Big Crimes Become Big Business

[Octafish]

Credit Suisse

Big Crimes Become Big Business

by RALPH NADER
CounterPunch, JANUARY 19, 2015

In May of 2014, financial firm Credit Suisse AG pled guilty to serious criminal charges. The giant bank aided and assisted approximately 22,000 wealthy U.S. taxpayers (whose names Credit Suisse AG escaped having to send to the Justice Department for law enforcement) for over a decade in filing false income tax returns and other documents with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

The full extent of these crimes, according to a Department of Justice news release, are as follows: “assisting clients in using sham entities to hide undeclared accounts;” “soliciting IRS forms that falsely stated, under penalties of perjury, that the sham entities were the beneficial owners of the assets in the accounts;” “failing to maintain in the United States records related to the accounts;” “destroying account records sent to the United States for client review;” “using Credit Suisse managers and employees as unregistered investment advisors on undeclared accounts;” “facilitating withdrawals of funds from the undeclared accounts by either providing hand-delivered cash in the United States or using Credit Suisse’s correspondent bank accounts in the United States;” “structuring transfers of funds to evade currency transaction reporting requirements;” and “providing offshore credit and debit cards to repatriate funds in the undeclared accounts.”

These elaborate illegal acts over many years are quite revealing. They show a deliberate willingness by Credit Suisse AG officials to knowingly engage in profitable activities that defrauded the United States Treasury and burdened honest taxpayers. Credit Suisse paid a $2.6 billion fine—small compared to the size of the crimes and the company’s large revenues. These crimes were yet another sordid chapter in the ever-burgeoning tax-evading business that makes its waves with wealthy Americans and massive corporate entities. But the Credit Suisse story does not end there.

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, or ERISA, was enacted to protect the retirement savings of retirement plan participants. The law, in theory, automatically disqualifies institutions like Credit Suisse AG who have committed serious crimes or pled guilty to serious crimes from serving as a “qualified professional asset manager” (QPAM) of ERISA assets or pension plans.

SNIP...

James Henry, former chief economist at McKinsey & Co. and current chair of the Global Alliance for Tax Justice, estimates that the United States loses between $170 billion to $200 billion a year in tax revenue through offshore tax havens. He told the Corporate Crime Reporter in 2013:

“The idea that you would actually permit big ticket tax dodgers to walk off of the stage with a slap on the wrist — like the proposed (Credit) Swiss settlement — or that you would let companies like Apple and Microsoft, General Electric and Google — shift their most valuable corporate assets to places where they have almost no activity and evade corporate income taxes at a time when we are slashing aid to kids in schools, money for seniors — this is outrageous.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/19/big-crimes-become-big-business/

Gee. Will the real crooks go to jail before we're all broke?

Image: Bankster the Dodger http://www.achieveourdreams.org/category/corporate/stop-corporate-tax-dodging/

[Scuba]

1. Laws (and taxes) are for the little people.

[Octafish]

2. Truth.

Which is why I am sad, having thought this was a democracy where no one -- including a pretzeldent -- is above the law.

Credit Suisse’s Guilty Plea: The WSJ Uses the Right Adjective to Modify the Wrong Noun

by William K. Black
New Economic Perspectives, May 21, 2014

EXCERPT...

The WSJ proposes that businesses should be immune from prosecution

The WSJ also has an interesting standard for prosecuting businesses: it is “appropriate only if … the entire bank is a criminal enterprise.” So, if there are any honest operations at a massive bank one cannot prosecute it. Yes, the WSJ just called for making it impossible to prosecute any bank. It didn’t have the courage to write that openly, of course, but that’s the effect of its proposed standard for prosecuting a bank (or any other business entity). Seeming legitimacy will grant the firm total immunity from being sanctioned criminally.

Indeed, because, as the WSJ correctly states it is impossible that the Department of Justice (DOJ) could have believed that Credit Suisse was “entire[ly] … a criminal enterprise” it follows logically (?) that DOJ’s prosecution of Credit Suisse must be “political.” The possibility that DOJ might not agree with the WSJ that businesses should not be immune from prosecution unless every aspect of their operations is criminal (which would require the rejection of well over a century of U.S. legal doctrine) does not enter the WSJ’s analytical process.

SOURCE: http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/05/credit-suisses-guilty-plea-wsj-uses-right-adjective-modify-wrong-noun.html

In a way I feel better, having come to understand where some of the Lies come from. At least since '07.

[Scuba]

4. Seems AG Holder is already working under the terms of this proposal.

[7wo7rees]

3. Dear Octafish, DU would be adrift without you!!

You are quite simply just the best of the best!!

Sincerely!

[RiverLover]

5. Our elected "representatives" ENABLE these big crimes that pay, and the payoff is spread right

back to the enablers.

[jeff47]

6. Must be a presidential election coming up. Nader's back out of hibernation. (nt)

[Octafish]

7. Wish he'd won in 1968.

From Bill Moyers:

For nearly 40 years, Ralph Nader has been crusading against the expansion of corporate control over our political economy.

[jeff47]

8. Wish he'd keep pushing all the time, instead of occasionally. (nt)