The Catholic Tax Haven

Panama City in the background. AP

The following persons have been board members of companies in Fribourg and Panama (list incomplete)

The Geneva-Fribourg-Panama Connection

By Matthew Temme

The above list represents a selection of names of lawyers, accountants, fiduciary agents, bankers, and businessmen who have been board members of companies in Fribourg and in Panama. Most have served primarily as “nominee” directors of Panamanian companies. They all figure on at least one Panamanian board. The asterisks indicate roughly how many companies they have been associated with. If there is no asterisk next to their names that means they have served on less than 10 Panamanian company boards.  One asterisk means they have served on more than 10  company boards; two asterisks mean they have served on more than 25; three asterisks mean they have served on more than 50; and four asterisks mean they have served on more than 100. Two cousins have served on more than 1000! (nos.185 & 186)  http://www.tdg.ch/geneve/actu-genevoise/hacke-registre-commerce-panameen-livre-avocats-genevois/story/15328349?track

A large proportion of these individuals maintained offices in Geneva. These 294 individuals established many thousands of Panamanian companies. Since it is obvious that most were primarily functioning as nominees, we can assume that the beneficial owners of the companies wished their identities to remain secret. At any rate, until recently Panama was one of the most opaque tax havens in the world. However, since Scottish coder Daniel O’Huiginn “scraped” the Panamanian company data base in 2008, it has been possible to follow the tracks of many criminals and tax cheats. http://qz.com/65290/germanys-offshore-money-and-the-hacker-who-helped-expose-it/

It has become increasingly obvious that different tax jurisdictions act in symbiosis in order to better hide who is controlling businesses. During the Iran-contra investigation in 1987, the important connections between Geneva banks, Fribourg-based nominees, and Panamanian shell companies were clearly exposed. The system that the Iran-contra conspirators used to hide their illicit funds offshore is routine practice for wealthy individuals who are intent on hiding their assets. This practice has been going on for a long time. By establishing these layers of secrecy, money launderers, kleptocrats, arms & drug traffickers, and tax cheats can escape the vigilance of government law-enforcement agencies. It was outrageous that CIA Director Bill Casey encouraged Col. Oliver North to use this underworld system to circumvent the U.S. Constitution by violating the Boland Amendment which restricted U.S. funding for the Nicaraguan “contras.”  http://www.nytimes.com/1986/12/15/world/white-house-crisis-dollars-traveled-companies-switzerland-appear-have-been.html

As taxpayers, we should be furious that this coordinated practice of hiding money under layers of secrecy in different tax havens is still being used. Gabriel Zucman has recently pointed out in his book The Hidden Wealth of Nations that trillions of dollars are being hidden from tax authorities in this fashion, siphoning off from national treasuries important revenue which is desperately needed for crumbling  infrastructure and outmoded educational systems. As a result of these “lawyerly” tricks, income inequality has gone through the roof. The apologists for these activities use euphemisms such as “tax competition” and “fiscal optimization” to describe their hiding of money in places like Panama.

The Swiss lawyers listed above would probably claim that everything that they do for their wealthy clients is perfectly legal under Swiss law, but Nicholas Shaxon, the author of the groundbreaking exposé on tax havens Treasure Islands has said that administering to hundreds of offshore companies is not normal. Every time these lawyers get caught in a web of illegality in which the offshore entities that they have created have proved to be an integral part, they claim innocence, going so far as to deny even having met the beneficial owners of the tarnished companies. In my next posting on the Iran-contra affair, we will see how the total disengagement of the nominee directors from Ollie North’s Panamanian master company “Lake Resources” was the traditional way nominees always shirk any responsibility when the companies that they are supposed to be supervising are caught doing  illegal things. This farce has to stop! http://tunisie-telegraph.com/2014/11/03/lamour-avocats-genevois-panama-offshore-evasionfiscale-geneve-suisse-7616

In my next posting, I will discuss how the Geneva-Fribourg-Panama connection was used to fund Col. Oliver North’s Iran-contra operation.