Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion

Corruption at the Doorstep, London

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Given the investigation and model defined, perhaps we should look inward here at home as the United States, especially a handful of cities are precisely the same.

Corruption On Your Doorstep: How Corrupt Capital Is Used to Buy Property in the UK

Corruption on your Doorstep looks at how corrupt money is used to buy property in the UK by analysing data from the Land Registry and Metropolitan Police Proceeds of Corruption Unit.  Findings in the report include the fact that 36342 London properties totalling 2.25 sq miles are held by offshore haven companies.

The research – analysing data from the Land Registry and Metropolitan Police Proceeds of Corruption Unit – found that 75%of properties whose owners are under investigation for corruption made use of offshore corporate secrecy to hide their identities.

Key statistics

  • £180m+ worth of property in UK have been brought under criminal investigation as the suspected proceeds of corruption since 2004. This is believed to be only the tip of the iceberg of the scale of proceeds of corruption invested in UK property. Over 75% of the properties under criminal investigation use offshore corporate secrecy
  • The average price of a property under criminal investigation in the UK is £1.5m. The minimum is £130,000, the maximum is £9m and the median is £910,000. 48% of properties investigated were valued at over £1m
  • 36,342 London properties totalling 2.25 sq miles are held by offshore haven companies. Of these, 38% in the British Virgin Islands, 16% in Jersey, 9.5% in Isle of Man, and 9% in Guernsey
  • Almost one in ten properties in the City of Westminster (9.3 per cent), 7.3 per cent of properties in Kensington & Chelsea, and 4.5 per cent in the City of London are owned by companies registered in an offshore secrecy jurisdiction. TI-UK has launched an interactive map of London which reveals the statistics for each borough – ukunmaskthecorrupt.org
  • In 2011 alone £3.8bn worth of UK property was bought by British Virgin Islands–registered companies
  • According to the latest figures, which cover October 2013 to September 2014, estate agents contributed to only 0.05% of all Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) submitted. This figure does not match the risks posed by money launderers to the UK property market

Transparency International makes 10 recommendations for reform, calling for buy in from the UK Government, lawyers, and estate agents to ensure that the UK property market is no longer a safe haven for corrupt funds. Action from the British Overseas Territories is also necessary to end this crisis.

The key recommendation is thattransparency should be established over who owns the companies that own so much property in the UK through making such transparency a Land Registry requirement. Sign our petition to UK political party leaders here.

A visual story of this journey and interactive map detailing the number of offshore-owned homes per London borough can be viewed at ukunmaskthecorrupt.org

 

I took a “Kleptocracy tour” around London and discovered the corruption capital

A sightseeing trip around central London properties revealed just how much dirty money there is swimming around the city.

In part, NewStatesmen: London is a globally leading city, bustling with culture and educational capital, a booming economy, and abiding by the rule of law. But, combined with regulations allowing for the anonymous purchase of real estate, it’s for these reasons that the UK’s capital is one of the world’s largest laundromats, a city where money from corruption is being poured into property.

The scale of money laundering

The amount of money laundered through the UK is estimated to be at £48bn, or two per cent of GDP, while it estimated £120bn worth of UK property is owned by offshore entities and up to 36,000 properties in London exist where offshore havens were used to hide the true buyers’ identities.

How they get away with it

“This is a real problem,” Simon Farrell QC, an expert in money laundering and corruption, says. “The only reason for corporate ownership is to disguise the true ownership and for those with dubious funds and who have avoided tax to shelter profits in London, a safe haven where the rule of law prevails. It’s a disgrace.”

So now, “London is now the premier location worldwide for corruption-based money laundering,” says Ben Judah, author of a book about Russia called Fragile Empire (2013).

 

Bowe Bergdahl Mental Issues or a Cover?

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He does not appear to be affected here.

Bergdahl Explains His Reasoning in Newly Released Documents

ABC: Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl said he left a post in Afghanistan in 2009 to draw attention to what he saw as bad decisions by officers above him, according to documents released Wednesday that also show he was diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder.

Attorneys for Bergdahl, who faces charges including desertion, said they released the documents to help counteract negative publicity over the case.

Bergdahl told a general who investigated the case that he hoped to cause an alarm by leaving his post, then walk to a larger base in Afghanistan so he could have an audience with a top commander.

“So, the idea was to — it was— literally, it was a sacrificial — it was a self-sacrifice thing,” Bergdahl said, according to the transcript of a 2014 interview with Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl.

Another newly released document from July 2015 shows that an Army Sanity Board Evaluation concluded that Bergdahl suffered from schizotypal personality disorder when he left the post. A Mayo Clinic website says people with the disorder have trouble interpreting social cues and can develop significant distrust of others.

Bergdahl faces charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, the latter of which carries up to a life sentence. He was held five years by the Taliban and its allies before a swap involving five Guantanamo Bay detainees, prompting criticism from some in Congress that the move threatened national security.

His military trial had been tentatively scheduled to begin over the summer, but it has been delayed by disagreements over access to classified materials.

Bergdahl’s attorney Eugene Fidell said the decision to release the documents was made to fight negative publicity and because prosecutors have already entered part of the interview into the court record.

“The more Americans know about this case, the better,” Fidell said in an email.

An Army spokesman didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment about the new documents after hours Wednesday.

In the interview, Bergdahl expressed misgivings about how he and other soldiers were sent to help retrieve a disabled armored vehicle before encountering explosives and enemy fire that turned a six-hour mission into one lasting several days. None of the men was killed, but Bergdahl said an officer complained they were unshaven upon their return to base.

He said he began to worry that if he didn’t say anything, a future bad order could get someone in his platoon killed.

He described coming up with a plan to leave the observation post his platoon was manning: “The only thing that I could see was, I needed to get somebody’s attention.”

He ruled out going to the media and instead decided to trigger an alarm by sneaking off and then walking to a larger base nearby. He described his thought process, referring to himself in the third-person: “That guy disappears. No one knows what happened to him. That call goes out. It hits every command. Everybody goes, what has happened?”

Within a couple days, he planned to show up at the base: “the Soldier shows up … People recognize him. They ID him. They go, ‘What did you just do?’ And that Soldier says, ‘I am not saying anything about what I did until I am talking to a general.'”

Instead, he wound up in enemy captivity.

**** The Bergdahl case is delayed indefinitely.

Military: A military appeals court halted proceedings against U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl on Tuesday while it considers a dispute over how much leeway the defense should have in accessing classified information.

The order delaying the case against Bergdahl, who walked off an outpost in Afghanistan in 2009, was issued by the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals. Prosecutors asked the appeals court to consider overturning a decision by the trial judge regarding thousands of pages of classified documents. The defense has argued that prosecutors want them to follow a cumbersome process of seeking classified information while it prepares for trial.

The issue had been debated for weeks in pretrial motions and emails between the sides. It wasn’t clear how long the trial tentatively scheduled for this summer could be held up while the prosecution’s appeal unfolds.

The judge overseeing Bergdahl’s military trial, Col. Jeffery Nance, ordered prosecutors last week to turn over many of the classified documents they had gathered, subject to certain rules.

“All CI which the government may offer into evidence at trial will immediately be provided to the defense” within the specified constraints, he wrote in his Feb. 2 order, using an abbreviation for classified information.

The judge also disagreed with prosecutors’ arguments that Bergdahl’s attorneys needed an extra layer of approval when they did their own research from the officials who initially restricted a given document — referred to as original classification authorities.

Within days, the prosecutors asked the appeals court to overturn the judge’s decision, adding in their written appeal that “no session of the court should be held or rulings should be issued until conclusion of the appeal.”

A defense attorney for Bergdahl, Eugene Fidell, issued a statement describing the timeline of events leading up to the appeal but declined further comment when reached by phone.

Bergdahl faces charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, a relatively rare charge that carries a punishment of up to life in prison. He was held by the Taliban and its allies for five years after he left the base in Afghanistan.

Bergdahl, of Hailey, Idaho, walked off his post in eastern Afghanistan’s Paktika province on June 30, 2009, and was released in late May 2014 as part of a prisoner swap, in exchange for five detainees in Guantanamo Bay. The move prompted harsh criticism, with some in Congress accusing President Barack Obama of jeopardizing the safety of the country.

He was arraigned in December but has yet to enter a plea.

Walter Huffman, a retired major general who served as the Army’s top lawyer, said the appeals court should move swiftly to resolve the issue because of rules giving the matter priority, but the case could be delayed further if either side were to appeal again.

“It will be resolved as speedily as it can, but if it’s appealed to another court the clock starts ticking again,” he said.

ICE Director Insensitive to Death, Enforcing Law

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Is there an agency director, secretary or anyone within the Obama administration that is sensitive to their failures of law and policy which results in death? How about Barack Obama himself or his national security council or even the Department of Homeland Security that is without dispute complicit in the death of innocents? This administration cant even determine what genocide means, they have lawyers looking at cases, law and evidence. Scary right? No worries, these matters are all ‘learning experiences’.

The Obama administration is remarkably slow to list organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood as a terror organization if at all. Further, drug cartels which have created war zones in Mexico and at our southern border are NOT listed as terror organizations even with Congress calling on this to be done.

ICE Director Gives Shocking Excuse For Failure To Detain Killer Illegal Alien [VIDEO]

Ross/DC: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director Sarah Saldana gave a baffling — and seemingly inaccurate — explanation during a Senate hearing on Tuesday for why federal immigration agents failed to detain an illegal alien who killed a 21-year-old Iowa woman in a drunken street race in Omaha in January.

ICE ignored a detainer request made by the Omaha police department last month for 19-year-old Eswin Mejia, Saldana said, because his victim, Sarah Root, had “not passed away” at the time the illegal alien drunk driver bailed out of jail.

That comment appears to be inaccurate since Root died hours after the Jan. 31 crash, in which Mejia was street racing with a .241 blood-alcohol level — three times the legal limit.

Mejia, a Honduran national, left jail on Feb. 5 after posting $5,000 bail. He is now on the run.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse asked Saldana why ICE did not respond to the Omaha police department’s request to detain Mejia after he posted his bail.

According to the Omaha World-Herald, Root’s father contacted an Omaha police accident investigator expressing his concern with a county judge’s Feb. 4 decision to set a $50,000 bond for Mejia. The illegal alien’s flight risk was also of concern for Root’s father. Mejia had a record for various traffic infractions and for failure to appear in court. ICE never detained him after those run-ins with the law.

The police investigator contacted ICE requesting an immigration hold for Mejia based on Root’s father’s concerns.

But ICE denied the initial request, and so the investigator and her lieutenant placed a call to an ICE supervisor. Their call was never returned, however, deputy Omaha police chief Dave Baker told the World-Herald.

Saldana gave conflicting excuses for why ICE failed to detain Mejia. During one part of her testimony she claimed that the agency did not have enough time to respond to the Omaha police department’s request. In another part, she said that ICE field officers should have used better judgement in exercising prosecutorial discretion.

“We tried to act,” Saldana told Sasse at one point. “But I believe there was a matter of hours between the time that we were contacted and the actual release.”

“It is very hard for us to get to every inquiry that is made by law enforcement,” she added.

Saldana said later in her testimony that ICE field officers can use prosecutorial discretion to detain illegal aliens if they believe that the person “presents a public safety threat.”

“In this case Sarah Root is dead,” Sasse pointed out. “What if someone kills a U.S. citizen? That doesn’t meet the threshold?”

Saldana responded with a confusing if not inaccurate answer.

“That was after the fact, sir,” she said.

“I understand that that person was injured and had not, when that four hour period of time, seriously injured, but had not passed away until later.”

It is unclear what Saldana meant by that statement. Root died on Jan. 31. Mejia bonded out of jail a week later.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment seeking clarification.

According to Sasse and various news reports, ICE spokesman Shawn Neudauer said last month that the case “did not meet ICE’s enforcement priorities” under President Obama’s Nov. 2014 enforcement priority policy because Mejia “had no prior significant misdemeanor or felony conviction record.”

ICE does not necessarily detain illegal aliens who have pending felony charges, apparently even in cases of felony vehicular homicide.

Obama’s enforcement priority executive action, which has come under intense criticism, places a priority on deporting illegal aliens with felony records, significant misdemeanor convictions, gang ties and those who pose terrorist threats.

He de-prioritized illegal aliens with convictions for drunk driving and lesser assault charges, including even domestic assault.

“It is a judgement that is being exercised by the person based on what they see at the time,” Saldana said of prosecutorial discretion, adding that in the Root case it “could have been exercised a different way.”

“That’s us looking back,” she continued. “I want to look forward so that we don’t have that situation arise again.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ruh Roh, Hillary Worked to Change Policy for her Blackberry

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Clinton tried to change rules to use BlackBerry in secure facility for classified information

FNC: Less than a month after becoming secretary of state, and registering the personal email domain that she would use exclusively for government business, Hillary Clinton’s team aggressively pursued changes to existing State Department security protocols so she could use her BlackBerry in secure facilities for classified information, according to new documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

“Anyone who has any appreciation at all of security, you don’t ask a question like that,”cybersecurity analyst Morgan Wright told Fox News.  “It is contempt for the system, contempt for the rules that are designed to protect the exact kind of information that was exposed through this email set up. “

Current and former intelligence officials grimaced when asked by Fox News about the use of wireless communications devices, such as a BlackBerry, in a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) emphasizing its use would defeat the purpose of the secure facility, and it is standard practice to leave all electronics outside.

A former State Department employee familiar with the Clinton request emphasized security personnel at the time thought the BlackBerry was only for unclassified material, adding their concerns would have been magnified if they had known Clinton’s email account also held classified material.

“When you allow devices like this into a SCIF, you can allow the bad guys to listen in,” Wright added.

A February 17, 2009 email marked SECRET and cleared through the NSA says, “Ms. Mills described the requirement as chiefly driven by Secretary Clinton, who does not use standard computer equipment but relies exclusively on her Blackberry for emailing and remaining in contact on her schedule etc. Ideally all members of her suite would be allowed to use Blackberries for communication in the SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility)”

Cheryl Mills was Clinton’s chief of staff from 2009-13.

The emails, obtained by Judicial Watch as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit also show that a specialized NSA team was brought in to assess the vulnerabilities and feasibility of using wireless communications, including within a secure facility.

The NSA State Department liaison, whose name was withheld, told Mills in a now highly redacted email:  “Sometimes the distinction between what can be done and what is, or is not, recommended to be done differ; this is one of those instances.  (State Department Diplomatic Security) DS’s response illustrates their level of concern based on their extensive professional expertise. “

Clinton never used a State Department issued BlackBerry. It is not clear from the documents whether Clinton and her team went ahead and used their BlackBerrys in SCIFs despite the concerns, including those of the NSA.

A February 18 2009 email from the State Department’s Senior Coordinator for Security Infrastructure, Donald R. Reid, states “…once she (Clinton) got the hang of it, she was hooked, now every day, she feels hamstrung because she has to lock up her BB up.  She does go out several times a day to an office they have crafted for her outside the SCIF and plays email catch-up.  Cheryl Mills and others who are dedicated BB addicts are frustrated because they too are not near their desktop very often during the working day…”

The reference to a secondary office for Clinton appears to conflict with a February statement from the State Department that no stand-alone computer was set up outside Clinton’s main office on the executive floor, known as Mahogany Row, to check her personal account.

On February 25, Fox News pressed the State Department spokesman about a January 2009 email, also obtained by Judicial Watch, between Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy and then Clinton chief of staff Mills where Kennedy said it was a “great idea” to setup a stand-alone PC for Clinton to check her email.

Asked by Fox News, State Department spokesman John Kirby said, “There was no stand-alone computer ever set up.”Fox News has asked Kirby to further clarify his statement.

In January 2009, Clinton signed at least two non-disclosure agreements in which she promised to protect classified information. Since then, more than 2,100 emails containing classified information have been identified, as well as 22 Top Secret that are too damaging to national security to release.

Earlier this week, Judicial Watch presented the federal court in Washington with a list of 7 Clinton aides it wants to question under oath about Clinton’s use of a private email sever when she was secretary of state.

Meanwhile, Judicial Watch is aggressively working on additional subpoenas for interrogatories of those within Hillary’s circle. One issue, in my humble opinion, they omitted Jake Sullivan.

Judicial Watch Submits Proposed Witness List, Discovery Plan to Federal Court in Clinton Email Matter

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today filed a plan for “narrowly tailored discovery” into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email matter with a federal court.  Judicial Watch’s discovery plan seeks the testimony of eight current and former State Department officials, including top State Department official Patrick Kennedy, former State IT employee Bryan Pagliano, and Clinton’s two top aides at the State Department:  Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin.  Judicial Watch’s plan says that “based on information learned during discovery, the deposition of Mrs. Clinton may be necessary” but would only occur with permission by the Court.

During a court hearing on February 23, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan granted Judicial Watch’s motion for discovery into whether the State Department and Clinton deliberately thwarted the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for six years.  The discovery arises in a Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit that seeks records about the controversial employment status of Huma Abedin, former Deputy Chief of Staff to Clinton.  The lawsuit was reopened because of revelations about the clintonemail.com system. (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)).

Judicial Watch seeks testimony from:

Stephen D. Mull (Executive Secretary of the State Department from June 2009 to October 2012 and suggested that Mrs. Clinton be issued a State Department BlackBerry, which would protect her identity and would also be subject to FOIA requests);

Lewis A. Lukens (Executive Director of the Executive Secretariat from 2008 to 2011 and emailed with Patrick Kennedy and Cheryl Smith about setting up a computer for Mrs. Clinton to check her clintonemail.com email account);

Patrick F. Kennedy (Under Secretary for Management since 2007 and the Secretary’s principal advisor on management issues, including technology and information services);

Donald R. Reid (Senior Coordinator for Security Infrastructure, Bureau of Diplomatic Security since 2003 and was involved in early discussions about Mrs. Clinton using her BlackBerry and other devices to conduct official State Department business);

30(b)(6) deposition(s) of Defendant [designated witness(es) for the State Department] regarding the processing of FOIA requests, including Plaintiff’s FOIA request, for emails of Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Abedin both during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State and after;

Cheryl D. Mills (Mrs. Clinton’s Chief of Staff throughout her four years as Secretary of State);

Huma Abedin (Mrs. Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff and a senior advisor to Mrs. Clinton throughout her four years as Secretary of State and also had an email account on clintonemail.com); and

Bryan Pagliano (State Department Schedule C employee who has been reported to have serviced and maintained the server that hosted the “clintonemail.com” system during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State four years as secretary).

With respect to testimony of Clinton, the Judicial Watch court filing states:

Based on information learned during discovery, the deposition of Mrs. Clinton may be necessary.  If [Judicial Watch] believes Mrs. Clinton’s testimony is required, it will request permission from the Court at the appropriate time.

Judicial Watch also seeks court approval of written questions requiring answers under oath by the State Department:

Who was responsible for processing and/or responding to record requests, including FOIA requests, concerning emails of Mrs. Clinton and other employees of the Office of the Secretary;

Who was responsible for the inventorying or other accounting of Mrs. Clinton’s and Ms. Abedin’s emails, records, and information;

Who was responsible for responding to Plaintiff’s FOIA request from the date of submission to the present; and

Which State Department officials and employees had and/or used an account on the clintonemail.com system to conduct official government business.

Judicial Watch also seeks testimony from a 30 (b)(6) witness or witnesses who can provide testimony on behalf of the State Department on the following issues:

the creation or establishment of the clintonemail.com system as well as any maintenance, service, or support provided by the State Department of that system;

the knowledge or awareness of State Department officials and employees about the existence and use of the clintonemail.com system;

any instructions or directions given to State Department officials and employees about communicating with Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Abedin via email;

any inquiries into Mrs. Clinton’s use of the clintonemail.com system as well as any discussions about responding to such inquiries or publicly revealing the existence and use of the clintonemail.com system to the public; and

the inventorying or other accounting of Mrs. Clinton’s and Ms. Abedin’s email upon their departure from the State Department.

The Judicial Watch plan requests only eight weeks to conduct the requested depositions.  Judge Sullivan will rule on Judicial Watch’s proposed discovery plan after April 15.

“This discovery will help Judicial Watch get all of the facts behind Hillary Clinton’s and the Obama State Department’s thwarting of FOIA so that the public can be sure that all of the emails from her illicit email system are reviewed and released to the public as the law requires,” stated Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton.

FOIA: U.S. Airport Employees Ties to Terror

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US airport employees had ties to terror, report says

FNC: A dozen employees at three U.S. airports were identified as having potential ties to terrorists, according to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by FOX 25’s Washington Bureau.

But those 12 workers are just a fraction of 73 private employees at nearly 40 airports across the nation flagged for ties to terror in a June 2015 report from the Homeland Security Inspector General’s Office.

FOIA requests identified two employees at Logan International Airport in Boston, Mass., four employees at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Georgia and six employees at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Washington.

The 2015 report did not reveal where the 73 workers were employed.

The Transportation Security Administration did not have access to the terrorism-related database during the vetting process for those employees, according to the report.

The TSA pushed back on the report as a whole, however, in a statement to FOX25.

“There is no evidence to support the suggestion by some that 73 DHS employees are on the U.S. government’s consolidated terrorist watch list,” national spokesman Michael England wrote in a statement.

*****

Meanwhile, perhaps ‘some’ of the items in the Senate Gang of 8 Immigration Reform Bill should have been passed…..

Outmoded U.S. immigration system poses security risk: study

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. immigration authorities’ lack of progress in automating their systems is compromising border security, making it more difficult to process people seeking to get into the country, a report said on Tuesday.

“We may be admitting individuals who wish to do us harm, or who do not meet the requirements for a visa,” John Roth, the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security, told a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing.

The report from Roth’s office, released on Tuesday, said immigration officials expect it will take $1 billion and another three years, 11 years into the effort, to move from a paper-based system to automated benefit processing.

U.S. lawmakers have been calling for a tighter visa system since the November Paris attacks and December San Bernardino shootings. In Paris, some of the militants were Europeans radicalized after visiting Syria, and a California attacker had been admitted on a fiance visa.

They want to ensure that potential militants cannot enter the United States under programs, such as the “visa waiver” granted citizens of most western countries.

Roth told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that workers processing millions of applications for immigrant benefits work with a system “more suited to an office environment from 1950 rather than 2016.”

He said some green cards and other immigration documents had been mailed to wrong addresses, or printed with incorrect names, which meant they could have fallen into the wrong hands.

The poor quality of electronic data that is kept makes it more difficult to engage in data matching, to root out fraud and identify security risks, Roth said.

Shipping, storing and handling over 20 million immigrant files costs more than $300 million a year, he added.

The report also said the EB-5 visa program, which admits investors who spend $500,000 or $1 million in the United States, depending on the area, may not be subject to close enough scrutiny to ensure Americans’ safety.

The current system also allows “known human traffickers” to use work and fiance visas to bring victims into the country, the report said.

Republican Senator Ron Johnson, the committee’s chairman, said the modernization was too slow and expensive. “It should not take years and years and billions and billions of dollars,” he said.