Posts Tagged ‘safe havens’
US and Israel: Fighting it out for the control of Lebanon “politics”
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 20, 2021
Swapping Punishment and counter Revenge at the expense of people in Lebanon, including the refugees, Palestinians and Syrians)
Note: This idea came to me in a flash and made plenty of sense given the many concording evidences, months and years after the events that happened in Lebanon. This conjecture is Never approached in articles and news, on the ground that the “active” feuds between Israel and US administration should be taboos.
The US embassy in Lebanon does Not need many secret agents: It receive intelligence pieces directly from the sources: ministers, deputies, Central Bank, private banks, and all its institutions.
The employees “agents” in every Lebanese institution are trained to recognize the kinds of fresh information that the US desire to obtain for the control of Lebanon “politics”
Most of the other embassies, with a few exceptions, receive the intelligence that the US wants to share with them, and in return they also share their intelligence with the US embassy.
Lebanon is ideal carrefour for collecting and swapping intelligence pieces in Lebanon and mostly of the “Arabic’ and Islamic States. That is why this pseudo-State is Not to erased from among the UN States.
Actually, most Lebanese “politicians” and in high level positions prefer to play double and triple agents, which is fine if they “register” as such with the US embassy, as long as they have “no direct contact” with the other agents without the approval for certain events and for a period.
Occasionally, and for local politics in Israel, Israel likes to forget that it is a tiny State and totally dependent on the US and has to plan a priori with the US in Lebanon politics.
In these circumstances, when Israel decide to play the strong partner in Lebanon or the adjacent States without the approval of the US, Israel is punished for tarnishing the “standing” of the US in this strategic turntable of intelligence swapping for the entire Middle-East, once Israel activities turn sour and it is the US that has to pay the dear price in the region.
Israel had deliberately targeted the US Liberty intelligence ship during the 1967 war, for 3 hours and killed 33 navy men. The US buried this bloody “accident” to the public, but I conjecture that is why the US didn’t build or sold any warships to Israel. It is the job of Germany to fund Israel war ships and submarine and built in France.
The US never forgot the heavy casualties it suffered in 1983 to its marines for the blowing of their headquarter close to Lebanon airport. Israel reneged on the deal to vacate Beirut and most of the occupied territories, and to quickly withdraw to the stretch of land in the south, a land that it occupied for 23 years.
The US responded by allowing Syria to get a mandated power over Lebanon politics in order to clip Israel control over many politicians.
And the resistance against Israel forces was launched that ended in Israel withdrawal in 2000 without any explicit pre-conditions.
The pre-emptive war in 2006 that lasted for 33 days is another tragic events.
I conjecture that the US was Not ready to launch this war on Hezbollah and Lebanon at this time, but Israel, for local politics, lied that it can destroy Hezbollah military forces.
A week into the war, Israel discovered that the morale of its army was Not at par with the goal of the war. Israel wanted to stop the war, but the US was outraged for being lead/dragged to this war and pressured Israel to resume the war, against all odds.
Israel ended up begging the US to quickly demand a cease fire.
In retaliation for this fiasco, the US got its revenge in 2008 by leaking the “safe havens” of Israel Mossad locations in Beirut to Hezbollah.
Within 3 days, Hezbollah had “closed” all of Israel spy networks in Lebanon and pressured the dual Lebanese political agents to desist from direct contact with Israel. And the US regained some of its standing with easy direct intelligence from Lebanon institutions.
Feeling safe, the nonchalance of the US control of Lebanon lead to the total bankruptcy of the State of Lebanon at all levels: US policies encouraged Lebanon civil war “leaders” to loot the wealth of Lebanon and its budgets since 2008.
Note: Israel is at odd with US policies in Lebanon. Israel has decided that “No more military pre-emptive wars on Lebanon, Not even on a smaller scale”. Israel desires a “stable” Hezbollah. Otherwise, Israel will be sucked into successive nightwares.
No more Caches for Fiscal Evaders in selected Islands?
Bye Bye Launderers and white washers of plundered wealth?
Since 2009, many nations were trying to find ways to close loopholes in fiscal laws that permitted the rich people to transfer wealth to foreign caches in order to escape paying their due taxes.
In 2020, Lebanon pseudo State has Not even contemplated preventing the militia/mafia leaders from draining our accounts in banks in hard currencies from vacating our territory.
The financial havoc has generated another capital consequence. in every nation around the world.
All these tiny islands and tiny States that were the havens of offshore companies where money were stashed away to avoid taxes are no longer safe havens.
The safe havens were pressured to enact laws that permit any State government to investigate accounts that were immune under “banking secrecy regulations“.
There are five main regions were these safe heavens concentrated their activities.
First, the Caribbean islands of about 14 of them, singly or set of smaller islands, such as: Caicos, Turks, Anguilla, and Montserrat (controlled by Britain), the Virgin Islands (controlled by the USA, the Aruba and Antilles (controlled by the Netherlands), the Bahamas, Caimans, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominic, Sainte Lucie, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, Saint Christopher and Nevis, Grenada, Panama City, and Belize.
Second, in Europe we got the city of Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Isle of Man, Isles of Guernsey and Jersey, Gibraltar, Monaco, Saint Marin, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Cyprus, and Switzerland.
Third, in the Far East we have: Tonga, Vanuatu, Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa, Nauru, Marshall Islands, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
Fourth, in the Arab Gulf we have: Dubai and Bahrain.
Fifth, in East Africa we have: Maurice, Seychelles Republic, Maldives, and then Liberia in West Africa.
For example, the Caribbean islands and particularly the Caimans has residency for 70% of hedge funds and manage about $ 2 trillion or 2,000 billions;
Jersey Island is the prime British offshore center and managing 300 billions;
Liechtenstein with 165 billions;
Switzerland with $2 trillions of offshore money or the third of the world’s caches and which generate a third of the State’s income.
The safe havens in the Virgin Islands are mostly invested by China.
Now most of these safe havens are in the process of regulating their financial activities because most States want the money of their citizens repatriated in order to be taxed.
The problem is that the fiscal laws in most States are so exorbitant and complicated that it is Not worth repatriating any money.
People are just waiting for lenient and simple fiscal laws to be enacted before they get the courage to transfer their money to their home states.
For example, taking into account penalties on bad faith (40%), interests in arrears, tax on revenue, social contribution and other rights and penalties, a French citizen having one million dollars in Switzerland should expect to pay 1,300,000 dollars, far more than what he has saved in the safe haven.
France has evaluated to 20 billions dollars of lost revenue is fiscal fraud, which amount to the total budget for the department of Research and higher Education.
The case of Switzerland banking secrecy laws started in 1934.
In 1932, France confiscated from the Commercial Bank of Bale ten books containing 2000 French clients; the socialist deputy Fabien Albertin divulged the names of the clients representing a wide spectrum of influential personalities from magistrates, to ministers, to deputies, and to bishops.
The State of Switzerland reacted.
Only in 1998 did the wall of banking secrecy fall in Switzerland when the US exercised pressures to recoup 1.25 billions dollars saved by Jewish families during the Nazi period.
There are four criteria to categorize a State as a fiscal paradise:
First, absence or lack of fiscal laws;
second, lack of transparency;
third, the economy cannot support that much funds (basically, a post office State); and
fourth, refusal to exchange judicial and fiscal information.
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