The PARADISE PAPERS; Catching The 1%ers/High-Roller$, With Their Pants Down!!!

[Phoenix68]

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November 5, 2017

 

"Like the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers revolve around the issue of offshore entities set up by members of the global elite. 

 

The Paradise Papers reportedly pinpoint over 120 politicians and royal leaders around the world who have connections to offshore finance, according to NBC News. 

 

Several top Trump administration officials are among those mentioned in the reports. 

 

NBC News, which obtained some of the documents, reported that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross failed to disclose shared business interests with Russian President Vladimir Putin's son-in-law, as well as other members of the president's inner circle, according to the documents."

 

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/358865-leaked-documents-reveal-offshore-dealings-of-top-trump

GO, GET 'EM, BOB!!!!

 

 

[untitled]

Good post. Commerce Secretary Ross was just added to Mueller's list.

[Phoenix68]

 

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November 5, 2017

 

"Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has an interest in Navigator Holdings, which earns millions a year transporting oil and gas for Russian energy firm Sibur.

 

Two major Sibur shareholders are under some form of U.S. sanctions.

 

The revelations will, again, raise questions about the Russian connections of Donald Trump's team. His presidency has been dogged by allegations that Russians colluded to try to influence the outcome of the election. He has called the allegations "fake news". A special counsel is investigating the matter.

 

Wilbur Ross and Donald Trump have known each other for more than a quarter of a century. Mr Ross played a key part in a prepackaged bankruptcy deal - deal agreed between a company and its creditors - for Mr Trump's Atlantic City casino, the Taj Mahal, in the 1990s.

 

Trump biographer David Cay Johnston told BBC Panorama: "If it hadn't been for Wilbur Ross, Donald Trump would not be in the White House."

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41876939

 

"Mueller Time is KARMA TIME, Man!!"

 

 

[untitled]

Looks like Ross did not disclosed his holdings properly.

[Phoenix68]

1 minute ago, untitled said:

Looks like Ross did not disclosed his holdings properly.

 

Imagine that.

Damned-near the entire TRUMPCO Regime appears to be pre-Alzheimers!!!!

[untitled]

Just now, Phoenix68 said:

 

Imagine that.

Damned-near the entire TRUMPCO Regime appears to be pre-Alzheimers!!!!

 

 

Indeed. Reminds one of the old Steve Martin routine: It's illegal to murder someone?!  I forgot it was illegal.

[Phoenix68]

Quote

 

November 5, 2017

 

"The core of the leak, totaling more than 13.4 million documents, focuses on the Bermudan law firm Appleby, a 119-year old company that caters to blue chip corporations and very wealthy people. Appleby helps clients reduce their tax burden; obscure their ownership of assets like companies, private aircraft, real estate and yachts; and set up huge offshore trusts that in some cases hold billions of dollars.

 

The predominantly elite clients of Appleby contrast with those of Mossack Fonseca — the company whose leaked records became the Panama Papers — which appeared to be less discriminating in the business it took on. Much of the material makes for dull reading: Spreadsheets, prospectuses and billing statements abound. But amid these are documents that help reveal how multinational companies avoid taxes and how the superrich hide their wealth. The records date back to 1950 and up to 2016.  

 

Americans — companies and people — dominate the list of clients. Past disclosures, such as the 2013 “Offshore Leaks” from two offshore incorporators in Singapore and the British Virgin Islands, the 2015 “Swiss Leaks” from a private Swiss bank owned by the British bank HSBC and another leak in 2016 from the Bahamas were dominated by clients not from the United States."

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/world/paradise-papers.html

 

 

[untitled]

Not the chain restaurant, Applebee's!

[Phoenix68]

Quote

 

November 5, 2017

 

"In the fall of 2010, the Russian billionaire investor Yuri Milner took the stage for a Q. and A. at a technology conference in San Francisco. Mr. Milner, whose holdings have included major stakes in Facebook and Twitter, is known for expounding on everything from the future of social media to the frontiers of space travel. But when someone asked a question that had swirled around his Silicon Valley ascent — Who were his investors? — he did not answer, turning repeatedly to the moderator with a look of incomprehension.

Now, leaked documents examined by The New York Times offer a partial answer: Behind Mr. Milner’s investments in Facebook and Twitter were hundreds of millions of dollars from the Kremlin.

Obscured by a maze of offshore shell companies, the Twitter investment was backed by VTB, a Russian state-controlled bank often used for politically strategic deals."

 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/world/yuri-milner-facebook-twitter-russia.html

 

 

[Phoenix68]

Quote

 

November 5, 2017

 

"Ties between two key Trump administration officials and Russia figure prominently in the newly disclosed “Paradise Papers” about the workings of secret offshore tax havens. (The papers were leaked from Appleby, one of the world's largest offshore law firms.) These warrant immediate congressional hearings.

 

First, the papers have unmasked the Kremlin connections of an investor with ties to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser. Yuri Milner, a Russian tech mogul – and Russian citizen – who lives in Silicon Valley, invested $850,000 in Cadre, a real estate firm co-founded by Kushner.

 

Ross has been devious – at best – with the Senate, which confirmed him to his Cabinet post. His ethics agreement filed in January 2017 was supposed to be a clean breast of his financial holdings, and, one would think, particularly his Russian connections. It is now clear that it fell well short of that. Those who remember the rush confirmation proceedings will see that Ross must have figured that the Senate minority would not have the opportunity to dig through to his Russian ties and heavy use of tax havens."

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestiefer/2017/11/05/new-paradise-papers-disclosures-of-trump-russia-ties-warrant-immediate-congressional-hearings/#7007fe794baa

 

 

[Phoenix68]

 

Quote

 

November 15, 2017

 

""Though by the ripe age of 79, Wilbur Ross had (seemingly) amassed a fortune large enough to leave most people content to never work again, when Donald Trump tapped the former Wall Street heavyweight to be his commerce secretary, Ross jumped at the chance.

 

As the days wear on the situation has only worsened, with Bloomberg having the audacity to run a story entitled, “We’re Cutting Our Calculation of Wilbur Ross’s Net Worth to $860 Million.” And the fun hasn’t stopped there—on Wednesday, the secretary of the Commerce Department was accused by several of his former colleagues of cheating them out of million$.

 

Forbes’s Dan Alexander, who broke the news that Ross is not actually a billionaire, reports that a trio of Ross’s ex-longtime colleagues at his private equity shop, WL Ross & Co., have sued the secretary and the firm for allegedly charging at least $48 million in improper management fees and pocketing the money!!"

 

"My kind o' guy!!!!"

 

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/11/trumps-commerce-secretary-allegedly-a-liar-and-a-thief

 

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trumps-faux-billionaire-cabinet-secretary-faces-new-troubles

 

[merrill]

On 11/5/2017 at 3:46 PM, Phoenix68 said:

 

 

On 11/5/2017 at 3:46 PM, Phoenix68 said:

 

bump

 

"Like the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers revolve around the issue of offshore entities set up by members of the global elite. 

 

The Paradise Papers reportedly pinpoint over 120 politicians and royal leaders around the world who have connections to offshore finance, according to NBC News. 

 

Several top Trump administration officials are among those mentioned in the reports. 

 

NBC News, which obtained some of the documents, reported that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross failedto disclose shared business interests with Russian President Vladimir Putin's son-in-law, as well as other members of the president's inner circle, according to the documents."

 

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/358865-leaked-documents-reveal-offshore-dealings-of-top-trump

 

[merrill]

Kiss your right to vote,worker rights,local public schools & pensions goodbye

 

 This consulting firm handpicks local, state, and federal candidates who share the Kochs' free-market, limited-government agenda, and groom them to win elections. "We seek out electable advocates of the freedom and opportunity agenda who will be forceful at both the policy and political levels," the company notes on its website.

Aegis says it can manage every aspect of a campaign, including advertising, direct mail, social media, and fundraising.

 

Aegis' president is Jeff Crank, a two-time failed Republican congressional candidate who ran the Colorado chapter of Americans for Prosperity and served as the chief operating officer of the national organization. The firm's six-person staff boasts two others with connections to the Kochs.

 

The group's lead strategist is Karl Crow, a former project coordinator for the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, where he focused "on how political advocates for economic freedom are identified, trained, and promoted," according to his bio on Aegis' website. 

 

Crow, who was scheduled to speak at an invite-only Koch donor summit in 2010 on the subject of voter mobilization, subsequently worked for Themis, the Koch brothers' voter microtargeting operation. Brad Stevens, the former state director for Americans for Prosperity-Nebraska, is Aegis' director of candidate identification.

[Phoenix68]

9 hours ago, merrill said:

Kiss your right to vote,worker rights,local public schools & pensions goodbye

 

 This consulting firm handpicks local, state, and federal candidates who share the Kochs' free-market, limited-government agenda, and groom them to win elections. "We seek out electable advocates of the freedom and opportunity agenda who will be forceful at both the policy and political levels," the company notes on its website.

Aegis says it can manage every aspect of a campaign, including advertising, direct mail, social media, and fundraising.

 

Aegis' president is Jeff Crank, a two-time failed Republican congressional candidate who ran the Colorado chapter of Americans for Prosperity and served as the chief operating officer of the national organization. The firm's six-person staff boasts two others with connections to the Kochs.

 

The group's lead strategist is Karl Crow, a former project coordinator for the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, where he focused "on how political advocates for economic freedom are identified, trained, and promoted," according to his bio on Aegis' website. 

 

Crow, who was scheduled to speak at an invite-only Koch donor summit in 2010 on the subject of voter mobilization, subsequently worked for Themis, the Koch brothers' voter microtargeting operation. Brad Stevens, the former state director for Americans for Prosperity-Nebraska, is Aegis' director of candidate identification.

 

Let's HEAR IT!!!......for $MALL BU$INE$$E$!!!!

 

 

 

 

https://www.thenation.com/article/obamas-sell-out-taxes-not-so-fast/

[merrill]

We said we didn't want it. Most people didn't even vote for it. In survey after survey, public opinion polls rank a large tax cut as one the least desirable uses of the federal budget . And Republican and Democratic leaders alike warned the President-select that his tax cut package STINKS.

 

But all to no avail. CONSERVATIVES HAVE YET  to back off from the monstrous, surplus-draining tax cut proposalS that cornerstone THEIR campaign. CONSERVATIVES KEEP telling us that it's for our own good: CONSERVATIVE tax cut will cure our softening economy and stave off the threat of recession by "encouraging capital formation, economic growth, and job creation."

 

At least one group is happy to swallow the CONSERVATIVE tax cut medicine—"the haves and the haves-more," as CONSERVATIVES refer to THEIR supporters.. After all, it is THE WEALTHY taxes THAT GET cut. 

 

Nearly three-fifths of the total benefits of the tax cut package will go to the richest 10% of all taxpayers, and some 43% will go just to the top 1%.

 

But no matter what CONSERVATIVES say, this tax giveaway to the wealthy will not inoculate us against recession. Nor are well-to-do taxpayers suffering from over-taxation, as the CONSERVATIVE team insists. One thing is sure.  Social programs that have already been neglected for more than two decades will continue to suffer AS WILL THE ECONOMY = IT IS DUMB TO PULL MONEY FROM THE ECONOMY.

Defending the Indefensible

The editors of the Wall Street Journal never met a pro-rich tax cut they didn't like. And the CONSERVATIVE tax cut is much to their liking. 

 

CONSERVATIVES ALWAYS SAY AND HAVE BEEN SAYING FOR THE PAST 38 YEARS:

• "Taxes are too high. Last year [1999], federal tax revenue as a percentage of the economy reached an historic peak—20.4% of GDP." 
• AS ALWAYS CONSERVATIVES  exceed THEIR its own budget caps and increased its spending beyond REALITY.  WRECKANOMICS IS SUPPLY SIDE ECONOMICS = BORROW AND SPEND.
• The economy HAS RETURNED TOo wobble. Economic forecasters are sniffing a recession; they are busily lowering growth projections for next year. And for good reason; TRUMP THE RUMP data IS starting to look scary." 

 

THE TRILLION TAX DOLLAR WARS AND TAX CUTS CREATE BIG BIG BIG DEBT!!!

 

http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2001/0301miller.html

[Phoenix68]

On 11/23/2017 at 11:02 AM, merrill said:

At least one group is happy to swallow the CONSERVATIVE tax cut medicine —

 

 

 

[merrill]

On 11/22/2017 at 11:13 PM, merrill said:

Kiss your right to vote,worker rights,local public schools & pensions goodbye

 

 This consulting firm handpicks local, state, and federal candidates who share the Kochs' free-market, limited-government agenda, and groom them to win elections. "We seek out electable advocates of the freedom and opportunity agenda who will be forceful at both the policy and political levels," the company notes on its website.

Aegis says it can manage every aspect of a campaign, including advertising, direct mail, social media, and fundraising.

 

Aegis' president is Jeff Crank, a two-time failed Republican congressional candidate who ran the Colorado chapter of Americans for Prosperity and served as the chief operating officer of the national organization. The firm's six-person staff boasts two others with connections to the Kochs.

 

The group's lead strategist is Karl Crow, a former project coordinator for the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, where he focused "on how political advocates for economic freedom are identified, trained, and promoted," according to his bio on Aegis' website. 

 

Crow, who was scheduled to speak at an invite-only Koch donor summit in 2010 on the subject of voter mobilization, subsequently worked for Themis, the Koch brothers' voter microtargeting operation. Brad Stevens, the former state director for Americans for Prosperity-Nebraska, is Aegis' director of candidate identification.

bump

[merrill]

On 11/23/2017 at 9:05 AM, Phoenix68 said:

 

Let's HEAR IT!!!......for $MALL BU$INE$$E$!!!!

 

 

 

 

https://www.thenation.com/article/obamas-sell-out-taxes-not-so-fast/

 

The White House released principles and a framework for tax reform today. We applaud the President's focus on tax reform, but the plan includes far more detail on how the Administration would cut taxes than on how they would pay for those cuts. Based on what we know so far, the plan could cost $3 to $7 trillion over a decade– our base-case estimate is $5.5 trillion in revenue loss over a decade. Without adequate offsets, tax reform could drive up the federal debt, harming economic growth instead of boosting it.

The framework proposes a number of specific changes including: consolidating and reducing individual income tax rates to 10, 25, and 35 percent; doubling the standard deduction; cutting the business tax rate to 15 percent on both corporations and pass-through businesses; repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and estate tax; repealing the 3.8 percent investment surtax from the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"); moving to a territorial tax system; and imposing a one-time tax on money held overseas.

The plan also includes some vaguer proposals, including "providing tax relief for families with child and dependent care expenses" and eliminating "targeted tax breaks that mainly benefit the wealthiest taxpayers." Although the framework itself is vague on the latter, at their press conference Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Director Gary Cohn seemed to imply it meant repealing all individual deductions unrelated to savings, charitable giving, or mortgage interest (revenue would come mostly from repealing the state and local tax deduction).

Even with the detailed portions of the plan, there are not enough parameters specified to provide a certain revenue estimate of the tax plan. But making some assumptions based on prior proposals, our best roughestimate suggests the specified parts of the plan would cost $5.5 trillion. Assuming tax break limits only apply only to higher earners, that cost could be as high as $7 trillion; assuming credits and exclusions are eliminated as well as deductions, it would cost $3 trillion.

With interest costs, a $5.5 trillion tax plan would be enough to increase debt to 111 percent of Gross Domestic Product (compared to 89 percent of GDP in CBO's baseline) by 2027. That would be higher than any time in U.S. history, and no achievable amount of economic growth could finance it.

Policy	2027 Debt Impact
	Cost ($)	% of GDP
Change rate structure to 10%, 25%, 35%	$1.5 trillion	5%
Repeal individual AMT	$0.4 trillion	1%
Repeal most deductions except for mortgages, charitable giving, and retirement	-$2.0 trillion (-$0.5 to -$4.5 trillion)*	-7% (-2% to -16%)
Double the standard deduction	$1.5 trillion	5%
Repeal estate tax	$0.2 trillion	1%
Reduce corporate tax rate to 15%	$2.2 trillion	8%
Reduce pass-through business tax rate to 15%	$1.5 trillion	5%
Move to territorial system with one-time tax on overseas profits	$0**	0%
Repeal the net investment income surtax	$0.2 trillion	1%
Subtotal, Rough Cost of Specific Policies	$5.5 trillion ($3 to $7 trillion)	20%
Repeal other tax preferences and expand child care benefits	???	???
Total Cost	???	???
Debt Impact of a $5.5 Trillion Tax Cut With Interest	$6.2 trillion	22%

[Phoenix68]

Quote

 

December 8, 2017

 

"Democrats in Washington have demanded the release of financial data, about members of the Trump administration, after the publication of the Paradise Papers highlighted that a member of the president’s cabinet had business links with Vladimir Putin’s family.

 

Senior lawmakers have written to the US treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, seeking access to financial data that might show the administration’s possible links to the Kremlin and other Russian individuals.

 

The Democrats are seeking access to any records that may be held by the treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (Fincen), which collects and analyses a vast amount of financial information to help combat money laundering and other financial crimes.

 

Mnuchin was not responsive to a previous request for data by the lawmakers, which was issued in May.

 

But the lawmakers said recent revelations about the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, and his ties to Russia – which were made public through the release of the Paradise Papers – represented further evidence of the importance of their request and the public interest in determining the extent of hidden Trump-Russia connections.

 

The Paradise Papers were published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a group of media outlets that includes the Guardian and the New York Times. The electronic documents detailed otherwise secret offshore investments and tax dealings of wealthy individuals, including politicians.

 

The Paradise Papers showed that Ross had failed to appropriately disclose a “substantial business relationship” with a close ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the congressional letter said.

 

Through its work, the consortium of journalists revealed that Ross maintained a financial stake in offshore companies that control 31.5% of a shipping company called Navigator, that counts a Russian gas and petrochemical company as one of its largest partners. The Russian company, called Sibur, is partly owned by Putin’s son-in-law and a Russian oligarch who is currently under US sanctions.

 

“Secretary Ross’s ownership stake in Navigator presents a clear conflict of interest,” the letter from the members of Congress stated."

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/08/democrats-trump-mnuchin-treasury-secretary-putin-russia

 

 

 

 

I'm sure Dems could convince "Mrs. Mnuchin" to help find the data ol' Stevie-boy is trying to "protect".

She looks like someone who work$....on a pretty-tight schedule....and, is ready to move-on; dork-free.