Venezuela Now Failed, Neighboring Countries?

Posted on May 22, 2016May 22, 2016 by Denise Simon

Beyond Venezuela, Puerto Rico has also failed and thousands from both countries are fleeing with the help of churches. Where are they going? Yup…we are experiencing another incursion. The questions begin, is the United States going to bail out Puerto Rico? Has China made a deal with Maduro of Venezuela for oil?

Venezuela is collapsing and the military just got involved

Demonstrators clash with police during a protest against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s Government in Caracas, 18 May 2016. (EPA)

The president deployed troops this weekend claiming the US threatens to invade, as tensions escalate in the Latin American state.

By Ben Winsor

SBS: Troops have been deployed around Venezuela’s capital of Caracas and in ‘every strategic region’ this weekend during the country’s largest ever military exercise.

The government claims the exercises are in response to the threat of invasion from the United States, but the real reason for the government’s state of emergency declaration is likely much closer to home.

For over a year now, Venezuelans have been suffering under an ever deepening economic and political crisis.

Bare supermarket shelves are common. Vital medicines are in short supply. Crime is rising. Blackouts occur daily. To save electricity, the government asked public sector workers to only show up on Mondays and Tuesdays – and this could soon extend to private companies as well.

All this in one of the largest oil producing nations on earth.

After the 2013 death of the country’s fiery socialist president, Hugo Chávez, Venezuela has been led by the increasingly unpopular former Vice President, Nicolas Maduro. Since then, economic mismanagement and a massive decline in oil revenues have led to a spiraling crisis.

The president, outnumbered by opposition parties, faces violent protests and a push for new elections. A March poll showed more than 60% of Venezuelans think Mr Maduro should resign or be removed.

It was against this backdrop that the Defence Minister appeared on state television this week.

“Venezuela is threatened,” he said. “This is the first time we are carrying out an exercise of this nature in the country. In terms of national reach, it’s going to be in every strategic region.”

The statement came after the United States – somewhat provocatively – declared Venezuela a national security threat and sanctioned officials they claimed were responsible for corruption and human rights abuses. US Prosecutors have also charged a number of former officials with trafficking cocaine.

President Maduro claims this is evidence of an attempted coup, citing the threat of a US attack when he declared a state of emergency. National security provisions now allow the government to impose tougher security measures, take control of basic goods and services, and distribute and sell food.

Maduro has also made what appear to be anti-democratic statements, telling foreign journalists that parliament has “lost political validity” and “it’s a matter of time before it disappears.”

A handout made available by the Miraflores Press shows President Nicolas Maduro waving as he takes part in an event in Caracas, Venezuela, 19 May 2016.

It didn’t have to be this way

Venezuela was once comparatively wealthy. A decade of high oil prices enabled President Chávez to embark on populist social welfare programs.

According to the World Bank, economic growth and resource redistribution under Chávez led to a significant decline in poverty. Inequality in Venezuela fell to one of the lowest rates in the region.

But the country’s success was built on a house of cards – oil prices.

In 2014 prices were over $100 USD a barrel, now a barrel trades at $48, having earlier dropped to around $30. The collapse has accelerated economic decline in the country, where government run businesses have been accused of corruption and inefficiency.

“They made the assumption that oil prices would remain high and they didn’t use the fat years wisely,” an international development official told SBS, “[they] did the opposite of diversifying the economy, throttling the private sector.”

“Ironic that they demonise the US – yet the US is the biggest buyer of their crude,” they said.

Meat shelves are empty at a supermarket in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, on March 3, 2015.

Colombian tensions

It’s not just the US which has come in for criticism – President Maduro has blamed immigrants from neighbouring Colombia for the economic crisis.

Last year, hundreds of Colombians in the border region were expelled and the border closed. The president accused immigrants of smuggling and paramilitary activity.

“Nonsense, they were mostly poor families,” a diplomatic source in Colombia told SBS.

President Maduro’s actions have been testing the patience and restraint of Colombia, which last week hosted an event bringing together almost all of Colombia’s former presidents in support of the Venezuelan opposition.

Some of the former leaders usually wouldn’t talk to each other, the source said. “Maduro is so disliked that he brought them together,” they said.

The event featured, Lilian Tintori, the wife of a jailed Venezuelan opposition leader, who yesterday ran a “Rescue Venezuela” campaign urging Colombians to donate basic supplies and medicines.

Her husband, Leopold López, was imprisoned for inciting violence, a move criticised by Amnesty International and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Colombians line up to donate medical supplies and diapers during the “Rescue Venezuela” campaign in Bogota, Colombia, Thursday, May 19, 2016.

The military option

With the crisis only deepening, the role of the military may prove significant.

With his militarized declaration of a national emergency, the 53-year-old president appears to believe the armed forces will be useful in holding power.

Unlike President Chávez before him, President Maduro does not come from a military background. He has nevertheless sought to keep top brass on side.

According to Alexandra Ulmer for Reuters, the military controls roughly a third of ministerial posts, is regularly praised by President Maduro, and has been given control of an oil services company.

General Vladimir Padrino, chief of the armed forces, is President Maduro’s Defence Minister. In his statements on television he appears to be backing the president’s crisis strategy.

Members of the Armed Forces including national reserve members take part in military maneuvers at a western district in Caracas, Venezuela, 20 May 2016.

The opposition also believes the army could be key.

Reuters reported opposition leader Henrique Capriles as this week claiming he had “high-placed allies” in the army.

“I want to tell the armed forces that the hour of truth is coming,” he said. “You must decide whether you’re with the constitution, or Maduro.”

The National Assembly speaker, Henry Ramos Allup, has also called for a resolution.

“We don’t want a bloodbath or a coup d’etat,” AFP reported him as saying.

Whatever the resolution, Venezuelans will continue to suffer the consequences of political and economic turmoil.

In the The Atlanic, Venezuelan writers Moisés Naím and Francisco Toro said what their country was experiencing was “monstrously unique.”

“It’s nothing less than the collapse of a large, wealthy, seemingly modern, seemingly democratic nation just a few hours’ flight from the United States.”

Has Jeh Johnson of DHS Stood in Line at TSA?

Posted on May 19, 2016May 19, 2016 by Denise Simon

the TSA also cannot publicly point to many significant attacks thwarted at airport gates, leading experts to insist that its protocols should be considered largely ineffective.

Rafi Sela, president of international transportation security consultancy AR Challenges, said the agency’s nearly $8 billion budget is largely being misspent on a misguided model. Politico

TheVerge: Security lines at airports around the US are growing longer and longer. And that’s infuriating airlines, airports, passengers, and our elected officials alike. The long lines at the TSA-staffed security checkpoints are delaying fights and causing people to miss their planes. But ironically, passengers and airlines — the two groups most affected — are the ones who can do the least about it.

“Logistically, we don’t have the opportunity to hold flights for hours,” Ross Feinstein, a spokesperson for American Airlines, said in an interview with The Verge. Passengers “get to the gate too late and they can’t get rebooked for days or a week. That’s our concern, the impact it’s having on our customers.” Naturally, frustrated customers take their anger out on airline employees or, increasingly, airline Twitter accounts. “We see it every day on social media. They’re very upset, and our employees are very concerned.”

But the airlines can’t fix the problem. Security lines are handled by the TSA and individual airports. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is in charge of JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark airports — three of the busiest in the country — recently sent a letter to the TSA urging it to fix the problems and threatening to use private security contractors to handle security screening.

hiring private contractors to handle screening isn’t a crazy idea

Hiring private security isn’t some crazy idea. Though most airport security checkpoints are manned by TSA agents, there are a handful of airports enrolled in the Screening Partnership Program (SPP), a TSA effort that allows private security contractors to screen passengers under federal supervision. It’s a program championed by Congressman John Mica (R-FL), a longtime TSA foe. There are nearly two dozen airports enrolled in SPP, including SFO in San Francisco, and Mica says it’s the way of the future.

“The TSA is destined to fail in its current structure,” Mica told The Verge. “It’s a huge bureaucracy.” The TSA is currently funded for 45,000 screeners, up from 16,000 when the Administration was formed in 2002. “We have 13,000 more administrative personnel, of which 4,000 are located within a few miles of the US Capital making an average of $104,000 per year. Incompetence highly paid, screeners not well paid.”

Mica says that TSA is staffed with government bureaucrats who have no incentive to execute well and are focused on “hassling innocent passengers.” He says the agency knows how many passengers will be passing through an airport checkpoint weeks in advance and that it still fails to “staff to traffic” — scheduling enough screeners to properly handle the number of passengers.

Related: TSA, an ‘abominable failure’

His solution is to have TSA set protocols, requirements, and guidelines, and have private contractors handle the day-to-day passenger screenings. Both the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy use private security contractors at military bases and nuclear installations. If it’s good enough for nuclear plants, Mica asks, why isn’t it good enough for our airports?

Unsurprisingly, not everyone in Congress agrees. One of them is Rep. Donald M. Payne, Jr. (D-NJ), who is on the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security and whose district includes Newark airport. “I think TSA is more than capable, if it has the manpower to do the job,” Payne told The Verge. “TSA, when given the manpower and proper utilization, has done an outstanding job and there has not been another attack on an American airport since TSA has been on the job.”

And that’s true. But luck may be playing a role. A leaked report showed that TSA failed to detect weapons and explosives 95 percent of the time in an internal Homeland Security test. A Homeland Security Inspector General’s report called an $878 million screening program, meant to detect suspicious behaviors at checkpoints, “expensive and ineffective.” That program reportedly failed to detect a single terrorist.

morale is a big problem at the TSA

It’s not easy to be on the front lines for the TSA agents either. “Morale is a big problem with the TSA. It’s a thankless job,” says Payne. “All you’re dealing with are people who arrive at the airport late, that want to move through the line expeditiously, and weren’t necessarily there when they should have been. But now they want the whole process to be expedited for their benefit. Sometimes it just doesn’t work that way.”

TSA, for its part, puts most of the blame on the increased number of passengers and on the fact that travelers use more carry-ons because of airline baggage fees. The airlines disagree. “There has not been a huge surge,” says Feinstein. “There are more people traveling, yes, but it’s around a 4 percent increase [over last year]. I don’t think anyone saw two-and-a-half hour wait times last summer. It’s not proportional. It doesn’t equate to a 500 percent increase in wait times.”

“Encouraging passengers to check more bags will not help and would actually exacerbate current checked baggage screening issues that are resulting in passengers missing their connections and having their bags delayed,” said Melanie Hinton, a spokesperson for Airlines for America, an industry trade group. “Even at Midway [Airport in Chicago], served predominantly by an airline that doesn’t charge bag fees, wait times are in excess of 90 minutes, further demonstrating that this problem is not a result of bag fees,” she said. (Southwest Airlines, the largest carrier at Midway, doesn’t charge fees for checked baggage.)

TSA refused our requests for an interview.

the entire industry is frustrated

Some airlines are trying to ease the dire situation by deploying their own forces. American Airlines, for example, has assigned employees to help manage non-screening functions at security checkpoints in an attempt to free up more TSA employees for screening. They’re handling things like telling flyers to remove their shoes or throw out water bottles, as well as moving plastic trays from one end of the security line to the other. But that’s only a short-term solution, and something of a last-ditch attempt at that.

“The entire industry is frustrated,” says Feinstein. “We have issues at DFW, LAX, Denver, Newark. It’s not isolated to a hub, it’s across the board.”

The situation isn’t likely to improve any time soon. Peak travel season begins around Memorial Day and really gets going in mid-June. “This isn’t even peak summer and we can’t rebook passengers on these flights,” Feinstein says. What we’re seeing with the long lines “really does concern us.”

SCOTUS: Illegals can be Deported for Minor Crimes

Posted on May 19, 2016May 19, 2016 by Denise Simon

High court rules non-U.S. citizens can be deported if convicted of minor crimes

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court is making it easier for the government to deport or otherwise remove people who are not U.S. citizens if they are convicted of seemingly minor state crimes.

The justices ruled 5-3 Thursday that a man who spent 23 years living in New York as a lawful permanent resident can be barred from re-entering the country because of a 1999 conviction for attempted arson.

George Luna Torres had served one day in prison and five years of probation after pleading guilty in state court but otherwise had a clean record since his parents brought him into the country from the Dominican Republic in 1983.

But the government argued that the state law conviction was equivalent to an aggravated felony for purposes of immigration law.

Under immigration law, a lawful permanent resident can be deported or denied re-entry to the United States after being convicted of an aggravated felony. Those offenses include certain federal crimes as well as state offenses that share the same elements.

Luna argued that the federal crime of arson is different from the state version because it must involve interstate commerce.

Writing for the court, Justice Elena Kagan said that is simply a technical difference needed to give Congress authority over arson crimes and not a meaningful distinction. She said Luna’s argument would also exclude more serious state crimes, such as kidnapping, from affecting immigration status simply because a kidnapper failed to cross state lines.

“The national, local or foreign character of a crime has no bearing on whether it is grave enough to warrant an alien’s automatic removal,” Kagan said.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the majority was ignoring a strict textual reading of the federal law, which includes interstate commerce as part of the crime.

“An element is an element, and I would not so lightly strip a federal statute of one,” Sotomayor said.

She was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer. *****

Mexican Airline Offering Migrants Free Airfare to Texas Border

Two foreign airline companies have begun offering steep discounts to Cuban migrants–set for border crossing into western Texas–as thousands rush to the United States in the aftermath of thawing relations with the communist island. Children under age 11 fly free of charge.

The Panamanian government confirmed to the Associated Press Wednesday that Panama City-based Copa Airlines and Mexico’s Global Air are now offering roughly 30 percent discounts for adult Cuban migrants hoping to cross into the United States with children enjoying complimentary seats. Since May 9, the airlines have reported that almost 2,500 have been shuttled to Ciudad Juarez for easy crossing into El Paso thereafter. An estimated 1,300 await flights booked in the weeks ahead under the promotion. More here from Breitbart.

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Immigrants must pass stringent eligibility requirements in order to naturalize. Naturalization is not an easy process. In order to become a U.S. citizen, an immigrant must:

First reside in the United States continuously for five years as a Legal Permanent Resident (three years in the case of the spouse of a U.S. citizen).
Be of “good moral character,” as determined by a criminal background check with the FBI.
Be proficient in spoken and written English.
Demonstrate a basic understanding of U.S. government and history.
Take an Oath of Allegiance to the United States, its Constitution and laws, and renounce allegiance to any other nation.

Latino immigrants applying for U.S. citizenship in record numbers thanks to Trump

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign may actually be empowering the Latino vote.

No, really. At least that’s what a number of non-profit organizations and even the White House are working toward.

The Republican candidate’s harsh words toward immigrants and repeated campaign promises to deport millions of undocumented people and build an impermeable wall along the U.S.-Mexico border immediately propelled him to the front of the GOP pack, but it’s also driving a larger number of immigrants than usual to seek U.S. citizenship – and have a voice in whether or not Trump wins the White House this November.

Hortensia Villegas is a Colorado mother of two who immigrated from Mexico legally nearly 10 years ago. She never felt the need to become a citizen, she told the New York Times, until Trump rose in the polls.

“I want to vote so Donald Trump won’t win,” Villegas, 32, told the paper at a Denver union hall where volunteers were helping hundreds of immigrants to fill out citizenship applications. “He doesn’t like us.”

And Villegas is not alone. Her sister and parents, as well as the parents of her husband – Miguel Garfío, who is a U.S. citizen by virtue of having been born in Colorado –are part of the crush of Latino immigrants who are trying to naturalize in time to vote this year.

Applications for citizenship were up in the six months through the end of January by 14 percent over the same time frame the previous year, the Times reported. Activists say that the numbers are growing by the week, estimating that the total applications for fiscal year 2016, which lasts until the end of September, could wind up close to a million.

That’s a 20 percent increase over previous years.

Traditionally, Mexican immigrants have sought citizenship at lower rates than others – according to Pew Research Center data, 36 percent of eligible Mexicans in recent years have become citizens, compared to 68 percent of immigrants overall.

That may be changing, thanks to Trump.

FoxLatino: Maria Polanco, a Honduran migrant who has lived in Nevada for 26 years but is only now applying for citizenship, told the Guardian recently, “We [immigrants] are not perfect, but the majority of us are not what Donald Trump says. We came looking for better opportunities for us and our kids. My great pride is that my daughter graduated from college – I don’t think she could’ve done that in my country.”

“People who are eligible are really feeling the urgency to get out there,” Tara Raghuveer, the deputy director of the National Partnership for New Americans, told the Times. “They are worried by the prospect that someone who is running for president has said hateful things.”

“This is a big deal,” Jocelyn Sida of Mi Familia Vota, told the Guardian. “We as Latinos are always being told that we’re taking jobs or we’re anchor babies, and all these things are very hurtful. It’s getting to the point where folks are frustrated with that type of rhetoric. They realize the only way they can stop this is by getting involved civically.”

Labor unions and NGOs like the National Partnership are the main actors providing assistance to those of the 8.8 million non-citizen immigrants who may want to naturalize, but they are not alone.

The White House launched a national campaign in September to help people apply for citizenship, setting up “citizen corners” at public libraries and recruiting prominent immigrants like 1980s pitching star Fernando Valenzuela and Spanish chef José Andrés for ads.

Last week, $10 million dollars in federal grants were promised to NGOs helping immigrants through the application process.

Many conservatives see it as a blatant effort to expand Democratic support in battleground states with large numbers of immigrants like Florida, Colorado and Nevada.

“I certainly don’t care what party they register with; I just want them to become citizens,” said Leon Rodriguez, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), told the times.

The candidate himself has long suggested that he’ll win the Latino vote, and his campaign spokesperson, Hope Hicks, told the Times, “No one will benefit more from Mr. Trump’s pro-worker immigration reforms than the millions of immigrants who already call America home.”

Mary Victorio, 22, a Mexican-born student at the University of Colorado Denver, told the newspaper that while she didn’t support him politically, she was grateful to Trump. “He gave us that extra push we needed to get ready to vote, to prove to people who see us negatively they are wrong.”

Dubai’s Floating Homes

Posted on May 19, 2016May 19, 2016 by Denise Simon

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Surrounded by 300 deserted man-made islands, Dubai’s newest real-estate wonder has all the amenities of a luxury hotel — plus views of the bottom of the sea.

The Floating Seahorse villas feature submerged bedrooms whose curtains open up to transplanted coral and the waters of the Persian Gulf. Wide-mouthed groupers and other fish dart past its over 15-centimeter-thick (6-inch-thick) acrylic windows.

In this Monday, May 9, 2016 photo, clients visit a full-scale mock-up of the Floating Seahorse home on the waters of The Dubai World in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The Seahorses, part of an ambitious larger hotel development called The Heart of Europe, seeks to attract something that sounds even more grandiose. That’s saving The World, as the long-stalled Earth-shaped island project off Dubai’s coast is called. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)

But the Seahorses, part of an ambitious larger hotel development called The Heart of Europe — which will be built on reclaimed islands — have an even more grandiose-sounding aim. They want to save The World, as the long-stalled Earth-shaped island project off the Dubai coast is called, by providing a major development that jumpstarts building on its other sandy islands.

“We wanted to be the first one. We always knew it’s a risk and a chance,” said Josef Kleindienst, the chairman of Kleindienst Group, which is building the Floating Seahorses and the Heart of Europe.

He added: “The World has started to move.”

Dubai is already home to the world’s tallest building, an indoor ski slope and man-made islands viewable from space. But while the machine-crafted frond of the Palm Jumeirah archipelago flourished, The World stopped spinning with Dubai’s financial crisis of 2009.

Together with several other state-linked firms, Nakheel, the government-owned builder behind both projects, found itself at the time unable to repay billions of dollars in loans. Those defaults triggered a collapse that forced neighboring oil-rich Abu Dhabi to give Dubai a $10 billion bailout.

Other projects have restarted in the years since, nudged by improving investor confidence and Dubai hosting the upcoming 2020 World Expo, or world’s fair. But The World project as envisioned by Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, has languished.

Today, only two of the 300 islands are being actively used. One is a day-use beach resort on Lebanon island, another is an island with a luxury villa and a helipad believed to be used by Dubai’s ruling family. The Dubai Media Office did not respond to a request for comment about the island.

In a statement, Nakheel acknowledged only two islands are developed, but said that financial deals involving the project are resuming on the project.

“We continue to see a renewed interest in The World, and have reached settlement agreements with third-party developers on payments worth over 1 billion dirhams ($272 million), allowing work there to recommence,” it said, without elaborating.

Some construction material and machinery can be seen entering The World by boat from Dubai’s coastline. Earth-moving equipment rattles over the sandy dunes of one of the first islands after The World’s circular breakwater, which offers the project its globe-like shape and stills its currents.

The rest of the islands are deserted until reaching the dock of the development run by Kleindienst, a former Austrian police officer and one-time member of the far-right Freedom Party who has written about making his fortune in stocks. He also wrote a book about his party obtaining classified police files on its political opponents, something its leaders denied in an ensuing political scandal in Austria in 2000.

At the dock, a sign painted in black, red and yellow announces in German: “Welcome to Germany: Passport Control.” Behind it, the initial cement-block frames of two planned Bentley-branded villas stand on Sweden island. Plans call for 10 similar villas to be built there, as well as hotels, restaurants, bars and other attractions on empty surrounding islands as part of The Heart of Europe development.

The real star, however, is the Floating Seahorse anchored alone in a nearby channel.

Weighing 240 tons, the villa on the sea smells of the Myanmar teak adorning its walls. A wet bar on its top floor is both open-air and air conditioned, with a hot tub. Below, the glass walls of its living room and dining room open out on blue beach chairs and netting allowing a look at the water below.

Below deck, automated curtains in the bedroom open out onto an under-the-sea view. Coral transplanted from the site of the Burj Al Arab, Dubai’s iconic sail-shaped luxury hotel, sits on the lip of the Seahorse under shade, drawing the sea life.

“It’s amazing. It attracts a lot of fish,” said Gianni Malerba, the director of hospitality operations for The Heart of Europe. “It fits very well with the ‘wow factor’ of Dubai.”

So far, Kleindienst said his organization has sold Floating Seahorses to both people who will use them and others who will rent them out as part of the planned hotels at the site. The latest models of the Seahorses have a list price of 12 million dirhams ($3.2 million).

Kleindienst said they plan to open the heart-shaped St. Petersburg island by October, with dozens of Seahorses connected to water, electricity and other utilities on the island via gangplanks.

For now though, the area runs off a generator and the model sits alone, drawing curious customers. Dubai’s skyscrapers are visible on the horizon.

“If this would happen in any other country, even if it is done in 50 years, nobody would consider it as delayed,” Kleindienst said. “Only in Dubai, everyone expects it needs to be done in one day.”

Panama Papers: Soros Beyond the Reach of Scrutiny

Posted on May 17, 2016May 17, 2016 by Denise Simon

Perspective of Soros political donations in 2012

May 2016: George Soros donates $8 million to boost Hillary

2014 was the year that launched the full ‘climate change’ mission.

TheHill: Adviser to President Obama John Podesta met with billionaires Tom Steyer and George Soros for a lunchtime meeting at the White House in February, according to meeting records. The White House visitor documents show that shortly after Steyer had committed to spend upward of $100 million on the 2014 election cycle for environmentally friendly candidates who helped put climate change on the map, he met with Podesta and Soros. The three met to discuss global climate change negotiations, and the process of the 2015 United Nations climate change convention to be held in Paris, a White House official told The Hill in an email.

The administration is looking to build momentum going into the talks where 120 nations will work to form a global climate treaty, and set emission reduction targets. President Obama will attend the UN climate summit in New York next month to build on negotiations.

Records show that Steyer met with Podesta again in March. The administration has received criticism from Republicans for its ties with the hedge fund manager turned climate activist.

Panama Papers reveal George Soros’ deep money ties to secretive weapons, intel investment firm

FNC: Billionaire George Soros, who has spent millions of dollars financing Democrats and left-wing causes, used a controversial Panamanian law firm to establish a web of offshore investment partnerships that operate around the world and out of the scrutiny of U.S. regulators, according to leaked documents.

The so-called Panama Papers, a trove of 11.5 million financial documents tracing the Mossack Fonseca law firm’s efforts to help politicians, celebrities and criminals shield their money from taxes, contain links to Soros, who funds the journalism group that is disseminating the information. So far, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has been silent on its benefactor’s ties to the law firm.

Three offshore investment vehicles controlled by Soros are catalogued in the Panama Papers. Soros Finance, Inc. was incorporated in Panama; Soros Holdings Limited was set up in the British Virgin Islands and a limited partnership called Soros Capital was created in Bermuda.

The laws of Panama, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands and a score of “tax havens” allow foreign firms to hide ownership of cash, real estate and other assets from securities regulators and tax collectors in the countries where they are physically headquartered.

On May 9, client data stolen from the Mossack Fonseca law firm in Panama was published online by the ICIJ as part of its Offshore Leaks database. The searchable database contains a portion of the offshore financial records given to the journalists by anonymous whistle-blowers since 2013; it does not include leaked emails and other explanatory data that ICIJ reporters use to write about the offshore financial holdings of newsworthy individuals.

News stories about offshore bank accounts revealed by the Panama Papers brought down Iceland’s prime minister last month. Heads of state, Hollywood stars, heiresses, arms dealers and drug lords who established secret offshore companies and bank accounts are outed almost daily by the ICIJ. Incorporating a business offshore is not illegal, but President Obama has called for the tax loophole to be sealed shut, saying everyone should “pay their fair share.”

Record of Soros Holdings Ltd. in the Panama Papers | Graphiq

Soros, 86, is worth an estimated $25 billion. His Open Society Institute is one of ICIJ’s main funders, granting it $1.5 million last year. The Panama Papers data reveals only the tip of Soros’ offshore iceberg, the Quantum Group of Funds. The ICIJ’s leader, journalist Gerard Ryle, said he had not noticed Soros’ companies in the Offshore Leaks database until FoxNews.com called the matter to his attention.

“I suspect we would have more information [on Soros] because the public database … does not contain the underlying data,” Ryle said in an email FoxNews.com.

FoxNews.com has requested access to that data.

Because it is based offshore, the Quantum Group of Funds is not normally subject to regulation by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. But in the mid-1990s, Soros Capital bought several SEC-regulated firms, an act which required it to disclose the basic design of the Quantum network of interlocking offshore companies and bank accounts that shield Soros’ billions.

Soros Capital set up an offshore company in the Cayman Islands for the purpose of investing private equity with the Carlyle Group, alongside members of Saudi Arabia’s Bin Laden family. Carlyle’s partners include ex-heads of state and former CIA officials. The private equity partnership specializes in buying and selling weapons manufacturing and intelligence gathering companies with government and military contracts and it also uses secret offshore companies to conduct business.

Offshore Leaks does not include SEC information, but it reveals Soros Capital as a major investor and corporate officer of AIF (Indonesia) Limited. AIF combines private investments with public funding contributed by Asian governments to develop massive infrastructure projects. The database links Soros Capital to Dongya Ports Limited, owned by a tangle of offshore entities.

Record of Soros Finance Inc. in the Panama Papers | Graphiq

Soros is certainly newsworthy. In 1992, the self-styled philosopher-economist nearly bankrupted the Bank of England by manipulating the price of the pound. Five years later, he exacerbated a regional economic crisis by betting against Thai and Malaysian currencies. Billions of dollars in profits from Soros’ currency-pummeling moves flowed through the Quantum Group of Funds.

Soros is the sole proprietor of Manhattan-based Soros Fund Management LLC, which controls his offshore empire. In July 2011, Soros closed the multibillion-dollar fund to all but members of his immediate family, allowing him to escape the Dodd-Frank Act mandate for hedge funds to disclose investors and conflicts of interest. A few months later, Soros lost the final appeal of his 2002 conviction by a French court for insider trading. But he remains a potent political force.

In 2014, Soros donated $381 million of Quantum Group of Funds shares to his Open Society philanthropy. The New York-based charitable foundation supports hundreds of advocacy groups, academic research and investigative journalists that align with Soros’ oft-stated goal to promote globalized capitalism and democracy.

On the other hand, the Panama Papers’ leaker, known as John Doe, said that he had exposed the vast cluster of offshore firms and bank accounts, because “income inequality” and “massive, pervasive corruption” are “the defining issues of our time.”

Soros’ offshore companies may not pay U.S. taxes (his spokesperson, Michael Vachon, declined to answer that question), but the billionaire donates lots of money to Democrats who write and enforce the tax laws. In the 2004 presidential election, he contributed $24 million to George Bush’s opponents. He is the largest donor to Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the presidency, plunking down $8 million, so far. He has donated “up to $1 million” to the Clinton Foundation. And Secretary of State Clinton’s emails reveal that Soros has lobbied her on behalf of his interests, which encircle the globe, mostly in the dark.

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There is more, and it deals with Hedge Funds, Soros and even political action committee cooperatives.

HuffPo: On the list of the largest U.S. companies by market value, those in the $30 billion to $45 billion range are household names: Capital One Financial, DirecTV, Phillips 66, Yahoo.

But far fewer people know much, if anything, about Citadel Multi-Strategy Equities Master Fund Ltd., with a gross asset value of $33 billion, or Elliott International, L.P., at $30.8 billion, or AQR Style Premia Master Account, valued at $16.6 billion. All are hedge funds organized under the laws of the Cayman Islands.

They’re also just a handful of the funds under the control of some of the biggest political donors in the nation: Kenneth C. Griffin, Paul Singer and Cliff Asness.

Hedge funds — partnerships of big-money investors that, put simply, try to beat the market by pursuing riskier-than-normal investments, often using debt and other forms of leverage — have boomed in recent years, with many producing huge financial gains for an elite pool of individuals, pension funds or other repositories of great wealth. Private and exclusive, the funds are not for the average American; often, the customers are not Americans at all.

The industry has made certain Americans very, very rich, though — and has helped create a new class of megadonors in U.S. politics. Besides Griffin (of Citadel Advisors LLC), Singer (Elliott Management Corp.) and Asness (AQR Capital Management), they include Robert Mercer and James Simons (Renaissance Technologies), Donald Sussman (Paloma Partners) and Seth Klarman (Baupost Group). These seven individuals who lead six hedge fund firms have together given at least $60 million to candidates, super PACs and political party committees since the beginning of 2015.

(The fund once managed by George Soros, another major industry donor, is now a family office and has no SEC Form ADV on file.)

The release of the Panama Papers has brought fresh reminders of the stunning amount of wealth held offshore, but that’s a world these donors and their firms navigate routinely as part of a rarefied investment community far more wealthy and sophisticated than the market to which most people have access.

OpenSecrets Blog analyzed hundreds of pages of reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by the six firms. The reports give new insight into these donors whose money is increasingly dominating political giving, thus allowing them disproportionate access to policymakers.

All told, the value of their 151 hedge funds is as high as $390 billion. Most of that is in the funds based overseas, mostly in the Cayman Islands. Of the 151 funds in the firms’ SEC reports, 67 are organized under the laws of the Caymans, where the firms manage some $282 billion in current asset value. About $103 billion of the wealth is held in Delaware-based hedge funds.

The six management companies reported that they themselves owned stakes in the hedge funds totaling approximately $38 billion. Don’t even think about trying to buy in with a few hundred thousand you may have lying around: The average minimum ante for an “accredited investor” is $5.4 million.

A quarter of the funds report greater than 50 percent ownership by non-U.S. investors (which could include offshore holding companies and other entities), and foreign investors own at least part of 41 percent of the funds. By far, most of the funds catering to these offshore entities are organized in the Cayman Islands.

In the presidential contest, hedge fund managers have played an enormous role in plumping up the coffers of several candidates’ super PACs. Sussman, for instance, who has given out more than $7 million this cycle in all, has contributed $4 million to Priorities USA Action, the group backing presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Sussman and Simons combined have given Priorities $16 million in the past two cycles. (Priorities supported President Barack Obama’s second campaign for the White House before it pivoted to Clinton.)

Mercer, who socked $13 million into Keep the Promise I, one of the super PACs supporting Sen. Ted Cruz‘s (R-Texas) recently suspended run for the White House, is the largest individual donor to super PACs so far this cycle. Griffin provided $5 million to Conservative Solutions PAC, which backed Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio‘s presidential bid before he dropped out; add in gifts from Singer, Asness and Klarman and the total jumps to $11.6 million.

These seven major hedge fund industry donors whose firms filed Form ADVs with the SEC in recent months have made $135 million in political contributions since 1989, as far back as the Center for Responsive Politics’ data go. But it’s only since 2010, when super PACs came into being in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, that the big money has really flowed.

Every firm but Renaissance has funds organized in a tax haven like the Caymans or Bermuda. But their offshore dealings don’t mean they’re engaging in tax evasion or anything similarly nefarious, says Steven Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and an expert on tax policy. Rosenthal wrote in 2012 that while managers can benefit from organizing their investment vehicles overseas, they often do so to cater to special kinds of clients like tax-exempt entities and foreign investors.

The larger point, though — rather than any illegal or hidden activity by the hedge fund managers — remains one of a few staggeringly affluent individuals investing heavily in the political system, giving many times what the average American could imagine contributing.

Their largess, in turn, could have an impact on how the government treats the rich — especially when it comes to the tax code. Capital gains tax rates levied on investment returns, for instance, are far lower than taxes on income. Indeed “tax issues affecting hedge funds” was one of the top issues listed on Renaissance Technologies’ lobbying reports in 2015, for example. (Sussman, the Priorities USA Action donor, it should be noted, has supported closing the carried interest loophole that allows hedge fund managers’ income to be taxed at the capital gains rate.)

“The world of capital is divided between those who have it and those who don’t,” Rosenthal said. “we’re taxing capital lightly. We tax labor fully. And so I think it fuels a lot of inequality.”

“I think the problem is how we look at capital,” he said. “When you look at the size of these investments by hedge funds, it’s eye-boggling.”