Category Archives: Treasury

PP Organ Sales, Pure Profit, Congressional Hearing

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Report: Planned Parenthood Organ Sales Are ‘Pure Profit’

Congressional panel says abortionists incur no costs for organ harvesting

FreeBeacon: Planned Parenthood abortion clinics profit from the sale of aborted baby organs, according to new documents released by a congressional committee investigating the organization’s practices.

The U.S. House Select Panel on Infant Lives released a preview of its findings after a months-long review of internal documents obtained from the nation’s top abortionist, as well as organ procurement companies and buyers. The panel concluded that abortion clinics incur no additional costs in harvesting organs obtained from an already-aborted baby and that the sale or transfer of those organs represented “pure profit” for the clinic.

“The [abortion clinic] has no costs so the payments from the [procurement business] to the [abortion clinic] are pure profit,” the report concludes. “All costs are born by the [procurement business] or the customer. The payments from the customer to the PB exceed its cost by a factor of 300 to 400 percent.”

Pro-life activists said those practices run counter to federal law, which bars clinics from profiting off of the sale of baby body parts.

“The abortion industry sells baby hearts, livers, brains, hands and other organs procured by a middleman company inside their facilities at no cost or effort to the facilities themselves. The facility receives upfront fees that can amount to five-figure sums every month and then the procurement companies resell organs for tens of thousands more—depending on the child’s characteristics,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, said in a release. “The documents make clear there is absolutely no cost to the abortion clinic so that all monies received go to their bottom line.”

The scandal began after investigators with the pro-life Center for Medical Progress released a series of videos capturing top Planned Parenthood officials discussing the group’s fetal organ sales in the summer of 2015. One top official was caught on camera saying that clinics generate a “fair amount of income” from the sales.

The committee’s conclusions stand in contrast to Planned Parenthood’s repeated denials that it made any money from the sale of organs. The group claimed that all payments were to recoup costs. The abortionist announced last year it would no longer accept any payments from researchers or procurement companies for baby body parts.

Planned Parenthood did not return a request for comment.

The congressional panel will hold a hearing Wednesday morning to discuss the report.

***** The law: 42 U.S. Code § 289g–2 – Prohibitions regarding human fetal tissue

(a) Purchase of tissue

It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration if the transfer affects interstate commerce.
(b) Solicitation or acceptance of tissue as directed donation for use in transplantation

It shall be unlawful for any person to solicit or knowingly acquire, receive, or accept a donation of human fetal tissue for the purpose of transplantation of such tissue into another person if the donation affects interstate commerce, the tissue will be or is obtained pursuant to an induced abortion, and—
(1) the donation will be or is made pursuant to a promise to the donating individual that the donated tissue will be transplanted into a recipient specified by such individual;
(2) the donated tissue will be transplanted into a relative of the donating individual; or
(3) the person who solicits or knowingly acquires, receives, or accepts the donation has provided valuable consideration for the costs associated with such abortion.
(c) Solicitation or acceptance of tissue from fetuses gestated for research purposes

It shall be unlawful for any person or entity involved or engaged in interstate commerce to—
(1) solicit or knowingly acquire, receive, or accept a donation of human fetal tissue knowing that a human pregnancy was deliberately initiated to provide such tissue; or
(2) knowingly acquire, receive, or accept tissue or cells obtained from a human embryo or fetus that was gestated in the uterus of a nonhuman animal.
(d) Criminal penalties for violations

(1) In general

Any person who violates subsection (a), (b), or (c) shall be fined in accordance with title 18, subject to paragraph (2), or imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both.
(2) Penalties applicable to persons receiving consideration

With respect to the imposition of a fine under paragraph (1), if the person involved violates subsection (a) or (b)(3), a fine shall be imposed in an amount not less than twice the amount of the valuable consideration received.
(e) Definitions

For purposes of this section:
(1) The term “human fetal tissue” has the meaning given such term in section 289g–1 (g) of this title.
(2) The term “interstate commerce” has the meaning given such term in section 321 (b) of title 21.
(3) The term “valuable consideration” does not include reasonable payments associated with the transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage of human fetal tissue.

Russia/Germany Join Abbas Against Israel

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In 2014: Hamas Issues ‘Terrorism 101 Handbook’

Manuals discovered by IDF give how-to tips for terror
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BDS:  The Boycott/Divest/Sanctions (BDS) Movement against Israel was formally launched in 2005, but really began gathering momentum as a result of the Second Intifada of 2000 and the UN’s World Conference Against Racism in 2001.This Report documents and dissects the BDS’ impact across a broad front of battlefields in the western world. These include economic struggles in corporate boardrooms and among trade unions, BDS’ “academic jihad” against Israel on campuses, the pressure on entertainment and cultural figures to cancel appearances in Israel, and efforts to gain support for BDS from important religious institutions.

Hamas’s link to BDS

Leading expert testifies to Congress over the terror group leading the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

Terror finance expert describes ‘network’ of ex-fundraisers in organizations linked to Hamas and key pro-boycott organization

ToI: WASHINGTON — The US should boost transparency of nonprofit organizations in order to shed light on ties between a key pro-boycott organization and defunct charities that were implicated in funding Hamas, analyst Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told members of Congress during testimony Tuesday afternoon when two subcommittees of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs met to discuss current threats to Israel.

During testimony, experts including Schanzer highlighted regional nonstate actors such as Iran and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) as key threats to Israel.

The chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade, Ted Poe, described the BDS movement as “a threat which seeks [Israel’s] ultimate destruction.”

Schanzer, a former terror finance analyst for the US Treasury, presented open-source research conducted by his group, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies which highlighted a network linking Hamas supporters with the leadership of the BDS movement.

The research tracked employees of three now-defunct organizations – the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, Kind Hearts Foundation for Humanitarian Development and the Islamic Association for Palestine — all of which were implicated by the federal government for terrorism finance, specifically of Hamas. A federal court found that the Holy Land Foundation had sent some $12 million to Hamas over the course of a decade

The research yielded what Schanzer described as “a troubling outcome” – with seven key employees of these organizations now associated with the Illinois-based organization American Muslims for Palestine.

Schanzer told members of Congress that the latter is “arguably the leading BDS organization in the US, a key sponsor of the anti-Israel campus network known as Students for Justice in Palestine.” The organization, he said, provides money, speakers, training and even “apartheid walls” to SJP activists on campus, for the annual Israel Apartheid Week events.

“The overlap between AMP, Holy Land, Kind Hearts and the Islamic Association for Palestine is striking,” said Schanzer, but noted that “our open source research did not indicate that AMP or any of these individuals are currently involved in any illegal activity.”

“The BDS campaign may pose a threat to Israel, but the network I describe here is decidedly an American problem,” he warned. Americans for Justice in Palestine raises money as a transparent 501c3 tax-exempt non-profit, which then provides funds for AMP which has the usually temporary designation of a corporate non-profit – a status that is usually transitional en route to a tax-exempt 501c3 organization.

“There appear to be flaws in the federal and state oversight of non-profits charities,” Schanzer complained. Although advocating for increased transparency, Schanzer said that he had a sense from talking to former colleagues that the Treasury was less invested in uncovering charities serving to fund terror networks than in the past.

“BDS advocates are free to say what they want, true or false, but tax advantaged organizations are obliged to be transparent,” Schanzer told the panel. “Americans have a right to know who is leading the BDS campaign and so do the students who may not be aware of AMP’s leaders or their goals.”

The BDS movement was not the only threat cited by the witnesses, who included former peace negotiator and Washington Institute for Near East Policy Distinguished Fellow David Makovsky, American Enterprise Institute Scholar Michael Rubin and the Brooking Institution’s Tamara Coffman Wittes.

Makovsky warned that the current stagnation of peace initiatives could feed further into BDS advances in the US.

The former negotiator warned “that the movement could metastasize beyond college campuses” if there is no peace solution on the ground – after noting that “under the current leadership” he did not envision peace efforts “succeeding in the near future.”

Makovsky said that he was “rather skeptical regarding efforts to put forward parameters at the UNSC,” warning that they “would be interpreted by both sides as an imposed solution and could serve as a baseline for defiance rather than bringing the parties closer.”

“We need to find a way to maintain the viability of a two-state outcome even if we can’t implement a two-state solution today,” he offered.

Makovsky suggested that it was not just the US but also European countries that could provide critical leverage in encouraging the Palestinians to jettison their anti-normalization policy and stop providing funds to families of jailed terrorists.

“The US needs to sensitize our European partners to these issues – given the closeness between Europeans and Palestinians, it would carry weight if the Europeans would practice the same tough love they have urged the United States to administer when it comes to Israel but they are reluctant to do when it comes to our Palestinian friends,” he said.

United Healthcare Bails on Obamacare

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Nancy Pelosi, call holding on line 3.  There are other healthcare providers that are likely to bow out of Obamacare in 2017.

UnitedHealth pulls back on ObamaCare exchanges amid huge losses

FNC: The nation’s largest health insurer, fearing massive financial losses, announced Tuesday that it plans to pull back from ObamaCare in a big way and cut its participation in the program’s insurance exchanges to just a handful of states next year – in the latest sign of instability in the marketplace under the law.

UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley said the company expects losses from its exchange business to total more than $1 billion for this year and last.

Despite the company expanding to nearly three dozen state exchanges for this year, Hemsley said the company cannot continue to broadly serve the market created by the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansion due partly to the higher risk that comes with its customers.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. said it now expects to lose $650 million this year on its exchange business, up from its previous projection for $525 million. The insurer lost $475 million in 2015, a spokesman said.

UnitedHealth has already decided to pull out of Arkansas, Georgia and Michigan in 2017, and Hemsley told analysts during a Tuesday morning conference call that his company will not carry financial exposure from the exchanges into 2017.

“We continue to remain an advocate for more stable and sustainable approaches to serving this market,” he said.

The state-based exchanges are a key element behind the Affordable Care Act’s push to expand insurance coverage. But insurers have struggled with higher-than-expected claims from that business.

A recent study by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association detailed how many new customers nationwide under ObamaCare are higher-risk. It found new enrollees in individual health plans in 2014 and 2015 had higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, depression, coronary artery disease, HIV and Hepatitis C than those enrolled before ObamaCare.

On the heels of Tuesday’s announcement, Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said in a statement it’s a sign of “the President’s broken promise that families would have more choices under ObamaCare.”

The Kaiser Family Foundation, in an analysis on the prospect of United’s exit, said “the effect on insurer competition could be significant in some markets – particularly in rural areas and southern states” if it is not replaced.

In the most extreme scenario, “If United were to leave the exchange market overall, 1.8 million Marketplace enrollees would be left with two insurers, and another 1.1 million would be left with one insurer as a result of the withdrawal,” the analysis said.

UnitedHealth had moved slowly into the newly created market by participating in only four exchanges in their first year, 2014. But the company then expanded to two dozen exchanges last year and said in October it would add to that total. It currently participates in exchanges in 34 states and covers 795,000 people

A month after announcing its latest exchange expansion, UnitedHealth started voicing second thoughts. The insurer said in November that it would decide by the first half of this year whether to even participate in the market for 2017.

Insurers say they have struggled, in particular, with customers who have signed up for coverage outside regular enrollment windows and then dumped expensive claims on their books, a problem the government has said it would address.

A dozen nonprofit health insurance cooperatives created by the ACA to sell coverage on the exchanges have already folded, and the survivors all lost millions last year.

Other publicly traded insurers like Aetna have said that they have lost money on this business as well. But some companies, like Molina Healthcare, have said they have managed to turn a profit from the exchanges.

Analysts expect other insurers to also trim their exchange participation in 2017, especially if they continue to struggle with high costs.

Iran Still Complains, White House Complies

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Where Iran’s Complaint About Banking Integration Misses the Mark

Levitt/WSJ: The governor of Iran’s central bank warned last week that failure to do more to integrate Iranian banks into the global economy could jeopardize the international agreement over Tehran’s nuclear program. The onus is on Washington and its allies to reassure banks that doing business in Iran is fine, Valiollah Seif said in a speech Friday at the Council on Foreign Relations. He said tellingly little about Iran’s efforts to change an environment businesses are wary of investing in, underscoring the discrepancy between Iran’s view of the nuclear deal and other international perceptions.

Mr. Seif complained that “almost nothing” has been done to reintegrate Iran into the global economy since implementation of the deal was announced in January. “Unless serious efforts are made by our partners,” he said, “in my view, they have not honored their obligations.”

Treasury official Adam Szubin said on Wednesday that Washington is not standing in the way of permissible business activities involving Iran. Some of the reasons entities might be wary of doing business there include rampant corruption, as Transparency International has documented, and the extent to which Iran’s banking sector is out of step with international banking norms, as my Washington Institute colleague Patrick Clawson has written.

“Effective implementation of the agreement,” Mr. Seif said, must be done “in such a way that Iran’s economic and business activities will be facilitated.” Otherwise, the deal “breaks up on its own terms,” he said.

Iran seems to expect the Obama administration to provide benefits beyond those in the nuclear deal, including access to the U.S. financial system and the ability to change into dollars foreign currency transactions through U.S.-based banks. U.S. officials say that neither demand will be met.

We live in a “post-sanctions environment,” Mr. Seif said. This ignores the fact that sanctions remain in place over Iran’s efforts to sponsor terrorism; its ballistic missile program; and its human rights abuses, which include executing minors and persecuting religious minorities.

Mr. Seif appeared to dismiss concerns about those activities as old hat. “If, according to our partners, it is our conduct which prevents international banks from engaging in business with us, they were fully aware of our conduct before signing. … We have not changed.”

That Iran has not changed is at the core of its problem, but that’s not how Mr. Seif seemed to see it. Asked about the risks of unwittingly doing business with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is still targeted by Treasury sanctions, Mr. Seif said potential investors could engage Iranian companies that run checks to determine who they would be doing business with. The use of Iranian companies to hide the IRGC’s involvement in business activities has been documented by the Treasury Department. And using in-country third parties to perform customer due diligence is seen as high-risk by international bodies that govern banking transactions.

The bottom line is that Iran has yet to curb or stop the illicit conduct that makes it a pariah state and a financial risk. It enacted a law against terrorist financing last July, but that’s done little to calm banks’ fears because its government continues to support terrorism. Until those behaviors change, banks are likely to continue to see prohibitive reputational, regulatory, and other risks to doing business there. And the only country that can do anything about that is Iran.

ALSO IN THINK TANK:

What the U.S. Has and Hasn’t Learned From Imposing Sanctions

On Iran Sanctions, Mixed News–and Warnings for Potential Investors

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Bloomberg: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said international banks remain wary of U.S. regulations and need “reassurances” that they can resume business with his nation even after its nuclear deal with world powers.

Zarif, speaking in New York ahead of a Tuesday meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, said talks with his counterpart were necessary to follow up on the implementation of the agreement on the U.S. side.

The deal’s aim “was to not have the U.S. intervene in Iran’s relations with most other countries,” the Iranian Students’ News Agency cited Zarif as saying. “We should prevent past U.S. regulations from being obstacles to most financial institutions in Europe and Asia having banking relations with Iran.”

Iranian central bank Governor Valiollah Seif voiced similar sentiments last week, telling Bloomberg Television that the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control should issue guidelines encouraging European banks to be more receptive to Iran. Seif met Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Thursday during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington. More from Bloomberg.

 

See Who Does Exploit Offshore Tax Havens

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Offshore investment is among the murkiest sectors of the financial world. That’s by design — keeping money offshore can help shield money from tax authorities, obscure its origin and conceal the genuine owners. There are many legitimate reasons for opening an offshore banks account. Wealthy people do it to better manage their investment portfolios or protect their assets. Offshore accounts can also help the rich pay less tax — legally.

However, offshore accounts are also the lynchpin in many illegal tax avoidance schemes. Owners go to great lengths to conceal the existence of these accounts from their home governments, and they are often helped by lax disclosure rules in offshore tax havens.

Investors caught trying to hide their accounts can face steep penalties. More here from CNN.

US corporations have $1.4tn hidden in tax havens, claims Oxfam report

Charity analysis of the 50 biggest US businesses claims Apple have $181bn held offshore, while General Electric has $119bn and Microsoft $108bn

Guardian: US corporate giants such as Apple, Walmart and General Electric have stashed $1.4tn (£980bn) in tax havens, despite receiving trillions of dollars in taxpayer support, according to a report by anti-poverty charity Oxfam.

The sum, larger than the economic output of Russia, South Korea and Spain, is held in an “opaque and secretive network” of 1,608 subsidiaries based offshore, said Oxfam.

The charity’s analysis of the financial affairs of the 50 biggest US corporations comes amid intense scrutiny of tax havens following the leak of the Panama Papers.

And the charity said its report, entitled Broken at the Top was a further illustration of “massive systematic abuse” of the global tax system.

Technology giant Apple, the world’s second biggest company, topped Oxfam’s league table, with some $181bn held offshore in three subsidiaries.

Boston-based conglomerate General Electric, which Oxfam said has received $28bn in taxpayer backing, was second with $119bn stored in 118 tax haven subsidiaries.

Computing firm Microsoft was third with $108bn, in a top 10 that also included pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer, Google’s parent company Alphabet and Exxon Mobil, the largest oil company not owned by an oil-producing state.

Oxfam contrasted the $1.4tn held offshore with the $1tn paid in tax by the top 50 US firms between 2008 and 2014.

It pointed out that the companies had also enjoyed a combined $11.2tn in federal loans, bailouts and loan guarantees during the same period.

Overall, the use of tax havens allowed the US firms to reduce their effective tax rate on $4tn of profits from the US headline rate of 35% to an average of 26.5% between 2008 and 2014.

The charity said this had helped firms spend billions on an “army” of lobbyists calling for greater state support in the form of loans, bailouts and guarantees, funded by taxpayers.

The top 50 US firms spent $2.6bn between 2008 and 2014 on lobbying the US government, Oxfam said.

“For every $1 spent on lobbying, these 50 companies collectively received $130 in tax breaks and more than $4,000 in federal loans, loan guarantees and bailouts,” said Oxfam.

Robbie Silverman, senior tax adviser at Oxfam said: “Yet again we have evidence of a massive systematic abuse of the global tax system.

“We can’t go on with a situation where the rich and powerful are not paying their fair share of tax, leaving the rest of us to foot the bill.

“Governments across the globe must come together now to end the era of tax havens.”

Oxfam estimates that tax avoidance by US corporations costs the world’s largest economy some $111bn a year, but said it was also fuelling the global wealth divide by draining $100bn from the poorest countries.

“Tax dodging practised by corporations and enabled by federal policymakers contributes to dangerous inequality that is undermining our social fabric and hindering economic growth,” the report said.

Oxfam also singled out British overseas territories such as Bermuda for their popularity with US firms seeking to slash their tax bill by “profit-shifting”.

In 2012, said Oxfam, US firms reported $80bn of profit in Bermuda, more than their combined reported profits in Japan, China, Germany and France, four of the world’s five largest economies.

The charity called on the US government to pass the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, including a requirement for firms to report their tax contribution on a country-by-country basis, there is only one caution when doing this though and that is to not be mistaken that a country is a tax haven when in fact it isn’t, for example many people refer to Andorra as the tax haven of Andorra however Andorra is not actually a tax haven, one way to be sure whether a country is a legally classed tax haven is refer to the FATF blacklist, it lists every country that is recognised by government as an actual tax haven.

Country-by-country reporting has been recommended by a host of non-governmental organisations and charities to prevent companies from artificially shifting their income out of the poorest countries.