Tax haven

Recipe for cooking the books

 
After “our” meltdown, The Truth About Tax, sounded so familiar.

Take large companies (who recruit top managers who fail the psychopathy test), captured governments and government agencies, PWC, postbox in Luxembourg, loads of secrecy, and if you don’t like the law-flavor, change it. – We are all invited.

The Snake is very, very old.

The Elite of Organized Crime?

Treasure Islands

Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens

“And now we have “too big to fail” banks and this offshore system, the ability of banks in the United States to go elsewhere to do things that allow them to grow faster and take more risks, away from the democratic curbs. It’s one of the reasons why they’ve grown so powerful and why we have got such a difficult situation today with Wall Street having such power over the politicians in this country and my country and others.”

Treasure Islands
Amazon
Nicholas Shaxson on Democracy Now
_
War By Other Means
Plutocracy, Get Used To It
(or hangthebankers)
_
Stiglitz on the upper 1% …
E. Warren “We are in trouble”
“Mad” Max & Janet Tavakoli
-“- & our enslaved Gaelic mothers
Iceland’s St. Pete connection
_
And the media coverage

Defenders of the Faith

“God Bless Iceland”.
“Maybe I should have“.
“It’s not to much for the state to swollow”.
“We should shout Hurray! for these men”.
“We do not pay debts for irresponsible men”.
“Slavery for another’s fault”.
“You are Not the Nation”.
“I can afford a Diet Coke”.
“Tortola? No, don’t know it”.
“Hi Magnus, We didn’t finalize our bonuses for last year. I suggest 1 million Euros. What say you. Bye. Se”.
“There are no money, they have gone to Money Heaven“.
“Macau bundle? No, not me, I was just the carrier”.
“Equivalent to appointing Nixon editor of the Washington Post during Watergate”.
“The Special Investigation Commission’s Report is getting in our way, temporarily”.
“Eva Joly is a Cuckoo Old Hagg”.
“I’m in NYC, just met Soros and BRuce Kovner. It tempts them to attack the Krona”.
“I can’t appear in a New York Court because of my English”.
“The Bank can’t punish people for having been in politics”.

Can’t Top That, and Then They Do

After all this time and endless stream of unbelievable news of bankers fraud we are told, that even after the fall, “they” stole the rescue-package (the best part of the Central-banks reserves) and transferred the moneys to tax-havens (Luxembourg and British-Virgin Islands).

Now, the news read “engaged in a sweeping conspiracy”, obviously not to the liking of the “conspiracy phobics“.

Global Illicit Financial Structures:

  • Tax havens
  • Secrecy jurisdictions
  • Disguised corporations
  • Redomiciliation provisions
  • Anonymous trust accounts
  • Fake foundations
  • Falsified pricing
  • Money laundering techniques

Interpol – Wanted EINARSSON, Sigurdur
Ounce of Gold for information leading to arrest
Iceland’s Glitnir sues ex-officials for $2 bln
Icelandic leaders accused of ‘negligence’
Dunning–Kruger effect

Done your laundry?

” Depending on which international agency you ask, criminals launder anywhere between $500 billion and $1 trillion worldwide every year. The global effect is staggering in social, economic and security terms.
. . .
Developing countries often bear the brunt of modern money laundering because the governments are still in the process of establishing regulations for their newly privatized financial sectors. This makes them a prime target. ”

Rumors relating to money laundering and connections between the fallen banks and the Russian mob continue. It is told that these are so ’embarrassing’ and reach so high up in the ranks and across boarders, that it will be about the last ‘material’ to be uncovered, – if at all.

In the meantime, low-level bank-employees are being investigated where the sums of money allegedly embezzled are in the range normal people can identify with.

No wonder that people delighted in the story about Tony Musulin – Best Thief of the Year 2009.

Meltdown Iceland
How Money Laundering Works

Conspiracy, the last taboo.

To conspire:
a : to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or an act which becomes unlawful as a result of the secret agreement
b : to act in harmony toward a common end.

It is in it self interesting that such condemnation has been associated with one concept, i,e. to act in harmony (although in secret) toward a common end.
Looking at the revelations related to the financial meltdown, the words bank secrecy (or bank privacy) even secrecy jurisdictions, take on some very familiar connotations.

Conspiracy Phobia
Some historical quotes

60 secrecy jurisdictions

Where are the world’s secrecy jurisdictions? – Richard Murphy FCA

“The Mapping the Faultlines project is based on the contention that the mechanisms that allow illicit financial flows to occur result from the synergistic relationship between the world’s secrecy jurisdictions and the secrecy providers (bankers, lawyers and accountants) whose work is based there.”

An excerpt and a full list is available for download here.

Nemesis on visit

The Icelandic nation is thunderstruck. The much acclaimed experiment in neocon-free-market-capitalist -governance has collapsed. People in this long-standing parliamentary democracy are now asking; Who knew? Who was informed? Who gave the permission for this to go on to its inevitable conclusion?

I for one would want to ask every single member of parliament these two questions.

  1. Did you know that Private Corporations where operating abroad backed by state guaranties?

  2. Did you ever inform your electorate of this fact? *

The only information I’ve got is that these are the rules of the EU and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). – Which justifies it?

It seams to me that we as a nation have lost our reputation much like a rape victim, that “we the people” have been led into debt slavery for generations to come, and finally, to sweeten the blow will be the first ‘developed’ nation in years, having to ask the IMF for ‘help’.

Is this a prime example: of shock doctrine and disaster capitalism, of corrupt politicians in bed with corporations, of idiot ideologues, of marginalized public, or are the answers to be found in the sacred texts of the Chicago School of Economics (…which of course were not followed to the Marxist letter)?

If you are living in a privileged country like we were, maybe it’s time to come out of the hypnotic trance so lovingly catered for by the mass media. – After all, the bursting of the ‘fractional reserve’ and/or derivative bubble’s is waiting for all of us.

* Deep (legal) Thought is already hard at work disputing the nature of reality in general and of facts in particular.

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