Monday, December 9, 2019
Massive Leak of Data Reveals Money-Hiding Secrets of Superrich—and This Is 'Only the Beginning'
Wednesday, December 04, 2019
Common Dreams
"It's hard to overstate how notorious and suspicious the firm is."
Eoin Higgins, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/04/massive-leak-data-reveals-money-hiding-secrets-superrich-and-only-beginning
A massive trove of documents, data, and recorded phone calls showing how British company Formations House works to hide money for the superrich is being reported on by journalists all over the world, with the first stories dropping at midnight on Wednesday.
The reporting is being done under the name "29 Leaks," a reference to Formations House's original address at 29 Harley Street in London. The data was leaked to the group Distributed Denial of Secrets over the summer.
"It takes a concerted effort from a large number of people to make substantive headway on an investigation like this, in which a large amount of data needs to be quickly processed and examined," Claire Peters, executive director of the Pursuance Project, told Unicorn Riot on Tuesday.
Peters and Pursuance Project outreach director Annalise Burkhart led a team of reporters from around the world uncovering and detailing the information stored in the huge, roughly 100 GB-sized trove of data.
"Formations House was the perfect example of a 'one-stop shop' for creating legal entities that serve as fronts for fraudulent operations and money laundering," said Burkhart. "In only a matter of days, a client could purchase offshore companies bundled into packages touting minimal compliance requirements, tax-free operations, and anonymity for directors and shareholders."
"It's hard to overstate how notorious and suspicious the firm is," Boing Boing wrote of Formations House when the leak's existence became public in July.
According to Unicorn Riot, reporting from the data will have an international scope:
Formations House has been the subject of international scrutiny for years, and the #29Leaks documents have been under investigation for some time. It is expected that news stories in Central America, Africa and Europe will examine information drawn from this set of leaks. The use of Formations House-managed companies to move money around between offshore and private banking centers like Luxembourg and other parts of the world is among the main themes of this dataset. Other documents expected to be covered in detail show how the African nation of The Gambia is commonly used to create banks and insurance companies on paper for wealthy people in other continents, which Formations House and related parties package and facilitate.
On Tuesday The Times of London showed, via undercover reporting, how Formations House sets up shell companies for its clients.
McClatchy reported on how Formations House helped Iran's national oil company avoid sanctions. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project detailed schemes across Eastern Europe. The Economic Times, meanwhile, dug into the comapny's Pakistani-British management.
More reporting will come, said the Pursuance Project's Peters.
"There's much more work to be done with this data," said Peters, "we're only at the beginning."
As Nation Transfixed by Impeachment, Trump Quietly Provides Offshore Drilling Industry 'Sweetheart Giveaway'
Tuesday, December 03, 2019
Common Dreams
Former lobbyist turned Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, says critic, probably assumed gift "to his former oil and gas client would slip by unnoticed."
Andrea Germanos, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/03/nation-transfixed-impeachment-trump-quietly-provides-offshore-drilling-industry
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt was condemned Monday for a proposed policy shift on offshore drilling panned as a "sweetheart giveaway" for a former client.
The new extraction-encouraging proposal was announced last month in a report (pdf) by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), two agencies within the Interior Department and occurred, according to transparency group Western Values Project, "under the cloud of impeachment."
Bernhardt's announcement followed longstanding fears that the former lobbyist would use his position in the federal government to serve the interests of the fossil fuel lobby above those of the American people and public lands. The recommendations laid out in the report pertain to royalties for offshore leasing and drilling.
"Federal officials," as Louisiana's Houma Today reported, "are offering oil and gas companies a discount on the fees they pay the government to drill in the Gulf of Mexico's shallow waters."
If enacted, the policy to "ensure maximum resource recovery" would benefit the oil and gas industry National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA), on whose behalf Bernhardt previously lobbied, said Western Values Project.
Also noteworthy, said the advocacy group, is that the report was co-authored by BSEE Director Scott Angelle, who also has ties to the fossil fuel industry. Western Values Project said that, during the government shutdown, Angelle—who has NOIA's stamp of approval for his current position—green-lit 53 permits for offshore drilling for companies that sit on the board of directors for NOIA.
"Since day one, Secretary Bernhardt has operated as though Interior was his own personal lobby shop by doling out favors for his former clients with impunity. This offshore royalty rate reduction deal is short selling our shared resources and ripping off taxpayers," said Jayson O'Neill, deputy director of Western Values Project.
"With Trump's own corruption dominating headlines," he continued, "Bernhardt probably thought this sweetheart giveaway to his former oil and gas client would slip by unnoticed."
Oil giants like Chevron and Shell are already taking advantage of a loophole in federal law to avoid paying at least $18 billion in royalties on oil and gas drilled in the Gulf since 1996, the New York Times reported in October, citing a report from the Government Accountability Office.
The possible policy shift sparked environmental worries from New Orleans-based advocacy group Healthy Gulf, which called the proposal "a recipe for disaster" in a tweet last month.
"This administration wants to lease areas of the Gulf for 'high-risk, small-upside opportunities' to smaller oil companies who don't have the resources to handle spills," the group said. "This proposal is as illogical as it is dangerous."
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