TAX HAVENSOFFSHORE SECRECY JURISDICTIONS: NO TAXES, NO REGULATION, BIG PROFITS
"The world contains about sixty secrecy jurisdictions, divided roughly into four groups. First are the European havens. Second, comes a British zone centred on the City of London, which spans the world and is loosely shaped around Britain's former empire. Third is a zone of influence focused on the United States."
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World"
"The City of London now stands as money launderer of the world, the capital of global crime. It is the heart and engine of the offshore haven, with Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man its european collection centres, the caribbean and others hoovering up billions of dollars from all over the globe... It has a dark and shadowy client list; terrorists, drug barons, arms dealers, politicians, corporations and companies, millionaires, billionaires - most with something to hide."
Graham Vanbergen
"The U.S. is effectively the biggest tax haven in the world."
Andrew Penney, managing director of Rothschild & Co.
"The most important feature of a secrecy jurisdiction is that local politics is captured by financial interests."
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World"
"The City of London is the money-laundering centre of the world's drug trade. In addition, due to incredibly lax financial laws by the British government, the London property market is built largely on the laundered money of crime from all over the world involving hidden tax havens, most of which are British."
Graham Vanbergen
"The City of London Is the centre of the most important part of the global offshore system. The City's offshore network has three main layers. Two inner rings - Britain's Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man; and its Overseas Territories, such as the Cayman Islands - are substantially controlled by Britain. The outer ring is a more diverse array of havens, like Hong Kong, which are outside Britain's direct control but nevertheless have strong historical and current links to the country and the City of London. One authoritative account estimates that this British grouping overall accounts for well over a third of all international bank assets; add the City of London and the total is almost a half."
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World"
"British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies make up around 25 per cent of the world's tax havens.
Tax havens include Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands to name just a few and each is inextricably linked to the City of London's crime offices.
The consequence of its operations is that money laundering is now at such levels and so widespread that the authorities have recently admitted defeat in its battle of attrition by stating openly it has been completely overwhelmed and lost control."
Tax havens include Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands to name just a few and each is inextricably linked to the City of London's crime offices.
The consequence of its operations is that money laundering is now at such levels and so widespread that the authorities have recently admitted defeat in its battle of attrition by stating openly it has been completely overwhelmed and lost control."
Graham Vanbergen
"A tax haven is a state [country or territory] captured by financial interests from elsewhere."
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World"
"The process of moving massive amounts of international capital from typical tax havens, into the U.S., is being driven by a familiar name in the world of international finance - Rothschild & Co.
Rothschild, a centuries-old European financial institution, manages the wealth of many of the world's most wealthy families and has been instrumental in helping move the global elite's wealth from traditional tax havens like the Bahamas, Switzerland and the British Virgin Islands to the U.S.
... After opening a trust company in Reno, Nev., Rothschild & Co. began ushering the massive fortunes of the world's most wealthy individuals out of typical tax havens, now subject to OECD international disclosure requirements, and into the Rothschild run U.S. trusts, which are exempt from the international reporting requirements.
The U.S. Treasury Department takes a very strong stand against international tax evasion - unless you put that money into a U.S trust account - which coincidentally is being helmed by Rothschild & Co."
Rothschild, a centuries-old European financial institution, manages the wealth of many of the world's most wealthy families and has been instrumental in helping move the global elite's wealth from traditional tax havens like the Bahamas, Switzerland and the British Virgin Islands to the U.S.
... After opening a trust company in Reno, Nev., Rothschild & Co. began ushering the massive fortunes of the world's most wealthy individuals out of typical tax havens, now subject to OECD international disclosure requirements, and into the Rothschild run U.S. trusts, which are exempt from the international reporting requirements.
The U.S. Treasury Department takes a very strong stand against international tax evasion - unless you put that money into a U.S trust account - which coincidentally is being helmed by Rothschild & Co."
Jay Syrmopoulos
"More than half of world trade passes, at least on paper, through tax havens. Over half of all banking assets and a third of foreign direct investment by multinational corporations, are routed offshore. Some 85 per cent of international banking and bond issuance takes place in the so-called Euromarket, a stateless offshore zone. The IMF estimated in 2010 that the balance sheets of small island financial centres alone added up to $18 trillion - a sum equivalent to about a third of the world's GDP. And that, it said, was probably an underestimate. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in 2008 that 83 of the USA's biggest 100 corporations had subsidiaries in tax havens... The Tax Justice Network discovered that ninety-nine of Europe's hundred largest companies used offshore subsidiaries. In each country, the largest user by far was a bank."
"Pepsi, IKEA, FedEx and 340 other international companies have secured secret deals from Luxembourg, allowing many of them to slash their global tax bills while maintaining little presence in the tiny European duchy.
These companies appear to have channeled hundreds of billions of dollars through Luxembourg and saved billions of dollars in taxes.
Big companies can book big tax savings by creating complicated accounting and legal structures that move profits to low-tax Luxembourg from higher-tax countries where they're headquartered or do lots of business. In some instances, companies have enjoyed effective tax rates of less than 1 percent on the profits they've shuffled into Luxembourg."
These companies appear to have channeled hundreds of billions of dollars through Luxembourg and saved billions of dollars in taxes.
Big companies can book big tax savings by creating complicated accounting and legal structures that move profits to low-tax Luxembourg from higher-tax countries where they're headquartered or do lots of business. In some instances, companies have enjoyed effective tax rates of less than 1 percent on the profits they've shuffled into Luxembourg."
report from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
"The most important tax haven in the world is an island. The name of the island is Manhattan. The second most-important tax haven in the world is located on an island. It is a city called London."
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World"
"Rich individuals and their families have as much as $32 trillion of hidden financial assets in offshore tax havens."
[based on a 2012 study of data from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations]
"The City of London, with its own borders and police force, sits within the Isles of Britain as an international hub, the tax haven of all tax havens. The banks use offshore business organisations to escape regulation and the grip these organisations have over an ever weakened and corrupt political class is utterly astounding. The Conservative party is literally bankrolled by bankers and hedge funds. Half of the wealthiest hedge fund managers in the land pay millions each year to the Tories. This is neoliberalism out of control."
Graham Vanbergen
"The British Virgin Islands, with fewer than 25,000 inhabitants, hosts over 800,000 companies."
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World"
"More than 170 of the Fortune 500 companies have a Luxembourg branch. A total of $95 billion in profits from American corporations' overseas operations flowed through Luxembourg in 2012, the most current statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis show. On those profits, corporations paid $1.04 billion in taxes to Luxembourg - just 1.1 percent."
Stephen E. Shay, professor of international taxation at Harvard Law School, 2014
"Fourteen small British island states decided not to seek independence, becoming British Overseas Territories, with the Queen as their head of state. Exactly half of them - Anguila, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos islands, are secrecy jurisdictions, actively supported and managed from Britain and intimately linked with the City of London."
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World"
"The Bank of England after 1945 set about re-establishing the hegemony of international financial capital.
... From the 1960s, the island semi-colonies and other assorted satellites of London came into their own as offshore Euromarket booking centres where the world's wealthiest individuals and corporations, especially banks, could park their money, tax free and in secrecy, and where they could grow faster than their regulated onshore counterparts.
... The umbilical, two-way relation between London and its overseas satellites has remained a defining feature of the entire offshore system ever since.
... From the 1960s, the island semi-colonies and other assorted satellites of London came into their own as offshore Euromarket booking centres where the world's wealthiest individuals and corporations, especially banks, could park their money, tax free and in secrecy, and where they could grow faster than their regulated onshore counterparts.
... The umbilical, two-way relation between London and its overseas satellites has remained a defining feature of the entire offshore system ever since.
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World"
"Offshore banking as a whole is under the thumb of the Anglo-Dutch oligarchy.
The British pre-eminence makes the world picture of offshore banking and dirty money more comprehensible. If the world offshore banking sector appears to run as a single operation under British monarchy control, that is because the same group of people who run it also run the opium traffic whose proceeds this banking sector was created to handle."
The British pre-eminence makes the world picture of offshore banking and dirty money more comprehensible. If the world offshore banking sector appears to run as a single operation under British monarchy control, that is because the same group of people who run it also run the opium traffic whose proceeds this banking sector was created to handle."
"Fourteen British Overseas Territories are the last surviving outposts of Britain's formal empire. With just a quarter of a million inhabitants between them they include some of world's top secrecy jurisdictions: the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Turks and Caicos islands and Gibraltar."
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World"
"The offshore world is a set of networks of influence controlled by the world's major powers, notably Britain and the United States. Each network is deeply interconnected with the others."
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World"
"The City [of London's] biggest role in the global offshore system is in its relationship with running Britain's spider's web. In the second quarter of 2009 the UK received net financing of US $332.5 billion just from its three Crown Dependencies Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. In 2009 the web as a whole held an estimated US $3.2 trillion in offshore bank deposits, about 55 per cent of the global total according to data from the Bank for International Settlements, and that is just bank deposits.
The British offshore web provides the City [of London] with three things. First, the tax havens scattered across the world capture passing foreign business and channel it to London just as a spider's web catches insects; second, it is a storage mechanism for assets; and third, it is a money-laundering filter that lets the City get involved in dirty business while providing it with enough distance to maintain plausible deniability."
The British offshore web provides the City [of London] with three things. First, the tax havens scattered across the world capture passing foreign business and channel it to London just as a spider's web catches insects; second, it is a storage mechanism for assets; and third, it is a money-laundering filter that lets the City get involved in dirty business while providing it with enough distance to maintain plausible deniability."
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World"
"The Jersey-Delaware [the British Island of Jersey and the US State of Delaware] notion of the captured state is: a place that seeks to attract business by offering politically stable facilities to help people or entities get around the rules, laws and regulations of jurisdictions elsewhere."
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World"
"Large amounts of money transit through the banking system, from the banks to the hedge funds, to offshore banking havens and back to the banks."
"The parallels between bribery and the business of secrecy jurisdictions are no coincidence... Bribery rots and corrupts governments, and tax havens rot and corrupt the global financial system."
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World"
Cash is also frequently shipped out of the United States. Often planes which fly cocaine into the U.S., fly back loaded with $20, $50, and $100 bills. The bills can then either be deposited directly in offshore banking centers - where no questions are asked - or in remote bank branches in the drug-producing countries. These funds are then wire-transferred out to the offshore banks, into secret accounts where there is no government supervision."
Offshore is undermining your elected government, hollowing out its tax base and corrupting its politicians. It is sustaining a vast criminal economy and creating a new, unaccountable aristocracy of corporate and financial power. If we do not act together to contain and control financial secrecy then ... a world of suave insiders, impunity, international criminal complicity and desperate poverty, will become the world we leave to our children. A tiny few will have their boots washed in champagne while the rest of us struggle for our lives in conditions of steepening inequality."
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World"
"Drugs smugglers, terrorists and other criminals use exactly the same offshore mechanisms and subterfuges - shell banks, trusts, dummy corporations - that corporations use."
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World."
"Corporations hold their profits offshore, indefinitely, and only when they bring it back home to pay out as dividends to shareholders does it get taxed [deferred tax]. This sharply reduces multinationals' cost of capital and this in turn gives them a huge competitive advantage against smaller, locally based firms."
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World"
"The second smallest state in the USA, Delaware is the home to many of the world's corporations. Over half of US publicly traded companies and nearly two-thirds of the Fortune 500 are incorporated here."
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World"
"What we have in [the British island of] Jersey and [the US state of] Delaware is rampant uncontrolled deregulation, harnessed to the interests of a few insiders and large corporate players. Just as European nobles used to consolidate their unaccountable powers in castles, to better subjugate and extract tribute from the surrounding peasantry; so financial capital has coalesced in these fortified nodes of unaccountable political and economic power, capturing local politics and turning these jurisdictions into fast and flexible private law-making machines, defended against outside interference and protected by establishment consensus and the suppression of dissent."
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World"
"The most common jurisdictions for US securitisations are the Cayman Islands and the state of Delaware.
... The most common jurisdictions for European securitisations are Ireland, Luxembourg, Jersey, and the UK. Every last one is a major secrecy jurisdiction that uses a simple business model: ask the financial institutions exactly what they need, then shape the laws accordingly and without democratic debate."
... The most common jurisdictions for European securitisations are Ireland, Luxembourg, Jersey, and the UK. Every last one is a major secrecy jurisdiction that uses a simple business model: ask the financial institutions exactly what they need, then shape the laws accordingly and without democratic debate."
Nicholas Shaxson in his book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World"
UNITED NATIONSFUTURE CONTROL CENTER OF A NEW WORLD ORDER
"The next step is the Great Merger of all nations of the world into a dictatorial world government. This was the main reason behind the push to bring Red China into the United Nations. If you want to control the natural resources, transportation, commerce and banking for the whole world, you must put everybody under the same roof."
Gary Allen in his book "None Dare Call It Conspiracy"
"What the Bilderberg group intends is a global army at the disposal of the United Nations, which is to become the world government to which all nations will be subservient.
... A UN army must be able to act immediately, anywhere in the world, without the delay involved in each country making its own decision whether to participate, based on parochial considerations?"
... A UN army must be able to act immediately, anywhere in the world, without the delay involved in each country making its own decision whether to participate, based on parochial considerations?"
Henry Kissinger at a Bilderberg meeting, Spotlight Reprint, August 1991
"The five veto powers and permanent members of the Security Council ... together manufacture and sell some 85% of military arms, including nuclear weapons, and so-called weapons of mass destruction. This is the UN of the arms dealers - the most disreputable and yet profitable business on earth.
And tragically and quite bizarrely these arms dealers are the same Member States that the UN Charter entrusts with maintaining Peace and Security around the world ... nuclear powers and weapons salesmen being responsible for peaceful co-existence! It's madness!"
And tragically and quite bizarrely these arms dealers are the same Member States that the UN Charter entrusts with maintaining Peace and Security around the world ... nuclear powers and weapons salesmen being responsible for peaceful co-existence! It's madness!"
Denis Halliday, Global Research Public Lecture, Montreal, Canada, December 1, 2009
"The United Nations is a dictatorship from which nothing good comes, because they find a million ways to prevent anything from happening.
... Within the Security Council, there are five countries that have veto power. But without a doubt, the most influential country in the United Nations is the United States. And it's really amazing the most warmongering country in the history of mankind is put there in charge to make sure that there is peace.
... The United Nations Charter tells you how you can proceed to reform it. They say you have to call a general conference and how you have to call it and the approval that you have to have from the Security Council. But at the end, when all is said and done, when you have decided what reforms you want to make, they have a veto power over it. So it's a farce. It's a fraud.
... The United Nations is beyond reform. It's beyond patchwork. It's the most important organization in the world to help save the human species and Mother Earth, but it has to be reinvented."
... Within the Security Council, there are five countries that have veto power. But without a doubt, the most influential country in the United Nations is the United States. And it's really amazing the most warmongering country in the history of mankind is put there in charge to make sure that there is peace.
... The United Nations Charter tells you how you can proceed to reform it. They say you have to call a general conference and how you have to call it and the approval that you have to have from the Security Council. But at the end, when all is said and done, when you have decided what reforms you want to make, they have a veto power over it. So it's a farce. It's a fraud.
... The United Nations is beyond reform. It's beyond patchwork. It's the most important organization in the world to help save the human species and Mother Earth, but it has to be reinvented."
former UN General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto
"That the policy of genocide in Iraq was initiated and legitimized through the United Nations is an instructive indication of the extent to which the UN has become a tool of Western, and particularly Anglo-American power."
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed in his book "Behind the War on Terror"
"The World Trade Organization is the third pillar of the New World Order, along with the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund."
New York Times
"The UN Security Council is now regarded as a captive [by most of the UN membership], where the North secures decisions by economic intimidation, abuses the peaceful-redress procedures inscribed in the charter and authorizes a kind of vigilantism against countries of the North's own choosing."
Erskine Childers, former adviser to the UN Secretary General
"The UN's Agenda 21 proposes a global regime that will monitor, oversee, and strictly regulate our planet's oceans, lakes, streams, rivers, aquifers, sea beds, coastlands, wetlands, forests, jungles, grasslands, farmland, deserts, tundra, and mountains. It even has a whole section on regulating and "protecting" the atmosphere. It proposes plans for cities, towns, suburbs, villages, and rural areas. It envisions a global scheme for healthcare, education, nutrition, agriculture, labor, production, and consumption - in short, everything; there is nothing on, in, over, or under the Earth that doesn't fall within the purview of some part of Agenda 21."
William Jasper in a report entitled "Your Hometown & the United Nations' Agenda 21", February 10, 2012
"Not only does MONUC [United Nations Observers Mission for Congo] make it possible for western mining companies to loot Congo, but MONUC contingents have also participated in illegal minerals plunder from DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo]."
Keith Harmon Snow, 2009
"The creation of an international body for the Sustainability of Human Life on the Earth. This body must have the independence and power to facilitate agreement between all societal actors to support the protection of the Biosphere as the Common Interest of Humanity."
Earth Charter Principle 14 - Global Sovereignty
"Sustainable development was a core philosophy behind the Programme of Action called "Agenda 21" at the 1992 United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED).
... Sustainable development has continued to evolve as the protection of the world's resources, while its true agenda is to control the world's resources.
... Agenda 21 sets up the global infrastructure needed to manage, count, and control all of the world's assets. Included are the forests, fresh water, agricultural lands, deserts, pastures, rangelands, farmers' fields, oceans and inland waterways, marine environment, marine life, cities, housing, sewer and solid wastes, methods of production, air, pollution, biotechnology-every aspect of living-farming, production and manufacturing, research and medicine, etc., along with you and me. Today everything is sustainable: sustainable water, sustainable forests, sustainable markets, sustainable agriculture, etc.
... Thousands of environmental NGO's support and are helping to implement Agenda 21 worldwide. Two very powerful NGO's that were part of the birthing of sustainable development are the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)."
... Sustainable development has continued to evolve as the protection of the world's resources, while its true agenda is to control the world's resources.
... Agenda 21 sets up the global infrastructure needed to manage, count, and control all of the world's assets. Included are the forests, fresh water, agricultural lands, deserts, pastures, rangelands, farmers' fields, oceans and inland waterways, marine environment, marine life, cities, housing, sewer and solid wastes, methods of production, air, pollution, biotechnology-every aspect of living-farming, production and manufacturing, research and medicine, etc., along with you and me. Today everything is sustainable: sustainable water, sustainable forests, sustainable markets, sustainable agriculture, etc.
... Thousands of environmental NGO's support and are helping to implement Agenda 21 worldwide. Two very powerful NGO's that were part of the birthing of sustainable development are the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)."
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