CorpWatch, May 10, 2005
In mid-May a Moscow court will issue a verdict in the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the figure behind Yukos Oil, who was once known as Russia’s richest man. Khodorkovsky, who a few years ago was worth more than $15 billion, is on trial for fraud and tax evasion, much of it made possible through the use of offshore shell companies.
Khodorkovsky has been in prison since 2003, when he was charged with embezzlement and for rigging a privatization auction of the petrochemical company, Apatit. Some critics argue that Khodorkovsky is being held up as a symbol of Russia’s ruling class of exorbitantly wealthy businessmen, and that his trial is politically motivated.
But Western corporations and, by extension, the Western media may in fact be equally motivated to obscure the facts and make Khodorkovsky into a capitalist martyr.
Pacific News Service – April 12, 2005
A new global movement is tracking the increasing number of offshore tax shelters and pressuring governments to make multinationals pay up.
As Americans fret over their personal income taxes, there is a movement afoot to reduce the tax burden on ordinary people by getting corporations and wealthy individuals to pay their fair share.
Last month, the Tax Justice Network (www.taxjustice.net/) issued a report based on publicly available statistics from the Bank of International Settlements and Merrill Lynch, the investment company. The data showed the following:
–Approximately $11.5 trillion of assets are held offshore by high net-worth individuals, or about a third of the total global GDP, the value of goods and services, which in 2003 was $36.2 trillion.
–The annual income that these assets might be expected to earn amounts to $860 billion annually.
–The tax not paid as a result of these funds being held offshore would exceed $255 billion a year.
CorpWatch, April 4, 2005
In December of 2004, there was a horrific fire in a Buenos Aires disco called the Cromagnon Republic. Three rock fans shot off flares that set fire to the ceiling and engulfed the overcrowded discotheque in flames and smoke. In the rush to get out, 200 people were killed and 700 injured, most from trampling and smoke inhalation. The main entrance had been wired shut, and some of the emergency exits were locked, blocking escape.
In the days that followed, thousands of the victims’ parents and friends marched in the streets and demanded justice. A judge started proceedings for manslaughter and froze $20 million belonging to the “owner,” Omar Chaban. However, investigators soon discovered that Chaban appeared in no official disco documents; he was just the “administrator.” The legal owners of the property and the disco company were offshore shell corporations registered in the tax haven of Uruguay, the neighboring country. The listed “owner” of the enterprise was a Uruguayan “straw man” in his 70s who had no money.
Dissent Magazine, Spring 2005
The debate about cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy is a false one. The issue is not whether transnational corporations and the very rich benefit from tax cuts, but that many of them walk away from all taxes. A General Accounting Office report found that between 1996 and 2000, 61 percent of all U.S. companies paid zero federal taxes. They accomplish this primarily through “profit laundering,” a phrase that ought to be on the lips of every social critic.
AlterNet, March 17, 2005.
Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, one of the world’s richest men, and head of AIG, one of the world’s largest financial companies, was forced to resign this week as prosecutors closed in on him and the company.
Given his economic and political power, the fall of Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, the 59th richest man in America and CEO of the American International Group (AIG), the world’s second-largest financial conglomerate (after Citigroup), is stunning.
AlterNet, Dec 22, 2004
How insurance companies are aiding tax evasion by over-charging in America and shipping the money to offshore firms.
Terry Mills was working in Wilmington, DE, for J. Montgomery, one of the largest insurance agencies in the region, when in 1993 he was called in to get to the bottom of a messy insurance problem. Little did he know that he would uncover a story – as yet unreported – about tax evasion through offshore firms, but with a twist. The scheme Mills came across seemed to be taking place with the aid of AIG, a major U.S. insurance giant.
Nov 2004
Insurance giant AIG has used offshore structures in Barbados and Bermuda to circumvent or violate U. S. state laws regarding reinsurance and to help at least one crooked client evade taxes.
In the late 90s, four state insurance departments were aware that AIG was secretly hiding its debts offshore but, despite substantial evidence of wrongdoing, no sanctions were ordered.
Pacific News Service, Sept 9, 2004
When none other than President George W. Bush announces that the real rich dodge taxes, is that an inadvertent flash of honesty about the shady secrets of offshore shell companies and tax shelters? The administration is tying itself up in knots to dodge the significance of his statement.
The real rich dodge taxes and small business owners pay the burden. Does that sound like a radical-liberal denunciation of privilege by candidate John Kerry?
Guess again. It’s a pronouncement by President Bush.
The Russia Journal, July 1, 2004
Three U.S professors, analyzing import and export transactions between Russia and the U.S., have found that phony prices led to as much as $8.92 billion in capital flight from Russia to the U.S. in 1995-1999.
Even with calculations providing the most conservative estimate, at least $1.86 billion illegally left Russia during that period. Assuming a 25 percent average tax rate, the lower figure would mean nearly half a billion dollars in illegal tax evasion, and the higher one more than $2 billion in taxes lost, just in trade involving the U.S.
Pacific News Service, April 9, 2004
As states and municipalities reel from service cutbacks caused by lower tax earnings, big corporations pay virtually no taxes on huge profits. They do it though elaborate “shell” games.
Were you stunned by the revelation, days before your taxes are due, that nearly two-thirds of companies operating in America reported owing no taxes from 1996 through 2000? That over 90 percent of large corporations — with at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in gross receipts — reported owing taxes of only under 5 percent?
Hound-Dogs, March 2004
(Same title but not same article as in Dissent 2003)
This is a story about a massive money-laundering operation run by the world’s biggest banks. It hides behind the “eyes-glazing over” technicalities of the international financial system. But it could be one of the biggest illicit money-moving operations anyone has ever seen. And it’s allowed to exist by the financial regulators who answer to Western governments.
In these days of global markets, individuals and companies may be buying stocks, bonds or derivatives from a seller who is Clearstreamhalfway across the world. Clearstream, based in Luxembourg, is one of two international clearinghouses that keep track of the “paperwork” for the transactions.
Dec 2003
Alexei Golubovich, longtime partner of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is the target of legal action in Switzerland by his former associate Yelena Collongues-Popova and is being investigated by a Geneva judge on her charge of forgery.
Golubovich has not been indicted by Russian prosecutors, though they are interested in talking to the former Yukos finance director who has reportedly fled to London. However, he could be indicted by the Swiss.
Collongues-Popova, who for half a dozen years ran some 30 offshore companies for Golubovich, got a court order in Switzerland that froze $4.2 million she says represents loans he owes a company she owns. Swiss investigative magistrate, Claude Wenger, is looking into her criminal complaint that Golubovich forged her signature to avoid paying the loans.
The Russia Journal, Nov 28, 2003
Two ex-bankers on Wednesday, Nov. 26, filed a criminal complaint with the Swiss attorney general against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Platon Lebedev, and Alexei Golubovich, accusing them of money laundering and support for a criminal organization.
The Russia Journal has obtained a copy of the report. The Journal asked Yukos press office to comment on the charge but no comments were received.
The former bankers have requested the federal officials in Switzerland to open an investigation into the charges and to search the records of the Swiss offices of Menatep SA, Menatep Finances SA and Valmet (in liquidation) and of Bank Leu related to investigate claims of fraud against the Russian company Avisma and money laundering by Menatep in Switzerland.
The Russia Journal, Nov 5, 2003
The charges against key shareholders in Yukos are enormous and very varied in scope. The Yukos tale is a long, complex and controversial one, requiring lengthy and painstaking substantiation. Public interest in the Yukos controversy is very high.
However charges and counter charges, mostly of a political nature, are being flung so wildly about in the media that The Russia Journal believes it essential at this stage to focus on the evidence in the accusations against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his partners. His innocence of the charges that have been filed against him must be presumed until a competent trial is held.
Those who support his innocence of the charges are invited to review and comment on this, the first in a Russia Journal series on the case against him and others in Menatep Group.
Nov 2003
A business group headed by Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was arrested in October for allegedly defrauding the state of $1 billion, stashed money in offshore centers, including Switzerland, Luxembourg, the British Virgin Islands, the Seychelles, Panama and the Bahamas, according to Yelena Collongues-Popova, who worked for one of Khodorkovsky’s associates. Lucy Komisar, a New York investigative reporter who is writing a book about the offshore bank and corporate secrecy system, interviewed Collongues- Popova. This is her story.
PARIS — A French woman of Russian origin, with thousands of papers related to the Menatep business group and its offshore banking and dealings over the past decade, has been providing information to Russian prosecutors who are building a case against oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the richest man in Russia, who was arrested in October for tax evasion.
She says she set up numerous offshore companies and bank accounts in the Caribbean and Europe to help the Menatep group cheat Russian company shareholders and tax authorities. Her registered agent in the Caribbean was Icaza Gonzalez Ruiz and Aleman in the British Virgin Islands and Bahamas, against which she now has a legal action. She says she used Bank Leu (Bahamas), a subsidiary of Bank Leu, Geneva, to deposit funds in fiduciary accounts to have the benefit of withholding tax exemptions.
In These Times, Jan 17, 2003
Trade unions, workers’ pension funds and state officials are taking the lead in a campaign to prevent companies from reincorporating in Bermuda and other tax havens—and to bring back those who’ve already gone.
Arguing that offshore registrations allow corporations to evade taxes, reduce shareholder rights and threaten the security of investments, the AFL-CIO, individual unions and pension funds such as California’s Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) are filing shareholder resolutions and going to court against companies that move their paper headquarters offshore, where corrupt corporate executives have an easier time cooking the books.
The Baltimore Sun, June 17, 2001
Money: The wealthy hide a bundle of their dollars in banks that can keep a secret.
The Bush tax cut for the top 1 percent of richest Americans is worth $69 billion, nearly 38 percent of the total. People who protested that are virtually ignoring another Republican policy that “saves” the rich the same amount. Experts estimate that $70 billion in taxes are lost annually because many wealthy Americans hide money in tax havens, but Republicans in Congress and the White House are blocking efforts to stop this tax evasion.
