“Everywhere there's lots of piggies
living piggy lives
you can see them out for dinner
with their piggy wives
clutching forks and knives
to eat their bacon”
----George Harrison
“Piggies”
When one thinks of tax havens one conjures images of the
Cayman Islands, Switzerland or, perhaps, Ireland. But the biggest
tax haven in the world is the United States, where “there is
'little appetite' for helping foreign governments retrieve money
laundered within its borders”. Indeed, bowing to pressure from
the banking industry, the United States stands alone in refusing to
join an agreement forged by the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development requiring banks to “report foreign accounts to
the tax authorities in the account holders' home country”. (1)
As a result, Franklin Foer, writes in The Atlantic:
“This obstinacy stood to subvert everything the
country had done to lead the fight against dirty money: while the
U.S. can ask almost any other nation's banks for financial
information about American citizens, it has no obligation to provide
other countries with the same. 'The United States had bullied the
rest of the world into scrapping financial secrecy...but hadn't
applied the same standards to itself.' (2) A Zurich-based lawyer
vividly spelled out the consequences to “Bloomberg”
'How ironic—no, how perverse—that the USA, which has been so
sanctimonious in its condemnation of Swiss banks, has become the
banking secrecy jurisdiction du jour...That 'giant sucking sound' you
hear? It is the sound of money rushing to the USA.” (3)
In 2010 when “USB admitted to hiding 20 billion in
American money” the problem became to big to ignore, almost,
anyway. Congress moved to pass the Foreign Account Tax Compliance
Act (FATCA), wherein foreign banks cannot hold American cash without
notifying the IRS—failure to comply risks hefty fines. Congress
did nothing, however to close the loophole in the Patriot Act dealing
with foreign money finding a haven here.
“Here was anti-corruption leadership at work—and
U.S. waffling on display”, writes Foer. “According to
one powerful strain of American exceptionalism, the nation boasts
superior financial hygiene and a bedrock culture of good government.
Indeed, the U.S. government has devoted more attention to money
laundering than perhaps any other nation on the planet. But the bar
isn't very high, and the vigilance has its limits. In 2011, the
Obama administration sought to collect more information about
foreigners' bank accounts and to share it with the relevant home
countries. But banks—along with their lobbyists and intellectual
mouthpieces—worked furiously to prevent the expansion .“ (4)
The closest the nation has come to real regulation was
embodied in The Patriot Act, legislation following the attacks
on 9/11. Banks are now required to report suspicious activity,
suspicious money transferred from abroad. And Banks face serious
criminal charges for ”failing to establish sufficient safeguards
against the flow of corrupt cash”. (5)
But there is a catch, there is always a catch. “Every
House district in the country has real estate, and lobbyists for that
business had pleaded for relief from the PATRIOT Act's monitoring of
dubious foreign transactions. They all but conjured up images of
suburban moms staking FOR SALE signs on lawns, ill-equipped to vet
every buyer. And they persuaded Congress to grant the industry a
temporary exemption from having to enforce the new law.
“The exemption was a gaping loophole—and an
extraordinary growth opportunity for high-end real estate. For all
the new fastidiousness of the financial system, foreigners could
still buy penthouse apartments or mansions anonymously and with ease,
by hiding behind shell companies set up in states such as Delaware
and Nevada. Those states, along with a few others, had turned the
registration of shell companies into a hugely lucrative racket—and
it was stunningly simple to arrange such a Potemkin front on behalf
of a dictator, a drug dealer, or an oligarch. According to Global
Witness, a London-based anti-corruption NGO founded in 1993,
procuring a library card requires more identification in many states
than does creating an anonymous shell company”. (6)
The dirty little secret is that the United States has
long been a haven for money-laundering and recent developments in the
explosion of organized crime—particularly foreign organized crime
has made New York, along with Los Angeles and Miami cesspools for
money laundering. This is because, like London and elsewhere,
high-end properties purchased by shell companies are the preferred
avenues for skirting the reporting requirements and not only keeping
the source of the money hidden from view but legitimizing future
transactions—thus 'cleaning or laundering the money' by future sale
of the properties.
All of this is known. What is telling about Foer's
report is the link between these real estate transactions and the
wholesale plundering of the Russian Federation by the Russian
oligarchy. What happened in Russia after the fall of Communism was
plunder on an unprecedented scale. “When Berkeley economist
Gabriel Zucman studied the problem in 2015, he found that 52 percent
of Russia's wealth resided outside the country.
“The collapse of communism in the other post-Soviet
states, along with China's turn toward capitalism, only added to the
kleptocratic fortunes that were hustled abroad for secret
safekeeping. Officials around the world have always looted their
countries' coffers and accumulated bribes. But the globalization of
banking made the export of their ill-gotten money far more convenient
than it had been—which, of course, inspired more theft. By one
estimate, more than $1 trillion now exits the world's developing
countries each year in the forms of laundered money and evaded
taxes.” (7)
Enter the tRUMPs.
“In 2017,” Floer
tells us, “Reuters examined the sale of Trump
Organization properties in Florida. It found that 77 of 2,044 units
in developments were owned by Russians. But that was likely an
incomplete portrait. More than one-third of the units had been sold
to corporate vehicles, which can readily hide the identity of the
true owner. As Oliver Bullough remarks, 'They might have belonged to
Vladimir Putin, for all anyone else could know.' Around the time that
Trump took up occupancy in the White House, the PATRIOT Act's
'temporary' exemption for real estate entered its 15th
year.” (8)
And it isn't just in Florida where tRUMP engages in
highly suspect business operations. Statistics for Trump Tower show
similar behavior even after he was elevated to the Oval Office. Then
there were properties in Panama and Azerbaijan. It is a violation of
the RICO statutes, governing the prosecution of organized crime, to
deal with known criminals in any business transaction. And ignorance
of the law, or the nature of persons with whom one is doing business
is no excuse. One is expected to know one's business partners.
Disgustus and his organization have violated this law in several
jurisdictions. But that isn't the end of it.
The deal usually goes like this. Disgustus and his
family put up no money but the name goes on the building. He gets a
cut for that. But his real value is that his organization manages
the place and it is in the management, the purchase agreements, that
one finds the real meat of the matter. For in exchange for the
prestige and the money, Disgustus and his family receive the money
from the crime syndicates and make their theft whole.
One must ask, in view of the revelations of The New
York Times that Disgustus lost over a billion dollars in the 10
years leading up to the fall of the old Soviet Union, just where he
is getting his money? How is it that in the wake of such a colossal
failure we find him paying cash for his acquisitions? Where is he
getting his money, and to whom is he beholden? Is it mere
coincidence that the plundering of the Russian Federation began in
earnest just about the time that the Russians came to the rescue of
America's biggest loser? I'm sure the Russians were desperate to
find someone, anyone, to help stash half the country's wealth. And
so, the search began for a pliable “useful idiot.”
This, too, is the legacy of the Generation of Swine.
An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh
Impeach and Imprison
_______________- Foer, Franklin. “How Kleptocracy Came To America” The Atlantic Magazine. Vol. 323. No. 2. March, 2019. Pp. 86-95. See page 91
- Foer is here quoting Oliver Bullough Moneyland:Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How to Take It Back.
- Op. Cit. Page 91.
- Ibid. Page 90
- Ibid. Page 88
- Ibid. Page 88-89.
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