Paraisos fiscais internos: entre a sadia competicao e a delinquencia: ocaso de Delaware (NYT)

Delaware, Den of Thieves?

By JOHN A. CASSARA

The New York Times, November 1, 2013

OUTSIDE of crimes of passion, criminal activity is typically motivated by greed.

As a special agent for the Treasury Department, I investigated financial crimes like money laundering and terrorism financing. I trained foreign police forces to “follow the money” and track the flow of capital across borders.

During these training sessions, I’d often hear this: “My agency has a financial crimes investigation. The money trail leads to the American state of Delaware. We can’t get any information and don’t know what to do. We are going to have to close our investigation. Can you help?"

The question embarrassed me. There was nothing I could do.

In the years I was assigned to Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or Fincen, I observed many formal requests for assistance having to do with companies associated with Delaware, Nevada or Wyoming. These states have a tawdry image: they have become nearly synonymous with underground financing, tax evasion and other bad deeds facilitated by anonymous shell companies — or by companies lacking information on their “beneficial owners,” the person or entity that actually controls the company, not the (often meaningless) name under which the company is registered.

Our State and Treasury Departments routinely identify countries that are havens for financial crimes. But, whether because of shortsightedness or hypocrisy, we overlook the financial crimes that are abetted in our own country by lax state laws. While the problem is concentrated in Delaware, there has been a “race to the bottom” by other states that have enacted corporate secrecy laws to try to attract incorporation fees.

The Financial Action Task Force, an international body that sets standards for the fight against money laundering, terrorist financing and other threats to the international financial system, has repeatedly criticized America for failing to comply with a guideline requiring the disclosure of beneficial ownership information. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with which the task force is affiliated, has championed international standards for financial transparency, but cannot compel compliance.

Watchdog groups like the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Global Financial Integrity and Global Witness say that anonymous companies registered in the United States have become the vehicle of choice for drug dealers, organized criminals and corrupt politicians to evade taxes and launder illicit funds. A study by researchers at Brigham Young University, the University of Texas and Griffith University in Australia concluded that America was the second easiest country, after Kenya, in which to incorporate a shell company.

Domestic law enforcement agencies are as stymied as foreign ones. In one case I worked on, American investigators had to give up their examination of a Nevada-based corporation that had received more than 3,700 suspicious wire transfers totaling $81 million over two years. The case did not result in prosecution because the investigators could not definitively identify the owners.

Anonymous corporations are not only favored tools of criminals, but they also facilitate corruption, particularly in the developing world. A recent World Bank study found that the United States was the favored destination for corrupt foreign politicians opening phantom companies to conceal their ill-gotten gains.

Last month, Representatives Maxine Waters of California and Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, the top Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee, introduced legislation that would require United States corporations to disclose to the Treasury Department their beneficial owners. On Thursday, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain went even further, announcing that a planned national registry of companies’ true owners would be open to the public, not just to law enforcement authorities.

The proposal enjoys support from law enforcement experts like Dennis M. Lormel, who led the F.B.I.’s efforts against terrorism financing after 9/11, and the former Manhattan district attorney Robert M. Morgenthau (and his successor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr.).

While officials in Delaware, Wyoming and Nevada talk about their corporate “traditions,” I am unimpressed. Business incorporation fees have accounted for as much as a quarter of Delaware’s general revenues. It’s no surprise that officials in Dover and Wilmington want to protect their state’s status as a corporate registry, but if that means facilitating criminal activity, their stance is a form of willful blindness. America must require uniform corporate-registration practices if it is to persuade other nations to cooperate in the fight against financial crimes.

John A. Cassara, a former special agent for the Treasury Department, is the author, most recently, of a novel, “Demons of Gadara.”

Chipre: a ilha de todos os traficos - Estadao e Paul Krugman

Raramente concordo com o keynesianismo exacerbado de Paul Krugman, mas agora, neste artigo sobre Chipre, ele relata simplesmente a verdade. A ilha se tornou uma lavanderia russa, para dinheiro legal e ilegal, o que obviamente não pode ser tolerado.
A conta vai sair cara, para todas as partes...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Barbeiragem em Chipre

22 de março de 2013 | 2h 09

Editorial O Estado de S.Paulo

Em meio aos gigantes da economia europeia que estão em dificuldades, coube a Chipre, um minúsculo país de 1 milhão de habitantes, com um Produto Interno Bruto de apenas US$ 23,6 bilhões, protagonizar uma crise financeira que ameaça despejar gasolina no incêndio da zona do euro. O caso todo é uma mistura de arrogância política e erros de avaliação.
A própria presença de Chipre na União Europeia (UE) - uma óbvia anomalia, já que nem o sistema financeiro do país nem sua economia respeitam os padrões mínimos exigidos pela UE - é fruto de um jogo de conveniências. Os reticentes dirigentes europeus tiveram de engolir Chipre em 2004 por pressão da Grécia, que ameaçava vetar o ingresso da Polônia e da República Checa, entre outros países do Leste Europeu, caso os cipriotas não fossem aceitos. Como se sabe, a ilha é dividida entre cipriotas gregos e turcos desde 1974, e o interesse de Atenas ao forçar a adesão de Chipre à UE era deslegitimar de vez a porção sob influência turca, que já não tem reconhecimento internacional. A UE, por sua vez, esperava que houvesse a reunificação de Chipre antes de aceitar seu ingresso, mas cedeu aos gregos. Pouco depois, os cipriotas gregos rejeitaram a reunificação em referendo, enterrando de vez as ilusões de que a entrada de Chipre no clube do euro pudesse facilitar o processo de paz. Assim, não surpreende a má vontade com que os cipriotas estão sendo tratados neste momento pelas autoridades europeias.
Chipre já não gozava de nenhuma confiança no resto do continente, o que explica a violência do pacote de socorro proposto pela UE e pelo FMI - que previa, além da tradicional exigência de austeridade fiscal, o confisco de parte dos depósitos bancários para ajudar a pagar a conta do resgate. Mas os duros termos do resgate revelam que os eleitores das potências europeias, a esta altura, não acreditam mais nos argumentos de seus governantes para socorrer países quebrados e só admitem que a ajuda seja liberada se esses países forem submetidos a condições muito mais severas do que as impostas até agora. A crise na zona do euro, portanto, não é apenas econômica, mas também de credibilidade política.
Não é de hoje, aliás, que os europeus do norte consideram os do sul irresponsáveis, corruptos e perdulários - portanto, indignos de solidariedade em momentos de penúria. A necessidade de consolidar a União Europeia abafou esse sentimento, mas a aguda crise na Grécia, na Espanha e na Itália tirou o gênio da garrafa e escancarou a dificuldade de conciliar culturas políticas tão distintas. Nesse contexto, a chanceler da Alemanha, Angela Merkel, que deveria ter defendido o resgate cipriota a despeito de sua impopularidade, ante o potencial explosivo da crise, preferiu o conforto de uma solução demagógica e irresponsável - teme-se, com razão, que o precedente aberto pelo confisco deflagre uma corrida aos bancos também na Itália, na Espanha, em Portugal e na Grécia, justamente no momento em que essas economias lutam para reequilibrar-se.
Ademais, as exigências da UE para o resgate cipriota não tocam em outro ponto importante: Chipre é uma lavanderia de dinheiro para milionários russos envolvidos em negócios obscuros. O certo seria controlar parte desses depósitos, mas o governo cipriota não quis melindrar a Rússia, responsável por uma ajuda de US$ 3,3 bilhões ao país, e decidiu que seriam taxadas as contas com valores abaixo de 100 mil, atingindo os correntistas comuns, cujos depósitos são garantidos pela legislação europeia. Não surpreende, portanto, que o Parlamento cipriota tenha rejeitado a exigência.
Discute-se a alternativa de que a Rússia possa socorrer Chipre novamente, em troca da exploração de suas reservas de gás - calcula-se que a ilha tenha o equivalente a 40% das necessidades da UE, hoje dependente do gás que vem da Rússia. Logo, um dos efeitos importantes da crise cipriota pode acabar sendo o aumento da influência russa no continente, algo que os dirigentes europeus certamente não esperavam quando aceitaram Chipre na UE.
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The New York Times, March 21, 2013

Treasure Island Trauma

By PAUL KRUGMAN

A couple of years ago, the journalist Nicholas Shaxson published a fascinating, chilling book titled “Treasure Islands,” which explained how international tax havens — which are also, as the author pointed out, “secrecy jurisdictions” where many rules don’t apply — undermine economies around the world. Not only do they bleed revenues from cash-strapped governments and enable corruption; they distort the flow of capital, helping to feed ever-bigger financial crises.

One question Mr. Shaxson didn’t get into much, however, is what happens when a secrecy jurisdiction itself goes bust. That’s the story of Cyprus right now. And whatever the outcome for Cyprus itself (hint: it’s not likely to be happy), the Cyprus mess shows just how unreformed the world banking system remains, almost five years after the global financial crisis began.

So, about Cyprus: You might wonder why anyone cares about a tiny nation with an economy not much bigger than that of metropolitan Scranton, Pa. Cyprus is, however, a member of the euro zone, so events there could trigger contagion (for example, bank runs) in larger nations. And there’s something else: While the Cypriot economy may be tiny, it’s a surprisingly large financial player, with a banking sector four or five times as big as you might expect given the size of its economy.

Why are Cypriot banks so big? Because the country is a tax haven where corporations and wealthy foreigners stash their money. Officially, 37 percent of the deposits in Cypriot banks come from nonresidents; the true number, once you take into account wealthy expatriates and people who are only nominally resident in Cyprus, is surely much higher. Basically, Cyprus is a place where people, especially but not only Russians, hide their wealth from both the taxmen and the regulators. Whatever gloss you put on it, it’s basically about money-laundering.

And the truth is that much of the wealth never moved at all; it just became invisible. On paper, for example, Cyprus became a huge investor in Russia — much bigger than Germany, whose economy is hundreds of times larger. In reality, of course, this was just “roundtripping” by Russians using the island as a tax shelter.

Unfortunately for the Cypriots, enough real money came in to finance some seriously bad investments, as their banks bought Greek debt and lent into a vast real estate bubble. Sooner or later, things were bound to go wrong. And now they have.

Now what? There are some strong similarities between Cyprus now and Iceland (a similar-size economy) a few years back. Like Cyprus now, Iceland had a huge banking sector, swollen by foreign deposits, that was simply too big to bail out. Iceland’s response was essentially to let its banks go bust, wiping out those foreign investors, while protecting domestic depositors — and the results weren’t too bad. Indeed, Iceland, with a far lower unemployment rate than most of Europe, has weathered the crisis surprisingly well.

Unfortunately, Cyprus’s response to its crisis has been a hopeless muddle. In part, this reflects the fact that it no longer has its own currency, which makes it dependent on decision makers in Brussels and Berlin — decision makers who haven’t been willing to let banks openly fail.

But it also reflects Cyprus’s own reluctance to accept the end of its money-laundering business; its leaders are still trying to limit losses to foreign depositors in the vain hope that business as usual can resume, and they were so anxious to protect the big money that they tried to limit foreigners’ losses by expropriating small domestic depositors. As it turned out, however, ordinary Cypriots were outraged, the plan was rejected, and, at this point, nobody knows what will happen.

My guess is that, in the end, Cyprus will adopt something like the Icelandic solution, but unless it ends up being forced off the euro in the next few days — a real possibility — it may first waste a lot of time and money on half-measures, trying to avoid facing up to reality while running up huge debts to wealthier nations. We’ll see.

But step back for a minute and consider the incredible fact that tax havens like Cyprus, the Cayman Islands, and many more are still operating pretty much the same way that they did before the global financial crisis. Everyone has seen the damage that runaway bankers can inflict, yet much of the world’s financial business is still routed through jurisdictions that let bankers sidestep even the mild regulations we’ve put in place. Everyone is crying about budget deficits, yet corporations and the wealthy are still freely using tax havens to avoid paying taxes like the little people.

So don’t cry for Cyprus; cry for all of us, living in a world whose leaders seem determined not to learn from disaster.