Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion

UK Money-laundering $2.9 Billion Linked to Azerbaijan

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May, 2017:

The largest bank in Azerbaijan has halted its foreign debt payments and will start restructuring talks with creditors after a currency crisis in the Caspian Sea nation drove the lender to the brink of collapse.

Under a restructuring plan published on Friday, the International Bank of Azerbaijan said its “designated financial indebtedness” was at $3.3 billion as of April 18. It missed a principal and interest payment on a $100 million subordinated loan on May 10, according to an emailed statement from the government-owned lender on Thursday. More here.

What is the Azerbaijani Laundromat?

A scheme to curry influence, pay lobbyists, apologists and European politicians and to launder cash. The $2.9bn (£2.2bn) operation ran between 2012 and 2014 – meaning that on average $3m was channelled out of Azerbaijan every day. The source of money isn’t always clear, but it comes from companies linked to Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, state ministries and the International Bank of Azerbaijan, the country’s largest bank, which recently filed for bankruptcy protection. The cash was transferred into four offshore-managed UK companies. From there, it was spent in various countries, including Germany, the UK, France, Turkey, Iran and Kazakhstan.

How was it done?

By clever use of the west’s financial system. Danske, Denmark’s largest bank, handled the payments via a small branch office in Estonia. It noticed nothing amiss. The organisers of the scheme exploited Britain’s weakly regulated company system. They registered four firms at Companies House in London. These were Hilux Services, Polux Management, Metastar Invest and LCM Alliance. The first two were incorporated in Glasgow, the third in Birmingham and the fourth in Hertfordshire. The beneficial owner of the firms is a secret. More here.

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UK Companies at the Heart of $2.9 Billion Money-Laundering Circle

UK Companies at the heart of $2.9 billion money-laundering circle

UK failing to end its complicity in global corruption

4th September 2017, London – A new investigation has shown UK registered companies to be at the centre of laundering $2.9 billion out of Azerbaijan, highlighting that the UK is failing to end its complicity in global corruption. These funds was used to pay-off politicians, purchase luxury goods and act as a slush fund for those close to the Azeri regime using money that appears to have been stolen from the International Bank of Azerbaijan, which is currently restructuring its debt because of funding problems.

The investigation found that four UK registered companies were at the centre of this scheme and essential to its success. These four companies formed a core part of over 16,000 transactions made by the ‘Azerbaijani laundromat’ between 2012 and 2014. Although registered in the UK, previous research by Transparency International UK found that these four companies were ultimately controlled in secretive offshore havens, where the real owners of companies are hidden from public view.

In recent years successive UK governments have made promises to close the loopholes that have left the UK, and its overseas territories, complicit in the laundering of corrupt money around the world. Over two years since the Government first outlined its intention to target corrupt money flowing through the UK, many of the promises have yet to be turned into action.

All four of these companies are either Scottish Limited Partnerships (SLPs) and Limited Liability Partnerships – forms of company that can be controlled by secretive companies based in offshore havens like the British Virgin Islands. Although new rules rushed in earlier this year require SLPs to report who they’re ultimately controlled by, and similar rules apply to LLPs, there are growing concerns that in practice these are not being enforced effectively. 

Duncan Hames, Director of Policy Transparency International UK, said:

“Knowing that UK registered companies were at the heart of a scheme that saw $2.9 billion stolen from Azerbaijan underlines just how damaging it is to be complicit in global corruption. These sums of money can be the difference between life and death for people around the world, and to know that they are instead being used to purchase luxury goods, line the pockets of corrupt politicians and improve the image of dictators, is particularly galling.”

“We are increasingly concerned that action on the promises made by successive governments to close the loopholes that make the UK attractive to money laundering, appears to have stalled. We have seen some regulatory change but it has gone from a core government mission to uncoordinated and piecemeal efforts.” 

“We’re calling on the UK Government to immediately enforce new laws to end the use of British companies as the getaway vehicle for corrupt individuals and organised criminal gangs. Much more than lip service is needed to fight global corruption. If a success is to be made of Brexit, the UK must uphold the highest standards of commerce and not end-up reducing itself to an offshore centre exposed to the risk of serving corrupt and repressive regimes from across the globe.” 

The UK Government is yet to deliver on its promise to introduce greater transparency around anonymous corporate ownership of luxury UK property, a key destination for laundered money, or produce a comprehensive anti-corruption strategy that sets out how it intends to end the UK’s role as a safe haven for corrupt wealth.

Notes:

The four UK companies at the heart of the Azerbaijani laundromat were Hilux Services LP, Polux Management LP, Metastar Invest LLP and LCM Alliance LLP. More details about the offshore companies controlling them are provided in the table below. Hundreds of businesses with similar secretive corporate structures are registered at the same addresses as these four companies.

 

UK Company Address Controlled by
Hilux Services LP Suite 1105 111 West George Street, Glasgow, G2 1QX Solberg Business Ltd (British Virgin Islands) and Astrocom AG (Seychelles)
Polux Management LP Suite 1098 111 West George Street, Glasgow, G2 1QX Solberg Business Ltd (British Virgin Islands) and Astrocom AG (Seychelles)
Metastar Invest LLP 175 Darkes Lane, Suite B, 2nd Floor, Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, EN6 1BW Advance Developments Limited (Belize) and Corporate Solutions Limited (Belize)
LCM Alliance LLP Cornwall Buildings 45-51 Newhall Street, Office 330, Birmingham, B3 3QR Astrocom AG (Seychelles) and Exponet GMBH (Seychelles)

 

Goodbye Columbus, History, the Arts and Math

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World history is ugly, but it is real and American history is no different. Learning about it and how it affects life today is a must, yet politics and special interest is interfering to the demise of culture and future generations.

Do you wonder why we still have CommonCore and actually what the Department of Education is doing? So do I. Take a look at the congressional committee title with education legislative responsibilities:

Committee on Education and the Workforce

No wonder there is limited education choice….

When math in public schools is being twisted in teaching methodology for social justice:

Initiative 3: Equity and Social Justice in Mathematics Education The Equity and Social Justice in Mathematics Education Initiative was established to promote, develop and support a just, equitable, and sustainable system of mathematics education that serves each and every child.

Why is this happening? Beyond political correctness and special interests, education systems are making judgments without parental input. Then local government officials take matters into the legislative realm.

A 2014 report by the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that an abysmal 18 percent of American high school kids were proficient in US history. When colleges such as Stanford decline to require Western Civilization classes or high schools propose changing their curriculum so that history is taught only from 1877 onward (this happened in North Carolina), it’s merely a blip in our news cycle.

A 2012 story in Perspectives on History magazine by University of North Carolina professor Bruce VanSledright found that 88 percent of elementary school teachers considered teaching history a low priority.

Los Angeles votes to rename Columbus Day ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Day’

The Los Angeles city council on Wednesday voted to rename Columbus Day “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

Over the years, many Native Americans groups and activists have decried the holiday as celebrating genocide, prompting numerous cities throughout the U.S. to change its name and emphasis. Columbus Day is celebrated nationally on the second Monday of October.

In Los Angeles, Italian-American groups voiced their opposition to changing the holiday, saying it would erase part of their heritage, the Los Angeles Times reported. Christopher Columbus was Italian.

South Dakota, as well as cities like Seattle, Albuquerque, and Denver, have already replaced the holiday with Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

The vote comes as New York has faced pressure to remove statues of Columbus in the wake of Charlottesville and the removal of Civil War statues. A beheaded statue of Columbus was found in Yonkers, N.Y., on Wednesday.

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. — “Gone With the Wind” will be gone from The Orpheum’s summer movie series, the theater’s board said Friday.

The Orpheum Theatre Group decided not to include the 1939 movie about a plantation in the Civil War-era South in its 2018 Summer Movie Series after feedback from patrons following the last screening Aug. 11.

“As an organization whose stated mission is to ‘entertain, educate and enlighten the communities it serves’, the Orpheum cannot show a film that is insensitive to a large segment of its local population,” the theater’s operators said in a statement.

Memphis’ population is about 64 percent African-American.

The historic theater in Downtown Memphis has shown the movie for decades, but this year’s event “generated numerous comments,” leading to the decision.

“While title selections for the series are typically made in the spring of each year, the Orpheum has made this determination early in response to specific inquiries from patrons,” the Orpheum group said.

The theater’s 2018 movie series will be announced in the spring and will contain classic films and more recent blockbusters.

Venezuela: Bribery, Corruption to Giving Away Their Children

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As Venezuelans die on the streets, U.N. Human Rights Council remains mum

The Geneva-based UNHRC, whose job is to “uphold the highest standards” of human rights across the world, has not issued one single resolution about Venezuela, nor convened any urgent session to discuss the crisis there, nor called for any inquiry into the deaths of protesters by armed government-backed mobs. More here.
Corruption and Bribery
During the relevant time period, ODEBRECHT, together with its co-conspirators, paid approximately $788 million in bribes in association with more than 100 projects in twelve
countries, including Angola, Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Mozambique, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela. Read more here as a part of this case is defined by the U.S. Justice Department due to several associated persons were located in New York and Miami. 
It is a global cascade of corruption where none other than Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela is a player in the scandal.

For years, Latin America’s construction giant, Odebrecht, built some of the region’s most crucial infrastructure projects.

Now it is becoming well-known for another superlative: it is involved in one of the biggest corruption cases in history.

Last year, the Brazilian-based group signed what has been described as the world’s largest leniency deal with US and Swiss authorities, in which it confessed to corruption and paid $2.6bn (£2.1bn) in fines.

Seventy-seven company executives have agreed to plea bargains with Brazilian authorities, and their statements to investigators are being made public. More here from BBC.

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A day after President Nicolas Maduro said he would seek an international arrest warrant against her, Venezuela’s sacked chief prosecutor accused him of corruption, Business Insider reported on Wednesday.

Luisa Ortega Díaz Luisa Ortega 

(Photo: Cancillería del Ecuador, CC BY-SA 2.0)

“I want to denounce, in front of the world, a grave situation in Venezuela: that of excessive corruption,” Luisa Ortega said at a press conference in Brazil.

She claimed she had evidence that President Maduro and Socialist Party titans such as Diosdado Cabello and Jorge Rodriguez have ties to the Odebrecht scandal.Additional summary here.

If you wonder where much of the wealth of Venezuela has gone due to being one of the most richest nations due to oil reserves, look no further  than what the banks across the globe may know. Ortega Díaz also said authorities in Switzerland requested information regarding the accounts of several Venezuelan officials over alleged links to the bribes, including a list of all Venezuelans who received deposits from Odebrecht directly or indirectly.

The world is an ugly place where peril is a human condition in 2017. World leaders offer feeble attempts to regain some kind of balance, when it comes to Venezuela, a large country in the Western hemisphere, humanity fails humanity.

Much of the population in Venezuela has been suffering beyond the scope of what media reports. Here is a sad example:

Giving away their children…

Struggling to feed herself and her seven children, Venezuelan mother Zulay Pulgar asked a neighbor in October to take over care of her six-year-old daughter, a victim of a pummeling economic crisis.

The family lives on Pulgar’s father’s pension, worth $6 a month at the black market rate, in a country where prices for many basic goods are surpassing those in the United States.

“It’s better that she has another family than go into prostitution, drugs or die of hunger,” the 43-year-old unemployed mother said, sitting outside her dilapidated home with her five-year-old son, father and unemployed husband.

With average wages less than the equivalent of $50 a month at black market rates, three local councils and four national welfare groups all confirmed an increase in parents handing children over to the state, charities or friends and family.

The government does not release data on the number of parents giving away their children and welfare groups struggle to compile statistics given the ad hoc manner in which parents give away children and local councils collate figures.

Still, the trend highlights Venezuela’s fraying social fabric and the heavy toll that a deep recession and soaring inflation are taking on the country with the world’s largest oil reserves.

Showing photos of her family looking plumper just a year ago, Pulgar said just one chicken meal would now burn up half its monthly income. Breakfast is often just bread and coffee, with rice alone for both lunch and dinner.

Nancy Garcia, the 54-year-old neighbor who took in the girl, Pulgar’s second-youngest child, works in a grocery store and has five children of her own. She said she could not bear to see Pulgar’s child going without food.

“My husband, my children and I teach her to behave, how to study, to dress, to talk… She now calls me ’mom’ and my husband ’dad,’” said Garcia.

ABANDONED

In some cases, parents are simply abandoning their kids.

Last month, a baby boy was found inside a bag in a relatively wealthy area of Caracas and a malnourished one-year-old boy was found abandoned in a cardboard box in the eastern city of Ciudad Guayana, local media reported.

Gil said that she had helped find places in orphanages for two newborns recently abandoned by their mothers in hospitals after birth. More here from Reuters.

BLM is Offered as a College Course on Several Campuses

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In 2015, it began:

HuffPo: “If colleges cannot address current events in an intellectually rigorous manner then what are they good for?”

Mary K. Coffey, Dartmouth College’s Art History department chair, asks a valid question — and one that her school’s students, faculty and administration plan to answer.

Dartmouth is set to offer a course titled “10 Weeks, 10 Professors: #BlackLivesMatter,” centered around racial inequality and violence in America.

‘The Dartmouth’ student newspaper reports that professors across more than 10 academic disciplines, from the humanities to geography to mathematics, will come together for an interdisciplinary approach to modern and historic perspectives of America’s racial climate.

According to Dartmouth geography professor Abigail Neely, the course was originally born from a Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning workshop that encouraged discussion of events that took place in Ferguson, Missouri following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown.

“The course has the potential to be revolutionary insofar as the students who take it will come away with a wide ranging critical framework for thinking through not only what happened in Ferguson (and elsewhere), but also why we continue to see so much violence perpetrated against poor people of color,” Coffey told The Huffington Post. “Having the ability to address the why question will make these students capable of thinking about change, alternatives, or forms of activism that might have a revolutionary impact.”

The creative curricular development comes on the heels of recent on-campus student activism and Dartmouth community protest, and in cooperation with members of faculty and administration dedicated to addressing student concerns.

“It reflects faculty support for student activism over the past several years around issues of inclusion, social justice, and campus climate,” professor Coffey explains. “Those students took risks to raise these issues on campus. Their work has generated interest in these issues within the student body. And it has given faculty who are dedicated to these concerns a new sense of purpose and motivation.”

The course is scheduled to begin during the university’s upcoming spring term.

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Then there is the University of Miami Law School:

In Spring of 2017, the School of Law will be convening an interdisciplinary course called “Race, Class, and Power: University Course on Ferguson and the #BlackLivesMatter Movement.”

The course will engage the multiple lenses through which Ferguson, the Black Lives Matter movement, and racial justice in the United States might be explored, including: policing and criminal justice, comparative inquiry regarding race and identity, theories of social movements, education reform, healthcare and medicine, environmental justice, literature and artistic expression, law and legal reform, statistical data analysis, and much more.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — San Diego State University plans to offer a course called “Black Minds Matter: A Focus on Black Boys and Men in Education,” that was inspired in part by the Black Lives Matter movement.

The weekly course will be open to the public for enrollment in October and will feature various speakers who will talk about how black men are undervalued in the classroom.

SDSU professor J. Luke Wood, who helped create the online course, said it will connect themes from the Black Lives Matter movement to issues facing blacks in educational settings.

“The Black Lives Matter movement has shed light on two invariable facts. First, that black boys and men are criminalized in society and second that their lives are undervalued by those who are sworn to protect them,” Wood said in a video introducing the class.

The upcoming course has drawn criticism.

Craig DeLuz, a gun rights advocate with the Sacramento-based Firearms Policy Coalition, said a public university should not be offering a course that includes speakers from a movement whose members have been accused of inciting violence.

“The biggest concern is they are offering a course based on the Black Lives Matter movement which has promoted violence and segregation and has really little to do with education, let alone presenting a positive image of education,” DeLuz said.

DeLuz, a member of Robla Elementary School District board of trustees, is organizing a group that plans to ask SDSU to cancel the course. They have not contacted the university yet, he said.

SDSU said in a statement that the “Black Minds Matter” course “has a racial justice focus, directly aligned with the mission of the joint doctoral program in Education. This program focuses on social justice, democratic schooling, and equity, as well as the research of the faculty who teach in it.”

A number of US colleges, including New York University, University of Washington and the University of Miami, now offer courses that include discussion of the Black Lives Matter movement.

September Busy for Congress CR and the Debt Limit Increase

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Developments in 2017 to learn more go here.

On March 7, 2017, CBO issued estimates that extraordinary measures could suffice to meet federal obligations until sometime in the fall of 2017.141 Such estimates are subject to substantial uncertainty due to changes in economic conditions, federal revenue flows, changes in the amounts and timing of federal payments, and other factors. On March 8, 2017, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin notified Congress that he would invoke authorities to use extraordinary measures after March 15, 2017, to ensure continued payment of federal obligations.142 On March 16, 2017, Secretary Mnuchin notified congressional leaders that he had indeed exercised those authorities.143 The debt limit on that date was reset at $19,809 billion.144

In testimony before Congress on May 24, 2017, Administration officials urged Congress to raise the debt limit before its summer recess.145 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney stated that the federal receipts were coming in more slowly than projected, which could imply that Treasury’s capacity to meet federal obligations could be exhausted sooner than previously projected.146 A Goldman Sachs analysis found, however, that some major categories of tax receipts had shown stronger growth.147

On June 28, 2017, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin sent a letter to Congress stating that extraordinary measures would be used until September 29, 2017.148 Secretary Mnuchin’s letter did not state that Treasury’s cash reserves or borrowing capacity would be exhausted on that date, but he did describe the need for legislative action by that date as “critical.” Others have estimated that the U.S. Treasury would likely be able to meet federal obligations until sometime in early October 2017.149 Treasury cash balances and borrowing capacity in mid-September, however, are projected to fall well below levels the U.S. Treasury has considered prudent to maintain operations in the face of significant adverse events.150

The Constitution grants Congress the power to borrow money on the credit of the United States—one part of its power of the purse—and thus mandates that Congress exercise control over federal debt. Control of debt policy has at times provided Congress with a means of raising concerns regarding fiscal policies. Debates over federal fiscal policy have been especially animated in recent years. The accumulation of federal debt accelerated in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession. Rising debt levels, along with continued differences in views of fiscal policy, led to a series of contentious debt limit episodes in recent years.

The 2011 debt limit episode was resolved on August 2, 2011, when President Obama signed the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA; S. 365; P.L. 112-25). The BCA included provisions aimed at deficit reduction and allowing the debt limit to rise in three stages, the latter two subject to congressional disapproval. Once the BCA was enacted, a presidential certification triggered a $400 billion increase. A second certification led to a $500 billion increase on September 22, 2011, and a third, $1,200 billion increase took place on January 28, 2012.

Federal debt again reached its limit on December 31, 2012. Extraordinary measures were again used to allow payment of government obligations until February 4, 2013, when H.R. 325, which suspended the debt limit until May 19, 2013, was signed into law (P.L. 113-3). On that date, extraordinary measures were reset, which would have lasted until October 17, 2013, according to Treasury estimates issued in late September 2013. On October 16, 2013, enactment of a continuing resolution (H.R. 2775; P.L. 113-46) resolved a funding lapse and suspended the debt limit through February 7, 2014. On February 15, 2014, a measure to suspend the debt limit (S. 540; P.L. 113-83) through March 15, 2015, was enacted. Once that debt limit suspension lapsed after March 15, 2015, the limit was reset at $18.1 trillion. On October 15, 2015, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew stated that extraordinary measures would be exhausted no later than November 3, 2015, although a relatively small cash reserve would be on hand. Lower tax receipts and higher trust fund inflows, however, reduced Treasury’s headroom more than had been expected. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 (BBA2015; H.R. 1314; P.L. 114-74), which relaxed certain discretionary spending limits, suspended the debt limit through March 15, 2017.

On March 16, 2017, the debt limit was reset at $19,809 billion and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin notified Congress that he had invoked authorities to use extraordinary measures. CBO estimated that those measures could meet federal obligations until sometime in the fall of 2017, although in May 2017, Administration officials said slower than expected growth in revenues could require earlier action. Some independent analysts still expect that the U.S. Treasury could meet federal obligations until sometime in early October 2017. On June 28, 2017, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin notified Congress that extraordinary measures would be used until September 29, 2017, and urged action before that date.

Total federal debt increases when the government sells debt to the public to finance budget deficits, which adds to debt held by the public, or when the federal government issues debt to certain government accounts, such as the Social Security, Medicare, and Transportation trust funds, in exchange for their reported surpluses—which adds to debt held by government accounts; or when new federal loans outpace loan repayments. The sum of debt held by the public and debt held by government accounts is the total federal debt. Surpluses reduce debt held by the public, while deficits raise it. This report will be updated as events warrant.