Two million corporations and limited liability companies are formed every year in the US with no one knowing who the beneficial owners are.
“Right now, a person forming a US corporation or limited liability company provides less information to the state than is required to open a bank account or obtain a driver’s license,” Democratic Senator Carl Levin said last year.
Welcome to America’s dirty little secret: the states of Wyoming, Nevada and in particular Delaware, where financial disclosure requirements are minimal. Delaware has come under scrutiny from Swiss bankers, who argue it provides the same levels of secrecy as they do.
Washington insiders say that while there are problems with Delaware’s business disclosure laws, they are expected to be addressed soon. And they argue that, unlike Switzerland, Delaware does not have a history of touting for overseas business using its facility to avoid tax as a selling point.
But while Obama leads the fight to combat tax evasion in offshore centers, recent studies indicate he should be looking closer to home.
Jason Sharman, professor of the center for governance and public policy at Griffith University in Australia, tried to set up shell companies in 22 countries. Surprisingly, the easiest places to retain secrecy were the US and Britain.
Sharman attempted to set up anonymous shell companies 45 times. In 17 cases, the service providers provided the requested shell without bothering to check on the actual identity of the client. And it was not expensive: US$550 to US$1,900. Shockingly, seven shells were provided in Great Britain, four in the US, one in Spain and one in Canada.
“History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes” (attributed to Mark Twain). The USSR was the international bully during the Cold War as it sought to make the world safe for Soviet-style Communism. China is now the global bully as it applies economic power and invests in Mao’s (毛澤東) magic weapons (the People’s Liberation Army [PLA], the United Front Work Department, and the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]) to achieve world domination. Freedom-loving countries must respond to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), especially in the Indo-Pacific (IP), as resolutely as they did against the USSR. In 1954, the US and its allies
Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Shen You-chung (沈有忠) on Thursday last week urged democratic nations to boycott China’s military parade on Wednesday next week. The parade, a grand display of Beijing’s military hardware, is meant to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. While China has invited world leaders to attend, many have declined. A Kyodo News report on Sunday said that Japan has asked European and Asian leaders who have yet to respond to the invitation to refrain from attending. Tokyo is seeking to prevent Beijing from spreading its distorted interpretation of wartime history, the report
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in China yesterday, where he is to attend a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin today. As this coincides with the 50 percent US tariff levied on Indian products, some Western news media have suggested that Modi is moving away from the US, and into the arms of China and Russia. Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation fellow Sana Hashmi in a Taipei Times article published yesterday titled “Myths around Modi’s China visit” said that those analyses have misrepresented India’s strategic calculations, and attempted to view
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) stood in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa on Thursday last week, flanked by Chinese flags, synchronized schoolchildren and armed Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops, he was not just celebrating the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the “Tibet Autonomous Region,” he was making a calculated declaration: Tibet is China. It always has been. Case closed. Except it has not. The case remains wide open — not just in the hearts of Tibetans, but in history records. For decades, Beijing has insisted that Tibet has “always been part of China.” It is a phrase
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