The Paradise Papers

[Risso]

5 hours ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

Oh ok, it's all good then, LOL

I didn’t say it was good. The poster said that they had been caught doung something, when in fact it’s something that lots of countries openly do. It’s called Citizenship by Investment. This topic is about the Paradise Papers which mainly concerns offshore jurisdictions like the IOM and BVI, but full sovereign states like Malta, Austria, UK, France and Germany offer Citizenship by Investment opportunities. The anounts you have to pay/invest vary, with France being the most expensive at £10m. Er, LOL.

[bickster]

13 hours ago, Risso said:

I didn’t say it was good. The poster said that they had been caught doung something, when in fact it’s something that lots of countries openly do. It’s called Citizenship by Investment. This topic is about the Paradise Papers which mainly concerns offshore jurisdictions like the IOM and BVI, but full sovereign states like Malta, Austria, UK, France and Germany offer Citizenship by Investment opportunities. The anounts you have to pay/invest vary, with France being the most expensive at £10m. Er, LOL.

Am I missing something here... Does the €10mil go directly to Macron?

It's one thing selling citizenship for an amount invested in the country, it's another completely putting it in the first lady's arse pocket

[peterms]

So here is some more stuff that Appleby don't want us to know, because it is "not in the public interest" for us to hear about it.

Quote

Paradise Papers firm worked for bank linked to terrorist financing and organised crime

The firm at the heart of the Paradise Papers leak provided offshore services to a bank accused of facilitating terrorist financing, transnational organised crime and the Syrian government’s chemical weapons programme.

Appleby represented the Cayman Islands holding company of FBME Bank for at least a year after the US Treasury published an extraordinary roster of allegations against the bank, and acted as its agent for more than a decade beforehand.

FBME, which was banned from the US financial system last year, denies all the allegations against it. It said Appleby regularly carried out full compliance checks on FBME Ltd, which it took on as a client in 2004.

Revelations from Appleby’s internal files, obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the US-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, were exposed in the Paradise Papers investigation last year.

The investigation was praised by politicians and campaigners for shining a light on tax havens and revealing the myriad ways in which companies and individuals can avoid tax using artificial structures.

The Guardian revealed how Appleby was repeatedly criticised by inspectors in multiple jurisdictions for failing to apply regulations designed to guard against money laundering and terrorist finance in secret reports by offshore regulators.

Appleby is suing the BBC and the Guardian over the Paradise Papers investigation, arguing that none of the articles published were in the public interest. In a statement issued at the time it denied wrongdoing but said it was “not infallible” and always acted quickly to “put things right”.

It has asked the court to permanently ban both media organisations from using its leaked files to investigate its conduct or that of its clients.

FBME was described as “a financial institution of primary money laundering concern” in a notice of finding published in July 2014 by the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (Fincen).

“FBME is used by its customers to facilitate money laundering, terrorist financing, transnational organised crime, fraud, sanctions evasion and other illicit activity internationally and through the US financial system,” Fincen said.

Appleby withdrew from acting as the FBME holding company’s registered agent 17 months later in December 2015. According to a US court judgment, Appleby decided that “FBME did not fit [its] risk profile”. FBME Ltd effectively ceased to exist in the Cayman Islands, a UK territory, as a result.

Appleby declined to comment on its longstanding relationship with the holding company of FBME Bank, which ended in December 2015. It said it had sold the part of the firm that handled offshore services, which is now a separate company called Estera, and so could not answer questions about the business.

Estera said it could not comment on “any historical dealings that Appleby may have had with any particular client”.

“Full compliance checks were carried out by Appleby. They requested these on a continual basis and we provided them with updated KYC and AML (anti-money laundering) documentation in line with international law,” FBME’s spokesperson said.

“Appleby declined to renew FBME Ltd’s registration despite there being no proof of any wrongdoing. The resulting lack of a registered office provider ultimately caused FBME Ltd to lose its ability to challenge Fincen in court.”

It is not known if Appleby was aware of any of the evidence of the malfeasance alleged by Fincen before the 2014 notice was published. It is unclear what its due diligence efforts specifically entailed. But some argue that offshore firms should be required to have as full as possible an understanding of their clients’ business.

Campaigners have paid increasing attention to law firms and registered agents operating in the offshore world in recent years, arguing that it is insufficient for offshore services firms to react only after allegations have been made by governments, campaigners or journalists.

Instead, they argue, the offshore industry has a responsibility to proactively vet both their clients and their clients’ business on an ongoing basis.

“Time after time, we hear registered agents proclaiming their innocence, denying they could have done anything differently and claiming their due diligence processes work just fine. To everyone else it is blindingly obvious that things are not right,” said Robert Barrington, executive director of Transparency International UK.

“Banks are particularly high-risk with regard to money laundering, and that kind of red flag requires a high standard of due diligence,” he said.

Murray Worthy, a senior campaigner on anti-money laundering at the campaigning group Global Witness, argued that as part of conducting due diligence on a client that was a bank, “that would include, you hope, who it’s providing those services to”.

He added there were “clear warning signs” that the bank warranted more thorough scrutiny prior to 2014.

“Tanzania was on the FATF [Financial Action Task Force on money laundering] blacklist from 2010 to 2014 as a high-risk or non-cooperative jurisdiction for money laundering,” he said. “Having a bank registered in a tax haven blacklist should have been a concern.”

Among the allegations made against FBME by Fincen in 2014 were that a “customer received a deposit of hundreds of thousands of dollars from a financier for Lebanese Hezbollah”, and that “as of 2008, a financial adviser for a major transnational organised crime figure who banked entirely at FBME” had “maintained a relationship” with the bank’s owners.

Fincen alleged that at least one of FBME’s customers was a front company for the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Centre. The group, alleged to be part of the Syrian government’s chemical weapons programme, was first sanctioned by George W Bush in 2005.

FBME denies the allegations made by Fincen. “FBME has not engaged in money laundering and was never accused of such until the Fincen allegations,” a spokesperson said. “The bank has acted in compliance with all the EU and Cyprus anti-money laundering directives, as corroborated by multiple third party auditors.”

The spokesperson added that Fincen had never presented evidence that FBME facilitated weapons proliferation in court. “The outrageous claims that FBME acted for terrorists, or knowingly acted for any sanctioned individuals, are false and deliberately damaging. Any client that was sanctioned had their accounts frozen immediately and were reported to the regulator. FBME conducted all required KYC (know your client) and UBO (ultimate beneficial owner) checks.”

The bank began legal action against Fincen in an effort to block the imposition of the ban, but ultimately failed. The ban came into force in 2017.