We are indebted to Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), English author, poet laureate and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first English language writer to receive that prize. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in English, in both prose and verse.
It also was he who aptly described the news media of his day as "harlots" having "power without responsibility."
Kipling's long ago charge of irresponsibility nails today's leftist writers who propagate their manufactured attacks against offshore financial activity in general, and tax havens in particular. (See my comment yesterday concerning one David Cay Johnston).
Return of the Komisar
Now comes another of this leftist ilk, one Lucy Komisar, identified as "an investigative journalist in New York who writes about the offshore bank and corporate secrecy system." Typical of her "moderate" views, Ms. Komisar has, for example, claimed that the long since abolished criminal offshore bank BCCI, was connected to a group that included the Bush family, the Saudis, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Ms. Komisar wrote in London's Evening Standard this week about how difficult it will be for British P.M. Gordon Brown and new U.S. President Barack Obama to abolish tax havens, a laudable goal as she sees it. (Obama's anti-tax haven stand is well known. Brown has not been nearly so enthusiastic about abolishing the financial business of a substantial part of what's left of the British colonies).
Voice from the Past
We first encountered Lucy Komisar in 2001, writing in New York City's Village Voice. Even then a notorious distortionist, she then represented the left-leaning Pacific News Service.
In 2001, a left-wing group called Public Interest published a factually inaccurate report alleging links between Enron Corporation campaign cash and the rejection of the OECD high tax plan by the Bush administration. The claim was that the Texas-based energy giant gave money to lawmakers, economists and nonprofit groups to help ward off restrictions on the overseas tax havens such as they used.
Komisar claimed back then, without proof, that there had been a political conspiracy financed by Enron to kill the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) "harmful tax competition" campaign. The alleged goal was to protect Enron's use of corporate subsidiaries in offshore tax havens such as the Cayman Islands. In Komisar's fictional account, Enron poured cash contributions into select political campaigns, including that of 2000 presidential candidate George Bush, in return for opposition to the OECD worldwide plan to abolish tax havens.
She also added another wild charge -- that killing the OECD plan lent aid and comfort to Osama bin Laden and terrorism. This lie was based on yet another lie, that traditional tax havens harbored terrorist cash. U.S. and objective media investigations (The Washington Post, for example) proved this never happened.
Another Round
Ms. Komisar's latest effort ("Clamping down on tax havens") appeared on Jan. 5 in the Evening Standard. It is a lengthy, convoluted dissertation, (as are most of her writings), this time she went after the financial activities of Bank Julius Baer, one of Switzerland's leading and most respected banks. Her bottom line charge against the bank: they skillfully used available British tax laws to lower their tax obligations by employing offshore entities.
Komisar writes: "The Evening Standard has examined how one of the world's biggest private wealth management groups circulates funds via offices in the Cayman Islands, claiming they take major investment decisions - when the main work is apparently carried out in London. It shows the scale of the task facing tax inspectors here and in the U.S. in an offshore purge."
Komisar's Purge
Her use of the word "purge" is interesting, in that the Soviet "commissars" of Josef Stalin's era were notorious for their purges of opponents, undesirables and anyone else who got in their way.
The saddest element of this continuing offshore/tax haven debate its that those who oppose offshore financial freedom have no allegiance to the truth. And even more distressing is that most of the "news" media allows wild charges such as those of Ms. Komisar to be presented as fact.
If you want to know the facts about offshore, our web site is your best choice for fair and balanced offshore news. Also we tell you all about legal offshore financal centers and tax havens, tax-free banking, investment and legal possibilities in my book, Where To Stash Your Cash Legally: Tax Havens of the World.
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