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The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

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Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#71

Post by from »

CyanBird wrote: post #51
motohagiography wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge with it is that this doesn't generalize to any shared principle and it's cynical realpolitik dressed up as network science. I'd argue this paper is less a work of scholarship than an example of collusive, astroturfed, agitprop, where even though russia's oligarchs are an easy target because they are still new money and retain the taint of trade from the corruption that produced their fortunes, the autho…

From my naive perspective it almost reads that you won't be able to receive your money on the proper hongkong HSBC select account and are upset about it Reality is that tax dodging is a wildly out of control problem, and worse it is considered to be de defacto standard to even run a business at all. From south Dakota to the city of London and beyond. It is really a problem

The outlash against oligarchs has almost nothing to do with tax dodging. If anything they pay many thousand times more than they consume in public services (they're not even in London the whole year and the property tax alone on one penthouse is probably more than the average person pays in taxes in a decade). It is more about sanctions right now than anything. This paper promotes the "facilitators" idea that if we could just eliminate a few key offshore providers we could stop the oligarchs right in their tracks. They have some nice theoretical calculations and visualizations that justify this. I think in the real world the outcome would be very different because there is no reason to think that a 1000 more "facilitators" wouldn't pop up wherever the new cool jurisdiction is. Are we really expecting the whole world to leave trillions of dollars on the table?

Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#72

Post by [deleted] »

ipaddr wrote: post #70
mikeyouse wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe none? There's no evidence that Clinton or Trump ever visited the island, so I guess the 10th in line to the British Throne is probably the closest you can get to a "global leader"?

Trump not mentioned in court. Clinton yes. Celebrities and high profile figures named in court documents Prince Andrew Alan Dershowitz Emmy Taylor Sarah Kellen Eva Dubin Glen Dubin Jean Luc Brunel Nadia Marcinkova Bill Clinton Marvin Minsky Henry Jarecki Naomi Campbell Ron Eppinger Stephen Hawking

[deleted]

Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#73

Post by mikeyouse »

ipaddr wrote: post #70
mikeyouse wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe none? There's no evidence that Clinton or Trump ever visited the island, so I guess the 10th in line to the British Throne is probably the closest you can get to a "global leader"?

Trump not mentioned in court. Clinton yes. Celebrities and high profile figures named in court documents Prince Andrew Alan Dershowitz Emmy Taylor Sarah Kellen Eva Dubin Glen Dubin Jean Luc Brunel Nadia Marcinkova Bill Clinton Marvin Minsky Henry Jarecki Naomi Campbell Ron Eppinger Stephen Hawking

Which is both a different question to whether “global leaders” were at Epsteins island and not entirely true..

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/what-the-unsealed-ep...

Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#74

Post by from »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #36
luckylion wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yet all alternate systems seems to be worse in terms of illegal abuse worse than that system, sure. Worse compared to a fascist state that has near total control over everyone? I don't think it's clear that tax evasion and black market deals are worse than that, the scale is just different. China is much deeper in technology than the Soviet Union ever was. Imagine what Stalin had done with China's abilities in 2023…

> don't think it's clear that tax evasion and black market deals are worse than that The paper's original context is the War in Ukraine. That doesn't mean we shred up our Bill of Rights. But the counterfactual is starker than tax evasion and cocaine naughties.

The other context which the authors and all the human rights groups who complain about this stuff ignore is that strict application of the AML laws results in mass derisking and the wholesale exclusion of entire industries and even countries from the financial system because banks do not want to risk the fines. Several major Caribbean banks are constantly on the verge of losing correspondent relationships despite doing basically everything the FATF asked that they could afford. Non banks ATMs (which aren’t even considered MSBs), check cashers and a whole host of other businesses are de facto excluded from major US banks right now. I think the desire to “do something” about Russia has made any sort of cost benefit analysis go right out the window.

Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#75

Post by ipaddr »

mikeyouse wrote: post #73
ipaddr wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump not mentioned in court. Clinton yes. Celebrities and high profile figures named in court documents Prince Andrew Alan Dershowitz Emmy Taylor Sarah Kellen Eva Dubin Glen Dubin Jean Luc Brunel Nadia Marcinkova Bill Clinton Marvin Minsky Henry Jarecki Naomi Campbell Ron Eppinger Stephen Hawking

Which is both a different question to whether “global leaders” were at Epsteins island and not entirely true.. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/what-the-unsealed-ep...

Intelligencer? Do they feel the name is clever, is it historical or is it just the most stupid sounding name they could come up with?

Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#76

Post by motohagiography »

CyanBird wrote: post #51
motohagiography wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge with it is that this doesn't generalize to any shared principle and it's cynical realpolitik dressed up as network science. I'd argue this paper is less a work of scholarship than an example of collusive, astroturfed, agitprop, where even though russia's oligarchs are an easy target because they are still new money and retain the taint of trade from the corruption that produced their fortunes, the autho…

From my naive perspective it almost reads that you won't be able to receive your money on the proper hongkong HSBC select account and are upset about it Reality is that tax dodging is a wildly out of control problem, and worse it is considered to be de defacto standard to even run a business at all. From south Dakota to the city of London and beyond. It is really a problem

The reason I don't think it's a serious problem is that governments operate on the counterfactual that they can legally collect enough to fund their patronage to key coalitions.

They can't, and if they have their own currency, their debt never comes due because they can steal it from savers through inflation. But they prefer to play this game, and that requires trading that debt to someone, and those someones are pension funds and other governments who use these vehicles in jurisdictions that can't easily be looted by said debtor states. The last government to collapse because of tax evasion was Greece, and the reason people evaded there was because it was complex, inconsistent and corrupt. The evasion facilities were built in by design, usually under the auspices of "justice," for favoured parties. The state is happy because when everyone is compromised, they have the discretion to step around the laws and always get someone on something, and blackmail and extortion are more efficient than courts.

That said, this perspective is from a basic disagreement in principle with managerialism. We pay what we are legally obligated to, and if the rules are so complex as to be inconsistent and exploitable, and governments are too mercurial to risk leaving capital within their reach, it's their own fault. The whole rich-people-bad argument is ugly and insincere because it advocates an extortionate state that panders to smaller human urges, and so I don't have a lot of tolerance for it.

Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#77

Post by 6510 »

nine_k wrote: post #66
yamtaddle wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've gathered from various schemes like this, including smaller-fry ones, it seems like the minimum requirement is to have enough Serious Business Shit going on that you can plausibly mask a bunch of activity (international, ideally) as part of that. Normal people don't. You've also got to have enough money that any tax authority looking at you decides you'd be an expensive target, so they won't try it unle…

OK, if we assume that it only works if you can hide a small amount of illicit activity in a flurry of legit activity, it can't be such a large problem; maybe you can make 5% of your transactions illicit, but not even 50%. I don't think this is the case with Russian oligarchs right now. I always had thought that the idea of shell companies is that there is a long chain, or even DAG, of companies that own basically not…

we cant accurately enough guess how these boutique wealth management firms do their thing... but we could pay them to do the guessing for us.

Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#78

Post by Scoundreller »

notch898a wrote: post #37
kornhole wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like many laws, they apply to you and me, not to the oligarchs. The international lawyers and accountants are the gatekeepers that navigate them through the loopholes.

That reminds me of FATCA. They made the burden just high enough for banks taking sub six-figure accounts that it's worthless to bank an American customer overseas unless they are rich.

Depends on the country.

Progressive ones have laws against refusals to open accounts, especially if you are a citizen of the country you’re trying to open an account in.

Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#79

Post by forgetfreeman »

csydas wrote: post #35
forgetfreeman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I should not have to share my bloody name or address with anyone to order a god damn box of chocolate." You don't. Get off your ass and go buy a box with cash. On the drive over meditate on who generally benefits when given the ability to move large sums of cash anonymously (hint: terrorist organizations, drug cartels, and tax dodging oligarchs).

I think you're missing the point here. I'm not a crypto advocate, but Visa and Mastercard definitely have too much power as do most online transaction processors, and the amount of information that online processors collect (at the request and joy of governments) is quite scary. A select few organizations can control whether you can buy necessities or not and cut you off even from legally earned money on a whim. Bank…

Individual what now? Sovereignty? We pretending fiat currency isn't a thing now? You a gold bug? Understand I don't disagree with any particular point you've made here but you may as well be freaking out about the weather. If the international financial system were to ever truly brick 2/3 of the world's population would busy themselves with killing each other. The surviving third that didn't succumb to disease would likely starve. What flavor of (now worthless) fiat currency you might have hoarded isn't going to alter any outcomes. I feel like what you're expressing here is less like a rant on international banking and more like pathological mistrust in institutions as a concept.

Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#80

Post by forgetfreeman »

CyanBird wrote: post #53
forgetfreeman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I should not have to share my bloody name or address with anyone to order a god damn box of chocolate." You don't. Get off your ass and go buy a box with cash. On the drive over meditate on who generally benefits when given the ability to move large sums of cash anonymously (hint: terrorist organizations, drug cartels, and tax dodging oligarchs).

Please, reminder that the cia literally funded their own international bank (bcci) in order to do their clandestine operations

Yeah, they've also funded their own charter airlines and a few drug cartels, because apparently destabilizing all of central and South America is an expensive proposition. Where are you going with this?
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