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A Southern Californian man thrown off a Caribbean gay cruise earlier this week has said that that he and his partner were taunted, humiliated and subjected to inhumane treatment when they were arrested for indecent exposure.Dennis Jay Mayer, 53, of Palm Springs said he has no doubt they were arrested in Dominica because they were gay. Police said it was because they were seen having sex in public on the balcony of their ship cabin. Mayer said they were not having sex, but were ‘partially clothed’. (edit) The pastor of Dominica's Trinity Baptist Church, Randy Rodney, praised the police for their...

Once thing's for sure. Mitt Romney didn't send his money down to the Cayman Islands to work on its tan. The former Massachusetts governor has been criticized by some for having some of his vast fortune in the Caribbean offshore banking center. Yes, it was politically clumsy. But it was not uncommon, and -- assuming he has filed all the right disclosures -- it was perfectly legal. But if you're not running for president, and don't have to worry about public relations, what are the legitimate reasons for moving money offshore? I spoke to Jim Duggan, a partner at Chicago...

Romney Parks Millions in Offshore Tax Haven By MATTHEW MOSK, BRIAN ROSS (@brianross) and MEGAN CHUCHMACH (@megcourtney) Jan. 18, 2012 Although it is not apparent on his financial disclosure form, Mitt Romney has millions of dollars of his personal wealth in investment funds set up in the Cayman Islands, a notorious Caribbean tax haven. A spokesperson for the Romney campaign says Romney follows all tax laws and he would pay the same in taxes regardless of where the funds are based. As the race for the Republican nomination heats up, Mitt Romney is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a...

Former Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer on Monday gave WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange data on about 2,000 clients that he contends may have evaded taxes, published reports said. At a press conference in London, Elmer told reporters about 40 politicians and “pillars of society” were among the individuals he gave Assange information on, the reports said. Elmer told The Observer newspaper during the weekend that the individuals named in the data include “business people, politicians, people who have made their living in the arts and multinational conglomerates — from both sides of the Atlantic.” Elmer once headed the Cayman Islands office...

The offshore bank account details of 2,000 "high net worth individuals" and corporations – detailing massive potential tax evasion – will be handed over to the WikiLeaks organisation in London tomorrow by the most important and boldest whistleblower in Swiss banking history, Rudolf Elmer, two days before he goes on trial in his native Switzerland. British and American individuals and companies are among the offshore clients whose details will be contained on CDs presented to WikiLeaks at the Frontline Club in London. Those involved include, Elmer tells the Observer, "approximately 40 politicians". Elmer, who after his press conference will return...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://treas.gov/press/releases/tg46.htm March 3, 2009 TG-46 Treasury Designates Companies Tied to Iran’s Bank Melli as Proliferators Washington, DC -- The U.S. Department of the Treasury today designated 11 companies under Executive Order 13382 for their ties to Iran's Bank Melli. E.O 13382 is an authority aimed at freezing the assets of Weapons of Mass Destruction proliferators and those who support them. Bank Melli has been designated as a proliferator by the United States, the European Union, and Australia for its role in Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Additionally, United Nations Security Council Resolution...

Offshore centre of choice for the world's hedge funds has admitted it may have to begin a new life – as a tax haven with taxes. After lengthy wrangling, the British overseas territory on Wednesday confirmed that it has finally secured permission from the UK to obtain a CI$50m (£38m) bail-out loan to plug a 35pc-40pc collapse in revenue this year. The island's government has also signalled that it is ready to cave into UK conditions on slashing government expenditure and an independent report on reform of its tax system that could see it start to impose direct levies to...

A Swiss bank that used its Cayman Islands’ branch to engage in what a US federal judge has branded “predatory lending practices” is being investigated by the US authorities. Senior officials of Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second largest bank, are facing claims that they pocketed millions of dollars by dishing out loans that were impossible to repay. On Tuesday, 15 September, 31 of the bank’s officials received subpoenas demanding that they hand over internal documents that explain why they loaned $375 million to the now bankrupt Yellowstone Club in 2005. The Yellowstone Club, founded by American tycoon Tim Blixseth, was once...

• Collapse of offshore centres could cost UK many millions • Liberal Vince Cable says it is wrong to reward mismanagement Britain could be forced to bail out one or more of its offshore tax havens at huge cost, according to early drafts of a Treasury report, because the economic crisis has wrecked their finances. Offshore expert Michael Foot will next month set out a number of options to government ministers in the report as anxiety grows within Whitehall over the health of Britain's overseas territories and crown dependencies. Senior insiders say early drafts of Foot's report suggest that the...

Cayman Hedge Funds Break 10,000 Barrier, by Amanda Banks, Tax-News.com, London Last updated 30 hours ago | Monday, August 11, 2008 Recent second quarter figures from the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA), have confirmed the achievement of a key milestone by the Cayman Islands financial services industry, with more than 10,000 investment funds currently registered in the jurisdiction. At the end of June 2008 there were 10,037 funds on CIMA's register, compared with 9,681 at the end of the previous quarter and 8,972 at the mid point of 2007. The current annual growth rate of 12% in net new hedge...

Sometimes in Washington, stealth is more important than strength. In recent years, hedge fund managers, who oversee those secretive and lightly regulated pools of billions of dollars of investment capital, have gotten increasingly worried about whether Washington will change tax rules for offshore investors. Many hedge funds set up subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands and other low-tax locales so their investors can pay lower taxes on a certain amount of their activity. If Congress were to make a grab for that money by changing the tax rules governing the hedge funds, it could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in...

I note from Bloomberg News that last year the former president received 2.8 million from a partnership with Ron Burkle. There are actually three Cayman Island accounts that Burkle pays Clinton from. To date, former President Clinton has received 15.5 million from Burkle's efforts. The link for this information can be found: HERE. Wikipedia describes the Burkle and Clinton Cayman Island relationship as follows: "..Recent calls for the release of Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former president Bill Clinton's tax returns have brought to light the fact that President Clinton is expecting a $20,000,000 payout from Burkle's supermarket...

What happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas -- especially if you're the wife of presidential candidate. Just ask Janet Huckabee, who attended a middleweight prize fight this last weekend in Vegas -- where she stayed at the Hooters Casino Hotel. That eye-opening combination -- a title bout in Sin City, which celebrates gambling, drinking and all things wild, along with a hospitality chain favoring buxom waitresses in low-cut garb -- could potentially shock the armies of evangelical conservative Christians who have made her husband, the former governor of Arkansas, the only remaining GOP opponent to party front-runner John...

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee’s visit to Grand Cayman at the weekend to give a paid speech to the Young Caymanian Leadership Awards (YCLA) banquet has caused a stir in the United States, where he is still campaigning against seemingly impossible odds for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr Huckabee was also the keynote speaker at the YCLA banquet in 2000 but all concerned have declined to comment on how much he is being paid for his appearance. However, since he left the governor’s office in Little Rock, Arkansas, a year ago, Mr Huckabee’s primary source of income has reportedly been...

GRAND CAYMAN, Cayman Islands — Mike Huckabee said he was having such a good time here in this sun-splashed tourist resort that it may take a S.W.A.T. team to get him out of his hotel room at the Ritz Carlton and head back to the snowy campaign trail in Wisconsin. He had faced questions late last week about why he was leaving the trail – Wisconsin votes Tuesday — to come and give a paid speech. Speaking to reporters here before he delivered the speech, he said that Senator John McCain, his chief rival, was taking two days off while...

Former President Bill Clinton's decision to reconsider a business relationship with California billionaire Ron Burkle reflects concern those financial dealings may embarrass his wife's presidential candidacy. Securities and Exchange Commission documents and financial- disclosure forms filed by Hillary Clinton show that Bill Clinton, 61, has a financial stake in three investment entities registered in the Cayman Islands by Burkle's Yucaipa Cos. LLC. In 2004, Hillary Clinton, a New York senator, said she wanted to ``close the loopholes'' for ``people who create a mailbox, or a drop, or send one person to sit on the beach in some island paradise and...

GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands — Hurricane Dean spared the Cayman Islands the worst of its fury on Monday as it headed for a collision course with Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, sending tourists fleeing for the airports and locals searching for higher ground. Dean was already a powerful Category 4 storm as it raked the Cayman Islands. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said it could grow into a monstrous Category 5 hurricane before slashing across the Yucatan Peninsula and emerging in the Gulf of Campeche, dotted with oil rigs. Dean was several days from Texas and its path still uncertain, but the...

Two years ago, former senator John Edwards of North Carolina, gearing up for his second run at the Democratic presidential nomination, gave a speech decrying the "two different economies in this country: one for wealthy insiders and then one for everybody else." Four months later, he began working for the kind of firm that to many Wall Street critics embodies the economy of wealthy insiders -- a hedge fund. Edwards became a consultant for Fortress Investment Group, a New York-based firm known mainly for its hedge funds, just as the funds were gaining prominence in the financial world ... run...

In the hunt for Saddam Hussein's billions, investigators have identified five networks of more than 100 companies used to launder money skimmed from Iraqi oil sales. Saddam's gangster regime set up shell companies in Switzerland, Jordan, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg and Panama, according to investigators. Those company networks and their banking affiliations were used to enrich the former Iraqi strongman, his sons Uday and Qusay, and other family members. "Ultimately, the money was stolen from the Iraqi people," said Taylor Griffin, spokesman for the Treasury Department, which is heading the government's laundering probe along with U.S. Customs, the Secret Service and various...

United States of America Cricket Association WORLD CRICKET LEAGUE QUALIFIER – AMERICAS CHAMPIONSHIP 2006 WCLQ SQUAD Steve Massiah - Captain (New York Region) Jignesh Desai - Vice Captain (Southwest Region) Khawaja Shuja - (Central West Region) Chintan Patel - (Atlantic Region) Abhishek Pawar - (Southwest Region) Akeem Dodson - (New York Region) Sushil Nadkarni - (Central West Region) Niraj Shah - (Central West Region) Carl Wright - (Atlantic Region) Steve Pitter - (New York Region) Fauad Hasan - (Northwest Region) Gowkaran Roopnarine - (Atlantic Region) Lennox Cush - (New York Region) Imran Awan - (Atlantic Region) Mustaq Muhhamed - Coach...

'The Parsky team" is now famous -- as well as infamous -- in Rancho Santa Fe. There is another "Parsky team" in the secrecy- shrouded Caribbean tax haven of the Cayman Islands, but that's barely known at all, just as its creators intended. Until recently, multimillionaire Gerald "Gerry" Parsky -- chairman of the University of California board of regents and George W. Bush's main advisor in California -- was better known in the state than he was in Rancho Santa Fe, where he has occupied a horsy estate for 16 years. He takes his own jet in the morning to...

Tropical Storm Warning Issued for Caymans Tropical Storm Warning Issued for Cayman Islands; Residents Begin Preparing for Worst By JAY EHRHART The Associated Press GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands - A tropical storm warning was issued for the Cayman Islands on Saturday and residents, many of whom had not removed the hurricane shutters from earlier storms this season, began preparing for the worst. The system could become Tropical Storm Wilma on Sunday, which would make it the 21st named storm of the season, tying the record for the most storms in an Atlantic season, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said....

RAMALLAH, West Bank - As Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat lay fighting for his life yesterday in a French hospital, his wife, Suha, was locked in a bitter dispute with Palestinian officials over the fate of his vast secret fortune. Arafat's assets have been estimated at anything between $200 million by Forbes to $6 billion by Israeli intelligence. The bonanza is managed in a complex network of bank accounts, holding companies and stocks whose details are known only to his closest confidant, financial adviser Mohammed Rashid. Suha Arafat has access to some of the money, but even she does not know...

Urgent US military intervention needed in Grand Cayman The following is the full text of an open letter from Mr Timothy Adam Chief Executive, Cable & Wireless (Cayman Islands) Ltd Wednesday, September 15, 2004 Grand Cayman urgently needs military intervention to restore and to preserve law and order. This needs to happen TODAY. No doubt US authorities are already aware of the widespread looting that has occurred. I have heard sporadic attempts at looting continue to occur. I got caught in traffic right beside a site where police had shot several times at a looter and had detained him, and...

Hurricane Ivan Hammers Jamaica, Heads for Caymans Sat Sep 11, 2004 12:01 PM ET By Horace Helps KINGSTON, Jamaica (Reuters) - Deadly Hurricane Ivan ripped Jamaica with powerful winds, torrential rains and huge waves on Saturday, tearing away houses and washing out roads before heading toward the tiny Cayman Islands and Cuba. With winds of 155 mph and a death toll already at 29 -- mostly on the devastated southeastern Caribbean island of Grenada -- Ivan gave Jamaica's 2.7 million people a small, last-minute reprieve when its center took a sudden westward turn. That kept the most catastrophic winds off...

It looks like the Cayman Islands are about to be devastated by Ivan. Please send thoughts and prayers to this tiny island. Email good thoughts to: studio@vibefm.ky They are broadcasting live at this station as long as possible: http://www.vibefm.ky/ (Click on the "vibe is streaming live" link in the upper left corner. Thanks.

"Like many well-to-do Americans from that period" -- the 1980s -- "Kerry went looking for a tax shelter." This comes from John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best. According to the book, Kerry "invested between $25,000 and $30,000" in a "scheme known as a 'straddle' that involved forward contracts to buy and sell certain commodities through companies in the Cayman Islands." The book reports that Kerry's Cayman Islands tax shelter scheme didn't pan out. An embarrassed Kerry had to abandon it with apologies. "I thought it was a way to try to...

Tropical storm Claudette formed today in the eastern Caribbean. It is moving very rapidly and is expected to make landfall between the northern tip of Nicaragua and Houma, Louisiana, including western Cuba, the Cayman Islands, and Jamaica sometime within the next week or so. The official forecast has it becoming a hurricane on Thursday before moving over the Yucatan Peninsula. Previous tropical storm live threads, for Ana and Bill, were posted in the News/Activism forum, and did not garner significant attention because they got buried. Being stupid, I didn't notice that the "weather" topic is in this forum. Post news...

P AUL Deakin studied the pictures of the 9/11 terrorists with disbelief as he realised that among them was the man who had become his friend.For four weeks the maths teacher from the North of England and Ziad Jarrah, the man who seized controls of the fourth hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, had shared a bungalow as they learned how to fly in Florida.They had watched Friends together on TV and gone out to local bars at weekends to play pool.But while all Paul had wanted was a private pilot's licence Jarrah had another purpose. He was to become...