Thursday, February 15, 2018

The world’s worst money launderers are the UK, Switzerland and the USA

The world’s worst money launderers are the UK, Switzerland and the USA
BoingBoing: ‘The USA has moved up in the Tax Justice Network’s Financial Secrecy Index to number two, behind Switzerland; in reality, though, the UK is the world’s worst money-laundry, but because its laundering activities are spread out over its overseas territories — taken as a whole, the UK leads the world in helping criminals and looters hide their fortunes. America’s role in money-laundering is well-documented; the ease of incorporating anonymous shell companies has been key to making fortunes disappear — and they also constitute the wide end of the funnel for dark money in US politics. One notable feature of the Financial Secrecy Index is how different it is to official government indices of money-laundering states; the EU’s index, which put 17 nations on notice last December, consists primarily of small, largely impoverished nations that account for a tiny fraction of the world’s money laundering (the exception being the UK overseas territories, which are mentioned independent of the UK itself). Somehow, the EU list doesn’t include its own member-states’ prolific money-laundries, nor the money laundering in its major trading partners…”
https://boingboing.net/2018/02/13/1-6-trillion-per-year.html
Theories introduce clarity to moral reasoning by excluding most of our intuitions. But when used in public debates, like abortion, the result can be an impoverished moral vocabulary and divisiveness.
Success has many fathers as it takes a village of dedicated journalists to find a needle of useful intel that is hidden in a number of haystacks ...

Asiaciti’s offshore marketing tour; Working on the Paradise Papers with a handicap
From within that trove of documents, comes the story of the Asiaciti promotional tour of America. The documents gave us an incredible insight into the city-by-city itinerary of offshore specialists marketing their wares to American clients. It has all the classics of an American road trip, from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and Miami!
https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/roll-roll-asiacitis-u-s-marketing-tour/

"Firms on Caribbean island chain own 23,000 UK properties"
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42666274
HMRC data: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/hm-land-registry-overseas-companies-ownership-data
  




Jensen, Michael C., Integrity: Without it Nothing Works (April 6, 2014). Rotman Magazine: The Magazine of the Rotman School of Management, pp. 16-20, Fall 2009; Harvard Business School NOM Unit Working Paper No. 10-042; Barbados Group Working Paper No. 09-04; Simon School Working Paper No. FR 10-01. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1511274 – “Note: This paper is an interview of Michael Jensen by Karen Christensen on the topic of integrity. This version of the document has been updated to incorporate new material.”

“There is confusion between integrity, morality and ethics. In our much longer (and as yet incomplete) paper on the topic (see “Integrity: A Positive Model that Incorporates the Normative Phenomena of Morality, Ethics and Legality” (available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=920625)) my co-authors, Werner Erhard and Steve Zaffron and I, distinguish integrity, from morality and ethics in the following way. Integrity in our model is honoring your word, as we define honoring your word. As such integrity is a purely positive phenomenon. It has nothing to do with good vs. bad, right vs. wrong behavior. Like the law of gravity the law of integrity just is, and if you attempt to violate the law of integrity as we define it you get hurt just as if you try to violate the law of gravity with no safety device. The personal and organizational benefits of honoring one’s word are huge — both for individuals and for organizations — and generally unappreciated.”

·        An abridged version of the full paper “Integrity: A Positive Model that Incorporates the Normative Phenomena of Morality, Ethics and Legality — Abridged” is available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1542759
·        For a full one-day workshop on integrity see: “A New Model of Integrity: The Missing Factor Of Production (PDF file of Keynote and PowerPoint Slides)” available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1559827
·        For our paper arguing for putting integrity into finance see: “Putting Integrity Into Finance: A Purely Positive Approach” available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1985594

 
"After decades spent languishing as a corporate backwater, human resources has been elevated in organizational hierarchies as companies realize the importance of recruiting and retaining talent in an information economy." (Quartz) Diversity hiring is so competitive, IBM is suing a Microsoft executive over it.