http://www.thekomisarscoop.com Reports & Analysis by Investigative Journalist Lucy Komisar Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:48:14 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2011/04/russian-deputy-pm-says-1000-russian-banks-are-money-launderers/ http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2011/04/russian-deputy-pm-says-1000-russian-banks-are-money-launderers/#comments Mon, 04 Apr 2011 20:40:45 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/?p=6216 http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2011/04/russian-deputy-pm-says-1000-russian-banks-are-money-launderers/feed/ 1 http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2011/02/a-russian-spook-operation-khodorkovsky-film-mysteriously-stolen-twice/ http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2011/02/a-russian-spook-operation-khodorkovsky-film-mysteriously-stolen-twice/#comments Sat, 05 Feb 2011 23:06:59 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/?p=5604 http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2011/02/a-russian-spook-operation-khodorkovsky-film-mysteriously-stolen-twice/feed/ 0 http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2011/01/ex-employee-who-claimed-firing-over-opposition-to-haiti-bribery-settles-suit-against-idt/ http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2011/01/ex-employee-who-claimed-firing-over-opposition-to-haiti-bribery-settles-suit-against-idt/#comments Tue, 25 Jan 2011 02:06:53 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/?p=5581 http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2011/01/ex-employee-who-claimed-firing-over-opposition-to-haiti-bribery-settles-suit-against-idt/feed/ 0 http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2010/12/shells-shams-and-corporate-scams/ http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2010/12/shells-shams-and-corporate-scams/#comments Fri, 10 Dec 2010 18:18:26 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/?p=5442 The American Interest, Jan-Feb 2011 (online Dec 9, 2010) Corporate secrecy, which involves hiding the identities of company owners from tax and other legal authorities, is itself no secret. It is well known that offshore banking centers such as Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the Cayman Islands have for many years enabled fraudsters all over the world to carry out scams, launder illicit profits, stash stolen loot and hide money from tax authorities. What most people do not know, however, is that there is a vast and growing American offshore. Foreign crooks prize states such as Nevada, Wyoming and especially Delaware for state laws that don’t require them to list owners or even company officials when a new company is formed. Corporate interests and the Obama administration are blocking congressional efforts to change that.]]> http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2010/12/shells-shams-and-corporate-scams/feed/ 1 http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2010/09/china-blocks-international-crackdown-on-offshore-says-european-commission-president-barroso/ http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2010/09/china-blocks-international-crackdown-on-offshore-says-european-commission-president-barroso/#comments Tue, 28 Sep 2010 00:39:00 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/?p=4976 http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2010/09/china-blocks-international-crackdown-on-offshore-says-european-commission-president-barroso/feed/ 1 http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2010/09/lingering-problem-for-idt-ceo-admits-company-met-with-aristide/ http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2010/09/lingering-problem-for-idt-ceo-admits-company-met-with-aristide/#comments Sun, 19 Sep 2010 18:40:30 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/?p=4783 Barron's, Sept 20, 2010 - Scoop summary: Howard Jonas, CEO of U.S. telecom IDT, in an interview with Lucy Komisar, acknowledges for the first time that then Haiti President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2003 met with an IDT official during discussions about a contract to pay Haiti Teleco for calls from U.S. customers. That contract included agreement for IDT to send payments to a shell company in the offshore Turks and Caicos Islands. Jonas said IDT got an "ethics letter" from a law firm clearing the deal, but the lawyer said in a memo filed with the court, published here for the first time, that he simply told IDT to do "due diligence." IDT signed the contract the next day. A former IDT official, who objected to the deal, was fired and is suing the company; trial is set for Nov 9th. The Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Jonas's revelations are likely to have a major impact in the trial and investigations.]]> http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2010/09/lingering-problem-for-idt-ceo-admits-company-met-with-aristide/feed/ 1 http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2010/05/the-wall-street-icecapade/ http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2010/05/the-wall-street-icecapade/#comments Wed, 19 May 2010 03:04:10 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/?p=4282 The American Interest, July-Aug 2010 (online May 18, 2010) - As I write this, the U.S. Senate is debating a major financial reform bill in which the credit default swap, a kind of derivative, plays a significant part. An amendment to that bill, proposed by Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR), would ban banks from proprietary trading. There are a lot of high-rolling bankers who do not want that amendment to pass, because it will mess up their plans to repatriate foreign profits into the United States, untaxed, by trading in derivatives on their own accounts. The clearinghouse ICE Trust U.S. forms a central part of these plans. What is ICE Trust U.S., and who owns it? ICE US Holding Co., which was established in 2008 as the parent of ICE Trust U.S., is located in the Cayman Islands. Yet none of the owners of ICE US Holding Co. are based in the Caymans. Among the owners of the Cayman’s company are Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, which are headquartered in New York. Bank of America, which now owns Merrill Lynch, is based in Charlotte, North Carolina. ]]> http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2010/05/the-wall-street-icecapade/feed/ 1 http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2010/03/idts-voodoo-economics-inside-the-justice-department%e2%80%99s-probe-of-telecom-bribes-in-haiti/ http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2010/03/idts-voodoo-economics-inside-the-justice-department%e2%80%99s-probe-of-telecom-bribes-in-haiti/#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:38:28 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/?p=3772 The Big Money, March 11, 2010 - When the devastating earthquake hit Haiti in January, IDT, the New Jersey-based global phone company, moved fast to help. It announced it was setting up calling stations at hotels and other sites so Haitians could use its Internet calling-service to reach family and friends around the world. It cut rates on its U.S. prepaid calling-card to 2 cents a minute to Haiti (at least for 12 days), donated 4,000 $2-prepaid calling-cards to Haitian community groups in New York and Florida, and said it would give some proceeds from prepaid calls to Haitian Red Cross relief. Such a warm, fuzzy response from a U.S. corporation often wins plaudits, though, of course, IDT has a business interest in the impoverished island. In 2005, in its latest publicly available figures, the company reported $4 million in profits from $17 million in revenues for routing calls there. ]]> http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2010/03/idts-voodoo-economics-inside-the-justice-department%e2%80%99s-probe-of-telecom-bribes-in-haiti/feed/ 1 http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2010/02/corruption-u-s-banks-abetting-corrupt-regimes-probe-finds/ http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2010/02/corruption-u-s-banks-abetting-corrupt-regimes-probe-finds/#comments Thu, 04 Feb 2010 01:14:41 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/?p=3320 Inter Press Service (IPS), Feb 3, 2010 - The global bank HSBC may be running offshore accounts for central banks. According to a U.S. Senate investigation, an HSBC subsidiary in London called HSBC Equator Bank had a sister bank in the Bahamas. According to an internal e-mail, the bank told HSBC USA it had been providing offshore accounts to central banks for 20 years, because the banks wanted to avoid "Mareva" injunctions, legally enforceable orders to freeze funds. ]]> http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2010/02/corruption-u-s-banks-abetting-corrupt-regimes-probe-finds/feed/ 0 http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2009/07/qa-tax-havens-bank-secrecy-and-tricks/ http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2009/07/qa-tax-havens-bank-secrecy-and-tricks/#comments Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:26:51 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/?p=1744 http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2009/07/qa-tax-havens-bank-secrecy-and-tricks/feed/ 0