May 20th, 2011
TJN has
repeatedly reported about Switzerland’s devious strategy of breaking the European Union’s thrust for a functioning system of automatic information exchange. The Swiss Finance Ministry, in conjunction with its banks,
deployed a strategy to fence off the dawning end of financial secrecy, called the “final withholding tax”. It is designed to preserve banking secrecy while buying off noise-making foreign governments through the transfer of a final tax on foreign citizens’ financial account’s income (
details here).
The
German-language Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger reported on spokespersons of the German and Swiss Finance Ministries signalling their willingness to soon...
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May 18th, 2011
If companies were people and those who violated the laws were criminals, then BAE Systems would be a repeat offender. Actually I’m not sure repeat offender even begins to cover it. Here’s some background.
BAE Systems is a defense contractor with products and services for air, land, and naval forces, including electronics, intelligence, weapons, among many others. It’s a British company, but over half of its $12 billion annual sales in its land and armaments business is with the United States. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, BAE is the largest armaments company in the...
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April 29th, 2011
Last summer, we
reported that the Obama Administration planned to globally promote the Energy Security Through Transparency (ESTT) provisions (Sec. 1504) of the new Dodd-Frank legislation. Now, it appears as though they've remained true to their word.
Last July, after the
passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, the White House released a
statement about Sec. 1504 saying (underlining added by me):
This provision is an essential new tool in promoting transparency in the oil and mineral sectors. This legislation will immediately shed light on billions in payments between multinational corporations...
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