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As part of just-inaugurated President Obama’s new foreign policy to improve relations between the United States and Russia, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in March 2009. Meeting in her hotel’s Salon Panorama in Geneva, she presented him with a small gift box containing a bright red button symbolizing the Obama administration’s desire to “reset” the relationship between the two governments. Thus began an effort to transfer American technology to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s own “Silicon Valley,” called Skolkovo. In a report released in late July by the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) entitled From...

President Obama is all for demonizing large American corporations that avoid taxes through income shifting…except when those large American corporations are dumping money in his campaign coffers. Bloomberg is running a big story on Google’s lucrative use of the very loopholes Team Obama wants to eliminate: Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda. Google’s income shifting — involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” — helped reduce its overseas tax rate...

Looks like the country's top diplomat and her headline-grabbing hubby have reached a détente while on a romantic Bermuda vacation yesterday. The laid-back Clintons looked like any other happily married couple outside the Cambridge Beaches resort, where they are staying for a brief vacation. The getaway comes less than two weeks after a feisty Secretary of State Hillary, during a visit to the Congo, lashed out at a university student who she thought had asked her Bill's opinion on an international issue. And on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton raised eyebrows when she skipped a meeting between President Obama and Bill Clinton...

On Obama Adviser’s Disclosure Form: ‘Bermuda’ A lot of attention has been focused lately on Mitt Romney’s offshore finances in places like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. But the word Bermuda pops up on the financial disclosure forms of one of President Obama’s top advisers too. Valerie Jarrett’s financial disclosure form filed May 4 lists a line of credit from a Bermuda insurance company valued between $100,000 and $250,000. We’ve asked the White House what exactly this mark is, and we’re waiting to hear back. In the meantime we’ve spoken to tax experts who have said that the filing could...

A FORMER Google executive has blown the whistle on a massive and “immoral” tax avoidance scheme that has “cheated” British taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of pounds over the past decade. Barney Jones, 34, who worked for the internet search giant between 2002 and 2006, has lifted the lid on an elaborate structure which diverts British profits through Ireland to the Bermuda tax haven. Although Google’s London sales staff would negotiate and sign contracts with British customers, and cash was paid into a UK bank account, deals were technically booked through its Dublin office to minimise its liabilities here....

The 500 largest American companies hold more than $2.1 trillion in accumulated profits offshore to avoid U.S. taxes and would collectively owe an estimated $620 billion in U.S. taxes if they repatriated the funds, according to a study released on Tuesday. The study, by two left-leaning non-profit groups, found that nearly three-quarters of the firms on the Fortune 500 list of biggest American companies by gross revenue operate tax haven subsidiaries in countries like Bermuda, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The conglomerate General Electric has booked $119 billion offshore in 18 tax havens, software firm Microsoft is holding $108.3 billion...

Progressives used to pressure U.S. corporations to cut back on outsourcing and on the tactic of building their products abroad to take advantage of inexpensive foreign workers. During the 2012 election, President Obama attacked Mitt Romney as a potential illiberal “outsourcer in chief” for investing in companies that went overseas in search of cheap labor. Yet most of the computers and smartphones sold by Silicon Valley companies are still being built abroad — to mostly silence from progressive watchdogs. In the case of the cobalt mining that is necessary for the production of lithium-ion batteries in electric cars, thousands of...

This is a History Lesson: The revelations of the so-called Panama Papers that are roiling the world’s political and financial elites this week include important facts about Team Clinton. This unprecedented trove of documents purloined from a shady Panama law firm that arranged tax havens, and perhaps money laundering, for the globe’s super-rich includes juicy insights into how Russia’s elite hides its ill-gotten wealth.

George Soros is a resident of New York state and a wealthy political donor. But the Panama Papers show his money resides elsewhere. Soros Holdings Limited was incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. Soros Capital in Bermuda. And Soros Finance Inc. was set up in Panama. It's there that the law firm Mossack Fonseca helped the rich and powerful avoid taxes and hide their wealth. http://www.aol.com/article/2016/05/17/george-soros-panama-papers-hillary-clinton/21379016/

Email at link has this attachment: MEMORANDUM To: John From: Sean RE: Framework Date: July 31, 2013 Sine Qua Non 1 - A board for Priorities USA Action SuperPAC that includes: You and Jim Messina as Chairs Capricia Marshall (The donors all respect her immensely) Paul Begala Minyon Moore Michael Whouley (Harold Ickes and Greg Speed are already on the Board) I think that if we are serious about having a functioning SuperPAC for her, it is imperative to have you and Jim as Chairs, and particularly important to have Michael and the Dewey Square folks to definitively get us...

"HSBC case blows lid off Clintons' offshore empire Panama Papers suggest ties to massive money-laundering scheme" The arrest of the head of global foreign exchange cash trading at HSBC bank may shed new light on suspicions the Clinton Foundation has been involved in illegal offshore money-laundering operations on a massive scale. The investigation into HSBC currency trader Mark Johnson and associate Stuart Scott for their alleged role in a “conspiracy to rig currency benchmarks” by front-running customer orders has escalated to the point where the Department of Justice is threatening to tear up a 2012 agreement to fine HSBC a...

Revelations in the Panama Papers that key Clinton financial partners had numerous offshore entities is the latest investigation to expose the secretive Clinton Global Financial Network. As the Panama Papers reveal, major Clinton financial partners, including Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra and the Chagoury family of Nigeria, made use of the controversial Panamian law firm Mossack Fonseca to move assets around the world. Several key figures in the uranium deal that sent 20 percent of American uranium production into the hands of the Russian government had offshore entities created by Mossack Fonseca. Frank Giustra used the firm to create UrAsia...

Reykjavik (AFP) - History professor Gudni Johannesson won Iceland's presidential election after riding a wave of anti-establishment sentiment, final results showed Sunday, although the vote was eclipsed by the country's eagerly-anticipated Euro football match. The political newcomer, who won with 39.1 percent of votes, was trailed by businesswoman Halla Tomasdottir, also without party affiliation, who took 29.4 percent, according to results announced on public television channel RUV. Johannesson only decided to run for the presidency after the so-called Panama Papers leak in April which detailed offshore accounts and implicated several senior Icelandic politicians, including the prime minister who was forced...

One of Hillary Clinton’s key supporters – an Israeli billionaire who has donated more than $15 million to her presidential campaign and troubled family foundation – used a controversial Panamanian law firm to set up offshore companies and once admitted to a Senate panel that he used phony investment losses to dodge hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes. Television and entertainment magnate Haim Saban, an Egyptian-born Israeli who made a fortune off of the “Power Rangers" children’s TV franchise and holds a lucrative stake in Univision, is among thousands of international movers and shakers whose names have surfaced in...

Soros, 86, is worth an estimated $25 billion. His Open Society Institute is one of ICIJ’s main funders, granting it $1.5 million last year. The Panama Papers data reveals only the tip of Soros' offshore iceberg, the Quantum Group of Funds. The ICIJ’s leader, journalist Gerard Ryle, said he had not noticed Soros’ companies in the Offshore Leaks database until FoxNews.com called the matter to his attention. “I suspect we would have more information [on Soros] because the public database … does not contain the underlying data,” Ryle said in an email FoxNews.com. FoxNews.com has requested access to that data....

(CNN)Donald Trump said Wednesday that he plans to release his taxes when an IRS audit is completed, despite telling the Associated Press the previous day before that he would not release his tax documents. "In interview I told @AP that my taxes are under routine audit and I would release my tax returns when audit is complete, not after election!" the real estate mogul tweeted Wednesday, after Trump's critics, including Mitt Romney and other Republicans, who have urged Trump to make his tax returns available.

What would Hermione Granger say? Actress Emma Watson has been named in the so-called "Panama Papers" as having used a company based in a Caribbean tax haven to handle her money, it was revealed Tuesday. The 26-year-old, who is taking a break from acting to work as a United Nations goodwill ambassador and women's rights campaigner, is a shareholder in one of approximately 200,000 offshore corporations whose information was published online Monday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

The members of the #NeverTrump movement cite, in part, Donald Trump’s position on trade as a reason why they cannot support their party’s presumptive nominee, chosen by Republican voters. They argue that Trump’s position on trade represents a betrayal of the Ronald Reagan legacy that defines virtually all thinking and rhetoric among the professional conservative class in Washington, D.C. However, there is one significant problem with this line of attack: namely, Reagan’s record on trade far more closely resembles Trump’s position than it resembles the view of those in the #NeverTrump movement. In fact, by their own definition, Reagan would...

It really is quite stunning to see the voices who support Ted Cruz try and reconcile his prior support for the Trans-Pacific Trade issue.  Their obtuse position is fraught with intellectual dishonesty, and, quite frankly, a necessary head-in-the-sand approach.We’ve previously outlined the issue HERE.   Senator Cruz supported the legislative trade-passage vehicle of TPA (Trade Promotion Authority) because ultimately the trade bill itself (TPP) benefits Wall Street’s interests.However, the best way to understand the issue of his support is to actually listen to Ted Cruz explain in 2015 why he supported, then stopped supporting TPA:You can clearly see, in his own words, Senator Cruz stating he stopped...

Listed below the video from Jeff Sessions you will find two pdf outlines which detail some of the more concerning aspects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Deal. Feel free to share those pdf formats with your friends, family and social circles who are not familiar with the inherent issues.