Tag: corruption

The Treasury Department Should Lead the Fight Against Corruption and Kleptocracy

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Introduction and summary

The United States today faces a pressing threat to its national interests: the strategic use of corruption by autocratic and kleptocratic states to undermine the integrity of democratic institutions and interfere in the politics of democratic states for geopolitical advantage. Such strategic corruption is not a new phenomenon, but it has become more acute and sophisticated with the rise of offshore financial centers and the growing assertiveness of authoritarian competitors in using nontraditional means of projecting power and wielding influence. In recent years, strategic corruption has been deployed more systematically and with greater success against the United States and its democratic partners than in previous eras.

As with earlier threats that have been fueled by access to mobile capital, strategic corruption has thrived thanks to international financial connectivity. More specifically, it has risen because of enduring ungoverned financial spaces in the global economy and gaps in anti-money-laundering frameworks both in the United States and in many other advanced economies. These features of strategic corruption mean that an effective response will require the participation of a broad set of stakeholders within the national security community. In particular, curbing strategic corruption and the kleptocratic networks that enable it will depend critically on the analytic capabilities and regulatory power of the actors within the U.S. government tasked with supervision of the international financial system, above all the Treasury Department.

Over the past 30 years, the United States has become increasingly effective at using its influence over the global financial system to protect its national security. In the 1980s and 1990s, concerns over drug trafficking, nuclear proliferation, and terrorism led to the creation of an infrastructure aimed at identifying and disrupting the flows of funds that enabled those crimes.1 After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration built on this foundation to create a formidable interagency mechanism, centered in the Treasury Department and supported by new legal authorities, to stop the financing of terrorist groups, and also deployed these capabilities to shut down the banks that were funding North Korean nuclear proliferation.2 More recently, the United States has used many of the same tools developed to combat terror financing to weaken the financial support networks of transnational criminal organizations and other malign actors that depend on access to foreign markets.3 Continue reading.

Corruption, Anger, Chaos, Incompetence, Lies, Decay

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END OUR NATIONAL CRISIS: The Case Against Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II.

Mr. Trump’s ruinous tenure already has gravely damaged the United States at home and around the world. He has abused the power of his office and denied the legitimacy of his political opponents, shattering the norms that have bound the nation together for generations. He has subsumed the public interest to the profitability of his business and political interests. He has shown a breathtaking disregard for the lives and liberties of Americans. He is a man unworthy of the office he holds.

The editorial board does not lightly indict a duly elected president. During Mr. Trump’s term, we have called out his racism and his xenophobia. We have critiqued his vandalism of the postwar consensus, a system of alliances and relationships around the globe that cost a great many lives to establish and maintain. We have, again and again, deplored his divisive rhetoric and his malicious attacks on fellow Americans. Yet when the Senate refused to convict the president for obvious abuses of power and obstruction, we counseled his political opponents to focus their outrage on defeating him at the ballot box.

How U.S. Firms Helped Africa’s Richest Woman Exploit Her Country’s Wealth

New York Times logoLISBON — It was the party to be seen at during the Cannes Film Festival, where being seen was the whole point. A Swiss jewelry company had rented out the opulent Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, drawing celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Campbell and Antonio Banderas. The theme: “Love on the Rocks.”

Posing for photos at the May 2017 event was Isabel dos Santos, Africa’s richest woman and the daughter of José Eduardo dos Santos, then Angola’s president. Her husband controls the jeweler, De Grisogono, through a dizzying array of shell companies in Luxembourg, Malta and the Netherlands.

But the lavish party was possible only because of the Angolan government. The country is rich in oil and diamonds but hobbled by corruption, with grinding poverty, widespread illiteracy and a high infant mortality rate. A state agency had sunk more than $120 million into the jewelry company. Today, it faces a total loss. Continue reading.

Super-PAC That Received Illegal Foreign Contributions from Indicted Giuliani Associates Spent Almost $5 Million to Benefit Minnesota Republicans

GOP-aligned Super-PAC allegedly received over $300,000 in foreign money for the purpose of buying influence in U.S. – Ukraine relations

DFL Demands MN GOP Return Money from Indicted Giuliani-Linked Associate

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Yesterday, two associates of Rudy Giuliani were arrested and charged with allegedly conspiring to funnel foreign money to Republican politicians and candidates for the purpose of buying influence in U.S. – Ukraine relations.

The two men arrested, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, allegedly funneled $325,000 into the Trump-aligned America First Super-PAC through a shell corporation. Among the Republicans who benefited most from America First’s illegal campaign cash were Minnesota Republican Congressmen Jim Hagedorn and Pete Stauber. Continue reading “Super-PAC That Received Illegal Foreign Contributions from Indicted Giuliani Associates Spent Almost $5 Million to Benefit Minnesota Republicans”

NRA board member and former president Marion Hammer obtained low-interest loan from affiliate she leads

Washington Post logoA past president of the National Rifle Association has taken out loans totaling more than $250,000, at an interest rate as low as 2 percent, from the NRA’s Florida affiliate, a nonprofit that she has led for decades and that employs only her, according to the organization’s tax filings.

Marion Hammer, executive director of the Unified Sportsmen of Florida, which receives most of its budget from the NRA, took out the loans to refinance or purchase homes, according to the tax filings. Since 1995, when Hammer began borrowing money, she has bought or helped buy several properties in Tallahassee — including one where a daughter resides and another where a granddaughter resides, property and other records show.

The disclosure of the below-market interest rate granted to Hammer, an NRA board member who is one of the nation’s leading gun lobbyists, comes as the organization is being battered by reports of economic benefits flowing to its top leadership. Those reports have fueled internal warfare at the nation’s most powerful gun lobby as well as investigations by the Democratic attorneys general of the District and New York.

View the complete September 6 article by Beth Reinhard and Tom Hamburger on The Washington Post website here.

NRA money flowed to board members amid allegedly lavish spending by top officials and vendors

A former pro football player who serves on the National Rifle Association board was paid $400,000 by the group in recent years for public outreach and firearms training. Another board member, a writer in New Mexico, collected more than $28,000 for articles in NRA publications. Yet another board member sold ammunition from his private company to the NRA for an undisclosed sum.

The NRA, which has been rocked by allegations of exorbitant spending by top executives, also directed money in recent years that went to board members — the very people tasked with overseeing the organization’s finances.

In all, 18 members of the NRA’s 76-member board, who are not paid as directors, collected money from the group during the past three years, according to tax filings, state charitable reports and NRA correspondence reviewed by The Washington Post.

View the complete June 9 article by Beth Reinhard, Katie Zezima, Tom Hamburger and Carol D. Leonnig on The Washington Post website here.

Trump signals White House won’t comply with Democratic probes

President Trump on Tuesday signaled the White House will not comply with a barrage of congressional investigations, accusing Democrats in the House of launching the probes to hurt his chances of winning reelection in 2020.

“It’s a disgrace to our country. I’m not surprised that it’s happening. Basically, they’ve started the campaign. So the campaign begins,” Trump told reporters at the White House after signing an executive order on veterans’ suicide prevention.

“Instead of doing infrastructure, instead of doing health care, instead of doing so many things that they should be doing, they want to play games,” he continued.

View the complete March 5 article by Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.

These 2018 corporate scandals demonstrate why the new Democratic Congress must crack down on corruption

The headlines for white-collar crime this year have largely been grabbed by special counsel Robert Mueller, who has uncovered a huge array of financial crimes in President Donald Trump’s inner circle

The headlines for white-collar crime this year have largely been grabbed by special counsel Robert Mueller, who has uncovered a huge array of financial crimes in President Donald Trump’s inner circle. But though Mueller’s revelations have shocked the American public consciousness, they were probably not the biggest financial scandals of the year.

On Monday, David P. Weber, a law professor and certified fraud examiner who reviewed the Panama Papers and blew the whistleon investigative misconduct as an assistant inspector general for the Securities and Exchange Commission, wrote an op-ed for The Hill outlining some of the most significant corporate scandals of 2018 — and how they prove Congress needs to ensure greater oversight of the financial system.

Weber specifically points to the scandals at 1Malaysia Development Berhad, a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund accused of a $4.2 billion embezzlement and fraud scheme with help from legal and auditing firms and a Department of Justice lawyer; Operation Car Wash, the gigantic Brazilian money laundering scandal that has implicated hundreds of politicians including multiple presidents; and the ongoing revelations about how European banks involved in the Panama Papers scandal helped oligarchs and tax evaders steal money around the world.

View the complete December 31 article by Matthew Chapman on the AlterNet.org website here.

The Swam Builders

How Stone and Manafort helped create the mess Trump promised to clean up

n that particular April 1 in Washington, in the midst of a presidential primary season trending toward a Reagan landslide, Paul Manafort had a lot to celebrate.

The Republican operative with the thick, meticulously parted black hair and magnetic smile was turning 31. And by a quirk of bureaucratic fate, his new business happened to be officially launching on that same day in 1980.

The little shop that Manafort opened in Alexandria, Va., was envisioned as a political consulting business, like so many others in the capital. But in the coming months — as the candidate he worked for, Ronald Reagan, swept into the White House — Manafort had another idea to bounce off his two partners, Charlie Black and Roger Stone.

View the complete November 29 article by Manuel Roig-Franzia on The Washington Post website here.

Dean Phillips on Rep. Collins and Corruption

EXCELSIOR, MN – Dean Phillips, candidate for Congress in Minnesota’s Third Congressional District, released the following statement on the indictment of Congressman Chris Collins and the ever-worsening culture of corruption in Washington:

“The indictment of Congressman Chris Collins for insider trading is yet another example of the greed that dominates Washington’s pay-to-play system. It is unfortunate – but not surprising – that Congressman Erik Paulsen, who accepted a $1,000 contribution from Congressman Collins earlier this year and has taken the 6th most special interest money in Congress, remains complicit in this culture of corruption.

“Time and time again, Congressman Paulsen has proven that his votes are bought and sold by special interests – when he refused to return contributions from the NRA after the shootings in Parkland, and again when he refused to return contributions from private prisons after the Trump administration’s family separation policy. Voters in Minnesota deserve more than empty quotes; the time for meaningful action is now.

“That’s why I am calling today for a ban on Members of Congress serving on for-profit boards, and also on the committees that govern the industries in which they work.”