ICIJ Secret Files Expose Offshore’s Global Impact

Government officials and their families and associates in Azerbaijan, Russia, Canada, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Canada, Mongolia and other countries have embraced the use of covert companies and bank accounts.

The mega-rich use complex offshore structures to own mansions, yachts, art master-pieces and other assets, gaining tax advantages and anonymity not available to average people.

Many of the world’s top’s banks – including UBS, Clariden and Deutsche Bank – have aggressively worked to provide their customers with secrecy-cloaked companies in the British Virgin Islands and other offshore hideaways.

A well-paid industry of accountants, middlemen and other operatives has helped offshore patrons shroud their identities and business interests, providing shelter in many cases to money laundering or other misconduct.

Ponzi schemers and other large-scale fraudsters routinely use offshore havens to pull off their shell games and move their ill-gotten gains…ICIF_Nominee_Trick_25.11.12ICIJ – How the nominee trick works

A nominee director is per se not illegal and can sometimes be useful, for example in preparing “off-the-shelf” ready-made companies.

But the legal conjuring trick behind the nominee systems opens the way to abuses such as using a “shell” companies for tax evasion, fraud, money laundering and other crimes.

For the trick with nominee directors to work depends on three pieces of paper:

• A promise by a nominee director only to do what the real owner tells them.
• Under a “general power of attorney” the nominee secretly hands back all control to that real owner.
• The third commonly-used document is a signed, but undated director’s resignation letter.

A nominee director is someone who is renting his or her name to hide the beneficial owner by taking the position on paper of the company’s directors. The term of straw man or front man has been used to describe someone who is acting as the nominee. Legally, according to the incorporation documents, the nominee is responsible for the company or entity. In addition, if it is the case of a nominee that is also listed as the nominee shareholder, then they in effect also have the related ownership responsibilities as well.

The basic function of the nominee director is to shield working executives of limited and other companies from the public disclosure requirements. It is designed to help a person who would rather not disclose their interest or association with a given corporate body. Anyone performing a company search on a company with a nominee director would be unable to discover in whose name the nominee director was registered.

Tax evasion by multinationals and corrupt leaders has emerged as a key issue ahead of the third substantive meeting of a UN high-level panel to discuss a framework for development after 2015.

The theme of this week’s meeting in the sweltering Indonesian resort island of Bali is global partnership, the orphan child of the millennium development goals (MDGs). Devoid of clear targets, MDG8 talks in general terms about an open, rule-based trading and financial system, dealing with debt burdens, providing access to affordable essential medicines, and increasing access to new technologies. Goal eight also mentions fostering links between the public and private sector to drive better development…article

The transparency payoff

This week the United Nations is bringing experts and world leaders to Indonesia to debate development priorities beyond 2015, when the Millennium Development Goals expire. Good governance tops the list of what to add to the current eight targets…article

‘I will not pretend that I am a man’: A week in the company of Christine Lagarde, the first female head of the IMF

This week her flat in Paris was raided by police looking for evidence in an investigation into corruption. She said she was happy for them to search for evidence to clear her name. Or something equally as facile…article

A  internal report from the FBI expresses some concern that the digital payment system Bitcoin will help criminals hide from authorities ..Report: DOJ_FBI_Bitcoin
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Take a look “Costofwar.com”

“From 2003 through 2012, the United States provided $60.64 billion for the relief and reconstruction of Iraq,” or about $15 million spent per day. Of the $61 billion, $52 billion was allocated from major funds such as the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund (IRRF) and the final $9 billion from additional assistance programs and reconstruction-related oversight expenses. In total over the last 10 years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office calculated at least $767 billion was spent when accounting for total military spending, additional aid and other diplomatic expenses. “Costofwar.com,”a product of the National Priorities Project, puts that figure higher, at about $812 billion, and notes that some projects are yet to be finished. Report Sigir learning from Iraq