Iceland To Take Power To Create Money Away From Rothschild Cartel

http://www.conspiracyclub.co/2015/04/05/iceland-bank-rothschild/

Who knew that the revolution would start with those radical Icelanders? It does, though. One Frosti Sigurjonsson, a lawmaker from the ruling Progress Party, issued a report today that suggests taking the power to create money away from commercial banks, and hand it to the central bank and, ultimately, Parliament.

Can’t see commercial banks in the western world be too happy with this. They must be contemplating wiping the island nation off the map. If accepted in the Iceland parliament , the plan would change the game in a very radical way. It would be successful too, because there is no bigger scourge on our economies than commercial banks creating money and then securitizing and selling off the loans they just created the money (credit) with.

Everyone, with the possible exception of Paul Krugman, understands why this is a very sound idea. Agence France Presse reports:

Iceland Looks At Ending Boom And Bust With Radical Money Plan

Iceland’s government is considering a revolutionary monetary proposal – removing the power of commercial banks to create money and handing it to the central bank. The proposal, which would be a turnaround in the history of modern finance, was part of a report written by a lawmaker from the ruling centrist Progress Party, Frosti Sigurjonsson, entitled “A better monetary system for Iceland”.

“The findings will be an important contribution to the upcoming discussion, here and elsewhere, on money creation and monetary policy,” Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson said. The report, commissioned by the premier, is aimed at putting an end to a monetary system in place through a slew of financial crises, including the latest one in 2008.

According to a study by four central bankers, the country has had “over 20 instances of financial crises of different types” since 1875, with “six serious multiple financial crisis episodes occurring every 15 years on average”. Mr Sigurjonsson said the problem each time arose from ballooning credit during a strong economic cycle.

He argued the central bank was unable to contain the credit boom, allowing inflation to rise and sparking exaggerated risk-taking and speculation, the threat of bank collapse and costly state interventions. In Iceland, as in other modern market economies, the central bank controls the creation of banknotes and coins but not the creation of all money, which occurs as soon as a commercial bank offers a line of credit. The central bank can only try to influence the money supply with its monetary policy tools.

Under the so-called Sovereign Money proposal, the country’s central bank would become the only creator of money. “Crucially, the power to create money is kept separate from the power to decide how that new money is used,” Mr Sigurjonsson wrote in the proposal. “As with the state budget, the parliament will debate the government’s proposal for allocation of new money,” he wrote.

Banks would continue to manage accounts and payments, and would serve as intermediaries between savers and lenders. Mr Sigurjonsson, a businessman and economist, was one of the masterminds behind Iceland’s household debt relief programme launched in May 2014 and aimed at helping the many Icelanders whose finances were strangled by inflation-indexed mortgages signed before the 2008 financial crisis.

What’s Really Going on in Ukraine?

Source: http://www.thrivemovement.com/whats-really-going-on-ukraine.blog

How do oil pipelines, the IMF and the Western banking cabal all meet in Ukraine?

To unpack any international event requires an ever-expanding awareness of the history, economics, resource and trade dynamics of the countries involved. Knowing where to look for clues helps reveal the similarities in seemingly unrelated events. The lens that THRIVE offers can be helpful in understanding the history of the global banking system, which is relevant no matter what country or issue you are trying to unravel.

In the case of Ukraine, Kimberly and I were recently in an informal Q&A where someone asked our perspective. The following short video is a first-level overview of some of the issues we think are operative. It is neither in-depth nor comprehensive, but it does include broken promises, the petrodollar, pipelines, the IMF and the Western banking cabal. The BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have been collaborating in forming their own international bank, an alternative non-NSA infected Internet and their own alternative financial rating agency — that relies on asset-backed valuation. These are key to further understanding, and we will be addressing them in future blogs.

For now, we offer this spontaneous, short video with hopes that it is helpful for your own critical thinking about this momentous and precarious global dynamic.

I believe that our awareness and vocal demand that there be no aggression can have significant influence, as has been demonstrated with Iran and Syria in recent months.

What if the people of the region of Ukraine were forgiven their predatory fiat debts and then actually left alone — free of “super-power” bullying and grabbing?

Please add your comments so that we can all better understand what’s going on in order to be most effective in our actions for peace.

Foster

The United States fought the American Revolution primarily over King George III’s Currency act, which forced the colonists to conduct their business only using printed bank notes borrowed from the Bank of England at interest.

After the revolution, the new United States adopted a radically different economic system in which the government issued its own value-based money, so that private banks like the Bank of England were not siphoning off the wealth of the people through interest-bearing bank notes.

But bankers are nothing if not dedicated to their schemes to acquire your wealth, and know full well how easy it is to corrupt a nation’s leaders.

Just one year after Mayer Amschel Rothschild had uttered his infamous “Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws”, the bankers succeeded in setting up a new Private Central Bank called the First Bank of the United States, largely through the efforts of the Rothschild’s chief US supporter, Alexander Hamilton.

The Rothschilds Want Iran’s Banks / All Wars Are Bankers’ Wars …
All Roads Lead to Rothschild

All Wars are Bankers Wars

Written and spoken by Michael Rivero. The written version is here:http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTI…

Video by Zane Henry.

This video is in the public domain. The producers have waived their copyright to this video.
Listen to a post production conversation between the producers by clicking on this mp3: https://soundcloud.com/eonitao-state/…

You are welcome to make copies and to distribute this video freely. A free downloader is available here:http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/products/…

THE AMERICAN DREAM

All of us Americans strive for the American Dream, and this film shows you why your dream is getting farther and farther away.Do you know how your money is created?Or how banking works?Why did housing prices skyrocket and then plunge?Do you really know what the Federal Reserve System is and how it affects you every single day?You will be challenged to investigate some very entrenched and powerful institutions in this nation,and hopefully encouraged to help get our nation back on track.

We need your support to continue to fight the lying liars! It is very expensive to make this level of media and we are going to need help to keep making it! “Any donations are appreciated! Please Consider Buying a copy @ http://www.theamericandreamfilm.com/

Donations and sales will help with production costs,further marketing of the film and hopefully will lead to other similar informative Films being made.

THE AMERICAN DREAM Film Website

http://www.theamericandreamfilm.com/

Banking – the Greatest Scam on Earth

The Greatest Scam on Earth – The Money Scam! The Money Scam is hidden right out in the open, yet buried in complication and confusion. A retired banker describes simply, the world’s Money Scam and the reason every country is now going bankrupt. Private bankers have stolen the money creation process, and whereas once our money was created by the governments, debt-free, it is now created out of thin air and issued as debt with interest charges. In today’s banker controlled world, money = debt, debt = slavery and therefore money = slavery — our monetary systems have become systems of enslavement. Money is created out of nothing, issued as debt, not enough money is created for the future interest payments and inflation steals our savings. The money creation process should be taken away from the banks and given to the governments who can create money debt-free, interest-free. This is how it used to be done and we needed no income taxes. Finally, it is explained what we should do to stop supporting the money scam.

An oldie but a goodie. From the archives. Enhanced sound from original version.

Syria and The Terrorist Governments of the Western World




Max Igan – Surviving the Matrix – September 6th, 2013
http://thecrowhouse.com

Source: http://unitednationsoffilm.com/all-wars-are-bankers-wars/#more-3560

Thousands of rogue bankers sacked since financial crisis

Patrick HoskingFinancial Editor

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/banking/article4001125.ece

Almost six thousand bankers, brokers and financial advisers in Britain have been sacked or suspended for dishonest or reckless conduct since the start of the financial crisis.

Figures extracted from the Financial Conduct Authority under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that Britishbased banks and other authorised financial firms have forced out 5,873 rogue managers and staff since 2008 — which amounts to almost three every day for the past six years.

While the expulsion rate last year was down from 2012, when the Libor cheating scandal erupted, it is still higher than at the start of the financial crisis.

With 150,000 people in Britain now working in authorised roles in financial services, the figures show that one in 160 of them was booted out for wrongdoing last year. That is worse than the figure of one in 210 expelled in 2008.

Brooks Newmark, a Tory member of the Treasury Select Committee, said that the numbers were disappointing. “Given the opprobrium thrown at the banking community over the past five years, you’d think they’d be extra careful. The message isn’t getting through. Where is their moral compass?”

Danielle Paffard, co-founder of the Move Your Money campaign, said: “This is a huge number. It underlines how broken and dishonest the banking industry still is.”

Employers in financial services have to tell the FCA when someone is dismissed or suspended over wrongdoing considered to impinge on their fitness to work in finance, filling in a “qualified Form C” notice, which alerts regulators that the employee may not be suitable for City roles. Qualified Form C notices were issued in 939 cases last year, down from 1,373 in 2012, but up on the 803 in 2008. Over six years the average number of notices per year has been 979.

Kirsty Ayre, a partner with City lawyers Pinsent Masons, which gathered the data, said the offences ranged from the most serious, such as Libor offences, to the seemingly trivial, such as lying about having seen a document.

She said that the high numbers were partly down to banks wanting to be tougher in stamping out dishonesty: “People are keener to get rid of bad apples. I don’t think this is evidence of any increased malpractice.”

The numbers come on the eve of the bank reporting season, when the biggest banks are expected to reveal even higher costs of mis-selling scandals such as payment protection insurance.

The bill for mis-sold PPI has reached £22 billion after Lloyds last week increased its estimate of the cost to it alone to £9.8 billion. Barclays is expected tomorrow to unveil a drop of about £1.5 billion in annual profit to £5.5 billion, mainly because of redress over a string of scandals.

Tomorrow Sir Richard Lambert, the former Director-General of the CBI, is due to publish a report on the creation of a professional body to champion higher standards and qualifications in banking. The Parliamentary Banking Standards Commission has already recommended a new system for approving senior bankers, and the Government has agreed to introduce legislation that could pave the way for reckless senior bankers to be jailed.

There are growing concerns that investigations into the manipulation of foreign exchange rates could be the next scandal to convulse the industry.

 

Hungary Sheds Bankers’ Shackles

International Monetary Fund told to vacate the country; nation now issuing debt-free money

By Ronald L. Ray

Hungary is making history of the first order.

Not since the 1930s in Germany has a major European country dared to escape from the clutches of the Rothschild-controlled international banking cartels. This is stupendous news that should encourage nationalist patriots worldwide to increase the fight for freedom from financial tyranny.

Already in 2011, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán promised to serve justice on his socialist predecessors, who sold the nation’s people into unending debt slavery under the lash of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the terrorist state of Israel. Those earlier administrations were riddled with Israelis in high places, to the fury of the masses, who finally elected Orbán’s Fidesz party in response.

According to a report on the German-language website “National Journal,” Orbán has now moved to unseat the usurers from their throne. The popular, nationalistic prime minister told the IMF that Hungary neither wants nor needs further “assistance” from that proxy of the Rothschild-owned Federal Reserve Bank. No longer will Hungarians be forced to pay usurious interest to private, unaccountable central bankers.

Instead, the Hungarian government has assumed sovereignty over its own currency and now issues money debt free, as it is needed. The results have been nothing short of remarkable. The nation’s economy, formerly staggering under deep indebtedness, has recovered rapidly and by means not seen since National Socialist Germany.

The Hungarian Economic Ministry announced that it has, thanks to a “disciplined budget policy,” repaid on August 12, 2013, the remaining €2.2B owed to the IMF—well before the March 2014 due date. Orbán declared: “Hungary enjoys the trust of investors,” by which is not meant the IMF, the Fed or any other tentacle of the Rothschild financial empire. Rather, he was referring to investors who produce something in Hungary for Hungarians and cause true economic growth. This is not the “paper prosperity” of plutocratic pirates, but the sort of production that actually employs people and improves their lives.

With Hungary now free from the shackles of servitude to debt slavers, it is no wonder that the president of the Hungarian central bank, operated by the government for the public welfare and not private enrichment, has demanded that the IMF close its offices in that ancient European land. In addition, the state attorney general, echoing Iceland’s efforts, has brought charges against the last three previous prime ministers because of the criminal amount of debt into which they plunged the nation.

The only step remaining, which would completely destroy the power of the banksters in Hungary, is for that country to implement a barter system for foreign exchange, as existed in Germany under the National Socialists and exists today in the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, or BRICS, international economic coalition. And if the United States would follow the lead of Hungary, Americans could be freed from the usurers’ tyranny and likewise hope for a return to peaceful prosperity.

Source: http://americanfreepress.net/?p=12418

Your mortgage documents are fake!

Prepare to be outraged. Newly obtained filings from this Florida woman's lawsuit uncover horrifying scheme (Update)

BY DAVID DAYENhttp://www.salon.com/2013/08/12/your_mortgage_documents_are_fake/

Lynn Szymoniak (Credit: CBS News/60 MInutes)

If you know about foreclosure fraud, the mass fabrication of mortgage documents in state courts by banks attempting to foreclose on homeowners, you may have one nagging question: Why did banks have to resort to this illegal scheme? Was it just cheaper to mock up the documents than to provide the real ones? Did banks figure they simply had enough power over regulators, politicians and the courts to get away with it? (They were probably right about that one.)

A newly unsealed lawsuit, which banks settled in 2012 for $95 million, actually offers a different reason, providing a key answer to one of the persistent riddles of the financial crisis and its aftermath. The lawsuit states that banks resorted to fake documents because they could not legally establish true ownership of the loans when trying to foreclose.

This reality, which banks did not contest but instead settled out of court, means that tens of millions of mortgages in America still lack a legitimate chain of ownership, with implications far into the future. And if Congress, supported by the Obama administration, goes back to the same housing finance system, with the same corrupt private entities who broke the nation’s private property system back in business packaging mortgages, then shame on all of us.

The 2011 lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in both North and South Carolina, by a white-collar fraud specialist named Lynn Szymoniak, on behalf of the federal government, 17 states and three cities. Twenty-eight banks, mortgage servicers and document processing companies are named in the lawsuit, including mega-banks like JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi and Bank of America.

Szymoniak, who fell into foreclosure herself in 2009, researched her own mortgage documents and found massive fraud (for example, one document claimed that Deutsche Bank, listed as the owner of her mortgage, acquired ownership in October 2008, four months after they first filed for foreclosure). She eventually examined tens of thousands of documents, enough to piece together the entire scheme.

A mortgage has two parts: the promissory note (the IOU from the borrower to the lender) and the mortgage, which creates the lien on the home in case of default. During the housing bubble, banks bought loans from originators, and then (in a process known as securitization) enacted a series of transactions that would eventually pool thousands of mortgages into bonds, sold all over the world to public pension funds, state and municipal governments and other investors. A trustee would pool the loans and sell the securities to investors, and the investors would get an annual percentage yield on their money.

In order for the securitization to work, banks purchasing the mortgages had to physically convey the promissory note and the mortgage into the trust. The note had to be endorsed (the way an individual would endorse a check), and handed over to a document custodian for the trust, with a “mortgage assignment” confirming the transfer of ownership. And this had to be done before a 90-day cutoff date, with no grace period beyond that.

Georgetown Law professor Adam Levitin spelled this out in testimony before Congress in 2010: “If mortgages were not properly transferred in the securitization process, then mortgage-backed securities would in fact not be backed by any mortgages whatsoever.”

The lawsuit alleges that these notes, as well as the mortgage assignments, were “never delivered to the mortgage-backed securities trusts,” and that the trustees lied to the SEC and investors about this. As a result, the trusts could not establish ownership of the loan when they went to foreclose, forcing the production of a stream of false documents, signed by “robo-signers,” employees using a bevy of corporate titles for companies that never employed them, to sign documents about which they had little or no knowledge.

Many documents were forged (the suit provides evidence of the signature of one robo-signer, Linda Green, written eight different ways), some were signed by “officers” of companies that went bankrupt years earlier, and dozens of assignments listed as the owner of the loan “Bogus Assignee for Intervening Assignments,” clearly a template that was never changed. One defendant in the case, Lender Processing Services, created masses of false documents on behalf of the banks, often using fake corporate officer titles and forged signatures. This was all done to establish standing to foreclose in courts, which the banks otherwise could not.

Szymoniak stated in her lawsuit that, “Defendants used fraudulent mortgage assignments to conceal that over 1400 MBS trusts, each with mortgages valued at over $1 billion, are missing critical documents,” meaning that at least $1.4 trillion in mortgage-backed securities are, in fact, non-mortgage-backed securities. Because of the strict laws governing of these kinds of securitizations, there’s no way to make the assignments after the fact. Activists have a name for this: “securitization FAIL.”

One smoking gun piece of evidence in the lawsuit concerns a mortgage assignment dated Feb. 9, 2009, after the foreclosure of the mortgage in question was completed. According to the suit, “A typewritten note on the right hand side of the document states:  ‘This Assignment of Mortgage was inadvertently not recorded prior to the Final Judgment of Foreclosure… but is now being recorded to clear title.’”

This admission confirms that the mortgage assignment was not made before the closing date of the trust, invalidating ownership. The suit further argued that “the act of fabricating the assignments is evidence that the MBS Trust did not own the notes and/or the mortgage liens for some assets claimed to be in the pool.”

The federal government, states and cities joined the lawsuit under 25 counts of the federal False Claims Act and state-based versions of the law. All of them bought mortgage-backed securities from banks that never conveyed the mortgages or notes to the trusts. The plaintiffs argued that, considering that trustees and servicers had to spend lots of money forging and fabricating documents to establish ownership, they were materially harmed by the subsequent impaired value of the securities. Also, these investors (which includes the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve) paid for the transfer of mortgages to the trusts, yet they were never actually transferred.

Finally, the lawsuit argues that the federal government was harmed by “payments made on mortgage guarantees to Defendants lacking valid notes and assignments of mortgages who were not entitled to demand or receive said payments.”

Despite Szymoniak seeking a trial by jury, the government intervened in the case, and settled part of it at the beginning of 2012, extracting $95 million from the five biggest banks in the suit (Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citi and GMAC/Ally Bank). Szymoniak herself was awarded $18 million. But the underlying evidence was never revealed until the case was unsealed last Thursday.

Now that it’s unsealed, Szymoniak, as the named plaintiff, can go forward and prove the case. Along with her legal team (which includes the law firm of Grant & Eisenhoffer, which has recovered more money under the False Claims Act than any firm in the country), Szymoniak can pursue discovery and go to trial against the rest of the named defendants, including HSBC, the Bank of New York Mellon, Deutsche Bank and US Bank.

The expenses of the case, previously borne by the government, now are borne by Szymoniak and her team, but the percentages of recovery funds are also higher. “I’m really glad I was part of collecting this money for the government, and I’m looking forward to going through discovery and collecting the rest of it,” Szymoniak told Salon.

It’s good that the case remains active, because the $95 million settlement was a pittance compared to the enormity of the crime. By the end of 2009, private mortgage-backed securities trusts held one-third of all residential mortgages in the U.S. That means that tens of millions of home mortgages worth trillions of dollars have no legitimate underlying owner that can establish the right to foreclose. This hasn’t stopped banks from foreclosing anyway with false documents, and they are often successful, a testament to the breakdown of law in the judicial system. But to this day, the resulting chaos in disentangling ownership harms homeowners trying to sell these properties, as well as those trying to purchase them. And it renders some properties impossible to sell.

To this day, banks foreclose on borrowers using fraudulent mortgage assignments, a legacy of failing to prosecute this conduct and instead letting banks pay a fine to settle it. This disappoints Szymoniak, who told Salon the owner of these loans is now essentially “whoever lies the most convincingly and whoever gets the benefit of doubt from the judge.” Szymoniak used her share of the settlement to start the Housing Justice Foundation, a non-profit that attempts to raise awareness of the continuing corruption of the nation’s courts and land title system.

Most of official Washington, including President Obama, wants to wind down mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and return to a system where private lenders create securitization trusts, packaging pools of loans and selling them to investors. Government would provide a limited guarantee to investors against catastrophic losses, but the private banks would make the securities, to generate more capital for home loans and expand homeownership.

That’s despite the evidence we now have that, the last time banks tried this, they ignored the law, failed to convey the mortgages and notes to the trusts, and ripped off investors trying to cover their tracks, to say nothing of how they violated the due process rights of homeowners and stole their homes with fake documents.

The very same banks that created this criminal enterprise and legal quagmire would be in control again. Why should we view this in any way as a sound public policy, instead of a ticking time bomb that could once again throw the private property system, a bulwark of capitalism and indeed civilization itself, into utter disarray? As Lynn Szymoniak puts it, “The President’s calling for private equity to return. Why would we return to this?”

Update: This story previously suggested that banks settled this lawsuit with the federal government for $1 billion. That number is actually the total for a number of whistle-blower lawsuits that were folded into a larger National Mortgage Settlement. This specific lawsuit settled for $95 million. The post above has been changed to reflect this fact.

Feds Put Out Call To Have JP Morgan Employees Arrested

When the banking crisis hit, many cried out demanding justice against the bankers who had used the public good as collateral for their increasing risks. Unfortunately, due to deregulation, there was little that the federal government could do. New regulations were passed with the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, giving the government authority to begin regulating the banks. But, what people had been waiting for, to see bankers go to jail, had not happened.

The wait is finally over. A report by the New York Times states that the feds have called for the United Kingdom to turn over the two men behind the JP Morgan multibillion dollar losses last year in what has been termed the “London Whale.” Javier Martin-Artajo, a manager who oversaw the trading strategy, and Julien Grout the trader who enacted the strategy, now face extradition to the United States, and a waiting jail cell when they arrive, much like Larus Welding who, as CEO of Glitnir Bank in Iceland, was arrested and convicted for his role in the financial crisis.

This is not enough, however, for the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is pressuring the financial giant to admit its role in the trading scandal. This is on top of the public apology given earlier this year. The evidence is damning and only by admitting wrongdoing will JP Morgan avoid the worst penalties which the federal government can bring to bear. JP Morgan alone is facing scrutiny from a reported eight different federal agencies over its behavior, along with various state and extra-national agencies.

And this is just the beginning. HBSC was just hit with almost $2 billion in fines, and other banks are scrambling to divest themselves of the risk which they are now facing. And with two of JP Morgan’s now facing jail time, the pressure is on to behave, and fast.

Will the top execs at the Wall Street financial giants go to jail? Not likely, they did their acts during a period of deregulation, so despite the incredible levels of damage they did to the economy, it was not illegal. But the strengthening of the federal government’s regulatory muscle is what we as a nation need to ensure that this does not happen again. And with the US Senate poised to reintroduce Glass-Steagall, the banks are, smartly, weighing their options and hedging their bets.

These are but two men, but they are an important symbol. It is a sign that there is a change happening, a new sheriff is in town. Empowered by new regulatory strength, there is new hope in Washington that another financial crisis will be averted, before it ever begins.

Read more: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/08/10/feds-put-out-call-to-have-jp-morgan-employees-arrested/#ixzz2biVquPH3

New Bank Investigations: Real Action, or More of the Same?

By Matt Taibbi

POSTED: August 8, 11:30 AM ET

Rolling Stone

Former Goldman Sachs trader Fabrice "Fabulous Fab" Tourre

  

A lot of interesting things happening on the white-collar enforcement front. Evil hedge fund SAC Capital and its villainous ruler Stevie Cohen were run through the gauntlet, Goldman Sachs patsy Fabulous Fab took a beating in civil court (I love the detail that emerged, that Goldman executives now call him "the poor kid"), and now, apparently, a pair of high-profile investigations have been launched against Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase for subprime mortgage fraud. The latter investigations seem to be designed to answer criticisms that nobody is going after the real doers of evil systemic crimes.

The Chase case apparently involves a criminal investigation, which is indeed interesting. The company admitted as much yesterday, saying federal investigators out West have "preliminarily concluded" that Chase brazenly violated securities laws when it sold subprime mortgage-backed instruments in 2005-2007.

But I'm skeptical it will turn into a real criminal investigation. All of the stories that broke in the last day or two noted the same detail, that Chase has beefed up its estimates for litigation/settlement costs:

As the investigations drag on, the bank is racking up significant legal costs. To help cushion against potentially hefty payouts to the authorities, JPMorgan recorded a $678 million expense for additional litigation reserves in the second quarter, up from $323 million in the same period a year ago, according to the filing on Wednesday.

The bank also estimated it could incur up to $6.8 billion in losses beyond its reserves, nearly $1 billion more than the first quarter of the year.

The government may very well decide to go after Chase in what it considers a big way. It may do the same for Bank of America, and then it may keep going on down the line to other banks, until it has collected a billion dollars or so from all the usual suspects, who were virtually all engaged in the same kinds of schemes, gathering and selling to customers radioactive mortgage bonds they knew were likely to explode, or were ridden with fraud and faulty underwriting.
But to me, these investigations will be meaningless unless one of two things happens, once they reach the inevitable stage of concluding painstakingly-crafted settlements with the inevitable teams of high-priced lawyers for the offending firms:

1) Someone goes to jail.

2) The company is ordered to break itself up into smaller pieces.


As to point one, here's the thing. If criminal laws were violated, then the government certainly has discretion to exercise mercy and seek non-criminal sanctions against the individuals responsible. But they can really only do that and not be total hypocrites if they also simultaneously implement leniency programs for ordinary street criminals at the same time.
Just yesterday, for instance, a federal judge in Mississippi handed down a six-month sentence to a man and ordered him to pay $8,282 in restitution for food stamp fraud – one Stanley Jones apparently lied in an application about whether or not anyone in his household had ever been convicted of a felony drug charge when he applied for food stamps.

Stanley Jones is going to do six months in jail for fraud in a case brought by the same Justice Department now sniffing around Chase and Bank of America. I would be shocked if $8,282 didn't represent the entire amount of value "taken" via Jones's fraud. I spent a lot of time with people targeted for welfare fraud for my upcoming book, The Divide, and the state never settles for anything less than every last dollar in these cases. Incidentally, you can find cases like this pretty much every day in every state in the country. Guaranteed, someone somewhere in America right now is drawing jail time for some form of welfare fraud.

Meanwhile, S.E.C. target Fab Tourre – the Goldman exec who joked about selling bad bonds to "widows and orphans" – will not do a day in jail for his part in a fraud that caused two banks in Europe to lose over a billion dollars. And Fab's restitution will range from $30,000 to $780,000, depending upon how much judge Katherine Forrest decides to ding him for each of his six counts of civil fraud. (It will be very interesting to see where she lands on that decision). Fab's bank, Goldman, Sachs, has already settled for $550 million for the same case, which is a lot of money, but again less than the total amount of the damage. And nobody went to jail.

This isn't about throwing bankers in jail for the sake of it. It's about making things fair. If we're going to keep throwing people in jail for food stamp fraud, then bankers who commit systematic securities fraud also have to go to jail. Either that, or we have to come up with alternative punishments for both types of nonviolent criminal. I'm not opposed to that, either. There are powerful arguments to be made against jail for many nonviolent offenders. The punishments for rich and poor just have to match, that's all.

As to point two – if we're not putting people in jail, we at least have to insist the companies break themselves up – this is in response to the argument made by the likes of Attorney General Eric Holder and former Department of Justice criminal division chief Lanny Breuer last winter after settlements involving HSBC (for money laundering) and UBS (for mass rate-fixing in the LIBOR scandal). The justification in those cases for deferred and or non-prosecution agreements coupled with huge fines as punishments for sweepingly destructive offenses was that the companies in question were too large and too systemically important to risk indicting criminally.

Well, let's say that's true. It's an argument not completely without merit. Nobody wants to see a repeat of the Arthur Andersen case, when the federal government indicted on a single count, the company went under, and 28,000 jobs were lost.

But if that's true, then the state can't simply accept that reality every time a huge company starts committing serial fraud or theft. If these companies commit crimes but are too big to prosecute, well, then, in lieu of indictments of the firm, or jail terms for executives, they have to become smaller, so that they can safely be prosecuted the next time. The state has the power to make that happen, but it would be a shock if they ever exercised that power.

That won't happen, however. Almost guaranteed, these investigations will end with huge cash settlements. We'll keep the jails filled with food-stamp thieves, while the bank execs who knowingly hawked doomed mortgage bonds to "widows and orphans" all over the world will almost certainly get off. At worst, their shareholders will cough up another billion or two in settlement money.

All of this is stuff that has to be kept in mind when news of such investigations leaks. It may sound like tough action. But it could just as easily be more of the same cost-of-doing-business, for-appearances-only non-regulation of the looking-busy genus. Wake me up when someone goes to jail.

Related

• Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/new-bank-investigations-real-action-or-more-of-the-same-20130808#ixzz2bOgCtGqt
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Police storm Rosbank as CEO caught in corruption sting

The chief executive of Rosbank, a Russian unit of Societe Generale, was detained by Russian police on Wednesday, for suspicion of accepting a bribe of about 5 million roubles (almost $160,000, €124,378). Russia's Interior Ministry said Vladimir Golubkov has been held "on suspicion of receiving illegal monetary compensation". The bribe was reportedly part of a total bribe of $1.5 million that Golubkov demanded in return for prolonging and modifying a loan for an unnamed company. The company requesting the loan extension is reportedly from the automotive industry.


A representative from the anonymous company responsible for the bribe tipped the police off before making the $160,000 payment to Galubkov. Anti-corruption officials stormed into Golubkov's office where they arrested him and recovered the 5 million roubles.

According to the police, Galubkov had already received $1.2 million from the company official before being caught. Police say Rosbank's senior vice president has also been detained in connection with the corruption charges.

Rosbank ranks as one of Russia's top-ten leading banks, based on assets and equity. It serves 3 million individual customers from 1,200 points of sale across Russia.

http://ruptly.tv/

Highlights of Offshore Leaks So Far

By Emily Menkes, April 5, 2013, 11:15 am

 

This week marks the beginning of one of the biggest financial leaks in history.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has just released the first stories from a global collaborative project into the world of offshore money. The Tax Justice Network, an advocacy group claims that a third of the world’s wealth is tied up in the secret area of offshore.

For the past 15 months, journalists from over 40 countries have worked together to shed light on this issue.

And here’s some of what they found.

• François Hollande’s treasurer during the 2012 presidential campaign, businessman Jean-Jacques Augier, is revealed to have investments in the Cayman Islands.
   
•  Philippine government officials said Friday that they will look into the disclosure that Maria Imelda Marcos Manotoc, the eldest daughter of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos was a beneficiary of a secret offshore trust in the British Virgin Islands. “We are duty bound to investigate and, depending upon informed preliminary findings, decide whether to pursue the matter,” said Andres Bautista, the chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good Government, tasked with recovering the Marcos family’s alleged ill-gotten wealth.
   
•  Germany’s largest financial institution, Deutsche Bank, helped its customers maintain more than 300 secretive offshore companies and trusts through its Singapore branch.
   
• New light is shed on a half-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme  in Venezuela that shuffled investor money among a maze of offshore companies, hedge funds and bank accounts stretching from the Cayman Islands to Switzerland and Panama, smoothing the way by funneling bribes to officials in Venezuela.
   
• Commonwealth Trust Limited, a BVI-based firm, is revealed to have set up companies involved in the Magnitsky affair, a case that’s strained U.S.-Russian relations and blocked American adoptions of Russian orphans

• One of Mongolia’s most senior politicians says he is considering resigning from office after being confronted with evidence that he has an offshore company and a secret Swiss bank account.
   
• Newly uncovered documents link Maria Imelda Marcos Manotoc, the eldest child of the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and now a senior political figure in her own right, to two secretive offshore trusts and an offshore company.
   
• A prominent Canadian lawyer, husband to a Liberal senator, moved CA$1.7 million (US$1.1 million) to secretive financial havens while he was locked in battle with the Canada Revenue Agency over his taxes, according to documents in a massive leak of offshore financial data.
   
• A corporate mogul whose business empire has won building contracts worth billions of dollars amid Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s massive construction spree is tied to the president’s family through secretive offshore companies.
   
• The prominent Thais listed in secret documents as owners of offshore holdings includes the former wife of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a sitting senator, a former high-ranking defense ministry official, Forbes-listed tycoons, and a former government minister whose assets in the United States are frozen because of her alleged links to Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe.
   
• Greek citizens who own or direct offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands and other tax havens rarely declare them to Greek tax officials, a review of more than 100 companies shows. Just four out of 107 offshore companies investigated by ICIJ are registered with tax authorities as the law usually requires, particularly when the firms hold assets or conduct business in Greece. Officials apparently have no record of the other 103 firms — or whether the owners declared any assets held by these entities or paid taxes on them.
   
• A list containing examples of some of the most high-profile names uncovered in this investigation, along with records of their offshore companies. Those named come in the form of politicians, businessmen, army generals, tycoons, relatives of dictators, and are scattered across 29 different countries.
   
• Finally, for those interested in how ICIJ managed to tackle records cache, the data manager of the project, Duncan Campbell, writes an in-depth explanation of how our journalists were able make sense of the 260 gigabytes of information obtained. Four large databases, half a million text, PDF, spreadsheet, image and web files were dissected to reveal over 130,000 records on the people and agents who run, own, benefit from or hide behind offshore companies. 

We hope you enjoy these stories; there will be more to follow daily for the next couple of weeks.

If you have story tips, documents or other information about this issue, contact us at investigations@icij.org.

 Subscribe to The ICIJ Global Muckraker by email or get the RSS feed

Source: http://www.icij.org/blog/2013/04/highlights-offshore-leaks-so-far

ABSOLUTE DATA – Tsunami of Offshore Fraud

http://unitednationsoffilm.com/absolute-data-tsunami-of-offshore-fraud/

Dutch Queen Beatrix running away into hiding with all the loot as Dutch lawmakers fed up about Netherlands role as a $13 trillion tax haven … It’s an excellent story, and it’s great to see that quite a lot of people in the Netherlands are ashamed of the role their country is playing. Abdicating suddenly after 33 years ruling the former Nazi Empire of the German proxie of The Netherlands, Queen Beatrix hands over the family business to her son.

“The Netherlands’ role as a $13 trillion relay station on the global tax-avoiding network is prompting a backlash. The Dutch Parliament is scheduled to debate the fairness of its tax system today. Lawmakers from several parties, including members of the country’s governing coalition, say they want to remove a stain on the nation’s reputation.

Meanwhile all over the globe there’s an even larger story breaking :

The ABSOLUTE DATA TSUNAMI of FRAUD.

• Government officials and their families and associates in Azerbaijan, Russia, Canada, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Mongolia and other countries have embraced the use of covert companies and bank accounts.
•  The mega-rich use complex offshore structures to own mansions, yachts, art masterpieces and other assets, gaining tax advantages and anonymity not available to average people.
• Many of the world’s top’s banks – including UBS, Clariden and Deutsche Bank – have aggressively worked to provide their customers with secrecy-cloaked companies in the British Virgin Islands and other offshore hideaways.
• A well-paid industry of accountants, middlemen and other operatives has helped offshore patrons shroud their identities and business interests, providing shelter in many cases to money laundering or other misconduct.
• Ponzi schemers and other large-scale fraudsters routinely use offshore havens to pull off their shell games and move their ill-gotten gains.

Ponzi Scheme Used Offshore Hideaways To Shuffle Investors’ Money

Who Uses the Offshore World

Don’t see your country in #offshoreleaks? We will release new stories daily over the next few weeks http://icij.org/offshore

ICIJ LIFTS VEIL ON OFFSHORE WORLD

INTERNATIONAL CONSORTIUM OF INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS LIFTS VEIL ON OFFSHORE WORLD - 86 INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS FROM 46 COUNTRIES WORKED ON WHAT MAY BE LARGEST-EVER CROSS BORDER JOURNALISM COLLABORATION

WASHINGTON, DC – The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a project of the Center for Public Integrity, released today its first of many re- ports from a 15-month investigation that cracks open the historically impenetrable world of offshore tax havens.

Drawing from a leaked trove of 2.5 million digital files, ICIJ led what may be the largest cross border journalism collaboration in history.

ICIJ’s investigation opens the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts and nearly 130,000 individuals and agents, exposing hidden dealings of politi- cians, con artists, and the mega-rich in more than 170 countries. Secrecy for Sale: In- side the Global Offshore Money Maze, ICIJ’s largest investigative reporting project in its 15- year history, is available at www.icij.org/offshore.

OFFSHORE LEAKS: DATA JOURNALISM CHALLENGES POWERFUL HIDDEN INTERESTS

Following today’s publication of findings from the analysis of millions of leaked documents about offshore companies and tax havens, Reporters Without Borders hails the journalistic investigation of leaked data troves and the major progress it represents in the emergence of a journalism capable of confronting powerful hidden private sector interests

“The conjunction of whistle-blowers and investigative journalists acting as democracy watchdogs makes it possible to challenge a skilful network of secrecy with often planetary ramifications,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “These new transparency tools will help to combat the embezzlement of public funds, the fraudulent acquisition of fortunes and corruption.”

Just as Reporters Without Borders saw the positive effects that the WikiLeaks revelations had on the fight against repressive regimes, so it now welcomes the work that has been carried out by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with funding from the Centre for Public Integrity.

The findings published today by 38 news organizations around the world were based on 15 months of research and analysis of more than 2.5 millions leaked files. The work was led by the ICIJ’s network of investigative journalists and mobilized more than 86 journalists in 46 countries.

The Swiss daily Le Matin said the leaked data, which includes emails, contracts, passport photos and accounts, contains information about more than 122,000 offshore companies and trusts linked to at least 130,000 people in 140 countries. read more

KEY FINDINGS

Secret records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reveal tens of thousands of people in more than 170 countries and territories linked to offshore companies and trusts. Here are some examples from around the world:

Georgia

Bidzina Ivanishvili
Prime Minister

Details: Georgia’s richest man, with a net worth estimated by Forbes magazine at more than $5 billion. Was elected prime minister in October 2012, straight from the business world.

Offshore business: Director of Bosherston Overseas Corp. in the British Virgin Islands (2006). The company is still in existence, according to BVI records.

Comment: “For the reporting period of 2011-2012 Prime Minister Ivanishvili had no interest in the company you have mentioned in your inquiry and therefore there was no obligation to report it in his declaration. The Prime Minister takes these reporting requirements seriously and everything is done according to the law,” a spokesman said.

France

Jean-Jacques AugierJean-Jacques Augier

Publisher

Details: Campaign treasurer of François Hollande for the 2012 presidential elections.  They studied together at the prestigious National School of Management (ENA). He’s also chief executive officer of investment holding company Eurane SA, mainly focused on the publishing field.

Offshore business: Shareholder — through Eurane SA — and director of International Bookstores Ltd (2005) in the Cayman Islands.

Comment: Jean-Jacques Augier said he used the company to do a large investment in China in 2005. One of his partners in the offshore firm was Xi Shu, a businessman and a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory body in China dominated by the Communist Party but with representatives from other parties and organizations.

 

 

Mongolia

Bayartsogt SangajavBayartsogt Sangajav

Politician

Details: Became his country’s finance minister in September 2008, a position he held until a cabinet reshuffle in August 2012. During those years he attended international meetings and served as a governor of the Asian Development Bank, pushing the case for his poor nation to receive foreign development assistance and investment. He was at the forefront of encouraging foreign mining and other companies to move into Mongolia. He currently serves as deputy speaker of the Mongolian Parliament.

Offshore business: Bayartsogt Sangajav controlled Legend Plus Capital Limited, an offshore company administered from Hong Kong but incorporated in the British Virgin Islands (2008). The documents show the company was used to open a secret Swiss bank account, controlled by Bayartsogt, just months before he was appointed his country’s minister of finance.

Comment: Bayartsogt said the company and the bank account were set up as a syndicate by him and three unnamed business friends to trade in stocks. Both the bank account and the company remain in his name, and he did not declare them to Parliament, something he now describes as a “mistake.” He said he was considering resigning from Parliament over the issue.

Venezuela

 

José Eliecer Pinto Gutiérrez

Army General

Details: Top commander in the Amazonas state, overseeing security in the Venezuela-Colombia border.

Offshore business: Shareholder, director and secretary of Romana International Holdings, Ltd. (2003-2006) in the British Virgin Islands.

Comment: Pinto Gutiérrez could not be reached for comment.

 

 

 

Myanmar/Burma

Aye Zaw Win   

Son-in-law of Burma’s former dictator Ne Win

Details: General Ne Win was a military strongman who ruled Burma during three decades, 1962-1988. His family became wealthy through business activities including forestry and fisheries.

Offshore business: Shareholder of Compass Point Finance Limited (1996) and Sky-Link Communications Ltd. (1997) in the British Virgin Islands. The companies were transferred to another offshore service provider, but the records do not provide a date.

Comment: Aye Zaw Win could not be reached for comment despite multiple attempts.

South Africa/Zimbabwe

“Billy” RautenbachMuller Conrad “Billy” Rautenbach

Businessman  

        

Details: Zimbabwean millionaire with close links to the Mugabe regime. The United States blacklisted him saying he has helped organized huge mining projects in Zimbabwe that “benefit a small number of corrupt senior officials.” Rautenbach fled South Africa in 1999 after being accused of fraud. The charges lodged personally against him were dismissed, but a South African company he controlled pleaded guilty to criminal charges and paid a fine of roughly $4 million.

Offshore business: Shareholder of Artemis Group, LTD. (2006) in the British Virgin Islands.

Comment: Rautenbach denies U.S. authorities’ allegations, contending that they made “significant factual and legal errors” in their blacklisting decision, his attorney, Ian Small Smith, said. Smith said Rautenbach’s BVI company was set up as “special purpose vehicle for investment in Moscow” and that it complied with all disclosure regulations. The company is no longer active.

 

 

 

Azerbaijan

Ilham AliyevIlham Aliyev, Mehriban Aliyeva, Arzu Aliyeva and Leyla Aliyeva

Ruling family

Details: Ilham Aliyev is the president of Azerbaijan and Mehriban Aliyeva is his wife. Arzu and Leyla are the couple’s daughters. The Aliyev family, beginning with Ilham’s father, Heydar Aliyev, has held power in Azerbaijan almost without interruption since the late 1960s.

Offshore business: Ilham Aliyev and Mehriban Aliyeva were directors of Rosamund International Ltd (2003) in the British Virgin Islands. Arzu Aliyeva was a director and shareholder of BVI company Arbor Investments (2008).  Leyla Aliyeva was director and shareholder of LaBelleza Holdings Ltd. (2008) and Harvard Management Ltd. (2008) both in the BVI.

Comment: Ilham Aliyev, Mehriban Aliyeva, Arzu Aliyeva and Leyla Aliyeva did not respond to ICIJ’s requests for comment.

United States

Denise Rich

Songwriter

Details: Ex-wife of the United States’ most famous tax fugitive, Marc Rich, who was controversially pardoned by former President Bill Clinton on Clinton’s last day in office. She is a Grammy-nominated songwriter, having written chart-topping songs for the likes of Sister Sledge and Celine Dion. In 2012, Rich resigned her U.S. citizenship.

Offshore business: Settlor and beneficiary of The Dry Trust (1992) and director of DTD Limited (2007), both in the Cook Islands.

Comment: Denise Rich did not respond to a request for comment.

 

 

 

Indonesia

Eka Tjipta WidjajaEka Tjipta Widjaja              

Businessman

Details: Head of Indonesia’s second richest family (2012), owns rainforest-clearing Asia Pulp and Paper and world’s second largest palm oil plantations.

Offshore business: Beneficial owner, through his Sinar Mas conglomerate, of various pulp and palm oil British Virgin Islands and Labuan offshore companies

Comment: Widjaja did not respond to a request for comment.

Thailand

Potjaman Na PombejraPotjaman Na Pombejra

Former Thai first lady

Details: Former wife of Thailand’s ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Potjaman and Shinawatra obtained a high-profile divorce at the Thai consular office in Hong Kong in 2008. Two years later, about $1.4 billion of Shinawatra’s family assets were seized after he was found guilty by the Supreme Court of corruption and abuse of power to benefit his family’s telecommunication company, Shin Corporation, while he was prime minister.

Offshore business:  Potjaman Na Pombejra acquired an offshore company called Premium Select Inc. (2007) in the British Virgin Islands, and soon after she was listed as the sole beneficial owner. The company was set up through the service of UBS AG Singapore.

Comment: Potjaman’s lawyer, Somporn Pongsuwan, did not return several phone calls seeking information on the offshore entity.

Fiji

Fred MarafonoFred Marafono       

Mercenary

Details: Ex-British SAS, he was involved in security work and diamond mining during the Sierra Leone civil war.

Offshore business: Director of Hinterland Mining Brokers Limited (1997-2000) in the Cook Islands.

Comment: Marafono passed away on March 27; earlier attempts to reach him for comment were unsuccessful.

Canada

Tony Merchant E.F. Anthony “Tony” Merchant

Trial lawyer

Details: A former politician, he is married to Canadian senator Pana Merchant. He has been involved in a number of high-volume class action suits, including a $1.9 billion settlement with the Canadian government on behalf of native groups over abuse of students in residential schools.  Merchant has had repeated battles with the Canadian revenue agency over his tax payments.   He has also been disciplined by the Law Society for “conduct unbecoming of a member.”

Offshore business: Beneficiary (1998-2002), settlor and protector of the Merchant (2000) US Inc Trust (incorporated 1998) in the Cook Islands.  His wife, Canadian senator Pana Merchant, is a beneficiary of the trust.

Comment: Anthony and Pana Merchant declined to comment.

 

Kazakhstan

Mukhtar AblyazovMukhtar Ablyazov

Businessman

Details: Ablyazov stands accused of embezzling up to $5 billion from a state-owned Kazakhstan bank in what British media describe as the biggest fraud in history.

Offshore business: An individual later named in U.K. court documents as a front man for Mukhtar Ablyazov set up 31 companies in 2006 and 2007 in the British Virgin Islands.

Comment: Ablyazov’s attorneys in London did not respond to a request for comment. Ablyazov has denied the fraud allegations in the past.

 

Philippines

Imee MarcosMaria Imelda Marcos Manotoc  

Politician

Details: Daughter of former Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos and at present governor of the province of Ilocos Norte.

Offshore business: Beneficiary and investment advisor to Sintra Trust (2002) in the British Virgin Islands. She was also a financial advisor for a company in which the Sintra Trust was a shareholder, ComCentre Corporation (2002), and a “master client” for the M Trust in Labuan, Malaysia (2007-2009).

Comment:  Manotoc did not respond to a request for comment.

 

 

Kuwait

Sheik Sabah Jaber Al-Ali Al-SabahSheik Sabah Jaber Al-Ali Al-Sabah and two relatives

Members of Kuwait’s ruling family

Details: Sheik Sabah Jaber Al-Ali Al-Sabah has headed the Kuwaiti Public Ports Authority. He and his brother are sons of Kuwait’s former deputy prime minister

Offshore business: He or his relatives are shareholders in two British Virgin Islands companies CIC Realty, Inc and Capital Investment Company Group, Ltd for seven years until 2002

Comment: Sheik Sabah Jaber Al-Ali Al-Sabah did not respond to a request for comment

 

 

Colombia

Alvaro Uribe and his sons, Tomás Uribe Moreno and Jerónimo Alberto Uribe Moreno

Businessmen

Details: Sons of former Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe. During their father’s eight years in office, they were accused of influence-peddling in two high-profile scandals, including in a case in which they acquired land in an area whose value skyrocketed after authorities granted it tax-free status. They were acquitted in both cases but prosecutors have started investigating new leads related to the land acquisitions.

Offshore business: Shareholders of Asia America Investment Corporation (2008) in the British Virgin Islands.

Comment: A lawyer for Tomás and Jerónimo Uribe Moreno, Jaime Lombana, said the company was created with the purpose of selling Colombian handcrafts abroad but the business never took off. The company was incorporated in the BVI because one of the partners in the venture lived there, said Lombana. The firm, he said, “didn’t produce any income.”

 

Djibouti

Abdourahman “Charles” BorehAbdourahman “Charles” Boreh          

Businessman and politician

Details: One of Djibouti’s most wealthy and powerful businessmen and a 2011 presidential election candidate. He is exiled in Dubai.

Offshore business: Beneficial owner of Net Support Holdings Ltd (2007) in the British Virgin Islands and Value Additions Ltd (2007) in Samoa

Comment: Boreh said he uses his offshore companies to steer his many investments worldwide and to protect his assets from potential political instability.

Spain

Carmen Thyssen-BornemiszaCarmen Thyssen-Bornemisza

Art collector and philanthropist

Details: Former Miss Spain and widow of a German-Hungarian baron, she’s one of the world’s top art collectors. Her hundreds of works of art ranging from Van Gogh to Goya are exhibited in museums in Madrid, Barcelona and Málaga.

Offshore business: Beneficial owner of Sargasso Trustees Limited (1996-2004)  and shareholder of Nautilus Limited (incorporated 1994) in the Cook Islands.

Comment: Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza’s lawyer acknowledged that she gains tax benefits by holding ownership of her art offshore, but stressed that she uses tax havens primarily because they give her “maximum flexibility” when she moves art from country to country.

Ukraine

Dmytro FirtashDmytro Firtash

Businessman

Details: Co-owns RosUkrEnergo, a partnership with Gazprom, the Russian natural gas giant. U.S. law enforcement officials and diplomats have linked him to arms and drug trafficking and to reputed Russian mob boss Semion Mogilevich.

Offshore business: Shareholder and director (since 2007) in Group DF Limited (incorporated in 2006) in the British Virgin Islands, which became a holding company for Firtash’s interests in energy, chemicals and real estate.

Comment: Firtash could not be reached for comment.

 

 

Pakistan

Moonis ElahiMoonis Elahi

Legislator

Details: Son of Chaudry Pervez Elahi, who until last month was Pakistan’s deputy prime minister. The Chaudry family has had a powerful role in the country’s politics for the past five decades. In 2010, Moonis Elahi was accused of receiving illicit payments as part of an alleged land scam. He was later acquitted amidst what Pakistan’s Supreme Court said was intense government interference in the investigation.

Offshore business: Shareholder and director of Olive Groves Assets Ltd. (2006) in the British Virgin Islands.

Comment: Moonis Elahi denied that he owns or controls Olive Grove Assets Ltd. He did not answer whether he had owned the firm in the past. ICIJ verified Elahi’s connection to the firm through the address listed for the politician in the corporate records, which is that of the Chaudry family residence in Lahore.

Saudi Arabia

Hassan Mohammed and Fady Mohammed Jameel

Businessmen

Details: Sons of one of the richest men in Saudi Arabia and executives in Abdul Latif Jameel Group, one of the world’s largest Toyota dealers, with operations in the Middle East, UK, Central Asia and China.

Offshore business: Directors (2002-2003) of Costa Azzoura Limited (incorporated in 2002) and directors (2004-2009) of Hillbeck Limited (incorporated in 2004) in the British Virgin Islands. Hassan was also shareholder of Hillbeck Limited (since 2004).

Comment: The Director of Business Development at the Abdul Latif Jameel Group, Farooq Vaid, said the Jameel brothers were not related to the offshore companies as directors or shareholders. He acknowledged knowing about the entities but didn’t want to confirm any further details. “These are privately held companies and nobody has the right to know,” he told ICIJ. Internal records show Vaid was shareholder of Costa Azzoura Limited and shareholder and director of Hillbeck Limited. He is also related to five more BVI companies — in one case as shareholder and in the other four cases as director. The Abdul Latif Jameel Group address in Jeddah is mentioned in most of the company records obtained by ICIJ.

Malaysia

Mirzan Bin Mahathir

Businessman

Details: Son of Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, the longest-serving prime minister of Malaysia (1981-2003), who modernized the country under an autocratic rule. Mahathir Mohamad was accused of abusing his extensive political powers to enrich his family and key business associates. Mirzan is a prominent entrepreneur, with directorships in various companies in Malaysia and internationally.

Offshore business: Shareholder and director of Utara Capital Limited (1997), Crescent Energy Limited (2003), and Al Sadd Investments Pte. Ltd. (2009) in Labuan.

Comment: An aide for Mirzan told Malaysiakini and ICIJ that Mirzan could not answer questions because he was out of town.

Italy

Fabio GhioniFabio Ghioni

Hacker

Details: Former head of information security at Telecom Italia, arrested in 2007 for leading a unit that illegally obtained data of 4,000 people, including politicians and journalists. In 2012 the Supreme Court of Cassation confirmed his 2010 plea bargain and his sentence of 3 years and 4 months in prison.

Offshore business: Owner of Constant Surge Investments Ltd (2006) in the British Virgin Islands.

Comment: Fabio Ghioni denied being the owner of Constant Surge Invesments Ltd. “The BVI? I don’t know where they are located!” he said on the phone. ICIJ verified Ghioni’s connection to the BVI firm through the address he used upon incorporation of the company which is that of his personal residence in Milan. The corporate files also include annotations describing Ghioni’s occupation at the time.

 

Brazil

Clarice, Leo and Fabio Steinbruch

Businessmen 

Details: Members of one of Brazil’s richest families, which owns large steel and textile companies and a bank.

Offshore business: Shareholders and directors of Peak Management Inc. (2007) in the British Virgin Islands.

Comment: Leo Steinbruch told ICIJ that “Peak Management exists, is active, it’s been declared on its owners’ tax forms and has been duly disclosed to the Brazilian Central Bank as a Brazilian investment abroad.”

India

Ravikant RuiaRavikant Ruia

Businessman

Details: In December 2011, he was accused of criminal conspiracy by India’s principal anti-corruption enforcement agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation. The accusation relates to a broader investigation of politicians, government officials and telecom executives in India for alleged irregularities in the award of cell phone frequencies to telephone companies.  Ruia’s firm is disputing the charges made against him and others.

Offshore business: Shareholder in one firm in the British Virgin Islands, Orion Worldwide Universal Corporation (2008). His daughter, Smiti, is a shareholder in two others. One of Ruia’s flagship companies, Essar Power, has further BVI entities that are named in the ICIJ documents.

Comment: A company spokesman said that of the eight companies registered in Ruia’s name as well as in the name of his flagship business Essar Power, five have since been liquidated. Three continue to be operational. “These companies were started as SPVs [Special Purpose Vehicles] to make investments and are in the knowledge of the authorities concerned,” the spokesman added.

 

Mexico

Dionisio Garza MedinaDionisio Garza Medina

Businessman

Details: His family co-owns Alfa, a conglomerate with interests in oil, food and telecommunications.

Offshore business: Shareholder of Vercors Private Limited (2005) in Singapore.

Comment: Garza Medina did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Alfa, of which Garza Medina was CEO until 2010, declined to answer questions saying this is a “private matter of Mr. Garza not related to Alfa.”

Greece

Apostolos VakakisApostolos Vakakis

Businessman

Details: CEO of the retail conglomerate Jumbo SA, one of Greece’s largest companies.

Offshore business: Shareholder of Karpathia Ltd. (2007) in the British Virgin Islands. Company transferred to another offshore service provider in 2009.

Comment: “I have declared officially all without exception my transactions that should be announced in public, as provided by relevant Greek legislation. … One does not use a legal entity in order to hide the identity of the beneficial owner by using shadow names but to be able to complete a transaction in a straightforward manner,” said Vakakis.

 

Jordan

The Shoman familySuha, Omar and Aysha Shoman            

Widow and children of one of Jordan’s richest families

Details: The family’s father, Khalid Shoman, was — until his death in 2001 — vice-chairman of the Arab Bank Group, one of the main banks in the Arab world, founded by his father. Omar sold their share of the bank for about $375 million in 2003.

Offshore business: Omar and Aysha are shareholders — jointly or on their own — of 12 companies in the British Virgin Islands, including OS Investments Inc. (2002), OAKS Inc. (2003), Fisch Investments Inc. (2005) and OS Tech Inc. (2006). Their mother is connected with two of the firms as a shareholder and one as a director. Most entities were transferred to another offshore service provider between 2007 and 2009.

Comment: Omar Shoman didn’t reply to requests to comment through his assistant and email. The ICIJ could not locate Aysha Shoman and could not reach Suha Shoman on the phone despite several attempts.

Tanzania

Mehbub Yusufali ManjiMehbub Yusufali Manji

Businessman

Details: The Manji family is one of the richest in Tanzania. It started Quality Group Limited, the country’s major conglomerate with interests ranging from automotive to food processing.

Offshore business: Director and shareholder of Intertrade Commercial Services Inc. (2007-2009) in the British Virgin Islands.

Comment: Yusuf Manji, chairman and CEO of the company, did not reply to ICIJ’s emailed request for comment. The contact address in the records is that of the company in Dar-Es-Salaam.

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