Slush fund accounts of major US politicians identified and seized at Vatican Bank (Rome).
Following is an article explaining "Slush Funds"
Slush Funds
In line with David McClintick (“Swordfish: A True Story of Ambition, Savagery, and Betrayal”), within the late 1980′s, the FBI and DEA set up dummy corporations to deal in drugs. They funneled into these corporate fronts cash from drug-associated asset seizures.
The concept was to infiltrate world crime networks however numerous the money in “Operation Swordfish” might have ended up in the flawed pockets. Government agents and sheriffs acquired mysteriously and filthily rich and the whole sorry affair was wound down. The GAO reported greater than $3.6 billion missing. This bit of history gave rise to at the very least one blockbuster with Oscar-winner Halle Berry.
Alas, slush funds are much less glamorous in reality. They usually contain grubby politicians, pawky bankers, and philistine businessmen – fairly than glamorous hackers and James Bondean secret agents.
The Kazakh prime minister, Imanghaliy Tasmaghambetov, freely admitted on April four, 2002 to his nation’s rubber-stamp parliament the existence of a $1 billion slush fund. The money was apparently skimmed off the proceeds of the opaque sale of the Tengiz oilfield. Remitting it to Kazakhstan – he expostulated with a poker face – would have fostered inflation. So, the nation’s president, Nazarbaev, saved the funds overseas “for use within the occasion of both an economic crisis or a menace to Kazakhstan’s safety”.
The money was used to repay pension arrears in 1997 and to offset the pernicious results of the 1998 devaluation of the Russian ruble. What was left was duly transferred to the $1.5 billion Nationwide Fund, the PM insisted. Alas, the original cash in the Fund came fully from one other sale of oil belongings to Chevron, thus casting in doubt the official version.
The Nationwide Fund was, certainly, augmented by a transfer or from the slush fund – however a minimum of one of these transfers occurred only 11 days after the damning revelations. Moreover, regardless of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, the unfazed premier denied that his president possesses multi-million dollar bank accounts abroad.
He later rescinded this last bit of disinformation. The president, he stated, has no bank accounts overseas but will promptly return all the cash in these non-existent accounts to Kazakhstan. These vehemently denied accounts, he speculated, were arrange by the president’s adversaries “for the purpose of compromising his name”.
On April 15, 2002 even the docile opposition had enough of this fuzzy logic. They established a People Oil’s Fund to monitor, henceforth, the regime’s financial shenanigans. By their calculations lower than 7 p.c of the income from the sale of hydrocarbon fuels (c. $4-5 billion yearly) make it to the national budget.
Slush funds infect each corner of the globe, not only the more obscure and venal ones. Every secret service – from the Mossad to the CIA – operates exterior the said state budget. Slush funds are used to launder cash, bathe cronies with patronage, and bribe decision makers. In some nations, setting them up is a prison offense, as per the 1990 Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure, and Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime. Other jurisdictions are more forgiving.
The Catholic Bishops Conference of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands issued a press release November 2001 during which it welcomed the government’s plans to abolish slush funds. They described the toxic effect of this apply:
“With a couple of notable exceptions, the follow of directing funds by way of politicians to district initiatives has been disastrous. It has created an environment during which corruption is believed to have flourished. It has decreased the responsibility of public servants, with out lowering their numbers or costs. It has been used to confuse people into believing public funds are the ‘property’ of particular person members reasonably than the property of the individuals, actually and fairly administered by the servants of the people.
The idea of ‘slush-funds’ has resulted in properly-documented inefficiencies and failures. There were even accusations made that funds were withheld from sure members as a way of forcing them into submission. It appears that evidently the era of the ‘slush funds’ has been a shameful period.”
However even is probably the most orderly and lawful administration, funds are liable to be mislaid. “The Economist” reported recently a few $10 billion class-motion suit filed by native-Americans against the US government. The funds, presupposed to be managed in trust since 1880 on behalf of half a million beneficiaries, were “either misplaced or stolen” according to officials.
Rob Gordon, the Director of the Nationwide Wilderness Institute accused “The US Interior Division (of) looting the special funds that had been established to pay for wildlife conservation and squandering the money instead on questionable administrative bills, slush funds and employee shifting expenses”.
Charles Griffin, the Deputy Director of the Heritage Basis’s Authorities Integrity Project, fees:
“The federal budget gives quite a few slush funds that can be utilized to subsidize the lobbying and political activities of special-interest groups.”
On his checklist of “Prime Ten Federal Programs That Actively Subsidize Politics and Lobbying” are: AmeriCorps, Senior Neighborhood Service Employment Program, Authorized Companies Corporation, Title X Family Planning, Nationwide Endowment for the Humanities, Market Promotion Program, Senior Environmental Employment Program, Superfund Worker Coaching, HHS Discretionary Aging Projects, Telecomm. & Info. Infrastructure Assistance. These federal funds alone complete $1.8 billion.
“Subsequent” and “China Instances” – later joined by “The Washington Publish” – accused the former Taiwanese president, Lee Teng-hui, of forming a $one hundred million abroad slush fund supposed to finance the gathering of knowledge, affect-peddling, and propaganda operations. Taiwan footed the bills trips by Congressional aides and funded academic analysis and think tank conferences.
Excessive ranking Japanese officers, amongst others, could have received funds by this stealthy venue. Lee is alleged to have drawn $a hundred,000 from the key account in February 1999. The money was used to pay for the studies of a former Japanese Vice-Defense Minister Masahiro Akiyama’s at Harvard.
Ryutaro Hashimoto, the previous Japanese prime minister, was implicated as a beneficiary of the fund. So had been the celebrated lobbying agency, Cassidy and Associates and assorted assistant secretaries in the Bush administration.
Carl Ford, Jr., at the moment assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, worked for Cassidy through the relevant interval and infrequently visited Taiwan. James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs loved the Taiwanese largesse as well. Both are accountable for crafting America’s coverage on Taiwan.
John Bolton, erstwhile undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, admitted, during his confirmation hearings, to having received $30,000 to cover the costs of writing 3 research papers.
The Taiwanese government has but to disclaim the information stories.
A Japanese international ministry official used slush fund money to finance the extra-marital actions of himself and many of his colleagues – usually in posh lodge suites. But this was no exception. In accordance with Asahi Shimbun, more than half of the 60 divisions of the ministry maintained comparable funds. The police and the ministry are investigating. One arrest has been made. The ministry’s accounting division has discovered these corrupt practices twenty years before however kept mum.
Even low-stage prefectural bureaucrats and teachers in Japan construct up slush funds by faking business journeys or padding invoices and receipts. Japanese citizens’ groups conservatively estimated that $20 million in journey and leisure bills within the prefectures in 1994 were faked, a practice often known as “kara shutcho” (i.e., empty enterprise journey).
Officials of the Hokkaido Board of Education admitted to the existence of a a hundred million yen secret fund. In a ensuing probe, 200 out of 286 faculties were found to maintain their very own slush funds. Among the money was used to help pleasant politicians.
But slush funds aren’t a sovereign prerogative. Multinationals, banks, company, spiritual organizations, political parties, and even NGO’s salt away a few of their revenues and income in undisclosed accounts, often in off-shore havens.
Secret election campaign slush funds are a fixture in American politics. A 5-year old bill requires disclosure of donors to such funds but the House is busy loosening its provisions. “The Economist” listed in 2002 the tsunami of scandals that engulfs Germany, each its main political events, lots of the Lander and numerous highly placed and mid-degree bureaucrats. Secret, primarily get together, funds appear to be concerned in the majority of these lurid affairs.
Italian firms made donations to political events by means of slush funds, although corporate donations – offering they are transparent – are completely legal in Italy. Each the best and, to a lesser extent, the left in France are said to have managed huge political slush funds.
President Chirac is accused of having abused for his private pleasure, one such municipal fund in Paris, when he was its mayor. However the funds had been principally used to provide party activists with mock jobs. Corporations paid kickbacks to obtain public works or native constructing permits. Ostensibly, they had been paying for sham “consultancy providers”.
The epidemic hasn’t skipped even staid Ottawa. Its Chief Electoral Officer instructed Solar Media in September 2001 that he is “concerned” about hundreds of thousands stashed away by Liberal candidates. Sundry ministers who coveted the prime minister’s job, have raised funds covertly and possibly illegally.
On April 11, 2002 UPI reported that Spain’s second-largest bank, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), held nearly $200 million hidden in secret offshore accounts, “which had been allegedly used to manipulate politicians, repay the ‘revolutionary tax’ to ETA – the Basque terrorist organization – and open the door for business deals, according to information reports.”
The cash might have gone to luminaries akin to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Peru’s Alberto Fujomori and Vladimiro Montesinos. The bank’s board members received fat, tax-free, “pensions” from the unlawful accounts opened in 1987 – a total of more than $20 million.
Latin American drug money launderers – from Puerto Rico to Colombia – might have labored by way of these funds and the bank’s clandestine entities in the Cayman Islands and Jersey. The present Spanish Secretary of State for the Treasury has been the financial institution’s tax advisor between 1992-7.
The “Monetary Instances” reported in June 2000 that, in anticipation of latest international measures to curb corruption, “leading European arms manufacturers” resorted to the creation of off-shore slush funds. The money is intended to bribe foreign officers to win tenders and contracts.
Kim Woo-chung, Daewoo’s former chairman, is on the heart of a massive scandal involving dozens of his company’s government, some of whom ended up in prison. He stands accused of diverting a whopping $20 billion to an overseas slush fund.
A mind boggling $10 billion have been alleged to have been used to bribe Korean authorities officials and politicians. But his conduct and even the scale of the fraud he perpetrated could have been typical to Korea’s submit-war incestuous relationship between politics and business.
In his paper “The Function of Slush Funds within the Preparation of Corruption Mechanisms”, reprinted by Transparency Worldwide, Gherardo Colombo defines corporate slush funds thus:
“Slush funds are obtained from a joint stock company’s finances, rigorously managed in order that the quantities involved don’t appear on the balance sheet. They do not essentially should consist of money, but may take the form of stocks and shares or other economically helpful goods (works of art, jewels, yachts, etc.) It’s enough that they can be used without any explicit problem or that they can be transferred to a 3rd party.
If a fund is in the type of cash, it isn’t even essential to confer with it outdoors the corporate accounts, since it could seem in them in disguised form (the ‘accruals and deferrals’ heads are often resorted to for the purpose of hiding slush money). In light of this, it isn’t at all times right to regard it as a reserve fund that is not accounted for in the books. Deception, trickery or forgery of various varieties are sometimes resorted to for the aim of organising a slush fund.”
He mentions padded invoices, sham contracts, fictitious loans, interest accruing on holding accounts, again to again transactions with related entities (Enron) – all used to funnel money to the slush funds. Such funds are often set up to cover for illicit and unlawful self-enrichment, embezzlement, or tax evasion.
Much less known is the position of these furtive vehicles in financing unfair aggressive practices, resembling dumping. Purchasers, suppliers, and companions receive hidden rebates and subsidies that much improve the – unreported – real value of production.
BBVA’s payments to ETA may have been a typical fee of safety fees. Both terrorists and organized crime put slush funds to unhealthy use. They receives a commission from such funds – and keep their own. Ransom funds to kidnappers typically circulate by means of these channels.
But slush funds are overwhelmingly used to bribe corrupt politicians. The fight in opposition to corruption has been titled in opposition to the recipients of illicit corporate largesse. But to succeed, nicely-meaning worldwide bodies, such because the OECD’s FATF, should assault with equal zeal those that bribe. Every corrupt transaction is between a venal politician and an avaricious businessman. Pursuing the one while ignoring the opposite is self-defeating.
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http://onedinar.forumotion.net/t27700-why-can-t-republicans-name-one-thing-to-cut-in-the-budget
