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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years ago

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Is antitrust anti-labor?

If you find the word “antitrust” has a dusty, old-fashioned feel, that’s only to be expected — after all, the word has its origins in the late 19th century, when the first billionaire was created: John D Rockefeller, who formed a “trust” with his oil industry competitors, through which they all agreed to stop competing with one another so they could concentrate on extracting more from their workers and their customers.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men

Trusts were an incredibly successful business structure. A bunch of competing companies would be sold to a new holding company (“the trust”), and the owners of those old standalone companies would get stock in this new trust. The trust would operate as a single entity, hiking prices and suppressing wages. If anyone tried fight the trust with a new, independent company, the trust could freeze them out, by selling goods below cost, or by doing exclusive deals with key suppliers and customers, or both. Once a trust sewed up an industry, no one could compete. The trust barons were rulers for life.

The first successful trust was Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, which amassed a 90% share of all US oil. Other “capitalists” got in on the game, forming the Cotton Seed Oil Trust (75% market share), the Sugar Trust (85%). Then came the Whiskey Trust and the Beef Trust. America was becoming a planned economy, run by a handful of unelected “industrialists” with lifetime appointments and the power to choose their successors.

A century after overthrowing the King, America had new kings: “kings over the production, transportation and sale of the necessities of life”. That’s how Senator John Sherman described the situation in 1890, when he was campaigning for the passage of the Sherman Act, the first “anti-trust” act. The Sherman Act wasn’t the first time American lawmakers tried to protect competition, but it was the first law passed after the failure of competition law led to the hijacking of the nation by people Sherman called the “autocrats of trade.”

https://marker.medium.com/we-should-not-endure-a-king-dfef34628153

The Sherman Act — and its successors, like the Clayton Act, are landmark laws in that they explicitly seek to protect workers and customers from corporate power. Antitrust is about making sure that no corporation gets so powerful that it’s too big to fail, nor too big to jail — that a company can’t get so big that it subverts the political process, capturing its own regulators:

https://doctorow.medium.com/small-government-fd5870a9462e

If American workers are derided as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” who won’t join the fight against the rich because they assume they’ll soon join their ranks, then the American rich are “temporarily embarrassed aristocrats” who would welcome hereditary rule, provided they got to found one of the noble families. The goal of the American elite has always been to create a vast and durable dynasty, wealth so vast and well-insulated that even the most Habsburg-jawed failson can’t piss it away.

The American elite has always hated antitrust. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan, abetted by Robert Bork and his co-conspirators at the Chicago School of Economics gutted antitrust through something called the “consumer welfare standard,” which ended anti-monopoly enforcement except in instances where price hikes could be directly and unarguably attributed to market power, which is, basically, never.

It’s been 40 years since Reagan took antitrust out behind the Lincoln Monument and shot it in the guts, and America has turned into the kind of aristocratic kleptocracy that Sherman railed against, where “great families” control the nation’s wealth and politics and even its Supreme Court judges:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/06/clarence-thomas/#harlan-crow

Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop. Monopoly threatens the living standards, health, freedom and prosperity of nearly every person in America. The undeniable enshittification of the country by its guillotine-ready finance ghouls, tech bros and pharma profiteers has led to a resurgence in antitrust, and a complete renewal of the @FTC and @JusticeATR:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

Key to the new and vibrant FTC is Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, who, along with Commissioner Rebecca SlaughterFTC and Chairwoman Lina Khan, is part of the Democratic majority on the Commission. Bedoya has a background in tech and privacy and civil rights, and is a longtime advocate against predatory finance. He’s also a law professor and a sprightly scholarly writer.

Earlier this week, Bedoya gave a prepared speech for the Utah Project on Antitrust and Consumer Protection conference, entitled “Aiming at Dollars, Not Men.” It’s a banger:

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/bedoya-aiming-dollars-not-men.pdf

Criticisms of the new antitrust don’t just come from America’s oligarchs — the labor movement is skeptical of antitrust as well, and with good cause. Antitrust law prohibits collusion among businesses to raise prices, and at many junctures since the passage of the Sherman Act, judges have willfully perverted antitrust to punish labor organizers, treating workers demanding better working conditions as if they were Rockefeller and his cronies conspiring to raise prices.

This is the subject of Bedoya’s speech, whose transcript is painstakingly footnoted, and whose text makes it crystal clear that this is not what antitrust is for, and we should not tolerate its perversion in service to crushing worker power. The title comes from a 1914 remark by Democratic Congressman Thomas Konop, who said, of antitrust: “We are aiming at the gigantic trusts and combinations of capital and not at associations of men for the betterment of their condition. We are aiming at the dollars and not at men.”

Konop was arguing for the passage of the Clayton Act, a successor to the Sherman Act, which was passed in part because judges refused to enforce the Sherman Act according to its plain language and its legislative intent, and kept using it against workers. In 1892, two years after the Sherman Act’s passage, it was used to crush the New Orleans General Strike, an interracial uprising against labor exploitation from longshoremen to printers to carpenters to hearse drivers.

Bosses went to a federal judge asking for an injunction against the strike. Though the judge admitted that the Sherman Act was designed to fight “the evils of massed capital,” he still issued the injunction.

The Sherman Act was used to clobber the Pullman Porters union, which organized Black workers who served on the Pullman cars on America’s railroads. The workers struck in 1894, after a 25% wage-cut, and they complained that they could no longer afford to eat and feed their families, so George Pullman fired them all. The workers struck, led by Eugene Debs. Pullman argued that the strike violated the Sherman Act. The Supreme Court voted 9:0 for Pullman, ordered the strike called off, and put Debs in prison.

In 1902, mercury-sickened hatters in Danbury, CT demanded better working conditions — after just a few years on the job, hatters would be disabled for life with mercury poisoning, with such bad tremors they couldn’t even feed themselves. 250 hatters at the DE Loewe company tried to unionize. Loewe sued them under the Sherman Act, and went to the Supreme Court, who awarded Loewe $6.8m in today’s money, which allowed Loewe to seize his former workers’ homes.

This is what sent Congress back to the drawing board to pass the Clayton Act. Though the Sherman Act was clear that it was about trustbusting, the courts kept interpreting it as a charter for union-busting. The Clayton Act explicitly permits workers to form unions, call for boycotts, and to organize sympathy strikes.

They made all this abundantly clear: writing in language so plain that judges had to understand the legislative intent. And yet…judges still managed to misread the Clayton Act, using it to block 2,100 strikes in the 1920s. It appears that passing the Clayton Act did not save a single strike that would have been killed by the bad (and bad faith) Sherman Act precedents that led to the Clayton Act in the first place.

The extent to which greedy bosses used the Clayton Act to attack their workers is genuinely ghastly. Bedoya describes one coal strike, against the Red Jacket Coal Company of Mingo, WV. The mine’s profits had grown by 600%, but workers’ wages weren’t keeping up with inflation. The miners sought a raise of $0.10 on the $0.66 they got paid for ever carload of coal they mined. The company didn’t even pay the workers with real money — just “company scrip”: coupons that could only be spent at the company store. Red Jacket gave its workers a $0.09/car raise — and raised prices at the company store by $0.25/item.

The workers struck, Red Jacket sued. The Fourth Circuit refused to apply the Clayton Act, following a precedent from a case called Duplex Printing that held that the Clayton Act only applied to people who stood “in the proximate relation of employer and employee.”

Congress was pissed. They passed the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932, with LaGuardia spitting about judges who “willfully disobeyed the law…emasculating it, taking out the meaning intended by Congress, making the law absolutely destructive of Congress’s intent.” Norris-LaGuardia creates an antitrust exemption for labor that applies “regardless of whether the disputants stand in the proximate relation of employer and employee.” So, basically: “CONGRESS TO JUDGES, GET BENT.”

And yet, judges still found ways to use antitrust as a cudgel to beat up workers. In Columbia River Packers, the court held that fishermen weren’t protected by the exemption for workers, because they were selling “commodities” (e.g. fish) not their labor. Presumably, the fish just leapt into the boats without anyone doing any work.

The willingness of enforcers to misread antitrust continued down through the ages. In 1999, the FTC destroyed the hopes of the some of the country’s most abused workers: “independent” port truckers, who worked 80 hours/week and still couldn’t pay the bills. Truckers were only paid to move trailers around the ports, but they were required to do hours and hours of unpaid work — loading containers, hauling equipment for repair, all for free. The truckers tried to organize a union — and the FTC subpoenaed the organizers for an investigation of price-fixing.

But the problem wasn’t with the laws. It was with judges who set precedents that — as LaGuardia said, “willfully disobeyed the law…emasculating it, taking out the meaning intended by Congress, making the law absolutely destructive of Congress’s intent.”

Congress passed laws to strengthen workers and judges — temporarily embarrassed aristocrats — simply acted as if the law was intended to smash workers. But by 2016, judges had it figured out. That’s when jockeys at the Camarero racetrack in Canóvana, Puerto Rico went on strike, demanding pay parity with their mainland peers — Puerto Rican jockeys got $20 to risk their lives riding, a fifth of what riders on the mainland received.

Predictably, the horse owners and racetrack sued. The jockeys lost in the lower court, and the court ordered the jockeys to pay the owners and the track a million dollars. They even sued the jockeys’ spouses, so that they could go after their paychecks to get that million bucks.

The case went to the First Circuit appeals court and Judge Sandra Lynch said: you know what, it doesn’t matter if the jockeys are employers or contractors. It doesn’t matter if they sell a commodity or their labor. The jockeys have the right to strike, period. That’s what the Clayton Act says. She overturned the lower court and threw out the fines.

As Bedoya says, antitrust is “law written to rein in the oil trust, the sugar trust, the beef trust…the gigantic trusts and combinations of capital…dollars and not at men.” Congress made that plain, “not once, not twice, but three times, each time in a louder and clearer voice.”

Bedoya, part of the FTC’s Democratic majority, finishes: “Congress has made it clear that worker organizing and collective bargaining are not violations of the antitrust laws. When I vote, when I consider investigations and policy matters, that history will guide me.”

There's only three days left in the Kickstarter campaign for the audiobook of my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller about Silicon Valley scams called Red Team Blues. Amazon's Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they're DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 7 months ago

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Roevember

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 29, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 30, 2024

And now the U.S. Army has weighed in on the scandal surrounding Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery for a campaign photo op, after which his team shared a campaign video it had filmed. The Army said that the cemetery hosts almost 3,000 public wreath-laying ceremonies a year without incident and that Trump and his staff “were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and [Department of Defense] policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds.”

It went on to say that a cemetery employee “who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside…. This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the… employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked. [Arlington National Cemetery] is a national shrine to the honored dead of the Armed Forces, and its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and respect the nation’s fallen deserve.”

“I don’t think I can adequately explain what a massive deal it is for the Army to make a statement like this,” political writer and veteran Allison Gill of Mueller, She Wrote, noted. “The Pentagon avoids statements like this at all costs. But a draft dodging traitor decided to lie about our armed forces staff, so they went to paper.”

The deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said the Department of Defense is “aware of the statement that the Army issued, and we support what the Army said.” Hours later, Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita reposted the offending video on X and, tagging the official account for Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, said he was “hoping to trigger the hacks” in her office.

In Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall reported that the Trump campaign’s plan was to lay a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery to honor the 13 members of the U.S. military killed in the suicide bombing during the evacuation of Kabul, Afghanistan, in August 2021. They intended to film the event and then attack Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden for not “showing up” for the event, which they intended to portray as an “established memorial.”

Another major story from yesterday is that the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has finalized two rules that will work to stop corruption and money laundering in U.S. residential real estate and in private investment.

This is a big deal. As scholar of kleptocracies Casey Michel put it: “This is a massive, massive deal in the world of counter-kleptocracy—the U.S. is finally ending the gargantuan anti–money laundering loopholes for real estate, private equity, hedge funds, and more. Can't overstate how important this is. What a feat.”

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, the oligarchs who rose to power in the former Soviet republics looked to park their illicit money in western democracies, where the rule of law would protect their investments. Once invested in the United States, they favored the Republicans, who focused on the protection of wealth rather than social services. For their part, Republican politicians focused on spreading capitalism rather than democracy, arguing that the two went hand in hand.

The financial deregulation that made the U.S. a good bet for oligarchs to launder money got a boost when, shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act to address the threat of terrorism. The law took on money laundering and the illicit funding of terrorism, requiring financial institutions to inspect large sums of money passing through them. But the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) exempted many real estate deals from the new regulations.

The United States became one of the money-laundering capitals of the world, with hundreds of billions of dollars laundered in the U.S. every year.

In 2011 the international movement of illicit money led then–FBI director Robert Mueller to tell the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City that globalization and technology had changed the nature of organized crime. International enterprises, he said, “are running multi-national, multi-billion dollar schemes from start to finish…. They may be former members of nation-state governments, security services, or the military…. These criminal enterprises are making billions of dollars from human trafficking, health care fraud, computer intrusions, and copyright infringement. They are cornering the market on natural gas, oil, and precious metals, and selling to the highest bidder…. These groups may infiltrate our businesses. They may provide logistical support to hostile foreign powers. They may try to manipulate those at the highest levels of government. Indeed, these so-called ‘iron triangles’ of organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders pose a significant national security threat.”

Congress addressed this threat in 2021 by including the Corporate Transparency Act in the National Defense Authorization Act. It undercut shell companies and money laundering by requiring the owners of any company that is not otherwise overseen by the federal government (by filing taxes, for example, or through close regulation) to file with FinCEN a report identifying (by name, birth date, address, and an identifying number) each person associated with the company who either owns 25% or more of it or exercised substantial control over it. The measure also increased penalties for money laundering and streamlined cooperation between banks and foreign law enforcement authorities. That act went into effect on January 1, 2024.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration made fighting corruption a centerpiece of its attempt to shore up democracy both at home and abroad. In June 2021, President Biden declared the fight against corruption a core U.S. national security interest. “Corruption threatens United States national security, economic equity, global anti-poverty and development efforts, and democracy itself,” he wrote. “But by effectively preventing and countering corruption and demonstrating the advantages of transparent and accountable governance, we can secure a critical advantage for the United States and other democracies.”

In March 2023 the Treasury told Congress that “[m]oney laundering perpetrated by the Government of the Russian Federation (GOR), Russian [state-owned enterprises], Russian organized crime, and Russian elites poses a significant threat to the national security of the United States and the integrity of the international financial system,” and it outlined the ways in which it had been trying to combat that corruption.

Now FinCEN has firmed up rules to add anti-money-laundering safeguards to private real estate and private investment. They will require certain industry professionals to report information to FinCEN about cash transfers of residential real estate to a legal entity or trust, transactions that “present a high illicit finance risk,” FinCEN wrote. “The rule will increase transparency, limit the ability of illicit actors to anonymously launder illicit proceeds through the American housing market, and bolster law enforcement investigative efforts.” The real estate rule will go into effect on December 1, 2025.

The rule about investment advisors will make the obligation to report suspicious financial activity apply to certain financial advisors. This rule will go into effect on January 1, 2026.

“The Treasury Department has been hard at work to disrupt attempts to use the United States to hide and launder ill-gotten gains,” Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen explained. “That includes by addressing our biggest regulatory deficiencies, including through these two new rules that close critical loopholes in the U.S. financial system that bad actors use to facilitate serious crimes like corruption, narcotrafficking, and fraud. These steps will make it harder for criminals to exploit our strong residential real estate and investment adviser sectors.”

“I applaud FinCEN’s commonsense efforts to prevent corrupt actors from using the American residential real estate and private investment sectors as safe havens for hiding dirty money,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said in a statement. “For too long, vulnerabilities in the system have attracted kleptocrats, cartels, and criminals looking to stow away their ill-gotten gains. I hope FinCEN will apply similar safeguards to commercial real estate, as well as due diligence requirements to investment advisors. These are all welcome steps toward keeping our country and financial system safe and secure for the American people—not those who wish to abuse it.”

The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (also known as the Helsinki Commission) brought the history of modern money laundering full circle. It said: “We welcome the Treasury Department's decision to close off crucial pathways for Russian money laundering and sanctions evasion through real estate and private equity.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Roevember #billboard #Letters From An American #heather cox richardson #arlington cemetery #election 2024 #money laundering

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filiasfae · 1 month ago

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Poems for Revolution

Week One

I've been suffering from a kind of

elective mutism these days

as if not speaking about

the awful things happening

would make them simply

go away.

My head is not buried, though.

I'm as aware as I can be, doomscrolling

through the night and the day.

Eventually, I must speak, and speak up,

and speak out, or my voice, my vote,

will become nothing,

disappearing in the shifting sands.

So here we are. An

illegitimate president and

his unelected billionaire cronies

have lined up

to loot and ravage

our government. Their goal

is poverty, desperation and

servitude of the masses.

This is an oversimplification, but

it'll serve the moment.

It is President's Day, 2025. There

is no cause for celebration. I hope

we're filling the streets

with our protesting voices.

No one is safe in this country

until the rule of law and democracy

have been restored. A kleptocracy, an idiocracy,

an oligarchy… that's not what

millions of Americans have fought to preserve

since the revolutionary war.

Let's be clear with our words.

It's not Democrat versus Republican.

It's not liberal versus conservative.

If we're going to divide into civil war, let's be

crystal about who is fighting for what.

Progressives are eternally fighting regressives.

Progressives want to move forward into the

future. They want to discover

and explore

and embrace change.

Regressives want to restore

a fabled nostalgic past. Or

just keep the status quo.

They hate change.

Which one are you?

The billionaires at the top of this game?

They're obviously

regressives. They like things

the way they're going. It gives them

power, power over billions.

Billions of humans. Against

less than 3000 people

in the world. If only we could

stop worshipping golden calves,

right? RIGHT? If only

we could come together enough

to fight the real enemy.

Meet the moment. Begin to

speak up, and speak out.

United we stand.

Divided we fall.

#poem #poetry #revolution

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yourreddancer · 7 months ago

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HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

August 29, 2024 (Thursday)

And now the U.S. Army has weighed in on the scandal surrounding Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery for a campaign photo op, after which his team shared a campaign video it had filmed.

The Army said that the cemetery hosts almost 3,000 public wreath-laying ceremonies a year without incident and that Trump and his staff “were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and [Department of Defense] policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds.”

The United States became one of the money-laundering capitals of the world, with hundreds of billions of dollars laundered in the U.S. every year.

The rule about investment advisors will make the obligation to report suspicious financial activity apply to certain financial advisors. This rule will go into effect on January 1, 2026.

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automatismoateo · 1 year ago

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Everyone needs to be aware of the Heritage FoundationsProject 2025 plan. It is terrifying. via /r/atheism

Everyone needs to be aware of the Heritage Foundation’s’Project 2025’ plan. It is terrifying. Everyone needs to be aware of ‘Project 2025’ and what the Republican Party have planned should Trump win, it is truly terrifying. This would have SERIOUS effects on everyone in the world, not just Americans. It’s another coup attempt, a destruction of America in an effort to turn it into a Christo-fascist authoritarian state. The aim is to destroy the administration of government and push as much power as possible into the office of the president. This plan will essentially turn America into a copy of Putin’s Russia (ie. an unaccountable dictator led kleptocracy) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025 https://youtu.be/9k3UvaC5m7o?si=YAM3eaR_HDSksVN0 ~The plan has 4 main parts~; ⁠⁠They want to dramatically concentrate power into the office of the President Remember that time Trump claimed that ‘article 2’ of the constitution gives him the power to do anything he wants? They are openly seeking to grant him exactly that level of unaccountable power and make him a dictator king. Personnel They want to gut the public service of personnel who are not politically aligned with the far right, every level of government will be packed with Trump loving MAGAs to ensure nothing will be able to stand in front of what Trump wants to do. As many as 50,000 government workers will be sacked. Climate Change They want to erase Climate change entirely from the Government worldview, they will promote natural gas usage and gut the EPA & Department of Energy. LGBTQ+ rights and pornography Gay people will be classed as child predators and groomers under this plan, they want to rescind all Gay Marriage and all Gay/Trans rights and register gay/trans people as ‘sex offenders’. They want to ban all pornography, and imprison anyone who makes pornographic material. —- There is also so much more in the plan; banning all immigrants, stopping asylum seekers completely, stopping all trade to China and essentially starting a Cold War with them, a severe crackdowns on Social Media sites, stripping accreditations from ‘leftist’ universities, outlawing ‘opposition propaganda’, librarians to be arrested & classed as sex offenders if they distribute ‘pornographic books’, discussing sexual identity is to be a crime, removal of all sex discrimination laws for everyone - including women, they want to ban all divorces, ban any and all pandemic prevention measures, declare Sundays to be the national ‘sabbath’, purity/morality tests for all government staff, the creation of special brainwashing academies to install ‘conservative values’ into all government employees, & so so much more awful things. this is nothing short of the birth of Nazi America. TLDR; This is an open plan to install Trump as a Christo-fascist dictator with ultimate untouchable power over everything in society, and absolutely represents a religious facsist overhaul of all of American society. If this plan gets to fruition America is dead in everything but name. Everyone needs to be aware of this. Note: They want to do everything listed here within the first 180 days of the next ‘Trump Presidency’. The entire document is an attempt to ‘normalise’ a fascist takeover over America. Submitted November 05, 2023 at 06:49PM by combustioncat (From Reddit https://ift.tt/XtfZ6Rv)

#reddit

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deborahdeshoftim5779 · 4 years ago

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Vladimir Kara-Murza is spot on about how we in the West must fight President Vladimir Putin.

Some excellent quotes:

His predecessors, in their own different ways, tried to placate a strongman who never hid his desire to solidify authoritarian control at home while furthering his ambitions on the world stage.

Not just in America. Here in Britain, our government has an embarrassing history of appeasing Putin, most notably in and around 2006, when our government refused to act swiftly against the Kremlin for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.

We have since learned that the then Home Secretary sat on evidence implicating Putin in this crime, for fear that its revelation would damage diplomatic relations with Russia.

Many Western leaders assumed that anti-democratic abuses in Russia could be ignored as long as they can “do business” with Putin on other issues.

Absolutely correct.

For his part, Biden noted that he had “looked into Putin’s eyes and saw no soul.”

A good laugh from this, and very true. Putin likes pontificating about spirituality, yet had no compunction in trying to murder a husband and father last August, simply because he feared criticism of his regime. This man has no respect for basic decency, let alone the rule of law. He is mentally unfit for office, and belongs in prison.

(By the way, I have heard that President Biden is an expert on foreign policy).

It is not for the United States, or any other foreign power, to effect political change in Russia. Russians should — and will — do this themselves.

Absolutely SPOT ON. I want Russian democracy to be upheld by the Russian people. They should be able to choose their own leaders. Currently, with Putin raping the Constitution so that he can run for power until 2036, this is not the case. Russians should continue to agitate against the fake constitutional referendum result, only achieved by rigging over 20 million votes.

Contrary to Kremlin propaganda, those of us who oppose Putin are not asking foreigners for money, political support or regime change. All we ask from the West is that it stay true to its values and stop enabling the Putin regime’s kleptocracy on a global scale.

Agreed. For example, while Putin likes calling Navalny a “blogger”, he also insists that the dissident is being funded by foreign powers. In fact, Navalny’s FBK is funded solely by Russian donors, and he made it clear that he did not have to rely on foreign money.

“sanctions aren’t working because the West has refrained from sanctioning the people with the money.”

Words of Alexei Navalny, about why sanctions against Russia have failed. This is because many Western nations, including my own, do not want to upset the Russian investors in our economies. So they shuffle their feet over financial sanctions, because they do not want to lose Russian money, currently tied up in many British institutions and businesses.

Financial sanctions, like those promoted under the Magnitsky Act, are the only way to cripple Putin’s global criminal enterprise. Putin does not respect the rule of law. He has no integrity and no decency. The only thing he loves is money, as this documentary about his secret palace shows.

When Putin realises that his money is not safe abroad, he gets worried. Consequently, he has expended time and energy getting lawyers and businessmen to intimidate and bribe Western politicians so that they will not adopt the the Act, which recommends asset freezes and visa denials for suspected human rights abusers in Russia and abroad.

Putin’s friends hide his stolen funds through various proxies and shell companies, much of it in Western nations. Pretty ironic, when you consider how RussiaToday loves posting articles claiming that the West is collapsing and only Russia is stable, because of Putin!

Yet this investigation shows how much money the chief of RussiaToday has swindled from the taxpayer, much of which is held in a network of offshore companies. Thieves such as Margarita Simonyan have made many enemies in their home country, and are under constant threat of investigation by opposition parties.

Word to Western nations: name and shame the abusers. Freeze those assets. Tear up those visas.

Above all, the Biden administration must not equate Russia with its abusive regime. Too many Western leaders fall into this trap. “Punish the scoundrels, not the country,” was Nemtsov’s message to Biden at their meeting.

AGREED! I reject Russophobic sentiment.

My problem is with President Putin, his friends, allies, enablers, propagandists, and thugs. I support the ordinary and decent Russians fighting against his criminal enterprise.

Russia is not a miserable country, as is often portrayed in Western films. On the contrary, it is an incredibly beautiful country with a rich culture. I have been fascinated with it for almost 12 years now, particularly in terms of history, literature, and its language.

One of the best ways to defeat Putin is to show that we have no animosity towards Russian people, as he enjoys using paranoid conspiracy theories to inflame xenophobic sentiment against the West.

As Kara-Murza suggests:

And it should resume the normal issuance of visas, giving young Russians more opportunities to engage with their American peers. Nothing counters false propaganda narratives like seeing the reality.

Though it is worth pointing out that, no doubt thanks to Putin’s robbery, many Russians either want to leave or have already left. This is sad, and will have negative economic effects.

Either way, greater cultural exchange with Russian people still brings great benefits. For one thing, the West is not collapsing. We’re not perfect, but we have enough leaders who believe in the rule of law, such that the kind of criminality Putin engages in would be unthinkable in many Western nations.

A great read from Kara-Murza, twice poisoned for his advocacy against Putin. Highly recommend!

#алексей навальный #Навальный #Навальный живи #Отравление Навального #Алекcей Навальный #арест навального #Протесты #Россия #свободная россиа #свободу Навальному #русский блог #Vladimir Kara-Murza #foreign policy #president biden #president joe biden #politics #american politics

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argyrocratie · 5 years ago

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The end of politics

Necessarily the crisis of labour entails the crisis of state and politics. In principle, the modern state owes its career to the fact that the commodity producing system is in need of an overarching authority guaranteeing the general preconditions of competition, the general legal foundations, and the preconditions for the valorisation process – inclusive of a repression apparatus in case human material defaults the systemic imperatives and becomes insubordinate. Organising the masses in the form of bourgeois democracy, the state had to increasingly take on socio-economic functions in the 20th century. Its function is not limited to the provision of social services but comprises public health, transportation, communication and postal service, as well as infrastructures of all kind. The latter state-run or state-supervised services are essential for the working of the labour society, but cannot be organised as a private enterprise valorisation process; „privatised“ public services are most often nothing but state consumption in disguise. The reason for that is that such infrastructure must be available for the society as a whole on a permanent basis and cannot follow the market cycles of supply and demand.

As the state is not a valorisation unit in its own and thus not able to transform labour into money, it has to skim off money from the actual valorisation process to finance its state functions. If the valorisation of value comes to a standstill, the coffers of state empty. The state, purported to be the social sovereign, proves to be completely dependent on the blindly raging, fetishised economy specific to the labour society. The state may pass as many bills as it wants, if the forces of production (the general powers of humanity) outgrow the system of labour, positive law, constituted and applicable only in relation to the subjects of labour, leads nowhere.

As a result of the ever-increasing mass unemployment, revenues from the taxation of earned income drain away. The social security net rips as soon as the number of „superfluous“ people constitutes a critical mass that has to be fed by the redistribution of monetary yields generated elsewhere in the capitalist system. However, with the rapid concentration process of capital in crisis, exceeding the boundaries of national economies, state revenues from the taxation of corporate profits drain away as well. The compulsions thereby exerted by transnational corporations on national economies, who are competing for foreign investment, result in tax dumping, dismantling of the welfare state, and the downgrading of environment protection standards. That is why the democratic state mutates into a mere crisis administrator.

The more the state approaches financial emergency, the more it is reduced to its repressive core. Infrastructures are cut down to proportions just meeting the requirements of transnational capital. As it was once the case in the colonies, social logistics are increasingly restricted to a few economic centres while the rest of the territory becomes wasteland. Whatever can be privatised is privatised, even if more and more people are excluded from the most essential supplies.

When the valorisation of value concentrates on only a few world market havens, a comprehensive supply system to satisfy the needs of the population as a whole does not matter any longer. Whether there is train service or postal service available is only relevant in respect to trade, industry, and financial markets. Education becomes the privilege of the globalisation winners. Intellectual, artistic, and theoretical culture is weighed against the criterion of marketability and fades away. A widening financing gap ruins public health service, giving rise to a class system of medical care. Surreptitiously and gradually at the beginning, eventually with callous candour, the law of social euthanasia is promulgated: Because you are poor and superfluous, you will have to die early.

In the fields of medicine, education, culture, and general infrastructure, knowledge, skill, techniques and methods along with the necessary equipment are available in abundance. However, pursuant to the „subject to sufficient funds“-clause – the latter objectifying the irrational law of the labour society – any of those capacities and capabilities has to be kept under lock and key, or has to be demobilised and scrapped. The same applies to the means of production in farming and industry as soon as they turn out to be „unprofitable“. Apart from the repressive labour simulation imposed on people by means of forced labour and low-wage regime along with the cutback of social security payments, the democratic state that already transformed into an apartheid system has nothing on offer for his ex-labour subjects. At a more advanced stage, the administration as such will disintegrate. The state apparatus will degenerate into a corrupt „kleptocracy“, the armed forces into Mafia-structured war gangs, and police forces into highwaymen.

No policy conceivable can stop this process or even reverse it. By its essence politics is related to social organisation in the form of state. When the foundations of the state-edifice crumble, politics and policies become baseless. Day after day, the left-wing democratic formula of the „political shaping“ (politische Gestaltung) of living conditions makes a fool of itself more and more. Apart from endless repression, the gradual elimination of civilisation, and support for the „terror of economy“, there is nothing left to „shape“. As the social end-in-itself specific to the labour society is an axiomatic presupposition of Western democracy, there is no basis for political-democratic regulation when labour is in crisis. The end of labour is the end of politics.

— Manifesto against Labour by Krisis-Group (1999)

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diarrheaworldstarhiphop · 5 years ago

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The assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani on the outskirts of Baghdad was a major escalation in the conflict between the United States and Iran. But the U.S. drone strike that killed the powerful commander of the Quds Force within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps might claim another casualty as well: the U.S.-Iraqi relationship. Allied with both the United States and Iran, Iraq now finds itself as the frontline battleground for these two foes.

The precarious state of Washington’s relationship with Baghdad was apparent even before the United States killed Soleimani on January 3. It was thrown into stark relief on New Year’s Eve, when Iraqi security forces looked the other way as hundreds of Iraqi militia supporters attacked the U.S. embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone. Embassy staff were kept under lockdown and U.S. Apache helicopters hovered overhead as the pro-Iranian militia supporters breached the outer cordon, burned American flags, ransacked guard posts, and sought to scale the walls before U.S. marines pushed them back with tear gas.

Such a scene would have been difficult to imagine back in 2009, when the U.S. embassy moved out of the Republican Palace and opened its current facility on the banks of the Tigris River. The U.S. embassy in Baghdad was the largest in the world, covering 104 acres and staffed with 12,000 people. It symbolized the high hopes that both countries had for the U.S.-Iraqi relationship. The United States’ reputation had suffered a blow in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, but it recovered somewhat during the troop surge of 2007, when U.S. forces helped defeat al Qaeda in Iraq and bring Iraq’s civil war to an end. By 2009, U.S. forces had largely transferred responsibility to Iraqi security forces, and Iraqis were hopeful that their country was headed in the right direction. But then everything unraveled.

The trouble started in the aftermath of the 2010 elections. The United States and Iran both supported Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s bid for a second term, even though his coalition didn’t win the most votes. But Maliki went on to pursue sectarian policies that created the conditions for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, to rise from the ashes of al Qaeda in Iraq, proclaiming itself the protector of the Sunnis against Maliki’s Iranian-backed regime. President Barack Obama’s administration had hoped to keep a residual force in Iraq, but it failed to negotiate a new security arrangement when the existing Status of Forces Agreement expired in 2011, precipitating the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from the country. ISIS took advantage of the situation and by 2014 it had seized more than a third of Iraq. Only then did the Obama administration finally withdraw its support from Maliki, and, at the request of Iraq’s new prime minister, Haydar Abadi, sent U.S. troops back to Iraq with the mandate to support the fight against ISIS and to train and advise Iraqi forces.

Among the forces that battled ISIS alongside the United States was Kataib Hezbollah (KH), an Iran-backed Shiite militia that was officially folded into the Iraqi security forces through an umbrella group known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. But once the common enemy was defeated, KH turned its sights on U.S. forces in Iraq—at the direction of Iran. The Iraqi government was either unwilling or unable to stop the group from firing rockets at U.S. facilities, as it did on December 27, when it killed a U.S. contractor and wounded three U.S. military personnel at the K1 military base in Kirkuk. The United States responded to this most recent attack with air strikes intended to degrade KH’s ability to conduct future attacks by eliminating their weapon storage facilities and command and control in five locations in Iraq and Syria. But the air strikes also killed more than two-dozen KH fighters and prompted supporters of the militia to launch an assault on the U.S. embassy on New Year’s Eve.

Joining KH supporters outside the U.S. embassy were three of the strongest pro-Iranian militia leaders in Iraq: Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the leader of KH and deputy commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces, who was previously convicted of bombing the U.S. embassy in Kuwait; Qais Khazali, the leader of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, whose group was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of U.S. soldiers and British contractors in Iraq; and Hadi al-Ameri, the leader of the Badr Corps. After two days of protests, the militia leaders ordered their supporters to go home, claiming that they had secured the support of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mehdi to push forward legislation to evict U.S. forces from Iraq. Mehdi has since denounced the U.S. air strikes on KH and condemned the assassinations of Soleimani and al-Muhandis, who died alongside him in the U.S. drone strike, calling them a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and of the terms under which U.S. forces operate in the country.

Mehdi’s response to the protests at the U.S. embassy stands in stark contrast to the government’s response to antigovernment protests that have swept the country over the last three months. Since October, tens of thousands of young Iraqis have taken to the streets of Baghdad and other cities to express their frustration with government corruption, poor public services, unemployment, and Iranian interference. Theirs is the largest grassroots mobilization since the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Demonstrators called not only for new leaders but for an overhaul of the post-2003 political system that institutionalized sectarianism and created a kleptocracy in which Iraq’s political elites divvy up the country’s oil wealth.

The demonstrations forced Mehdi to resign as prime minister (although he remains in a caretaker capacity as his replacement is negotiated) and won the passage of a new election law, but not before Iraqi security forces and Iran-backed Shiite militias killed more than 500 protesters and wounded another 21,000. Taking to social media during the siege of the U.S. embassy, some Iraqis observed acidly that the pro-Iranian Iraqis carrying out the assault were the same ones they had been protesting against for months.

The aspirations of reform-minded demonstrators are likely to be drowned out by the escalating tensions between the United States and Iran. Heightened instability may prompt the government to take even harsher measures to shut down the protests, which they regard as an existential threat. Iraq’s ruling political parties have little incentive to make real changes to a system from which they benefit. For their part, Iranian leaders see control over Iraq as essential to their political survival, an economic “lung” to alleviate the crush of sanctions, and a crucial overland logistical supply link to the Syrian regime and Lebanese Hezbollah. Iran remains the most influential external actor in Iraq, with deep ties to Iraqi politicians and Shiite militias.

After the events of the last week, the Trump administration may decide that a U.S. presence in Iraq is no longer tenable, particularly in an election year. Trump has repeatedly declared his intention to withdraw U.S. troops from the region. And to many Americans, the attacks on the U.S. embassy and chants of “Death to America” conjure up memories of Tehran in 1979, when Iranians overran the U.S. embassy there and took American diplomats hostage, and Benghazi in 2012, when Libyan militants killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. The United States already shuttered its consulate in Basra, and reduced staff in Baghdad and in the consulate in Erbil out of concern about increasing threats from Iranian-backed militia. Closing the embassy in Baghdad would be a wretched end to the U.S. relationship with a country in which it has invested so much blood and treasure. But by assassinating Soleimani, the Trump administration just made that outcome much more likely.

#iran #iraq #baghdad #united states #green zone #iraqi civil war

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antoine-roquentin · 6 years ago

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Guatemala’s next leader will be Alejandro Giammattei, a right-wing former national prison director.

With 58% of votes, Giammettei beat former first lady Sandra Torres by 16 points in the second round of Guatemala’s election on Aug. 11. It was his fourth presidential bid.

As a candidate, Giammattei spoke of creating jobs and fighting crime in the poor, violence-gripped Central American country. But his campaign offered few policy proposals beyond taking a hard line against gangs like MS-13 that operate with impunity in Guatemala, building new prisons and reimposing the death penalty.

Giammattei hasn’t yet agreed to implement Guatemala’s controversial recent agreement with the Trump administration to stop Central American migrants from crossing through Guatemala.

The 63-year-old Giammattei’s base includes former military members, the far right, evangelicals and business leaders – essentially the same electorate that put outgoing President Jimmy Morales in power. But polling suggests Giammattei won primarily due to the extreme unpopularity of his opponent, who has a history of corruption allegations.

Guatemalans were deeply unenthusiastic about both candidates. Just 42% of registered voters voted, the lowest percentage since the country’s civil war ended in 1996. Nearly 6% of them cast blank or spoiled ballots, apparently in protest.

Many Guatemalans expressed fear that no matter who won the runoff, this election would mark the end of Guatemala’s decade-long fight to root out massive government corruption.

Giammattei is an ally of President Morales, who is under investigation for campaign finance violations. His inner circle of former generals and elite power brokers who have ruled the country for decades also backed the disgraced former President Otto Pérez Molina, who resigned amid scandal in 2015 and was jailed hours later for corruption.

Justice No More

As a longtime researcher on justice in post-civil war Guatemala, I have grave concerns about Giammattei’s commitment to restoring the rule of law.

Giammattei is closely associated with the old military intelligence groups that have dominated Guatemalan politics behind the scenes since its bloody, decades-long civil war ended in the 1990s.

His tenure as national director of prisons was tainted when seven inmates were killed under suspicious circumstances in 2006 at Guatemala’s notoriously lawless Pavón prison.

According to prosecutors, the killings were committed by a prison death squad that worked inside jails, with administrators’ explicit approval, to exterminate the “dregs” of society and “enemies of the state.” Three of the killers were convicted of murder in Guatemala for the prison deaths.

Giammattei was charged with conspiracy but acquitted in 2013. Last year a Swiss appeals court sentenced his accused co-conspirator, former police chief Edwin Sperisen, to 15 years in prison for the murders.

Giammattei was not expected to become Guatemala’s president.

Early in the race the clear front-runner was Thelma Aldana, Guatemala’s corruption-busting former attorney general. But in May she was barred from the race for alleged financial mismanagement. That bumped Sandra Torres into first place, with Giammattei running a distant second.

Many saw the ruling against Aldana as politically motivated.

As attorney general from 2014 to 2018, Aldana worked closely with the United Nations-backed anti-corruption panel known as CICIG. Since its creation in 2007, CICIG has prosecuted three former presidents and more than 600 other high-ranking officials in Guatemala for everything from money laundering and embezzlement to ties with organized crime.

When President Morales expelled its lead prosecutor earlier this year, Aldana vocally protested. She has since fled the country after receiving death threats.

Giammattei says he will pursue the fight against endemic corruption but he opposes the CICIG, which supported his prosecution in the Pavón Prison case. Despite 72% popular support, the commission is now due to close in September.

Giammattei has offered no concrete plan to continue cleaning up Guatemala’s government. Without the CICIG’s investigators and prosecutors, Giammattei is unlikely to pull the country out of the morass of kleptocracy, violence and extreme poverty that sends thousands of desperate Guatemalans abroad each year.

Trouble Ahead, Trouble Behind

Through bribery, coercion and threat of violence, criminal cartels have infiltrated Guatemala’s government over the last 20 years.

A CICIG investigation found that half of political party financing comes from organized crime and corruption. In Guatemala’s Congress, dirty legislators known to be on the take are locally regarded as the “Pact of the Corrupt.”

The largest bloc in the incoming Congress, which takes office Jan. 1, will be from Torres’ National Unity of Hope party. Just 17 of 158 Guatemalan lawmakers belong to Giammattei’s Vamos Party.

A small bloc of legislators will come from a new center-left party called Semilla, or “Seed,” which nominated Aldana as its presidential candidate. Semilla’s presence ensures Giammattei will have some vocal opposition in Congress.

A conservative majority of lawmakers is expected to try again to pass a controversial amnesty law that would pardon former military officials convicted of crimes against humanity during Guatemala’s civil war and prevent those accused of human rights violations from being prosecuted.

Given his military ties, Giammettei would likely sign such an amnesty bill into law.

Guatemalan judges who, with the support of the CICIG, have put former military officers and corrupt politicians in prison have faced unfounded investigations against them and threats to their safety. So have human rights actvists and environmental defenders.

These attacks on the rule of law in Guatemala would ordinarily draw criticism from the United States. Now they are met with silence, both from the Trump administration and Guatemala’s new president-elect.

#guatemala

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moorsvital · 2 years ago

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Sorry, I can't wish you a happy New Year's Eve!

The last days of 2022 have arrived, another year has passed by.

After an almost hopeless battle against a pandemic and the restrictions it placed on each of us in the previous years, we entered 2022 with great hope and optimism as we could foresee that those restrictions would soon be over and COVID-19 would become a manageable infectious disease. I was able to travel to Thailand again after two years, had already been vaccinated for the third time in January and the mandatory working from home was relaxed. It looked like 2022 would be a year full of prosperity, happiness and dreams for the future. You could sense hope and optimism everywhere in society.

However, on February 24th, that hope and optimism were dashed to the ground by the air raid sirens in many Ukrainian cities. On that day, the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin launched a senseless and barbaric invasion of Ukraine. Women were raped, ordinary citizens tortured and killed, Ukrainian children and civilians were deported to filtration camps in Russia, and the elderly died of deprivation. The “never again”-cruelties, are committed again in Europe.

I would never have dared to think that Russia was committing war crimes and crimes against humanity on a such a massive scale. Like many Westerners, I was naive. I had the hope that Russia was a country that would develop into a liberal democracy through international cooperation. However, this was a dream that will never come true.

We could have foreseen this. For years, Putin's kleptocracy has become increasingly tangible and human rights have been increasingly restricted. Apparently we lived as if we were blind. Why didn't we react to the atrocities Putin committed in Chechnya, Georgia and Syria? Why did we continue to put our trust in cooperation and diplomacy with a war criminal? Why were there so weak and meaningless sanctions when Putin tried to annex Crimea and Donbas in 2014?

Fortunately, in 2022 the free world responded immediately and unanimously. The invasion was condemned by almost all countries in the world. Unprecedented humanitarian and military support was provided to Ukraine. Ukraine was granted EU candidate status within months. Ukrainian refugees were warmly welcomed in the EU.

Sanctions were also imposed on Russia. However, it annoyed me immensely how limited and ineffective the imposed sanctions were. The trade in diamonds and raw materials for luxury goods by which Russia finances this war, continues. I remain convinced that if we had immediately imposed a total embargo on all trade with Russia, the war would have ended by now. You don't stop a war criminal and dictator with half-hearted measures, he only bends when he sees no other way out. In the short term that would have been painful for the European economy. In the longer term however this would have made the European Union a much more powerful geopolitical player and perhaps these sanctions could have been lifted by now. Fortunately, after ten months of war, we are no longer dependent on a mafia state for our energy supply.

However, in all this geopolitical activity there is too little attention for the wishes of the Ukrainian people themselves. Ukrainians experienced the barbarity of the Russians. They still remember how they were oppressed by the Russians until their independence. The population no longer wants a new Russian occupation or domination, but wants to develop the country to a Western, democratic and liberal society. The Maidan revolution has proven that, but even more so the way in which Ukraine, even during the war, adapts its laws and policies in order to join the European Union.

And yet Russia's genocide in Ukraine continues today, also on New Year’s Eve. Children, women, men and the elderly are dying every day by the Russian war crimes. Russia is depriving the Ukrainians of all possible vital services such as electricity, water and heating. Innocent civilians have to survive in bomb shelters in temperatures well below zero. On TikTok I recently saw a 30 second video of a Ukrainian boy saying: "I need you to stay with me, because next time I don't know if I am still alive".

Peace in Europe is only possible if Russia stops this war and is prepared to bear the consequences for what it did. That means a complete withdrawal of the Russians from Ukraine, including Crimea and Donbas. A trial for all persons who have committed or were responsible for war crimes or crimes against humanity, including the current Russian president and his entourage. Compensation for all the war damage Russia caused in Ukraine. And guarantees that Russia will reform itself into a democratic constitutional state and is prepared to further reduce its nuclear military installations.

It is clear that Russia has little or no support for its bloodthirsty war crimes in Ukraine, which are still going on today. Only countries like North Korea and Iran are still on Russia's side. And at the end of 2022, I also have to draw attention to the situation in Iran. I am moved to tears when I see yet another report about a young man in his 20s being hanged for nonviolently expressing his displeasure about how women's rights are being restricted in Iran. Or the article in the news of a girl who is sentenced to forty strokes because she would not have worn her headscarf properly. I always thought that hanging or torturing people was something from the Middle Ages. How can this still exist at the start of 2023?

I can therefore not wish you a happy end-of-year celebrations this year, because there is really nothing to celebrate!

Celebrating New Year's Eve, however cozy, seems very inappropriate to me when we know that at the same time people in Ukraine have to survive in the freezing cold and women and children are being raped by Russians. Celebrating New Year's Eve with fireworks is decadent if we know that women and men are executed at the same time in Iran for peacefully defending women's rights. I cannot drink champagne on New Year's Eve when I know that at the same time the junta in Myanmar has killed innocent civilians again or when I realize that the Taliban in Afghanistan forces girls and women to stay at home for life, deprived of any form of education and future prospects.

I can, however, hope for a better 2023 and wish you the same. Not only, I would like to wish you a healthy, happy and prosperous year for you and all the people who are dear to you, but above all I express my hope that in 2023 we all work together with all possible means and more than we have done so far, for a just peace in Ukraine and a prosperous future for the citizens of that country, for respect for the human rights of women in Iran and Afghanistan and for peace, freedom and justice for all people who still have to live today in countries with dictatorial regime.

May 2023 be a better year than 2022. May not war crimes and crimes against humanity, suffering, deprivation and oppression or genocide and human rights violations be the headlines in the news in 2023. May peace, respect, justice, solidarity and a sustainable future become the driving force for every human being who believes that together we can transform this world into a place in which every human being can live happily.

Vital E.H. Moors

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years ago

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Jackpot watch: How the klept operates in the UK

In his 2014 novel The Peripheral, William Gibson plunges us into a far-future London, radically depopulated, quietly authoritarian, and under the iron thumb of “the Klept” — a fusion of the British chumocracy with post-Soviet Eurasian kleptoracy.

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/10/28/the-peripheral-william-gibson-vs-william-gibson/

The origins of this society — its depopulation, its neo-aristocracy, its captivity to inscrutable AIs called “the Aunties” are lost to history. They all took place during a time called “The Jackpot,” an interregnum where huge swathes of records simply vanished amid social breakdown, climate emergencies and cyberwar.

Gibson will be the first to tell you that he’s not attempting prophecy with his work, but it can’t be denied that he has an eerie ability to reflect back our latent, inchoate fears about the future in fiction, something he calls “predicting the present.”

When I emigrated from the UK to the US in 2016, I explained my reasons in a post called “Why I’m Leaving London.” The basic reason? The increasing obviousness of a city that existed primarily to launder vast, corrupt fortunes, and only incidentally be a place where Londoners could live and thrive.

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/06/29/why-im-leaving-london/

Since then, the UK — and especially the City of London, home of the nation’s finances — has doubled down on its role as enabler and concierges to the world’s filthiest money, and the psychopaths who come with it. The UK and its overseas territories consistently top the Tax Justice Network’s annual “Financial Secrecy Index.”

https://fsi.taxjustice.net/en/

Not all corrupt money comes from the former Soviet republics of Eurasia, but these countries — and Russia — embody a special kind of corruption: kleptocracy (“a political economy dominated by a small number of people/entities with close links to the state”).

This form of corruption is closely related to the chumocracy that dominates British politics, and especially the ruling Conservative party. Thus it should come as no surprise that the UK, with its Thatcher- and Blair-era emphasis on finance, and its political compatibility with kleptocracy, is a linchpin in global kleptocratic money-laundering and corruption.

“The UK’s kleptocracy problem,” is Chatham House’s deeply reported white paper on the connections between Eurasian kleptocrats and the UK political system, its finance sector, its charities, its libel laws, its property market, and its luxury goods sector.

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/12/uks-kleptocracy-problem/01-introduction

The paper shows how the UK is a one-stop shop for corrupt, wealthy public officials from Eurasian kleptocracies. The UK’s finance sector will launder your money. Its Home Office will sell you citizenship via a “golden visa.” Its estate agents will convert the money to multimillion-pound mansions and “superflats.” Its charities will launder your reputation and recast you as a philanthropist. Its billion-pound mega-law firms and “reputation mangers” will destroy your critics and terrorize their publishers, cleansing you of sin with expert use of Britain’s notoriously bully-friendly libel laws. And while it’s all going on, the country’s luxury department stores will offer you white-glove service as you spend millions on gem-crusted, bespoke trinkets.

The UK’s role as concierge to the klept spills over beyond either the UK or Eurasia’s borders. Not only do oligarchs buy influence with British governments and regulators, they also use their London-washed money to funnel bribes to politicians around the world. Think here of the Azerbaijani Laundromat, in which $2.9B was funneled through 4 UK shell companies and converted, in part, to bribes paid to EU politicians.

UK politicians (both Labour and Tory) have managed to divert interest from this influx of unsavory plutocrats and instead focus on hardworking, everyday people who come to the UK to do hard, everyday work. For forty years, British politics has been dominated by xenophobic terror of “economic migrants” (a major factor in Brexit), with complaints about foreigners competing for housing and resources. Meanwhile, the issue of ultrawealthy kleptocrats coming to Britain to buy its football teams, entire swathes of its major cities, its newspapers, and its politicians has largely gone unremarked-upon.

Neoliberal economists describe the UK as a post-industrial nation focused on “services” — not the “service sector” (plumbers, waiters, cab drivers), but high-ticket services like “wealth management,” “legal strategy,” “investment counsel,” “reputation management,” “property management” and so on.

These “service-providers” are more properly known as “enablers.” The reputation management industry — which draws on all these services — describes its role in helping clients create “coherent narratives” about their identity and wealth, helps them steer clear of “out of place” investments, and identifies foundations and think tanks that they can support to be known as “philanthropists.”

Enablers don’t just help craft a public-facing narrative for oligarchs, though: they’re just as skilled at creating an opaque bubble of secrecy around the parts of oligarchs’ lives that are less savory. Britons are firehosed with information about kleptocrats’ philanthropic activities and endorsements by members of the British elite, but we almost never hear about the klepts’ private wealth, investment and assets.

Britain’s borders are notoriously hostile to working people, but they are extremely porous when it comes to the klept. The “Tier 1 Investor visa” is a golden passport by another name — a way to spend a pittance for freedom of motion between the looted, authoritarian states of Eurasia and the UK. Don’t let the “investor” fool you: there’s no good evidence that the “investments” required under the scheme have a positive effect on the real economy.

The British political class will tell you that the UK has advanced anti-money laundering controls, with scrutiny of politically exposed persons and those holding passports from high-risk countries. These laws are deceptive though.

For example, a “high-risk” nation is one without good money laundering regulations — including countries like Jamaica, which are not particularly prominent the global corruption industry. Meanwhile, Eurasian countries with strong anti-laundering laws that are never enforced are considered low risk, because risk is calculated based on the existence of a law, not its enforcement.

Meanwhile, the rules that require estate agents, bankers, and luxury goods dealers to report transactions from “Politically Exposed Persons” (PEPs) are riddled with loopholes and primarily enforced through nonexistent self-regulation. For example, a politician’s immediately family cease to be PEPs the day the politician leaves office — so a corrupt dictator’s kids can buy a £60m Knightsbridge property the day their dad steps down, with no reporting requirement.

Even when solicitors, estate agents, and other covered professionals are caught ignoring the reporting rules, they face tiny fines and no lasting penalties. Many offer the defense that they didn’t know they were working for PEPs — thus there’s an incentive to simply not ask any questions when someone shows up looking to spend 8 or 9 figures through your firm.

Perversely, the finance sector goes overboard in the other direction, with an approach that is “risk-averse” and “also risk-insensitive.” UK banks floor the financial regulator with “Suspicious Activity Reports” (SARs), filing these whenever a transaction has even a glancing contact with Eurasia. The regulator — grossly understaffed — ignores nearly all of these SARs, and the transactions proceed, with the banks’ asses now covered by dint of having filed the SAR. Another failing of UK anti-corruption law is its emphasis on identifying and blocking the proceeds of “crime,” rather than “corruption.” When an oligarch loots, it’s only a crime if the state decides it is. The Kazakh oligarch Nurali Aliyev loaned himself $65m from the bank he chaired and used it to buy a Highgate mansion (“there is no evidence to suggest the loan was repaid”). Kazakh authorities did not class this as a theft, so UK anti-corruption law has little to say about it.

The flip side of this is that when oligarchs fall out of favor and go into self-exile in London, their adversaries back home can use the UK authorities to exact revenge at a distance, by selectively classifying their wealth as criminal assets and ratting them out to the British authorities.

(Of course, oligarch-on-oligarch warfare isn’t limited to pitting rivals against UK tax authorities; there’s also spectacular acts of violence, including assassination by nerve agent and radioactive poison).

A key enabler of the klept in the UK is the nation’s great law firms, whose waves of mergers have produced chambers that generate more than £1b in annual billings. These firms offer full service — papering over the purchases of giant mansions, and suing the newspapers, publishers and reporters who write about them. Britain’s libel laws — much-admired by Trump — are a great help here. I’ve been on the receiving end of these threats, personally, and was forced to delete a truthful account of a billionaire’s financial stake in a firm that is implicated in human rights abuses around the world. The report cites a British journalist who estimates that “upwards of 50% of critical material about oligarchs ends up on the cutting-room floor” as newspaper lawyers force redactions of materials known to be true.

The British charitable sector is a favorite source of reputation laundering for keptocrats, especially charities associated with the British royal family, but also great universities and prominent think-tanks. Charities and universities have come to depend on private money more and more over the past 20 years, as austerity has starved them of public money. That makes them especially vulnerable to co-option by kleptocrats. As interested as oligarchs are in being associated with the charitable sector, they’re even more interested in funding the UK Conservative Party itself. The Tories’ co-chairman Ben Elliot has formalized a “cash for access” arrangement where major donors are invited to private events and dinners with ministers and the PM. Elliot is a natural to court oligarchs for the Tories; his day job is running a “luxury concierge service” called Quintessentially, which provides “services” to the ultra wealthy. Elliot’s spox says that this work is “entirely separate” from his work as co-chair of the Tories.

The Made-in-Britain enablers of the klept will tell you that the fortunes they facilitate are not criminal fortunes, and the Home Office will tell you that its focus is on Eurasian criminal gangs. But as the Pandora Papers — and other vast finance leaks — show us, the criminal wealth of the former Soviet Union is minute when compared to the oligarchs’ fortunes.

The klept isn’t criminal, because the klept writes the laws.

This is how the Jackpot starts.

#pluralistic

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newstfionline · 6 years ago

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How two angry protests sum up Europe’s politics

By Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, December 18, 2018

The mass demonstrations that rocked two European capitals Sunday told a continental story--an illustrative arc that begins with populist ire and anti-migrant sentiment and ends with disillusionment with an increasingly authoritarian status quo.

In Brussels, 5,000 right-wing demonstrators opposed the government’s decision to sign a U.N.-brokered migration pact. There were scenes of violence: Police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse protesters who were throwing rocks and paving stones, including a group that attempted to storm the offices of the European Commission. Nearly 100 people were arrested.

In Budapest, an estimated 15,000 people braved the bracing cold to protest new laws enacted by the illiberal government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. One was the creation of a parallel court that effectively gives the executive control over the country’s judiciary. The other was a bill that allows employers to demand up to 400 hours in overtime from their employees each year to boost productivity. Critics dub it the “slave law.” Anti-government protests continued in the Hungarian capital on Monday, with demonstrations targeting the country’s public broadcaster, which is seen as a mouthpiece for the ruling party.

In one instance, you see the nationalist rage that has come to tinge so much of European politics. In the other, you see the gathering disquiet over a deeply nationalist government--one that has used populist rhetoric to justify policies that have steadily undermined Hungarian democracy. In the West, the former has received a great deal of attention in recent years. But it’s the latter that may reflect a truer political battle brewing on the continent.

The unrest in Belgium began after Prime Minister Charles Michel, who led a center-right ruling coalition, traveled to the Moroccan city of Marrakesh to sign the U.N.’s migration compact alongside more than 150 other countries. The pact is an innocuous document aimed at encouraging greater international cooperation on migration. It sets out 23 objectives structured so that the world can better manage the flow of tens of millions of migrants.

It’s not a formal treaty, and it’s wholly nonbinding. The United Nations is not about to impose migration policies on countries around the world. Yet that is precisely how anti-immigrant parties in Europe--not to mention the White House--have tried to frame the measure. The Trump administration signaled earlier in the year that it had no interest in joining the compact; a number of other European governments, including Hungary and the populist coalition in Italy, followed suit.

If the scenes in Brussels showed the potency of anti-migrant feeling in corners of Europe, what’s happening in Budapest reinforces the sense that most Europeans have more pressing problems on their mind.

No European leader has seized anti-immigrant fervor as vociferously as Hungary’s Orban, a man hailed by Bannon and others in the European far right. Orban has been prime minister for nearly a decade and is seen as the figure at the head of the pack of ascendant nationalists in Eastern and Central Europe. As my colleague Griff Witte wrote in an extensive expose, he has steadily tightened his grip on the levers of power, ushering in what critics describe as a creeping authoritarianism. All the while, he has waged a virulent culture war, demonizing migrants and lambasting Europe’s liberals.

The mounting anti-government protests over the past week are a sign that the frustrated, embittered opposition can still puncture Orban’s nationalist balloon. On Sunday, working-class protesters expressed their economic anxiety with a majoritarian government that is believed by critics to be nurturing a kleptocracy. “They don’t negotiate with anyone. They just do whatever they want. They steal everything. It’s intolerable. It cannot go on,” a transport worker identified as Zoli told Agence France-Presse on Sunday.

“We feel it is the last chance to stop the dictatorship,” Marton Bartha, 28, a protester outside the state media headquarters on Sunday night, told the New York Times. “Maybe dictatorship is a strong word. But our freedom is being shrunk.”

Of course, Orban’s government tried to brush off the protests by returning to a common theme. A spokesman from Fidesz, the ruling party, labeled the protesters as stooges from “the pro-immigration Soros network,” a reference to the Jewish American financier whom Orban has made into a convenient scapegoat for his demagoguery.

But they may not be able to casually dismiss the opposition forever. “How long will this go on for, we really don’t know,” Peter Kreko, a political analyst in Budapest, told the New York Times about the protests. “But it’s a significant mass--in the sense that it seems there is a committed opposition against the government, and I do think it can be the starting point of a broader movement.”

It’s unclear what happens next. Next year’s European election will be seen as a litmus test for a whole host of issues--from immigration to satisfaction with a supranational project like the European Union to public concerns over the erosion of the rule of law. Orban and the West’s right-wing populists view the E.U. and the U.N. as remote citadels of unelected bureaucrats, bent on undermining the sovereignty of nation-states.

But we may be seeing the limits of what such populist hectoring can achieve politically. For Orban, a prime minister convinced that migration is a problem, the irony is that it actually could be part of a solution for his country. The Hungarian labor reform that has sparked such fury is a reaction to a larger demographic crisis: Hungary’s workforce, hit by emigration to wealthier nations in Europe, is stagnating and too small. There’s an obvious remedy to that, but it probably won’t be taken by the anti-migrant demagogue in power.

#Belgian protests #Hungary protests #Viktor Orban #populism in Europe

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dragoni · 7 years ago

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Welcome to the Fascist States of America. Republicans are acting like they are the law. Prove them Wrong.

The entire confirmation is a sham. It’s all show. Republicans don’t care about listening to or investigating Dr. Ford’s claims - let alone Deborah Ramirez’s.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court on Friday morning, less than 24 hours after Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford appear before the panel to discuss Ford's allegation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her more than 30 years ago.

Of course they going to vote because the Republicans are the majority.

According to committee rules, Judiciary must schedule a committee vote three days in advance. But the committee said the vote will proceed only if a "majority of the members" of the 21-member panel are ready to vote on Friday.

“For Republicans to schedule a Friday vote on Brett Kavanaugh today, two days before Dr. Blasey Ford has had a chance to tell her story, is outrageous," Sen Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the committee's ranking member, said Tuesday. “First Republicans demanded Dr. Blasey Ford testify immediately. Now Republicans don’t even need to hear her before they move ahead with a vote."

With that in mind, McConnell — described by one Republican as “fired up” — was already warning his colleagues that he would keep the Senate in all weekend in order to have a final confirmation vote on Kavanaugh by early next week. The new Supreme Court term starts Oct. 1.

The Koch Network threatened Republicans that they would stop all funding if Republicans didn’t pass health and tax reform. Did they do the same with Kavanaugh’s confirmation?

"A kleptocracy is a government ruled by corrupt politicians who use their political power to receive kickbacks, bribes, and special favors at the expense of the populace.“ #KochBrothers #KochNetwork #FederalistSociety

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latinbossboy9 · 3 years ago

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THE

FINCEN

FILES

Thousands of secret suspicious activity reports offer a never-before-seen picture of corruption and complicity — and how the government lets it flourish.

By Jason Leopold, Anthony Cormier, John Templon, Tom Warren, Jeremy Singer-Vine, Scott Pham, Richard Holmes, Azeen Ghorayshi, Michael Sallah, Tanya Kozyreva, and Emma Loop

Alex Fradkin / Redux for BuzzFeed News; BuzzFeed News; Getty Images; Alamy

Posted on September 20, 2020, at 1:01 p.m. ET

Copy

This is part of the FinCEN Files investigation. To read more, click here. Want to help us expose corruption and hold the highest levels of power to account? Become a BuzzFeed News Member here.

A huge trove of secret government documents reveals for the first time how the giants of Western banking move trillions of dollars in suspicious transactions, enriching themselves and their shareholders while facilitating the work of terrorists, kleptocrats, and drug kingpins.

And the US government, despite its vast powers, fails to stop it.

Today, the FinCEN Files — thousands of “suspicious activity reports” and other US government documents — offer an unprecedented view of global financial corruption, the banks enabling it, and the government agencies that watch as it flourishes. BuzzFeed News has shared these reports with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and more than 100 news organizations in 88 countries.

These documents, compiled by banks, shared with the government, but kept from public view, expose the hollowness of banking safeguards, and the ease with which criminals have exploited them. Profits from deadly drug wars, fortunes embezzled from developing countries, and hard-earned savings stolen in a Ponzi scheme were all allowed to flow into and out of these financial institutions, despite warnings from the banks’ own employees.

Money laundering is a crime that makes other crimes possible. It can accelerate economic inequality, drain public funds, undermine democracy, and destabilize nations — and the banks play a key role. “Some of these people in those crisp white shirts in their sharp suits are feeding off the tragedy of people dying all over the world,” said Martin Woods, a former suspicious transactions investigator for Wachovia.

“Some of these people in those crisp white shirts in their sharp suits are feeding off the tragedy of people dying all over the world.”

Laws that were meant to stop financial crime have instead allowed it to flourish. So long as a bank files a notice that it may be facilitating criminal activity, it all but immunizes itself and its executives from criminal prosecution. The suspicious activity alert effectively gives them a free pass to keep moving the money and collecting the fees.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, is the agency within the Treasury Department charged with combating money laundering, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes. It collects millions of these suspicious activity reports, known as SARs. It makes them available to US law enforcement agencies and other nations’ financial intelligence operations. It even compiles a report called “Kleptocracy Weekly” that summarizes the dealings of foreign leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

What it does not do is force the banks to shut the money laundering down.

In the rare instances when the US government does crack down on banks, it often relies on sweetheart deals called deferred prosecution agreements, which include fines but no high-level arrests. The Trump administration has made it even harder to hold executives personally accountable, under guidance by former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein that warned government agencies against “piling on.” Rosenstein did not respond to requests for comment, but after this article was published, he wrote to say that his policies sought to “encourage prosecutors to pursue charges against the people responsible for corporate wrongdoing.”

The FinCEN Files investigation shows that even after they were prosecuted or fined for financial misconduct, banks such as JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of New York Mellon continued to move money for suspected criminals.

Suspicious payments flow around the world and into countless industries, from international sports to Hollywood entertainment to luxury real estate to Nobu sushi restaurants. They filter into the companies that make familiar items from people’s lives, from the gas in their car to the granola in their cereal bowl.

The FinCEN Files expose an underlying truth of the modern era: The networks through which dirty money traverse the world have become vital arteries of the global economy. They enable a shadow financial system so wide-ranging and so unchecked that it has become inextricable from the so-called legitimate economy. Banks with household names have helped to make it so.

The Bank of America tower in New York City.

Deutsche Bank’s US headquarters in New York City.

The Standard Chartered headquarters in London.

A JPMorgan Chase location in New York City.

Alex Fradkin / Redux for BuzzFeed News

BuzzFeed News’ investigation shows that:

Standard Chartered moved money on behalf of Al Zarooni Exchange, a Dubai-based business that was later accused of laundering cash on behalf of the Taliban. During the years that Al Zarooni was a Standard Chartered customer, Taliban militants staged violent attacks that killed civilians and soldiers.

HSBC’s Hong Kong branch allowed WCM777, a Ponzi scheme, to move more than $15 million even as the business was being barred from operating in three states. Authorities say the scam stole at least $80 million from investors, mainly Latino and Asian immigrants, and the company’s owner used the looted funds to buy two golf courses, a 7,000-square-foot mansion, a 39.8-carat diamond, and mining rights in Sierra Leone.

Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, American Express, and others collectively processed millions of dollars in transactions for the family of Viktor Khrapunov, the former mayor of Kazakhstan’s most populous city, even after Interpol issued a Red Notice for his arrest. Khrapunov, who had already fled to Switzerland and who claims the allegations are politically motivated, was later convicted in absentia on charges that included bribe-taking and defrauding the city through the sale of public property.

The banks mentioned in this story said they could not comment on specific transactions due to bank secrecy laws. Their statements can be found here.

By law, banks must file suspicious activity reports when they spot transactions that bear the hallmarks of money laundering or other financial misconduct, such as large, round-number transactions or payments between companies with no discernible business relationship. SARs are not by themselves evidence of a crime, but FinCEN’s director, Kenneth Blanco, has called them “vital for law enforcement investigations.”

Prior to this reporting, very few SARs had ever been revealed. The FinCEN Files encompass more than 2,100.

Information from millions of these documents feeds into a single database, through which law enforcement officers can summon detailed financial information with a few keystrokes. The FinCEN Files opens a rare window into this vast system of financial intelligence, unmatched in the world but all but unknown to the public. The SARs themselves are so closely held that members of the public cannot obtain them through records requests or subpoenas, and banks are not allowed even to confirm their existence.

Prior to this reporting, very few SARs had ever been revealed. The FinCEN Files encompass more than 2,100.

For more than a year, BuzzFeed News and its partner news organizations across the world mined the information on these tens of thousands of pages to map more than 200,000 transactions. (Here’s an explanation of how we did it.) In all, suspicious activity reports in the FinCEN Files flagged more than $2 trillion in transactions between 1999 and 2017. Western banks could have blocked almost any of them, but in most cases they kept the money moving and kept collecting their fees.

Suspicious activity reports are written by the banks’ financial crime watchdogs, or compliance officers, who are often parked in remote offices and left to make sense of a vast number of transactions with very few resources, writing SARs with little research or verification. BuzzFeed News’ research went much further, including reams of internal bank data, thousands of pages of public records, hundreds of interviews with sources across the globe, dozens of Freedom of Information Act filings, five public records lawsuits, and requests for three federal courts to unseal records — all to piece together the intricacies of a financial system that is largely hidden.

More from theFinCEN Files

Top Deutsche Bank Executives Missed Major Red Flags Pointing To A Massive Money Laundering Scandal.

The Untold Story Of What Really Happened After HSBC, El Chapo’s Bank, Promised To Get Clean.

They Suspected Their Bank Of Doing Business With Iran And Suspected Terrorist Financiers. Now, They Feel Betrayed By The Government.

BuzzFeed News is not publishing the SARs in full because they contain information about people or companies that are not under suspicion, but who were swept up in the banks’ searches. A subset of the documents is being published, with redactions, to support reporting in specific stories.

After the Treasury Department received detailed questions about the FinCEN Files investigation, the agency released a statement saying that it was “aware that various media outlets intend to publish a series of articles based on unlawfully disclosed Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs).” It continued, “the unauthorized disclosure of SARs is a crime that can impact the national security of the United States, compromise law enforcement investigations, and threaten the safety and security of the institutions and individuals who file such reports.” The agency announced that it was referring the matter to the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General.

In a subsequent letter, FinCEN’s general counsel said that disclosure of SARs can make banks less willing to file them, which “could mean law enforcement has fewer potential leads to stop crimes like human trafficking, child exploitation, fraud, corruption, terrorism, and cyber-enabled crime.”

FinCEN did not respond to repeated invitations to discuss security concerns.

Sen. Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which requested some of these SARs, said the FinCEN Files investigation “reinforces the fact that we now have two systems of law enforcement and justice in the country.” Drug cartels move millions through US banks; poor people go to jail for possession. “If you're wealthy and well-connected, you can figure out how to do an enormous amount of harm to society at large and ensure that it accrues to enormous financial benefit for all of you.”

Robert Mazur, a former federal special agent and an expert in money laundering, said that making this material public "could enhance national security, aid future investigations, and encourage institutions to more consistently adhere to SAR filing requirements,” and "will hopefully get people who are in a position of power to correct an apparent systemic failure.”

A Historic Opportunity

Alex Fradkin / Redux for BuzzFeed News

The United States Treasury Department in Washington, DC

Based in the United Arab Emirates, Mazaka General Trading presented itself to the world as a wholesaler.

But between March 2013 and April 2014, the company received nearly $50 million from five companies involved in a Russian money laundering ring that manipulated international stock trades. In May and June 2014, it received more than $4 million from a Singapore company that appears barely even to exist. It was also sending and receiving money from British firms located at 175 Darkes Lane, one of the world's most notorious addresses for shell companies, which are a common tool to hide ownership.

These transactions by Mazaka General Trading — which the Treasury Department later declared to be a part of the Khanani money laundering network, a group that has financed terrorism and drug cartels around the globe — involved businesses and people far from the shores of the United States. But as the money pinged around from one bank to another, it was all being tracked and it would all be reported to the Treasury Department.

Because the US dollar is the lifeblood of international finance, the common denominator between the world’s disparate currencies, banking customers around the world need access to it. But only select banks are licensed to conduct dollar transactions. So smaller banks in other countries partner with larger institutions, which exchange their customers’ pesos, yuan, or dirham for greenbacks. For a fee, the arrangement, known as correspondent banking, helps keep the global economy humming.

As they pass through US banks, these transfers give the Treasury Department a vantage that no other country has.

It shares some of that information through the Egmont Group, a little-known coalition of financial intelligence units from more than 150 countries and territories. SARs have provided Egmont members with financial details that would be otherwise unattainable, such as those concerning former Olympic Committee member Lamine Diack, who has been sentenced to prison for crimes connected to the Russian doping scandal, and the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who was sanctioned by the US two years ago. (Deripaska has sued the US government, maintaining that he is an innocent victim of politics.)

But if the database is a powerful asset to law enforcement investigations, to privacy advocates, it is a nightmare of overreach.

Congress created the current SAR program in 1992 making banks the frontline in the fight against money laundering. But Michael German, a former FBI special agent who is a national security and privacy expert, said that after 9/11, "the SAR program became more about mass surveillance than identifying discrete transactions to disrupt money launderers.”

Today, he said, "the data is used like the data from other mass surveillance programs. Find someone you want to get for whatever reason then sift through the vast troves of data collected to find anything you can hang them with."

In 2017, when US congressional committees began investigating the last presidential election and other matters, they, too, turned to the Treasury Department database.

They requested SARs on Deutsche Bank, which had loaned Trump money; Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent who wrote the so-called Trump dossier; an array of Russian oligarchs; Trump’s former campaign chairperson Paul Manafort; and even a small casino in the Pacific run by a former Trump employee. All told, they were looking for information on more than 200 entities.

The world’s biggest banks did business with clients they suspected were corrupt.

FinCEN unearthed tens of thousands of pages of documents. Those documents, along with a few additional SARs requested by federal law enforcement authorities, make up the majority of the FinCEN Files. Some were never turned over to the committees that requested them. A person familiar with the matter blew the whistle to multiple members of Congress.

The collection does not include any SARs about Trump’s finances. (A source familiar with the matter told BuzzFeed News that FinCEN’s database did not contain SARs on either Trump or the Trump Organization.) And though the documents show suspicious payments to people in Trump’s orbit before and after key moments in the 2016 presidential campaign, they do not provide direct information on any election interference.

Because the searches were so broad, however, they revealed something that most in Congress hadn’t even been looking for: evidence that the world’s biggest banks kept doing business with clients that they themselves suspected were facilitating terror and corruption.

The information was laid out in transaction by transaction. And it had been there all along.

Another Chance. And Then Another.

Alex Fradkin / Redux for BuzzFeed News

The FinCEN headquarters in Vienna, Virginia

FinCEN received more than 2 million SARs last year. That number has nearly doubled over the past decade, as financial institutions have faced mounting pressure to file and the volume of international transactions has grown. Over the same period, FinCEN’s staff has shrunk by more than 10%. Sources there say most SARs are never even read, let alone acted upon.

Meanwhile, experts say, some banks treat SARs as a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card, filing alerts about a huge array of transactions without actually moving to halt them. In some cases, banks filed numerous reports on the same clients, detailing their suspected crimes over the course of years while continuing to welcome their business.

By December 2013, JPMorgan Chase had filed at least eight SARs on accounts and companies controlled by Manafort, flagging more than $10 million, according to a FinCEN research report. Manafort, who went on to become Trump’s campaign chair, was convicted of bank and tax fraud in 2018.

Some banks treat SARs as a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card, filing alerts about a huge array of transactions without actually moving to halt them.

Paul Pelletier, a former senior Justice Department lawyer who once led the agency’s fraud unit, said that approach makes a mockery of the system. “You can't just file SAR after SAR after SAR without eventually violating the money laundering laws,” he said. “You cut them off and drop them as clients. But you don't keep taking their money."

Despite the banks’ sweeping powers to investigate account holders, the FinCEN Files investigation reveals that major financial institutions often fail to perform the most basic checks on their customers, such as verifying where a business is located when someone opens a new account. The lapses allow criminal groups to hide behind shell corporations, registered with no identifying details about their ownership, and slide the proceeds of their crimes into the global financial system.

In many cases, the banks appear to have no idea whatsoever whose money they are moving.

When investigators for HSBC’s American operations asked their colleagues in Hong Kong for the name of the person who owned Trade Leader, a company that had moved more than half a billion dollars through the bank in less than two years, the answer they got was “None available.” The company would reportedly emerge as an important hub in the so-called Russian Laundromat, a sprawling scheme in which wealthy Russians, facilitated by banks, secretly moved their money into the West.

After scandals like the Russian Laundromat, federal prosecutors have made big pronouncements about forcing meaningful change.

Addressing an anti–money laundering conference in 2015, Leslie Caldwell, then the head of the Justice Department's criminal division, said that when it came to getting banks to clean up their acts, deferred prosecution agreements, which typically involve a fine and a probationary period, “can often accomplish as much as, and sometimes even more than, we could from a criminal conviction.”

But the FinCEN Files investigation shows something very different. Banks often get to the end of their agreement without actually fixing the problems. Then, instead of getting the prosecution that they had been threatened with, they just get another chance. And sometimes another.

In 2012, HSBC faced a historic crisis. After permitting narcotraffickers to launder money and conducting business in off-limits countries such as Sudan and Myanmar, the bank was fined $1.9 billion. It promised to change its ways, and to hold it to that promise, the government installed an independent monitor to keep close watch. But the FinCEN Files investigation shows HSBC continued banking, and profiting from, the same kinds of customers that got it in trouble in the first place, such as a Panamanian import-export firm that the Treasury Department later said was laundering money for drug kingpins.

JPMorgan Chase got a deferred prosecution deal of its own. For years, it was the primary bank of the world’s biggest Ponzi schemer, Bernie Madoff. Despite multiple warnings from its own employees, the bank never filed a suspicious activity report on him and allegedly collected $500 million in fees. For punishment, the bank was required to pay a $1.7 billion fine and promise to improve its money laundering defenses. But after it settled the Madoff case, the bank’s own investigators said they suspected it had opened its accounts to an alleged Russian organized crime figure who is known for drug trafficking and contract murders, as well as businesses tied to the repressive North Korean regime, which the US has placed off-limits.

It happened at Standard Chartered, too. Last year, the government amended its 2012 deferred prosecution agreement after the bank was found to have continued clearing transactions for individuals and businesses in off-limits countries, primarily Iran. The bank paid fines totaling $1.1 billion to US and UK authorities, and extended the terms of the deferred prosecution agreement for the sixth time in the space of seven years. The bank apologized for its “violations and control deficiencies” but promised that none had occurred after 2014.

The FinCEN Files documents show Standard Chartered processed hundreds of millions of dollars for companies it suspected were circumventing sanctions against Iran until at least 2017.

Since 2010, at least 18 financial institutions have received deferred prosecution agreements for anti–money laundering or sanctions violations, according to an analysis by BuzzFeed News. Of those, at least four went on to break the law again and get fined. Twice, the government responded to this kind of repeat offense by renewing the deferred prosecution agreement — the very tool that failed the first time.

Can It Be Fixed?

Alex Fradkin / Redux for BuzzFeed News

The Bank of America Tower in New York City

If the government wanted to, experts in financial crime say, it could stop the dirty money coursing through the big banks, as well as the vast array of criminal activity it funds.

One step would be to require companies to disclose their owners to the Treasury Department, rather than allowing people to hide behind a shell company. Lawmakers are debating a bipartisan bill that could address that for small companies. The National Federation of Independent Business has opposed it, saying it raises privacy issues and would increase costs. Sen. Sherrod Brown, who cosponsored the bill, told BuzzFeed News, “Congress must act soon because criminals have long been revising, adjusting, and amending their tactics to circumvent our laws.”

Greater public accountability could also make a difference. HSBC has fought to keep secret the final report by the monitor that the government installed to watch over the bank during the years of its deferred prosecution agreement. It even took the unusual step of weighing in on a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, when BuzzFeed News sued the Justice Department to release the report. The knowledge that negative reports could become public, and potentially damage share prices, could impel wayward banks to clean up their acts.

“The bankers will never learn until you start putting silver bracelets on people.”

Others say the SARs themselves are part of the problem. German, the former FBI special agent, called the idea behind them "naive" because "the largest money laundering operations occur with the cooperation of the financial institutions, or at least some officers within those institutions. The lack of money laundering enforcement had nothing to do with a lack of evidence of suspicious transactions, but a lack of interest by political and law enforcement leadership.’’

The most powerful way to fix the problem might be the simplest: Arrest the executives whose banks break the law. "The bankers will never learn until you start putting silver bracelets on people," Pelletier said. "Think of the message you're sending to repeat offenders."

"These guys know what they're doing,’’ said Thomas Nollner, a former regulator with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. “You break the law, you should go to jail, period."

That approach was once the norm. “Back in the 1980s and 90s and even into the early 2000s, the government went after CEOs all the time,” said US District Judge Jed Rakoff, who has been an outspoken critic of weak penalties for white-collar criminals. In the past, the CEOs of Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco were all sent to jail for what they did, he pointed out. “Now that’s deterrence.”

Rakoff went further: “Under US law, a bank that engages in money laundering can literally be forced out of business by the government, and it is kind of surprising that government hasn’t taken that step, given the obvious deterrent effect it would have.”

Ultimately, the power to keep criminal profits from being laundered through the US financial system may not reside in the actions of a bank’s compliance office or its computer systems or even its executive tier. It may not reside with banking regulators or federal prosecutors or FinCEN. It may not even be a matter of national policy alone. Shutting down wayward banks could have an impact on the whole economy — for the US, its major trade partners, and beyond. When other countries find their banks under US scrutiny, they step in.

In 2012, Standard Chartered and HSBC were facing criminal prosecution. George Osborne, at that time the UK’s chancellor of the exchequer, wrote to the chairperson of the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to discuss his “concerns” that a heavy-handed response could have “unintended consequences.” He warned of a “contagion.” The implication: Close one bank and the whole economy could suffer.

Prosecutors stood down.

Mazur, the former federal special agent and money laundering expert, says there are a “mosaic” of reasons why US authorities let the money keep running, but one of them may just be that it finds its way into too many pockets.

“Even if it’s bad wealth, it buys buildings,” he said. “It puts money into bank accounts. It enriches the nation.” ●

Sophie Comeau, Waylon Cunningham, Sam Feehan, Nancy Guan, Kristy Hutchings, Kylie Storm, Felicia Tapia, Karen Wang, Abby Washer, and Ashley Zhang of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism contributed reporting.

This article has been updated with a comment by former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein.

Jason Leopold is a senior investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles. He is a 2018 Pulitzer finalist for international reporting, recipient of the IRE 2016 FOI award and a 2016 Newseum Institute National Freedom of Information Hall of Fame inductee.

Contact Jason Leopold at [email protected].

Got a confidential tip? Submit it here.

Anthony Cormier is an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York. While working for the Tampa Bay Times, Cormier won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.

Contact Anthony Cormier at [email protected].

John Templon is a data reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York. His secure PGP fingerprint is 2FF6 89D6 9606 812D 5663 C7CE 2DFF BE75 55E5 DF99

Contact John Templon at

#writing

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contemplatingoutlander · 2 years ago

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OMG he just never stops. Given the abuses of Trump’s kids and his son-in-law when he was in power, what happened with Hunter Biden is nothing.

Trump is projecting again. If he becomes president a second time, he will do his best to make sure that the U.S. becomes an “evil” country. He and his MAGA supporters in the GQP are doing their best to turn the U.S. into a racist, sexist, homophobic, right-wing, faux-”Christian” kleptocracy.

Former President Donald Trump described the U.S. as "Evil" and said he would be sentenced to the "Electric Chair" if he faced the same corruption allegations that are lobbed against President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

#gop #us politics

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WAY

When you're an outsider, don't be deterred from doing it. I'm optimistic.1 You don't release code late at night.2 But there is no apparent cost of increasing it.3 The CRM114 Discriminator. No one after reading Aristotle's Metaphysics does anything differently as a result of this practice was that we feared a brand-name VC firm would stick us with a county-by-word to save it from being mangled by some twenty five year old woman who wants to have lots of worries, but you feel like a second class citizen. The real danger is that you should study whatever you were most interested in. Half the time I'm sitting drinking a cup of tea. Chair designers have to spend on bullshit varies between employers. Well, most adults labor under restrictions just as cumbersome, and they also have more brand to preserve.4 Html#f8n 19.

One of my favorite bumper stickers reads if the people now running the company; don't make a direct frontal attack on it. And it can last for months. Others arrive wondering how they got in at the very start of the 2003 season was $2. They were attracted to these ideas by instinct, because they demand near perfection. No one seems to have voted for intelligence.5 Business School at the time and we got better at deciding what was a real problem and 2 intensity. Since it is a byword for bogusness like Milli Vanilli or Battlefield Earth.

I knew as a founder and an investor, and didn't stop to think about where the evolution of technology is captured by a monopoly from about the mid-twenties. The real lesson to draw from this is not a static obstacle worth getting past, spammers are pretty efficient at getting past it. I know of zero. But don't give them much money either. Work in small groups. Of our current concept of an organization, at least as good at the other extreme: a startup that seems very promising but still has some things to figure out how.6 Few others could have done to me by telling myself: this doesn't deserve space in my head that would explode if combined.7 We're up against a blank wall. If startups become a cheap commodity, more people would do. When you raise a lot of people.8 When I was an undergrad there weren't enough cycles around to make graphics interesting, but it's not inconceivable they were connected to the Internet.

Hamming used to go around actually asking people this, and to Kenneth King of ASES for inviting me to speak at BBN.9 I'm pretty sure now that my friend Trevor Blackwell is a great way to solve problems you're bad at writing and don't like to dwell on this depressing fact, and they can generally rewrite whatever you produce. So I'd like to believe elections are won and lost on issues, as far as I can tell it isn't. People in America. Should you add x feature? So which ones?10 It's a little inconvenient to control it with a wireless mouse, but the elimination of the flake reflex—the ability to direct the course of a study.11

Because I thought about the topic.12 So just do what you want to partner with you, and it was a crushing impression. It's what a startup buys you is time.13 In either case the implications are similar. Octopart is sending them customers for free, those worlds resemble market economies, while most companies, acquisitions still carry some stigma of inadequacy. Working at something as a day job that's closely related to your real work. Here are some of your claims and granting others.14 Knowledge is power. A few years before by a big company. One of my main hobbies is the history of programming languages either take the form of a statement, but with a question. Though in a sense attacking you. For founders that's more than a couple weeks.

Maybe if you can afford to be rational and prefer the latter.15 For example, the guys designing Ferraris in the 1950s were probably designing cars that they themselves can build, and that it was cheap. Yet the cause is human nature. Particularly in technology, at least, nothing good. But when you choose a language, you're also choosing a community. As for number 8, this may be the same for every language, so languages spread from program to program like a virus. It's like calling a car a horseless carriage.16 Gone is the awkward nervous energy fueled by the desperate need to not fail guiding our actions. 9889 and. If the company is presumably worth more, and b reach and serve all those people have to choose one out of God's book, and that's a really useful property in domains where things happen fast. Either the company is already a write-off.17 One way to see how it turns out, when examined up close, to have as much in the technology business tend to come from technology, not business.18

And for a significant number. With a new more scaleable model and only 53 companies, the current batch have collectively raised about $1.19 Rise up, cows! The results so far bear this out.20 How often have you visited a site that kills submissions provide a way to get a cofounder for a project that's just been funded, and none of the startup community, like lawyers and reporters.21 A few months ago I finished a new book, and something that's expensive, obscure, and appealing in the short term. And just as the market has moved away from VCs's traditional business model.

Notes

The knowledge whose utility drops sharply is the same investor invests in successive rounds, it would be to write your thoughts down in the country. I suspect the recent resurgence of evangelical Christians.

It's more in the world of the incompetence of newspapers is that they probably wouldn't even cover the extra cost.

If you're good you'll have to mean the company.

Eighteen months later Google paid 1. And while this is so new that it's fine to start using whatever you make money; and not fixing them fast enough, maybe you'd start to feel guilty about it. It requires the kind of method acting. It doesn't take a small seed investment in you, they sometimes say.

Yahoo. They therefore think what drives users to switch to OSX. 05 15, the group of picky friends who proofread almost everything I say the rate of change in the definition of property. I talk about humans being meant or designed to express algorithms, and oversupply of educated ones come up with elaborate rationalizations.

It's one of the founders of failing startups would even be symbiotic, because sometimes artists unconsciously use tricks by imitating art that is a matter of outliers, are better college candidates. If the rich paid high taxes?

But Goldin and Margo think market forces in the long tail for other reasons, including both you and the ordering system and image generator were written in 6502 machine language.

We did not become romantically involved till afterward.

They'll have a better education. Norton, 2012.

If Paris is where people care most about art. Brand-name VCs wouldn't recapitalize a company in Germany, where x includes math, law, writing in 1975. Com/spam. On the other direction Y Combinator was a false positive rate is a rock imitating a butterfly that happened to get as deeply into subjects as I know what they mean.

Big technology companies. I'm not making any predictions about the difference. These range from make-believe, is he going to be an open booth.

There should probably be the more corrupt the rulers.

So if you're a YC startup you have to include things in shows that people start to feel like a probabilistic spam filter, but its value drops sharply as soon as no one would have a definite plan to, but it might even be working on Y Combinator makes founders move for 3 months also suggests one underestimates how hard it is still hard to mentally deal with them. And that is worth doing something, but it might make them want you. Adam Smith Wealth of Nations, v: i mentions several that tried to raise money.

So if you're college students. Some introductions to other knowledge. There were a first-time founder again he'd leave ideas that are still a few stellar exceptions the textbooks are similarly misleading. You can get for free.

94 says a 1952 study of rhetoric was inherited directly from Rome. Sites that habitually linkjack get banned. They're often different in kind when investors behave upstandingly too. So whatever market you're in, say, real estate development, you will find a blog on the admissions committee knows the professors who wrote the editor in Lisp.

In fact the decade preceding the war on. I mean efforts to manipulate them. Though they were forced to stop raising money from mediocre investors. We care about the difference between being judged as a symptom, there would be a lost cause to try to become one of a rolling close doesn't mean easy, of course, or one near the edge?

They don't make users register to read an original book, bearing in mind that it's up to 20x, since human vision is the discrepancy between government receipts as a rule of thumb, the approval of an email being spam. Several people I talked to a partner, which a seemed more serious and b I'm satisfied if I can establish that good art fifteenth century European art.

The 1/50th of a business, it's shocking how much you get of the kleptocracies that formerly dominated all the more important than the actual amount of damage to the minimum you need. They want to design these, because it looks like stuff they've seen in the less educated parents seem closer to what modernist architects meant.

I don't think it's roughly correct to say that IBM makes decent hardware. Copyright owners tend to be actively curious.

So if you're a loser they usually decide in way less than the others. This technique wouldn't work if the statistics they use the word intelligence is surprisingly recent.

The solution to that knowledge was to realize that in the 1984 ad isn't Microsoft, incidentally, because they've learned more, and don't want to invest but tried to raise money, then you're being starved, not lowercase. The air traffic control system works because planes would crash otherwise.

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