LLC limited liabil
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see c3-4 shuffle / dark $
SEE MONEY LAUNDER CORRUPT TRANSPARENCY
MERRI OK
this is generic cat, but mostly concerned with shell anonymous hide asset and money launder for US and political purpose, eg michael cohen llc to hide hush $ djt
often (small) law firms?
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AN 8 26
Former prosecutors piled on President Donald Trump’s efforts to obliterate anti-corruption efforts and destroy policies dedicated to preventing bribery and money laundering in the country.
The Atlantic reports this week “brought the biggest blow yet: The Treasury has obliterated a recent rule to deter devious shell companies, handily reopening the American economy to anyone looking to hide their illicit wealth.”
On Tuesday, the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced that businesses formed in the United States would no longer need to disclose their actual owners. Worse, it determined that nearly all the data already gathered on such companies would be destroyed.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the move “a victory for common sense and American small businesses,” but former prosecutors told MS NOW that it effectively destroys years of hard work curbing shifty financial networks and provides cover for wealthy American tax dodgers and money launderers.
“If you look at this sort of small scale fraud, they are now solely pursuing, whether it's against daycares in Minneapolis or food trucks in southern California, I'm willing to bet that if you did another sort of demographic breakdown and analysis, you would find that this is just one more piece of the administration's general preference to go after minorities at the expense of going after people who are actually damaging the country,” former prosecutor Michael Feinberg told MS NOW anchor Nicole Wallace. “The notion that you would go after a daycare or a food truck or something else with a relatively small economic footprint and no tentacles that reach into other criminal organizations while giving a pass to major corporations that might actually be committing large scale fraud, or enabling embezzlement. And money laundering is insane. And I can't find any legitimate motive for it.”
Feinberg added that prosecution of huge, multi-faceted schemes like those cooked up by Enron will be a thing of the past under Trump’s gutted departments.
“That's going to be exponentially more difficult the next time something like that happens, because this department of justice [have] jettisoned literally centuries of cumulative subject matter expertise and experience. You can't just replace a toughened, experienced prosecutor or a seasoned investigator with somebody who just graduated from law school or Quantico.”
Former prosector and DOJ pardon attorney Liz Oyer also pointed out that Trump has walked away from major cases against wealthy individuals by either surrendering investigations or pardoning them entirely. Worse, he’s erasing the money many convicted felons were sentenced to pay back to their financial victims.
“I was a federal public defender for about ten years, and the majority of my clients were low-income people of color, and those people have always experienced the unfairness of the criminal justice system because of disproportionate targeting with prosecutions because of having less resources to defend those cases,” Oyer told Wallace. “This administration has essentially doubled down on those disparities. …Trump does not care one bit about who he is targeting disproportionately and how his prosecution policies affect communities of color, low-income communities, communities with large immigrant populations.”
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chuck gray sos
Wyoming secretary of state conducts audits of commercial registered agents
On March 18th, the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office conducted several targeted, in-person audits of commercial registered agents, including the location of 30 North Gould Street in Sheridan, Wyoming. "Our administration takes fraud and abuse of corporate filings extremely seriously, and the office works to ensure compliance by Wyoming business entities and commercial registered agents with Wyoming law,” Secretary of State Chuck Gray said in a statement. “These targeted, in-person audits of large commercial registered agents are an important part of ensuring compliance with Wyoming law, and our office also conducts regular audits to ensure compliance with the Commercial Registered Agents Act.”
llc farms eg datwyler
...
When contacting Wyoming Discount Registered Agent Inc., a third-party LLC agent associated to the Lander address, owner Adolph Stankus of Nevada, refused to provide Berg with any information about the actual people running businesses that are associated to the address, but told her he would forward the tax information requested to them, to which she declined.
Berg said of the corporations that have transferred into Wyoming, around 800 in Fremont and Sheridan counties were from Nevada.
There’s a similar service based in Sheridan called Wyoming Registered Agent Services LLC, with 16,941 businesses filed at its address.
Berg doesn’t believe agents like Stankus aren’t doing anything illegal, but said that actual Wyoming businesses are being put at a disadvantage when it comes to their tax burden.
Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, disagreed and pointed to Wyoming state law, which says the principal-listed office of an LLC must be the actual main office for the business. Wyoming law states that a registered office is also required to be a street address located in Wyoming that must be a physical location where the business entities’ registered agent or a natural person who has an agency relationship can accept services for the business.
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pp 11 25
Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Secretly Got Money From $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts
The company is run by the husband of Noem’s chief DHS spokesperson and has personal and business ties to Noem and her aides. DHS invoked the “emergency” at the border to skirt competitive bidding rules for the taxpayer-funded campaign.
by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski
November 14, 2025,
On Oct. 2, the second day of the government shutdown, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrived at Mount Rushmore to shoot a television ad. Sitting on horseback in chaps and a cowboy hat, Noem addressed the camera with a stern message for immigrants: “Break our laws, we’ll punish you.” [BUFFALO?]
Noem has hailed the more than $200 million, taxpayer-funded ad campaign as a crucial tool to stem illegal immigration. Her agency invoked the “national emergency” at the border as it awarded contracts for the campaign, bypassing the normal competitive bidding process designed to prevent waste and corruption.
The Department of Homeland Security has kept at least one beneficiary of the nine-figure ad deal a secret, records and interviews show: a Republican consulting firm with long-standing personal and business ties to Noem and her senior aides at DHS. The company running the Mount Rushmore shoot, called the Strategy Group, does not appear on public documents about the contract. The main recipient listed on the contracts is a mysterious Delaware company, which was created days before the deal was finalized.
No firm has closer ties to Noem’s political operation than the Strategy Group. It played a central role in her 2022 South Dakota gubernatorial campaign. Corey Lewandowski, her top adviser at DHS, has worked extensively with the firm. And the company’s CEO is married to Noem’s chief spokesperson at DHS, Tricia McLaughlin.
The Strategy Group’s ad work is the first known example of money flowing from Noem’s agency to businesses controlled by her allies and friends.
Government contracting experts said the depth of the ties between DHS leadership and the Strategy Group suggested major potential violations of ethics rules.
“It’s corrupt, is the word,” said Charles Tiefer, a leading authority on federal contract law and former member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said that the Strategy Group’s role should prompt investigations by both the DHS inspector general and the House Oversight Committee.
“Hiding your friends as subcontractors is like playing hide the salami with the taxpayer,” Tiefer added.
Federal regulations forbid conflicts of interest in contracting and require that the process be conducted “with complete impartiality and with preferential treatment for none.”
“It’s worthy of an investigation to ferret out how these decisions were made, and whether they were made legally and without bias,” said Scott Amey, a contracting expert and general counsel at the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight.
The revelations come as the amount of money at Noem’s disposal has skyrocketed. The so-called Big Beautiful Bill granted DHS more than $150 billion, and Noem has given herself an unusual degree of control over how that money is spent. This summer, she began requiring that she personally approve any payment over $100,000.
Asked about the Strategy Group’s work for DHS, McLaughlin, the agency spokesperson, said in an interview, “We don’t have visibility into why they were chosen.”
“I don’t know who they’re a subcontractor with, but I don’t work with them because I have a conflict of interest and I fully recused myself,” she said. “My marriage is one thing and work is another. I don’t combine them.” Her husband, Strategy Group CEO Ben Yoho, didn’t respond to questions.
“My marriage is one thing and work is another. I don’t combine them,” said DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin, who is married to Strategy Group CEO Ben Yoho. Tricia McLaughlin via Instagram
In a written statement, DHS said, “DHS has no involvement with the selection of subcontractors.” They added that the Strategy Group does not have a direct contract with the agency, saying “DHS cannot and does not determine, control, or weigh in on who contractors hire.”
Contracting experts said that agencies can and do sometimes require that subcontractors be approved by officials. It’s not clear how much the Strategy Group has been paid.
This is not the first time that the Strategy Group has gotten public money through a Noem contract. As governor of South Dakota in 2023, her administration set off a scandal by hiring the Ohio-based company to do a different ad campaign, paying it $8.5 million in state funds. While the state said the contract was done by the book, a former Noem administration official told ProPublica that Noem quietly intervened to ensure the Strategy Group got the deal. ProPublica granted some people anonymity to discuss the deals because of their sensitivity.
The firm also paid up to $25,000 to one of Noem’s closest advisers in South Dakota, previously unreported records show. (The adviser, 28-year-old Madison Sheahan, now serves at DHS as the second-in-command of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Sheahan didn’t respond to questions about why she was paid.)
The DHS ad that the company filmed at Mount Rushmore has aired during “Fox & Friends” in recent days. Executives from the Strategy Group traveled to the shoot and hired subcontractors to fill out the film crew, according to records and a person involved in the campaign. The ad’s aesthetic sits somewhere between a political campaign ad and a Jeep commercial as Noem tells would-be immigrants to “come here the right way.”
“From the cowboys who tamed the West to the titans who built our cities,” Noem says, as images of Trump Tower in Chicago and Trump raising his fist after the assassination attempt last year flash on the screen, “America has always rewarded vision and grit.” Noem continues: “You cross the border illegally, we’ll find you.”
Watch the DHS Ad Filmed at Mount Rushmore
Obtained by ProPublica
The ad is the latest in a campaign that Noem debuted in February, just a few weeks after she took charge of DHS. “Any delay in providing these critical communications to the public will increase the spread of misinformation, especially misinformation by smugglers,” the agency wrote, explaining why it was skipping the competitive bidding process normally required for government contracts. The initial ads featured Noem thanking Trump for securing the border.
The contracts total $220 million so far, leading the DHS ad budget to triple in the most recent fiscal year, according to Bloomberg. The lion’s share of ad contracts is typically used to buy TV airtime or spots on social media. Advertising firms make money by taking an often-hefty commission. Federal records show the contracts have gone to two firms. One is a Republican ad company in Louisiana called People Who Think, which has been awarded $77 million.
But the majority of the money — $143 million — has gone to a mysterious LLC in Delaware. The company was created just days before it was awarded the deal.
Little is known about the Delaware company, which is called Safe America Media and lists its address as the Virginia home of a veteran Republican operative, Michael McElwain. McElwain has long had his own advertising company (separate from the Delaware one), but there’s little evidence that firm could handle a nine-figure federal contract on its own: It reported just five employees when it received COVID-19 relief money a few years ago.
How, where and to whom Safe America Media doled out the $143 million is unknown. Any subcontractors hired to do work on the DHS ads are not disclosed in federal contracting databases.
The office funding the ad contracts is listed as the DHS Office of Public Affairs, which is run by McLaughlin, contract records show. McLaughlin married Yoho, the Strategy Group CEO, earlier this year.
In its statement, DHS said the agency does its contracting “by the book” and the process is run by career officials. “It is very sad that Pro Publica would seek to defame these public servants,” DHS added.
Asked about why the agency chose Safe America Media, DHS said, “The results speak for themselves: the most secure border in American history and over 2 million illegal aliens exiting the United States.” McElwain and People Who Think didn’t respond to questions.
Yoho was still in college when he first served as campaign manager for a U.S. congressman. Now, at 38 years old, he’s a national player in the cutthroat industry of political advertising. Federal election records show tens of millions in payments to his firm during the 2024 election cycle, coming from dozens of Republican congressional candidates. And Noem has proved a particularly lucrative client.
Lewandowski brought Yoho into Noem’s inner circle back in South Dakota, according to two people familiar with the matter, putting the young consultant in charge of the ad side of her 2022 gubernatorial reelection campaign. Noem had a more than $5 million advertising budget for the race, records show. After she won in a landslide, Yoho, who has called Noem a friend, came to South Dakota to attend her inauguration ceremony. He sat off to the side of the stage, next to Lewandowski. (Lewandowski didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
Yoho shared a photo of himself with Noem and her husband, Bryon, at Noem’s 2023 inauguration in South Dakota. Benjamin Yoho via X
By then, Yoho’s next big project with Noem was already in the works. In late 2022, Noem was quietly preparing to launch another sprawling ad campaign — only this time, the money would come from state coffers. The stated goal was to encourage workers to move to South Dakota. The upcoming contract opportunity wasn’t public yet, but Yoho was already involved in planning the campaign, according to records first reported by Sioux Falls Live.
Then on Jan. 12, 2023, Yoho’s company registered to do business in South Dakota under the name Go West Media. The next day, the contract opportunity went live.
Seven companies submitted proposals for the project. Then the pressure from above set in, according to a former Noem administration official involved in the process.
The former official said a top Noem aide told them the governor would be angry if Yoho’s company didn’t win the contract. “He was very direct: ‘She wants to do it,’” they said. Contemporaneous text messages reviewed by ProPublica corroborate that senior Noem administration officials pushed for Yoho to get the contract. Eventually, he did. (In its statement, DHS denied that Noem influenced the process.)
Noem starred in Yoho’s ads herself,,
and
as she touted her state’s growing economy. Exactly how much Yoho and the Strategy Group made off the $8.5 million deal is unclear. Some of the money was used to purchase spots on Fox News, including one during a Republican presidential debate. Some of the money appears to have gone back to South Dakota — into the bank account of another of Noem’s top advisers.
Noem in costume in ads she starred in that were produced by the Strategy Group, funded with public money in South Dakota. South Dakota Governor’s Office of Economic Development via YouTube
Sheahan, now the second-in-command at ICE, was paid up to $25,000 by Go West in 2023 for “consulting,” according to a financial disclosure document Sheahan later filed. At the time, Sheahan was serving as both the operations director for Noem as governor and the political director for Noem’s campaign work, according to a copy of her 2023 resume obtained by ProPublica. Her responsibilities included coordinating “daily logistics and operations” for Noem and her team, the resume said. She also managed the “relationship with high level donors” to American Resolve, Noem’s network of outside political groups.
As his firm received millions from the South Dakota state government, Yoho separately continued to work for Noem in other capacities. He worked under Lewandowski on the publicity campaign for Noem’s 2024 memoir, according to a person familiar with the matter. (The book became famous for including an anecdote about Noem shooting her dog.)
The Strategy Group also received a stream of payments for social media consulting and media production work over the last few years from Noem’s American Resolve PAC. Federal election records show the PAC made its last payment to Yoho’s company this February, a couple weeks after Noem took her post as the head of DHS.
Corrections
{Do you have any information we should know about Kristi Noem or DHS contracts? Justin Elliott can be reached by email atjustin@propublica.organd by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240. Josh Kaplan can be reached by email atjoshua.kaplan@propublica.organd by Signal or WhatsApp at 734-834-9383.*}:
Jeff Ernsthausen contributed research.
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26 min in shell offshore why allow secret $?
mayfair london uberrich shell corps own houses
putin dep mayor stole $ smuggled abroad w help of banksters in west; applebaum
https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/376-how-democracies-fail
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DAF $ c3 c4 shuffle?
FTM$
The favorite DAF sponsor of the Right is DonorsTrust. Used heavily by Charles Koch,Robert Mercer, and Adolph Coors, it pours money into a network of right-wing charities and social welfare nonprofits. DonorsTrust gave more than $8.4 million to Project Veritas from 2014-18, or nearly one-third of the group’s contribution revenue. DonorsTrust’s yearly contribution rose from $607,000 in 2014 to a high of $2.4 million in 2017. Several members and staff of DonorsTrust have close ties to Koch-backed operations. The related Donors Capital Fund gave $20,000 to Project Veritas from 2014-15.
Project Veritas has a 501(c)(4)political arm, Project Veritas Action Fund, to which the billionaire, Trump-supporting Mercer family has steered funds. In 2018, a nonprofit called Making America Great, chaired by Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of former Renaissance Technologies co-CEO and Breitbart News funder Robert Mercer, donated $750,000 to the action fund. The Mercer Family Foundation has not donated directly to Project Veritas in recent years, but it’s possible it has used DonorsTrust to do so. From 2014-18, the foundation gave $10.9 million to DonorsTrust, including nearly $8.2 million in 2018, a big increase from previous years. By shifting more of its charitable dollars through DonorsTrust, the family is effectively hiding its donations from the public. In 2012, Robert Mercer donated $25,000 to Project Veritas through his LLC Gravitas Maximus.
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cohen oligarch $ vesel....
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1020 fake newspapers mostly delaware:
....Franklin Archer, a fictitious name for Iowa-incorporated DirecTech LLC, “brings coverage to underreported areas of American life,” according to its website. It has two networks: the “Metro Business Daily Network” and the “Local News Network.” As reported byThe Guardian, the CEO of Franklin Archer is Timpone’s brother, Michael Timpone. On the corporate front, the relationship between Metric Media LLC and Franklin Archer remains unclear, but they appear to share not only technology resources and authors, but also the publications themselves. To wit, as can be seen below in Figure 4: at the time of writing, the Arizona Business Daily is owned by Franklin Archer, according to Facebook, and the Michigan Business Daily by Metric Media LLC. The New Jersey Business Daily has no confirmed page owner.
[pix]
2020, a third network was added to the Franklin Archer portfolio, although it is not mentioned on its website: theAmerican Catholic Tribune Media Network, which includes five state-specific publications (in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Florida, and Arizona) and one national one (the American Catholic Tribune). These sites relay information about parishes and churches, including updates on how various churches intend to conduct Mass every week. Earlier this year, the sites mentioned they are “a product of Franklin Archer,” but that disclaimer no longer exists. Their Facebook pages, however, state they are owned by Franklin Archer.
These sites follow the exact same model as all the other sites in the extended network: rewrite original reporting from existing sources, including diocesan newspapers, repurpose announcements (including Mass timings and homilies) published by various churches under the guise of “press release submissions,” and sprinkle on some original reporting.
:{Yet another new product of Franklin Archer is the Freedom Media Network, which hosts podcasts and a YouTube channel with just under a thousand subscribers. The channel is described as “your source for positive news and content aimed at helping you become more purposeful, productive, and prosperous.” One of the podcasts, Freedom Mindset Radio, is rife with anti-science positions,}
:{the suggestion that getting a diagnosis is dangerous, as “they’re labeling a bag of symptoms.” The YouTube videos started being uploaded in January, and the website went live in March. ...}:
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/giuliani-created-2-secret-companies-amid-his-work-in-ukraine-and-we-think-he-only-had-one-client/
rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney, has told Salon that he created two new companies last year amid his work on Trump’s behalf trying to dig up damaging information on Joe Biden in Ukraine. The purpose of the companies, especially that of Giuliani’s brand new one-man law firm — as well as their possible connections to the president — is somewhat unclear.
According to New York records, one of the companies, first called Giuliani Media and now known as Giuliani Communications, was created in November, just before Giuliani traveled to Ukraine with a production crew from One America News Network (OAN).
During that trip, Giuliani interviewed Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Derkach, who was recently sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department as an “active Russian agent,” for material included in a documentary later aired on OAN. Giuliani released his interview with Derkach a few months later.
Although the existence of Giuliani Communications has not been previously reported, its creation lines up with reports at the time that Giuliani planned to create a podcast aimed at defending Trump from the impeachment narrative. He eventually launched that podcast, which airs regularly, and has conducted video interviews as well — including the one with Derkach. For unclear reasons, Giuliani changed the company name to Giuliani Communications in March 2020, the same month he released his Derkach interview.
giuliani’s other new company is his personal law firm, Rudolph W. Giuliani PLLC, which was created in June 2019, according to New York records. The company was first identified in an October 2019 report from Roll Call. Giuliani told Salon that he had set up the firm because a client of his wanted money put in escrow.
“I didn’t want Giuliani Partners to do it, because I know the ethical rules,” Giuliani said, but declined to name the client or to explain the potential ethical problems further. “I’m just a country lawyer,” he added.
“The question is what the client hired Giuliani to do,” Brett Kappel, top authority on lobbying and government ethics law, told Salon. If the client had hired Giuliani to provide legal advice, Kappel explained, or to “represent him in litigation or a negotiation where an exchange of money was contemplated,” then Giuliani would be required to place any funds entrusted to him by the client in an escrow account separate from the law firm’s funds. The former New York mayor’s consulting business,Giuliani Partners, “isn’t a law firm and isn’t subject to the same ethical requirements,” Kappel said.
That raises the intriguing question of why Giuliani had not set up a personal law practice until he got this specific request from this specific client. Although attorneys can represent clients without forming a firm, a PLLC shields the owner from liability.
At the time Giuliani formed his PLLC, he had already been representing Trump as his personal attorney for more than a year. He also claims to have represented Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, with whom he also struck up a business arrangement in 2018. Parnas and Fruman later ran political errands for Giuliani in Ukraine.
On the day Giuliani set up his personal firm, he seemed to have Ukraine on the brain, tweeting, “New Pres of Ukraine still silent on investigation of Ukrainian interference in 2016 election and alleged Biden bribery of Pres Poroshenko. Time for leadership and investigate both if you want to purge how Ukraine was abused by Hillary and Obama people.”
That same month, according to the Washington Post, Giuliani began doing consulting work forLuis Abinader, a presidential candidate in the Dominican Republic. It is not clear whether he also did legal work for Abinader.
A few days later, Giuliani he took a trip with Parnas to London that lasted several days, during which Giuliani met with Venezuelan financier Alejandro Betancourt, who is currently the subject of a major money laundering investigation in the U.S. Giuliani later took on Betancourt as a client, and spoke on his behalf to Justice Department prosecutors in September.
Giuliani told Salon in a previous phone conversation that Parnas was his client during a trip the two took to Madrid in July 2019, when he met with top Ukrainian foreign policy official Andriy Yermak (who subsequently became chief of staff to President Volodymyr Zelensky). Giuliani made the claim about representing Parnas when he was asked about his meeting with Yermak, explaining that attorney-client privilege barred him from discussing details of their conversations. Parnas’ current attorney has denied that Giuliani was representing Parnas at that time.
Giuliani claims to have done all his work for Trump free of charge, though the president has never publicly acknowledged that. Giuliani’s work on Trump’s behalf ultimately led to the president’s impeachment.
“Trump did not disclose on his financial forms, as required, that he was taking pro bono counsel from Giuliani,” Jordan Libowitz, of the government watchdog Citizens for Ethics in Washington, told Salon. Trump has alleged that “there’s no way of assessing the value of Giuliani’s work,” Libowitz said, “even though it is his responsibility to keep track of it.”
Giuliani disclosed the previously unknown companies in a conversation with Salon about another previously unreported company that he created in 2002 and which received taxpayer-backed emergency loans this spring. Salon’s investigation of the company offered new insight into Giuliani’s arcane business arrangements, which are reportedly the subject of subpoenas from federal investigators in the:{ Southern District of New York. Experts told Salon that the company’s loan application raises questions of bank fraud, a felony.}:
That SDNY probe is also reportedly investigating whether Giuliani’s activity in Ukraine violated the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).
Matt Sanderson, a top FARA law attorney, told Salon that despite reams of reports, and Giuliani’s history of peddling known Russian disinformation about both Joe Biden and his son Hunter, there isn’t enough public information to determine whether Giuliani’s work in Ukraine would qualify him, or OAN, as foreign agents.
“We would have to know if anyone acting on behalf of foreign interests, especially someone tied to the government, paid for or directed that work,” Sanderson said.
OAN, as a U.S. media company, is exempt from registering as an agent. Sanderson, however, pointed to a recent episode involving former CNN host Larry King, who conducted a blatantly unethical interview with Russian journalist Anastasia Dolgova that was filmed in two parts: King’s scripted questions, and then Dolgova’s answers.
King’s exposure, Sanderson told ProPublica, might hinge on whether he was “acting in his capacity as a member of the news media,” or was “doing an infomercial where he’s paid specifically to do the interview.” The same might apply here to OAN, Sanderson said.
Trump has often spoken glowingly of OAN — which has positioned itself significantly to the right of Fox News and has frequently spread even more blatant misinformation — as a preferred alternative. The president promoted the network’s Ukraine coverage several times on Twitter, including a Chanel Rion interview with former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko, during which Giuliani was present at the table.
Giuliani’s interview with Andrii Derkach is no longer available on OAN’s site, and all stories in which “Derkach” is tagged have been removed. OAN president Charles Herring previously told Salon that the network’s website automatically deletes older content, but there are indications that the Derkach material was deliberately removed. One story in which his name was misspelled as “Derkash,” for instance, was not deleted.
Giuliani did not reply to Salon’s questions about whether he had charged or expensed any of his Ukraine-related activity on President Trump’s behalf to either Giuliani Communications or Rudolph W. Giuliani PLLC.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/rudy-giuliani-collaborated-on-smear-of-joe-biden-with-active-russian-agent-whos-now-under-us-treasury-sanctions
former LifeLock spokesperson (and New York mayor) Rudy Giuliani is now seeking to distance himself from a member of the Ukrainian parliament who was sanctioned last week by the U.S. Treasury Department as an “active Russian agent.”
The sanctions target Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker who has ties to Russian intelligence that date back more than a decade. Treasury now accuses Derkach of running a “covert influence campaign” aimed at the 2020 U.S. presidential election since late 2019.
Giuliani met with Derkach last year in Ukraine in the former mayor’s role as Donald Trump’s attorney, during a trip aimed at digging up dirt on Joe Biden, then viewed as the Democratic frontrunner and now the party’s presidential nominee. Derkach and Giuliani discussed the much-debunked allegations about Biden in a segment on One America News Network (OAN), which Giuliani replayed on his personal podcast this March.
According to the Treasury Department, Derkach was pushing “false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning U.S. officials in the upcoming 2020 presidential election” into U.S. media via press conferences, interviews and other statements.
His efforts include releasing edited audiotapes that purport to document improprieties by Joe Biden in his dealings as vice president with the Ukrainian government.
When asked how he felt about his work with someone whom the Trump administration has now sanctioned as an active Russian agent, Giuliani offered no remorse, replying to Salon by text message:
“Yes I am very comfortable with what I did now leave me alone I’m with my friends discussing our experience on September 11 andkeep covering up for the Biden Family making millions selling his public office.”
Giuliani, who forwarded a supposed dossier of information on Biden to the State Department in the spring of 2019, told NPR that he had “never tried to influence the election.”
Derkach, Giuliani said in comments to NPR, “had no unique information that wasn’t already known except the $5.3 billion and that is being investigated in UKRAINE.” That again promotes Derkach’s debunked claims that Biden and his family somehow enriched themselves on a grand scale from business deals in Ukraine.
Giuliani’s activity in Ukraine last year led directly to the impeachment of his client, President Trump.Even as congressional impeachment hearings were proceeding, Giuliani traveled to Ukraine with an OAN news production team in an apparent attempt to justify his smears against Biden and create an alternative to the impeachment narrative. A few weeks after his trip, the House voted to impeach Trump.
Giuliani also popped up in an intriguing photograph with Chinese journalist Ding Gang, an associate of expat billionaire Guo Wengui, a Mar-a-Lago member who has been accused of being an agent of the Chinese government. [twt pix of bannon]
as Salon first reported, Bannon’s nonprofit group Citizens of the American Republic — subject of a documentary and now also a federal investigation — employed topTrump campaign strategist Jason Miller from October 2019 until at least February 2020, at a salary of $20,000 a month.
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/hes-back-trumps-former-campaign-manager-resurfaces-at-the-heart-of-ukraine-inquiry
...
Let’s also remember where Manafort carried out the crimes that landed him in prison: Ukraine. According to the Washington Post, as part of a plea deal, “Manafort acknowledged that he made more than $60 million in Ukraine, laundering more than $30 million of it through foreign companies and bank accounts to hide it from the IRS and cheating the government out of $15 million in taxes. He also agreed that he had lobbied in the United States on behalf of Ukrainian officials without registering and that he conspired to tamper with witnesses in his case.”
And where do we find ourselves today? Right back in Ukraine. This time it’s Manafort’s former boss, Donald Trump himself, who has been personally managing the campaign to get the Ukrainian government to help his re-election efforts. In fact, it was this week that we learned from George Kent, deputy assistant secretary of state in charge of Ukraine, how Trump wanted Zelensky to announce an investigation into Biden and the 2016 election. Kent told House impeachment investigators that Trump “wanted nothing less than President Zelensky to go to a microphone and say investigations, Biden and Clinton,” according to the Washington Post.
Even the minor characters are similar. In 2016, we had low-lifes like Kilimnik and “Professor” Joseph Mifsud running around on the fringes of Russia’s efforts to penetrate the Trump campaign and influence the presidential election. For 2020, we’ve got a couple of real jewels by the names of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, both born in the former Soviet Union, and you guessed it! Both are currently under indictment on federal campaign finance charges. In 2016, the connections to Trump were made through Manafort and campaign advisers like George Papadopoulos. This time, it’s Giuliani who is Trump’s cut-out to these foreign-born scam artists. And what was Giuliani using Parnas and Furman for? According to The New York Times, beginning in January of this year, “Mr. Giuliani had enlisted Mr. Parnas and Mr. Furman to collect information and make connections in Ukraine that could be used to damage Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic presidential contender, and to undermine the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.”
Even the way they have been moving funny money around was reminiscent of 2016. Back then, Manafort had pulled in millions from his work for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, which he laundered throughshell companies and bank accounts in Cyprus. This year, Parnas and his buddies used a company called Fraud Guarantee, that apparently had no employees and no customers, to funnel money to Giuliani through a complicated deal with a Long Island lawyer and a shell company in Belize
...
Parnas and Fruman were tapped out, having recently made the illegal $325,000 contribution to America First Action, a super PAC supporting Donald Trump, for which they are now under indictment. But they wanted a connection to Giuliani they could use back in Ukraine to drum up business deals, and apparently the way you get connected to Giuliani is to give him money. So they got a Long Island lawyer named Charles Gucciardo, who was a Trump supporter and large-money donor, to invest in their company, and then used the good offices of Fraud Guarantee to funnel $500,000 to Giuliani.
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619
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/06/bipartisan-push-to-crack-down-on-money-laundering-and-dark-money-shell-companies
A bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to require obscure corporations and limited-liability companies to disclose their true owners to law enforcement to snuff out laundered cash and political “dark money” flowing into the U.S. from foreign-influenced shell companies.
Members of Congress have introduced a number of bills mandating disclosure of companies’ beneficial owners — the person or persons who enjoy the benefits of ownership and control the company — to federal investigators. Lawmakers are mostly attempting to crack down on money laundering and the financing of other illegal activities. But the proposed legislation could also impact foreign interference in U.S. politics.
Foreign nationals and governments are prohibited from directly or indirectly engaging in activity to influence U.S. elections. But opaque LLCs, which are not required to disclose their beneficial owners to the public or law enforcement, frequently contribute to politically-active outside groups. This untraceable process has prompted concerns that they are anonymously injecting foreign money into the U.S. political process.
More than 4,000 LLCs contributed to groups in 2016, nearly quadruple the number in 2012. In the 2016 election cycle alone, nearly $46 million came from LLCs at the federal level, nearly double the $24 million from LLCs in the 2012 presidential election cycle.
Overall, direct spending in U.S. federal elections by groups that do not disclose their donors has exceeded $1 billion since OpenSecrets began tracking dark money in 2006.
Opaque foreign money has also found its way to political committees. Jho Low, a fugitive Malaysian financier accused of stealing billions, allegedly used a shell company to funnel more than $1 million to a pro-Barack Obama super PAC ahead of the 2012 presidential election. Low has not only been charged in relation to his alleged illegal foreign contributions in support of Obama, but has also been tied to suspicious money transfers funneling money into President Donald Trump’s joint fundraising committee.
These anonymous shell companies also show up in Foreign Agents Registration Act filings, masking the source of money behind influence campaigns and undermining the intent of the law to provide transparency on foreign influence activities.
Lax corporate disclosure laws have turned the U.S. into a top destination for shell companies. Last year, the U.S. surpassed the Cayman Islands to become the second largest haven for secretive offshore accounts and shell companies, according to a report from London-based Tax Justice Network.
“We’re becoming second only to Switzerland in the place people pick to put their money,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said during Wednesday’s hearing on shell companies. “Being second in a lot of things is good … not here.”
Lawmakers have introduced a number of bills to address the flow of untraceable money. Senate Judiciary Committee members Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) introduced legislation Tuesday that would require corporations to turn over beneficial ownership information to law enforcement in the event of a subpoena or summons.
A bipartisan group of senators in early June proposed their own bill to combat abuse of shell companies, requiring that corporations and LLCs disclose their beneficial owners to the Treasury Department. Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), Peter King (R-N.Y.) and Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) introduced similar legislation in May.
Whitehouse and Grassley, along with Graham and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) have also introduced legislation to specifically address political contributions from shell companies. The bill, first introduced last year, would make it a felony for individuals to use or help set up a shell company to conceal illegal political activity such as foreign political contributions.
The Treasury Department’s financial crimes enforcement unit finalized a rule last year that requires financial institutions to collect beneficial ownership information for customers opening accounts. But experts say the rule won’t stop the flow of money from foreign shell companies, making Congressional action necessary.
“This was a step in the right direction. But the primary responsibility for identifying the owners of a company cannot lie with banks. It should lie with the companies themselves, at the time of incorporation or when their ownership changes,” former Acting Treasury Secretary Adam Szubin toldthe Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday. “And FinCEN’s rule does nothing to illuminate the ownership of shell companies incorporated in the U.S. that exclusively open bank accounts abroad, a route that many dirty companies have followed.”
The House passed the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Rewards Act, which would reward whistleblowers who notify the U.S. of assets linked to corrupt foreign individuals, in May. The legislation is currently being considered by the Senate Banking Committee, which will hold a hearing Thursday on the topic of beneficial ownership collection. Among the organizations testifying are the Bank Policy Instituteand Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition, both groups pushing for disclosure of beneficial ownership to law enforcement.
These kinds of measures find support from a number of powerful trade associations, public interest groups and think tanks, ranging from the American Banking Association to Public Citizen to the American Enterprise Institute.
Center for Responsive Politics Executive Director Sheila Krumholz testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday, detailing how shell companies inject money into U.S. politics and advocating for greater transparency of beneficial ownership.
A few organizations have come out against the proposed measures. The National Federation of Independent Business has voiced opposition to some of the disclosure measures, expressing concern over the regulatory burden it would place on small businesses. The American Bar Association also expressed concerns about privacy.
None of the beneficial ownership proposals would propose creating a public registry of beneficial ownership information for businesses. Although some foreign countries keep their own running registries of these owners, U.S. lawmakers have not shown interest in expanding disclosure to that level, citing privacy concerns.
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frack variant:
https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/05/06/us-tax-breaks-shale-oil-gas-master-limited-partnerships
no lnx
About a half decade ago, as the shale drilling rush was sweeping across the U.S., drillers needed upfront cash — and quick — to let them snap up acreage, drill and frack exploratory wells, and hone their skills at the horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) that fueled an oil and gas boom.
Bankers and financiers began attending shale industry conferences, marketing a clever idea. By dusting off an obscure part of the tax code, drillers and pipeline builders could attract a different class of investor than would usually look at a boom-and-bust prone industry, an investor hunting for stability and predictability. Form a Master Limited Partnership, or MLP, shale drillers and pipeline builders were advised, and you'll be able to access that capital.
[series:
The Fracking Industry’s Water Nightmare
The Fracking Industry Is Cannibalizing Its Own Production, Increasing Spill Risks
Oil Industry Plans to Keep Workers Safe—by Firing Them and Having Robots Do Their Jobs
Rise of the Machines: Fracking Execs Plan Profits by Using Automation to Shrink Workforce
Why It Matters If Fracking Companies Are Overestimating Their ‘Proved’ Oil and Gas Reserves
Flip This Well: How Fracking Company CEOs Get Rich While Losing Billions
This Fed Policy Enabled the Fracking Industry’s $280 Billion Loss
How Wall Street Enabled the Fracking ‘Revolution’ That’s Losing Billions
GOP Tax Law Bails Out Fracking Companies Buried in Debt
Low Octane: The Surprising Reason Shale Oil Makes a Poor Fuel for High-Tech Cars and Trucks
Despite Disappointing Returns, Oil Driller Pushes Ahead with Fracking Near Rare Texas Wildlands]
The Secret of the Great American Fracking Bubble
The pitch for investors on MLPs was hard to resist: They “offer high yields and low taxes,” as the Financial Times described them in 2013. The tax benefits were a huge part of the draw, especially for wealthy investors (not just individuals, but also pension funds, which poured in billions).
The biggest benefit: a tax loophole that lets MLPs dodge so-called “double taxation,” paid by regular corporations and much-hated by investors, in which tax is paid both by the corporation on earning money and by investors as personal income. No corporate income tax, more money to go around for everyone but the government.
In 2000, MLPs had a total market value of less than $14 billion; by 2014, they had drawn over $500 billion in investments and some people were breathlessly predicting MLPs could wind up a trillion-dollar asset class.
And MLPs offer another quirk that investors found exciting. Holders not only stand to collect “distributions,” or a percentage of profits every three months, they can also trade MLP shares like stocks, meaning there were two ways to profit during the sector's rapid expansion.
Meanwhile, the tax benefits were substantial — from 2009 to 2012, MLPs shaved $13 billion dollars off their beneficiaries' tax bills, one 2013 report calculated.
Investment firms pushed MLPs hard. In 2014, Bloomberg reported that 109 out of 114 MLPs had favorable recommendations from the majority of Wall Street analysts covering them. “At the top, everybody’s a believer,” Timothy Gramatovich, Chief Investment Officer at California-based Peritus Asset Management, told Bloomberg.
Wall Street loved them for their own reasons: the $890.3 million that Bloomberg calculated MLPs earned banks in fees in 2013. “MLPs are Wall Street’s dream,” a Hedgeye Risk Management analyst observed. “They’re fee machines.”
MLPs helped to pour gasoline on the shale industry's fire, fueling the rapid expansion of fracking nationwide. In a perfect trifecta of poor public policy, the benefits from an energy MLP are exclusively available to producers of non-renewable fuels, set up a tax shelter benefitting these corporations, and create incentives for companies to go deeper into debt....
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Understanding the tax code:
What is a 501(c)(4) vs. a 501(c)(6) vs. an LLC?
The main vehicles through which dark money enters elections are three groups that
are often identified by their corporate structure and/or associated section of the U.S.
tax code.
First, “social welfare” organizations, which are organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the
tax code. By law, these organizations must be “operated exclusively for the promotion
of social welfare.”
Second, trade associations, which are organized under Section 501(c)(6) of the tax code.
This section encompasses business leagues, chambers of commerce, real estate boards,
boards of trade and professional football leagues.
Third, limited liability companies (LLCs) may also be a source of political dark money.
In most states, it’s easy to identify the actual human beings who are behind an LLC.
But in some states — most notably Delaware and Wyoming — public records need
not identify any living, breathing people associated with an LLC, making them
tantamount to black boxes.
These three types of organizations may buy political advertisements or donate to
other groups, such as super PACs, that may also buy political ads.
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real estat ripoffs
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/nyregion/real-estate-shell-companies-scheme-to-defraud-owners-out-of-their-homes.html
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cei open ltr ~ irs
Becky Gerritson, Founder
Born Free AmericanLLC
Stormy Daniels–Donald Trump scandal - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormy_Daniels–Donald_Trump_scandal
1.
https://www.opensecrets.org/dark-money/basics