webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

panama papers

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see offshore banks</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a data-ga-action="Home Headlines: Headline" href="https://www.democracynow.org/2019/12/2/headlines/malta_prime_minister_resigns_amid_probe_of_journalist_s_murder" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(241, 242, 243); text-decoration-line: none; outline: 0px; border: 0px; text-align: center;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Malta Prime Minister Resigns amid Probe of Journalist’s Murder</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">panama papers PM, jrnlist</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/business/vnesheconombank-veb-bank-russia-trump-kushner.html">https://www.nytimes.com/<b>2017</b>/06/04/business/vnesheconombank-veb-bank-russia-trump-kushner.html</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Bank at Center of U.S. Inquiry Projects Russian ‘Soft Power’</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Video</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">TRANSCRIPT</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">0:00/2:17</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Jared Kushner’s Meeting With a Russian Banker</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Jared Kushner is now under congressional and F.B.I. scrutiny after his meeting with a close ally of Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Here’s how the Russian banker Sergey N. Gorkov could benefit from meeting President Trump’s senior adviser.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">They met for a half-hour in December: Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser and Sergey Gorkov, a prominent Russian banker and close associate of Vladimir Putin. NATPOP: Vladimir V. Putin meeting with Gorkov [Rossiya 24. February 2017]: How is it going at the bank? - All Normal Who is this Russian banker and why is his meeting with Kushner now under Congressional and FBI’s scrutiny? TITLE: When a Putin’s Ally Meets Trump’s Advisor Sergey Gorkov is the chief of Vnesheconombank, the state-owned Russian bank that was deeply intertwined with Russian intelligence and that was hit with sanctions after the annexation of Crimea. SOT Rossiya 24, Dec 29 - Gorkov: “We are preparing to work under sanctions, pay our debt.” The White House said the meeting between the men was just a routine diplomatic encounter. But Gorkov has no known diplomatic role for Putin. The White House has also said there were no discussions of sanctions against Vneshekonombank during the Kushner-Gorkov meeting. But removing sanctions would greatly expand the ability of Gorkov’s bank to do business in the United States, and the issue was clearly on his mind. In this interview on Russian TV right around the time of the meeting, Gorkov had been expressing optimism that the sanctions would be lifted. SOT: Gorkov Rossiya 24, Dec 29: “Let’s hope hope that the situation with sanctions will change for the better next year.” Interviewer: “” That’s right, after the new administration takes over.” Gorkov: “Yes, that’s possible Putin personally appointed Gorkov to lead Vnesheconombank in 2016. Experts say it was in part because of his ties to Russia’s security services - he studied law at the university known to train spies. Here’s Gorkov reporting on Vneshekonombank successes to the Russian president. SOT Vladimir V. Putin [Moscow, Aug. 2016 - Channel One News on Youtube]: It seems that as a new head of the bank, you’re overcoming the challenges you encountered. Three months after the meeting with Kushner, Gorkov said it had been part of his bank strategy to discuss promising trends with influential businesses abroad. What remains unclear, and what investigators are looking into, is what exactly Mr. Kushner and Mr. Gorkov wanted from each other.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Jared Kushner is now under congressional and F.B.I. scrutiny after his meeting with a close ally of Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Here’s how the Russian banker Sergey N. Gorkov could benefit from meeting President Trump’s senior adviser.CreditCredit...Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters..</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By Ben Protess, Andrew E. Kramer and Mike McIntire</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">June 4, 2017</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It has offices in a sleek Manhattan skyscraper. Its bonds are accessible to millions of American investors. And it holds ties to some of New York’s biggest banks.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Despite this presence on Wall Street, detailed in previously unreported financial records, Vnesheconombank, or VEB, is no normal bank. It is wholly owned by the Russian state. It is intertwined with Russian intelligence. And the Russian prime minister is, by law, the chairman of its supervisory board.</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Now VEB is at the center of an international firestorm that threatens the Trump presidency because the bank’s chief — a prominent graduate of Russia’s spy school — met with Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, during the presidential transition. That meeting is a focus of a federal counterintelligence investigation about possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Three years ago, in response to Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine, the Obama administration imposed sanctions on VEB that have effectively kept it from taking on most new business in the United States. Since then, however, VEB has quietly kept up appearances on Wall Street in the event that sanctions would be lifted, according to interviews with American bankers and former government officials.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">That moment appeared to be nearing with Mr. Trump’s victory. And so the bank’s chief, Sergey N. Gorkov, traveled to New York in December for what he described as a “roadshow” promoting the bank that was largely hinged on the prospect of improved diplomatic and business relationships between the United States and Russia.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>During that trip, The New York Times has found, Mr. Gorkov met with bankers at JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and another, unidentified American financial institution.</b>&nbsp;Goldman Sachs bankers also tried to arrange a meeting but ultimately had a scheduling conflict. The meetings, which are not prohibited by sanctions, were confirmed by three people briefed on the discussions but unauthorized to speak publicly about them.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">None of the American banks were new to VEB. Citi and JPMorgan had long, established relationships clearing financial transactions for VEB in the United States, activities not affected by the sanctions. And before the sanctions, securities filings show, Goldman and others had helped the Russian bank issue bonds, activity that was blocked by the sanctions and that VEB was eager to resume.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">After a few painful years, continuing Western borrowing had become a pressing priority for Moscow. The Russian Finance Ministry has spent about $10 billion to prop up the bank over the past three years, according to banking analysts.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On that same trip, Mr. Gorkov met with Mr. Kushner. The nature of the meeting, which remains in dispute, followed a session between Mr. Kushner and the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, about opening a communications channel with Russian officials during the presidential transition, according to current and former American officials.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The F.B.I. and congressional investigators are now scrutinizing whether Mr. Kushner may have met with Mr. Gorkov to help establish a direct line to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, or for other reasons not cited by the White House.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The White House and VEB have issued contradictory statements about the purpose of the Gorkov meeting.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The White House has said that Mr. Kislyak requested the meeting and that “Mr. Kushner was acting in his capacity as a transition official.” But VEB said Mr. Gorkov had met with Mr. Kushner, who was still running his family’s real estate company, to discuss business. The statement said VEB’s management had met with “a number of representatives of the largest banks and business circles of the U.S.,” a claim supported by the Times’s reporting about Mr. Gorkov’s meetings with banks in New York.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">VEB has not disclosed specifics of the conversation with Mr. Kushner, which is of keen interest to investigators.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Mr. Kushner’s hunt for overseas investors for his company’s financially troubled Manhattan office tower on Fifth Avenue has been documented by The Times. While such an investment would not fit the profile of VEB’s past lending, it would have been possible for Mr. Gorkov to relay such information to other Russian banks. It is not known, however, whether the subject was raised in the meeting.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ImageVnesheconombank, or VEB, has offices on Third Avenue in New York. Sanctions have limited the bank’s United States activities.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Vnesheconombank, or VEB, has offices on Third Avenue in New York. Sanctions have limited the bank’s United States activities.Credit...Sam Hodgson for The New York Times]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The subject of sanctions was also freshly topical in December. The rolling back of sanctions was an essential part of Mr. Gorkov’s strategy in visiting New York, and was central to the health of his bank. The next month, during Mr. Trump’s first week in office, administration officials signaled they were considering lifting the sanctions that stemmed from the conflict in Ukraine.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Separately, Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, had several phone conversations late last year with Mr. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador. In one, the two men discussed additional sanctions imposed by the Obama administration in response to the Russian government’s efforts to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The meeting with Mr. Kushner was not VEB’s only connection to Mr. Trump’s campaign or associates.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A banker who pleaded guilty last year to spying for Russia out of VEB’s office in New York was part of an unsuccessful Russian scheme to recruit&nbsp;<b>Carter Page,</b>&nbsp;an American businessman who later became a Trump campaign adviser, as a spy. VEB also obtained shares in a Ukrainian steel smelter when it was sold by a business partner of Mr. Trump’s who built a Trump hotel in Toronto, according to previously undisclosed documents from the vast leak known as the Panama Papers. The VEB involvement in the smelter deal was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">These interactions have stirred concerns over whether the bank, which few Americans have heard of despite its ties to Wall Street and big companies like Boeing, has been spreading Russian influence along with its financial footprint.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A representative for the bank would not comment.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>‘This Is Not a Bank’</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>VEB and Mr. Putin are inextricably linked.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">The bank stepped up lending after 2008 when Mr. Putin, then prime minister, became chairman of the board. And during the oil boom, VEB was seen as embodying Russia’s new financial might.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Under a 2007 law, VEB’s mandate was to lend to important but underfinanced sectors of the Russian economy, including infrastructure and businesses that help diversify the economy beyond oil dependence.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>There are other government-controlled banks in Russia, Sberbank and VTB, but they are primarily retail banks. VEB serves a very different role, lending mostly to large borrowers, many of them politically connected.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">To that end, VEB over the last decade has lent freely in ways that dovetail with government priorities and make it a tool of Russian soft power. The purse strings opened for two influential groups in particular: oligarchs building Olympic sites in Sochi and companies in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">“This is not a bank,” said Karen Vartapetov, a public finance analyst at Standard & Poor’s. “We should rather treat this bank as a government agency. It is used by the government as a tool to invest in politically and socially important but not always financially viable projects.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>VEB’s role as a projector of state influence was on display in 2010 with a deal that potentially affected a Trump hotel in Toronto.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At the time,&nbsp;</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Alex Shnaider, a Russian-Canadian businessman</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;developing the hotel, was looking to sell a steel plant in&nbsp;<b>Ukraine</b>. His Midland Resources Holding Ltd., which owned the Zaporizhstal steel factory, sold at least half its stake to a collection of<b>&nbsp;five offshore companies that received funding from VEB,</b>&nbsp;according to documents in the trove of files from the law firm</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Mossack Fonseca&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">that were obtained by the&nbsp;<b>International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The documents show that one year after acquiring the Zaporizhstal stake, the five companies — based in<b>&nbsp;Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands — transferred it to Russian control.</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In each case, the companies’ shares were “charged in favor of” VEB, meaning the bank effectively took ownership of them in exchange for financing the steel plant acquisition.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Court papers in Canada show that Mr. Shnaider’s deal to sell the steel plant coincided with his need to cover cost overruns in the Trump deal.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;His lawyer initially told The Wall Street Journal last month that about $15 million from the Ukraine sale went into the $500 million Toronto project, but he later backtracked.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Nothing in the Panama Papers linked VEB’s financing to the Trump project, which Mr. Trump did not own. Rather, the deal underscored VEB’s strategy to venture into Ukraine at the behest of the Russian government.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">More broadly, the bank’s plan had been to tap capital markets in New York to help finance the Ukraine lending, but the plan collapsed with the imposition of sanctions in 2014.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The bank today, not unlike Mr. Putin’s government, expanded its sway abroad in a way that appears unsustainable. Weighed down by sanctions and the oil price collapse, the Russian economy has slipped to 12th in the world, below South Korea’s, according to a World Bank ranking.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">At the time sanctions were imposed, the bank’s total debt ran about $20 billion. It has since been reduced to $17 billion, according to financial disclosures at the end of last year. But the Ukraine lending in particular is affecting the balance sheet, with outstanding Ukraine debt totaling $14.2 billion at the current exchange rate, banking analysts say.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Last week, the Russian business newspaper Vedomosti reported that about 40 percent of VEB’s loans were at risk of default.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Mr. Gorkov, who previously worked at the Yukos oil company and was a senior executive at Sberbank,</b>&nbsp;became director of VEB in February 2016, partly with a mandate to find market solutions to the bank’s financial woes.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">For Mr. Gorkov, fixing VEB would require a new focus, and that, according to the bank’s statement, became the reason for a meeting with Mr. Kushner.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The two met as Mr. Gorkov traveled to gather ideas for a new strategy for the bank, published a month after the meeting with Mr. Kushner in a document called “Strategy 2021.” It called for shifting some risks directly to the Russian budget, selling assets not considered central to the bank and trying to resume borrowing in places like the United States.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The document suggested that the bank was expecting some relief from sanctions. “The forecasts for the term of the strategy predict certain decrease of geopolitical risks and gradual weakening of the restricted access to global capital markets,” it said.</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Robert Amsterdam, a lawyer who has represented Mr.<b>&nbsp;Gorkov’s former boss at Yukos, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky</b>, said it was essential that sanctions be lifted for the VEB turnaround to succeed.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Putin doesn’t have to worry about what the voters think of him,” Mr. Amsterdam said. “Putin has to think about the top 100. And the top 100 are those who are sanctioned.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">American Ties</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Long before VEB became saddled with sanctions, it had deep ties to Washington and Wall Street.</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">In 2010, Mr. Gorkov’s predecessor appeared at the<b>&nbsp;U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington to unveil a pact with the Export-Import Bank of the United States,</b>the federal agency that supports American exports. Under the deal, the two institutions agreed “to cooperate in financing U.S. exports to Russia.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The arrangement was followed by two little-noticed deals. In 2013, the Export-Import Bank guaranteed a loan of about $500 million so that, in effect, a VEB subsidiary could acquire a number of Boeing 777 aircraft — planes that VEB then leased to Aeroflot Russian Airlines. A year later, shortly before the sanctions hit, the American agency guaranteed another loan of about $700 million for a similar deal.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Export-Import Bank said, “These transactions all supported the sale of U.S. exports and thus supported American jobs.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Since the sanctions took effect, the spokeswoman said, there have been no new VEB transactions, and deals involving any Russian entities have been placed on “administrative hold.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The sanctions also limited VEB’s relationship with American banks. The sanctions prohibit United States banks and companies from “transacting in, providing financing for or otherwise dealing” in new long-term debt.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">For years, issuing debt was a good business for both Wall Street and VEB. Between 2006 and 2013, Goldman, Citi and Morgan Stanley helped the Russian bank issue one bond deal after another, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Now, American banks can work for VEB only in more limited roles.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>JPMorgan, Citi and BNY Mellon, for example, remain registered to clear VEB’s transactions through the United States,</b>&nbsp;clearinghouse records show, though such transactions have waned since the sanctions were imposed. Many major American banks and investment firms also continue to include VEB debt in mutual funds, including those of Fidelity and Pimco, securities filings show.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It would not be out of the ordinary, then, for a VEB official to have brief courtesy meetings with New York bankers about continuing business, though they would not be allowed to discuss new bond deals, said Aaron Wolfson, a partner at Lewis Baach who previously worked at JPMorgan and prosecuted banks for skirting sanctions.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Still, Zachary K. Goldman, a former Treasury Department official who worked on financial sanctions issues, said the banks needed to be cautious.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>“Just because limited interactions with VEB may be legally permissible doesn’t mean that there aren’t reputational and other kinds of risks involved,</b>” said Mr. Goldman, now the executive director of the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. “The concern for me with this particular entity would be its reported ties to the Russian security services.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Spies in Suits</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Mr. Gorkov, 48, graduated in 1994 from the university of the Federal Security Service, the successor to the K.G.B. — a school for spies.</b>&nbsp;Like many in his generation of security agents in the early post-Soviet period, he ventured into banking and the oil business.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In fact, say businessmen who have worked in Russia, so many F.S.B. agents are in the upper management of state-owned companies that the roles of spy and executive blend almost seamlessly.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“In Putin’s Russia, they don’t draw a distinction,” said Mr. Amsterdam, the lawyer who represented Mr. Gorkov’s former employer.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Highly educated and often speaking foreign languages, former F.S.B. officers include Mr. Putin himself, senior officials throughout his government, and board members and top executives at state-run corporations.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Mr. Gorkov’s biography on VEB’s website does not suggest he ever served in the F.S.B. The bank did not respond to questions about whether he worked for the agency.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But the bank has been known to employ spies. In 2015, federal prosecutors in Manhattan and Washington announced charges against Evgeny<b>&nbsp;Buryakov</b>, an employee at VEB’s New York office, accusing him of acting as a covert agent of the S.V.R., the Russian foreign intelligence agency.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Mr. Buryakov, who was charged alongside two other Russian men accused of trying to recruit Mr. Page, later pleaded guilty, and VEB paid his legal bills.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">At the time, the authorities suspected that some VEB managers were aware of Mr. Buryakov’s spy activities, according to a person briefed on the investigation. Federal authorities recorded a conversation between the two co-defendants discussing how an S.V.R. official told Mr. Buryakov’s supervisor at VEB that Mr. Buryakov was an “employee of the service.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div></div></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/how-multinational-corporations-pad-their-budgets-with-the-wealth-of-developing-countries/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/how-multinational-corporations-pad-their-budgets-with-the-wealth-of-developing-countries/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Amazon.com Inc. was brought to court by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2017 for transfer pricing discrepancies.</b>&nbsp;In 2005 and 2006, the multinational tech<b>company transferred $255 million in royalty payments to its tax haven in Luxembourg</b>, but according to the IRS these royalty payments should have amounted to $3.5 billion.&nbsp;<b>This transfer pricing adjustment would have increased Amazon’s federal tax payments by more than&nbsp;<a href="https://mnetax.com/amazon-wins-transfer-pricing-case-tax-court-20243-20243" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">$1 billion</a>.&nbsp;</b>Even for the U.S., a country with decent (although waning) infrastructure, the loss of this much cash in federal tax revenue is substantial. Take for instance the water crisis in&nbsp;<b>Flint, Michigan—if the city’s estimated costs of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/22/flints-crisis-can-be-fixed-with-55m-in-new-pipes-lansing-mayor.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">$55 million</a>&nbsp;to replace the pipes are accurate, then Amazon’s tax payments could have saved the 100,000 residents from lead poisoning 18 times over.</b></font></p><div class="p2_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Water supply is not the only infrastructural problem that arises when export countries suffer from a dramatic loss of tax revenue. Education, hospitals, telecommunications, and roads also decline. And in developing countries—the countries that endure the most severe backlashes of transfer and trade mispricing—this infrastructure is often never properly constructed in the first place. The much-needed cash is, instead, sitting in a tax haven.</font></p><div class="p3_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The anonymous whistleblower who, in 2015, leaked the 11.5 million documents that we now know as the “Panama Papers” shared in a&nbsp;<a href="https://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/572c897a5632a39742ed34ef/" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">manifesto</a>&nbsp;that “income inequality” was their motivation in revealing the levels of financial abuse that tax havens create.&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A key concern for the whistleblower is that tax havens are “metastasizing” across the earth’s surface—214,000 offshore entities are cited in the Panama Papers. The “metastasizing” certainly continued after the release of the Panama Papers—just two years later, a&nbsp;<a href="https://uspirgedfund.org/reports/usp/offshore-shell-games-2017" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">U.S. PIRG study</a>&nbsp;found that 73 percent of the Fortune 500 companies operated 9,755 tax haven subsidiaries....as being “the core of a global system that allows large corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid paying their fair share, depriving governments, rich and poor, of the resources they need to provide vital public services and tackle rising inequality.”</span></font></p><div class="p4_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tax havens are a geopolitical&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/tax-haven-curse/491411/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">nightmare</a>, and transfer pricing is a legal accounting trick to get money into tax havens.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Transfer Mispricing, Defined</font></strong></p><div class="p6_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There’s a wide range of these kinds of tax avoidance games played by multinationals: Transfer mispricing, abusive transfer pricing, trade misinvoicing, base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS), and re-invoicing—they all fall under the umbrella of trade mispricing, or the intentional falsification of transactions on an international level, and are the process that has allowed the old colonial relations of productions to continue. Arguably, the polynymity of this deceptive practice is evidence of its ubiquity, but “thievery” could just as well replace any of these titles.</font></p><div class="p7_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The short-term goals for mis- or re-invoicing vary. In some cases the desired outcome is to dodge capital controls (a strategy commonly used in emerging markets to&nbsp;<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110324021806///www.mof.go.jp/jouhou/soken/kenkyu/ron056.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">reduce</a>&nbsp;rapid cash outflows). In other cases, the incentive for misinvoicing is to claim tax incentives or avoid paying duty. Generally, the scheme is this: shift profits out of high tax countries and into low tax countries, or tax havens, while ensuring that the majority of the expenses are assigned to high tax countries.</font></p><div class="p8_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2015, Global Financial Integrity (GFI) published a&nbsp;<a href="https://secureservercdn.net/45.40.149.159/34n.8bd.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/IFF-Update_2015-Final-1.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">study</a>&nbsp;revealing that in 2013 an astounding US$1.1 trillion was stolen annually—or nearly $3 billion a day—from developing countries due to trade mispricing. If you wonder why developing countries seem rather slow to develop, here’s a big part of the answer. The head-spinning loss of $3 billion a day in taxable revenue begs the question: is “corporate practice” simply legal thievery?... the pricing of commodities traded between or within multinational enterprises—is a legal practice and a key feature of cross-border and intra-firm transactions. The United Nations prefers to use the broader phrase “trade pricing” in addressing this practice and defines it as a “<a href="https://www.un.org/esa/ffd/tax-committee/ta-transfer-pricing.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">normal incident</a>&nbsp;of the operations of multinational enterprises (MNEs).” Because the word “incident” evokes concern, it should not go unnoticed. One of the most disruptive consequences of transfer pricing is that international transactions are now governed by the common interests of the “associated enterprises” of an MNE group. That is, market forces no longer control the transactions because with the allowance of transfer pricing, an increasing percentage of global trade (this includes the international transfer of goods and services, capital, and intangible goods, or intellectual property) now occurs as an internal practice between affiliated entities.</font></p><div class="p11_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Theoretically, internal transfer pricing is supposed to follow the arm’s length principle. This principle follows the idea that transfer prices should be controlled and recorded as if internal trades were happening amongst independent entities, or at “arm’s length.” But like the IRS case against Amazon.com reveals, proving arm’s length is not so straightforward. So while the “arm’s length principle” is very much written into place (<a href="https://www.oecd.org/ctp/transfer-pricing/transfer-pricing-country-profiles.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Brazil is listed</a>&nbsp;as the only country without domestic legislation or regulation that makes reference to the arm’s length principle), even research from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations recognize that this principle is very much impossible to implement.</font></p><div class="p12_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unable to ignore the ease with which a company could engage in abusive transfer pricing, the OECD and the G20 countries first drafted the “<a href="https://www.oecd.org/ctp/BEPSActionPlan.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">BEPS Action Plan</a>” in 2013 as part of a broader effort to enhance transparency for tax administrations to assess transfer pricing. At large, base erosion and profit shifting undermine the integrity of any tax system. But the direct “harm” BEPS created for individual taxpayers and governments was only part of the motivation for implementing the 2013 action plan. The other motivating factor was the added risk to businesses, including the risk to an MNE’s reputation in the event its effective tax rate was viewed as being “too low” as it would impede, locally, “fair competition” for corporations functioning only in those domestic markets. With this latter motivation, little promise ought to be expected from the plan as it maintains a focus on risks brought to MNEs.</font></p><div class="p13_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Setting potential reputation risks aside, the incentive for companies to strategically misprice trade or shift their profits is to avoid tax or duty payments. The incentive is to shield wealth. And while there is no single way to avoid tax payments and dues, there is one necessary component: tax haven subsidiaries. ...Tax haven subsidiaries function as cash canals to transport taxable profits with the goal of lowering or, if you are Amazon Inc., entirely avoiding tax payments. But a company’s subsidiary in a tax haven requires financial sleights of hand to get the cash safe. Take for instance the Goldcrest method Amazon used in Luxembourg. It shifted its intellectual property rights (or intangibles) that were held by its U.S. parent company to its subsidiary, Amazon Lux. The subsidiary then collected royalties tax-free on international sales. Google and Ikea, similarly, decided to play the “Going Dutch” move, using their subsidiaries in the Netherlands.</font></p><div class="p16_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The “Swiss Sidestep” is another tax play, and rather than royalty payments, “management service fees” are the key element. By paying a value-added service fee to a sister company in a European tax haven, a company can “side-step” tax payments by converting profits into fees. And, then, of course, there is the privacy and protection that a company gets on the island of Mauritius—with the “Mauritius Maneuver” a person can send their cash to Mauritius to avoid income tax and then bring it back—without a trace—as “foreign investment.” ...Each of these fictional narratives that frame the legal movement of cash across borders has one theme in common: wealth protection and, therefore, poverty production.</font></p><div class="p18_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Colonial Undertones of Transfer Pricing</font></strong></p><div class="p19_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is not the case that some industries are more prone than others to transfer mispricing, or even that developed countries are immune to this manipulative business practice—the IRS case against Amazon is a great example of this. But, it is the case that developing countries are more vulnerable to the impact of transfer mispricing. Suppose a company extracts 2 megatons (MT) of cobalt from Papua New Guinea (PNG) and then exports the 2 MT (or 1 million kilograms) at the price of US$5 per kilogram, but imports into Canada—by way of Mauritius or the Netherlands—the same 2 MT of cobalt at the price of US$10. The result for PNG is the loss of tax revenue on $5 million. Even at a mere 5 percent tax rate with these modest and imaginative figures, a loss of US$250,000 for PNG is significant.</font></p><div class="p20_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The impact of trade and transfer mispricing on developing countries is not just monetary. There is a series of moral effects as well. In the hypothetical PNG scenario, for instance, one glaring concern that arises from this manipulative business practice is the implication that the people of PNG are somehow unaware of the value of their own resources. Trade mispricing, then, alienates people from their own place, and in a manner similar to a worker’s alienation from their product. A red flag must be raised to the psychological impact of pricing discrepancies that suggest cobalt, somehow, has a lesser value within the borders of PNG than within, say, Canada or Belgium.</font></p><div class="p22_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The combination, or the intersection, of these two matters—these monetary and moral effects—is evidence that trade and transfer (mis)pricing, the crux of an MNE—are symptoms of an ongoing colonial hangover. The antidote? Establish strict and enforceable regulations so that one nation’s economic sovereignty does not come at the expense of another nation’s resource sovereignty.</font></p><div class="p23_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tanya Rawal-Jindia is a researcher at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/staff/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research</a>.</font></span></p><div class="p24_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by&nbsp;<a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/globetrotter/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Globetrotter</a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</font></span></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font><div><p style="font-family: " pt="PT" sans="Sans" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;headlines for white-collar crime this year have largely been grabbed by special counsel Robert Mueller, who has uncovered a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/manafort-convicted-8-counts-n901231" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">huge array of financial crimes</a>&nbsp;in President Donald Trump’s inner circle. But though Mueller’s revelations have shocked the American public consciousness, they were probably not the biggest financial scandals of the year.</font></p><p style="font-family: " pt="PT" sans="Sans" font-size="font-size" px="px"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On Monday, David P. Weber, a law professor and certified fraud examiner who reviewed the&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">Panama Papers</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;and&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2013/06/11/sec-settles-whistleblower-case-with-580k-payment-to-assistant-ig/?utm_term=.f9ca04663bc1" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">blew the whistle</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;on investigative misconduct as an assistant inspector general for the Securities and Exchange Commission, wrote an&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/423238-the-largest-corporate-scandals-of-2018" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">op-ed</a>&nbsp;for&nbsp;<em>The Hill</em>&nbsp;outlining some of the most significant corporate scandals of 2018 — and how they prove Congress needs to ensure greater oversight of the financial system.</span></font></p><p style="font-family: " pt="PT" sans="Sans" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Weber specifically points to the scandals at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-24/how-malaysia-s-1mdb-scandal-shook-the-financial-world-quicktake" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">1Malaysia Development Berhad</a>, a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund accused of a $4.2 billion embezzlement and fraud scheme with help from legal and auditing firms and a Department of Justice lawyer;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/world/americas/brazil-dilma-rousseff-impeached-removed-president.html?module=inline" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">Operation Car Wash</a>, the gigantic Brazilian money laundering scandal that has implicated hundreds of politicians including multiple presidents; and the ongoing&nbsp;<a href="https://www.riskscreen.com/kyc360/news/hsbc-expects-to-pay-1-5-billion-in-fines-over-tax-evasion-money-laundering/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">revelations</a>&nbsp;about how European banks involved in the Panama Papers scandal helped oligarchs and tax evaders steal money around the world.</font></p><p style="font-family: " pt="PT" sans="Sans" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Though these scandals all occurred overseas, Weber notes, they have all in some way landed on U.S. shores by implicating American businessmen and officials.</font></p><p style="font-family: " pt="PT" sans="Sans" font-size="font-size" px="px"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The 1MDB scandal, for instance, involved&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/malaysian-financier-low-taek-jho-also-known-jho-low-and-former-banker-ng-chong-hwa-also-known" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">three Goldman Sachs bankers</a>, resulting in criminal charges against the U.S. investment banking giant by Malaysian authorities, and according to&nbsp;<em>The Wall Street Journal</em>,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;a firm linked to the wife of former RNC official Elliott Broidy</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;was allegedly&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-ally-was-in-talks-to-earn-millions-in-effort-to-end-1mdb-probe-in-u-s-1519919321" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">in talks</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;for a $75 million lobbying contract to persuade the Justice Department to back off investigating 1MDB (Broidy and his wife are not mentioned by name in any of the criminal proceedings). In the Operation Car Wash saga, meanwhile a&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4501518-J-amp-F-Complaint.html" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">lawsuit</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;alleges that a U.S. law firm improperly held a “strategy session” with a Brazilian prosecutor.</span></font></p><p style="font-family: " pt="PT" sans="Sans" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And perhaps most shockingly, in the E.U. banking scandal,&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/423238-the-largest-corporate-scandals-of-2018" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">multiple legal officials</a>&nbsp;with the federal government, including the former chief of top financial crimes investigation team FinCEN and the former Treasury undersecretary for counterterrorism, are now providing legal counsel to HSBC and Deutsche Bank, two institutions implicated in the scheme.</font></p><p style="font-family: " pt="PT" sans="Sans" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“<span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">When will Congress act to curtain misconduct by professionals?” laments Weber.</span></font></p><p style="font-family: " pt="PT" sans="Sans" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">In general, white-collar crime has&nbsp;</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/why-manafort-and-cohen-thought-theyd-get-away-with-it" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">gone underinvestigated for years</a></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">&nbsp;— which is arguably why Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen and campaign chair Paul Manafort thought they could get away with bank fraud and tax evasion. But there is likely far more misconduct going on below the surface than we know. This year’s scandals reveal the need for a strong, serious enforcement regime, for the integrity of the financial system and the confidence of the public</span></font></p><p style="font-family: " pt="PT" sans="Sans" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></p><p style="font-family: " pt="PT" sans="Sans" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world">https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><h1 class="video-page-title" itemprop="name" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; display: inline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Secrecy World</em></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></h1><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.c-span.org/person/?jakebernstein" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s ease 0s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Jake Bernstein</a>, senior journalist with the investigative team that broke the Panama Papers story, talked about what was revealed in the leaked documents.</p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/bernie-sanders-calls-international-progressive-movement-searing-op-ed">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/bernie-sanders-calls-international-progressive-movement-searing-op-ed</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...Bernie:</font></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A new and international progressive movement must commit itself to tackling structural inequality both between and within nations," he continues. "Such a movement must overcome 'the cult of money' and 'survival of the fittest' mentalities that the pope warned against." In addition, Sanders writes, "it must support national and international policies aimed at raising standards of living for poor and working-class people—from full employment and a living wage to universal higher education, healthcare and fair trade agreements. In addition, we must rein in corporate power and prevent the environmental destruction of our planet as a result of climate change."</font></span></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sanders offers at least one concrete proposal. The Tax Justice Network estimates that the planet's wealthiest individuals and corporations have stashed between <b>$21 and $32 trillion in off-share tax havens,</b> and that by eliminating this abuse, we could end world hunger and generate hundreds of millions of jobs, among countless other possibilities. Ultimately, he believes these kinds of measures are not just the "moral thing to do" but a "strategic geopolitical imperative."</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world" class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; width: 400px; float: left; min-width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><h3 style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 400; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.15em; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; transition: color 0.35s;"><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world" class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; width: 400px; float: left; min-width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world" class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; width: 400px; float: left; min-width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world" class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; width: 400px; float: left; min-width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world" class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; width: 400px; float: left; min-width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world" class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; width: 400px; float: left; min-width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world" class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; width: 400px; float: left; min-width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world" class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; width: 400px; float: left; min-width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world" class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; width: 400px; float: left; min-width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world" class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; width: 400px; float: left; min-width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world" class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; width: 400px; float: left; min-width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world" class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; width: 400px; float: left; min-width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world" class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; width: 400px; float: left; min-width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world" class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; width: 400px; float: left; min-width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world" class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; width: 400px; float: left; min-width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world" class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; width: 400px; float: left; min-width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?438024-2/secrecy-world" class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; width: 400px; float: left; min-width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Secrecy World</font></i></a></h3><h3 style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 400; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.15em; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; transition: color 0.35s;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Jake Bernstein, senior journalist with the investigative team that broke the Panama Papers story, talked about what was revealed in the leaked documents.</font></h3></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=
Mossack Fonseca&nbsp; panama papers

--</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://www.ecowatch.com/pulitzer-prize-storm-lake-times-2355740850.html
</font><div><p style="line-height: 21px; margin: 10px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition, an international collaboration between McClatchy, the Miami Herald and the International Consortion of Investigative Journalists that resulted in the landmark&nbsp;<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/tag/panama-papers" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Panama Papers</a>&nbsp;investigation into offshore tax havens was awarded the prize for Explanatory Reporting.</font></p><p style="line-height: 21px; margin: 10px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Guardian&nbsp;<span style="word-wrap: break-word;">listed</span>&nbsp;[no linl]&nbsp;the wide-ranging ramifications of the revelations contained in the Panama Papers:</font></p><p style="line-height: 21px; margin: 10px 0px 10px 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Iceland's prime minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson was<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/05/iceland-prime-minister-resigns-over-panama-papers-revelations" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">&nbsp;forced to quit</a>&nbsp;after it emerged that his family had sheltered cash offshore. There were demonstrations in Argentina and a small war in Azerbaijan, initiated—some believed—to distract from revelations concerning the president and his daughters.</font></p><p style="line-height: 21px; margin: 10px 0px 10px 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In China, censors blocked the words "Panama Papers" and jammed the website of the Guardian. In Russia, aides to Vladimir Putin fumed about a western "spy" conspiracy after it emerged that Putin's oldest friend, the cellist Sergei Roldugin, had&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/sergei-roldugin-the-cellist-who-holds-the-key-to-tracing-putins-hidden-fortune" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">about $2bn flowing into a network of British Virgin Islands companies</a>.</font></p><p style="line-height: 21px; margin: 10px 0px 10px 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The founders of the Panamanian law firm,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/10/panama-papers-mossack-fonseca-offices-raided-over-odebrecht-bribery-scandal" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca</a>, were arrested in February. They are&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/11/panama-papers-mossack-fonseca-fonders-refused-bail" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">currently in jail</a>&nbsp;on suspicion of money laundering following a coordinated swoop by prosecutors across Latin America.</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div></div></div>