve conspired with Equatorial Guinean President Theodore Obiang Nguema to divert Exxon Mobil oil royalties from government accounts. The bank’s president and ex-chair stepped down from the board of the bank holding company in 2004 shortly before federal regulators fined the bank a record $25 million for failing to follow rules to prevent money laundering. Jonathan Bush also is an ex-chair of the New York Republican State Finance Committee. Bush credits the investors sent his way by this banker uncle as a key to his “success” in the Texas oil industry in the early 1980s. Jonathan Bush was a Yale classmate of William Donaldson, George W. Bush’s second chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SOURCE:

http://www.whitehouseforsale.org/ContributorsAndPaybacks/pioneer_profile.cfm?pioneer_ID=158

Update on Riggs Bank Scandal & Jonathan Bush

http://www.democrats.com/node/4086

[Octafish]

12. Absolutely right. Guess who ties ENRON to BCCI?

Thanks for the friendly reminder, Warpy! Sorry so late in reply -- Comcast crapped out on us yesterday.

Phil Gramm loves moving money offshore. It must run in the family -- The Bush Crime Family. So...

Guess who ties ENRON to BCCI?

Wendy Gramm! Yes, the wonderful wife of that smooth-talking ex-Senator and fun-loving deregulator, Phil Gramm. Holy smokes!

Here's the citation and source from the Federation of American Scientists website. If we've already gone over this, I've gotta go take an aspirin.

If not, let's have at it, DU! Yee-haw! It's feeding time...

(Kerry subcommittee's BCCI report, no copyright problems)


CAPCOM

Introduction

In the entire BCCI affair, perhaps no entity is more mysterious and yet more central to BCCI's collapse and criminality than Capcom, a London and Chicago based commodities futures firm which operated between 1984 and 1988. Capcom is vital to understanding BCCI because BCCI's top management and most important Saudi shareholders were involved with the firm. Moreover, Capcom moved huge amounts of money -- billions of dollars -- which passed through the future's markets in a largely anonymous fashion.

Capcom was created by the former head of BCCI's Treasury Department, Ziauddin Ali Akbar, who capitalized it with funds from BCCI and BCCI customers. The company was staffed, primarily, by former BCCI bankers, many of whom had worked with Akbar in Oman and few of whom had any experience in the commodities markets. The major investors in the company were almost exclusively Saudi and were largely controlled by Sheik AR Khalil, the chief of Saudi intelligence. Additionally, the company employed many of the same practices as BCCI, especially the use of nominees and front companies to disguise ownership and the movement of money. Four Americans, Larry Romrell, Robert Magness, Kerry Fox and Robert Powell -- none of whom had any experience or expertise in the commodities markets -- played important and varied roles as frontmen.

While the Subcommittee has been able to piece together the history of Capcom and can point to many unusual and even criminal acts committed by the firm, it still has not been able to determine satisfactorily the reason Capcom was created and the purposes it served for the various parties connected to the BCCI scandal. It appears from the available evidence that Akbar, BCCI, and the Saudis all may have pursued different goals through Capcom, including:

-- misappropriation of BCCI assets for personal enrichment.

-- laundering billions of dollars from the Middle East to the US and other parts of the world.

-- siphoning off assets from BCCI to create a safe haven for them outside of the official BCCI empire.

SNIP...


Despite suspicions about highly unusual transactions, CFTC Chairperson Wendy Gramm told the Subcommittee:

In terms of finding trading violations or Commodity Exchange Act violations that perhaps could support money laundering, we did not find any discernible pattern...o one has ben able to --at least other law enforcement officials have not been able to find money laundering in Capcom US, to our knowledge, as of now.(133)

Money laundering, as Chairperson Gramm testified, is not even a violation of the Commodities Futures Trading Act. Incredibly, it appears that the CFTC and the self-regulatory organizations have never even made a criminal referral for possible money laundering:

Senator Kerry. ave you ever specifically referred, or have any of the exchanges ever made a criminal referral for money laundering?

Dr. Gramm. We have raised concerns.

Senator Kerry. Have you made a criminal referral for money laundering?

Dr. Gramm. No. Not-- not specifically in that regard...

Continued...

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/21capcom.htm

Original Thread, way back on Old Du:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=7548&forum=DCForumID70&archive=

[Egalitariat]

5. Taxes are what rich people pay so poor people can have a civil society

That's how they see it.

[papau]

7. Taxes are paid by rich to get protection so poor will not take their wealt

Indeed - a "nation" is a rich construct -

One needs a "nation" to get folks to protect your- the rich's- wealth and to get poor folks to give up their lives in benefit to your goals and needs - so we sell "defend our nation and our masters".

Indeed their is little to be uncivil about until someone has stolen most of the wealth. Differences in wealth are a necessary incentive to getting a productive and growing economy.

Vast differences in wealth require wars and depressions to hide the facts from folks lest they get pissed and change the arrangement

[natrat]

8. nah not really

just build more jails, higher fences, more savage laws so when they try to revolt ya just mow em the fuck down

[lukasahero]

9. Actually, taxes are what the really rich don't pay at all. eom

[Octafish]

13. Rich tax cheats have a lot to answer for...

These men and women paid a price higher than taxes.
Their sacrifices helped keep our nation free,
despite Bush and the rest of the BFEE money-grubbers.

[dcfirefighter]

15. Inescapable taxes

Basing taxes on land has some merit:

It encourages the economic use of land, land is not wasted.
It's value is apparent, and unable to be hidden, or taken offshore.
It discourages sprawl, reducing transport costs & energy use, and leave more land for agriculture, recreation, and conservation.
It allows a reduction in taxes against productive activities.
It reduces housing costs, and increases wages.