| By Carlton Meyer | |
| May/13/2008 | |
|
StructuringThis data provided federal agents with leads to possible criminal activity, but they were often unable to link cash transactions to a specific crime. As a result, a vague law prohibiting “structuring” was enacted, in which it became illegal to structure transactions to avoid the $10,000 reporting requirement. This little understood law is a favorite tool of law enforcement because few Americans know that depositing or withdrawing a few thousand dollars in cash a few times a year may land them in prison. Once such activity is detected, federal agents demand an explanation, while threatening to imprison the suspects for “structuring.” As a result, thousands of uncooperative or unconvincing Americans have been imprisoned for nothing more than suspicious cash transactions.
However, there are thousands of cases where law enforcers abused the intent of money laundering laws. Foreign exchange dealers, car dealers, or local wire transfer dealers may be offered a bonus by undercover agents if they promise not to file the required report. If they agree, they are arrested. People attempting to hide money from the IRS or their wife or debt collectors are often investigated. Large cash withdrawals by Eliot Spitzer for his expensive prostitution flings were detected by FinCEN, which led to his downfall. Washing MoneyMoney laundering is a federal crime with heavy penalties. It was sold to Congress as an essential tool to use against elusive drug dealers and organized crime bosses. Nowadays, it is part of almost every federal indictment that involves cash transactions as part of criminal activity. It is routinely abused by federal prosecutors to entice a guilty plea for minor crimes. Suspects, who insist on innocence and a trial, face the prospect of ten years in prison for money laundering, even though the penalty for their root crime is less than a year in prison. The most serious count facing Eliot Spitzer is money laundering. Most federal agents and prosecutors are not zealots, but professionals doing their best. They want every tool Congress will allow, which is why most criminal laws in the USA are not written by congressmen responding to concerns of citizens, but by federal employees in the U.S. Justice Department. The 9-11 terror attack provided them with a unique opportunity to amass a wish list of new powers that became known as the “Patriot Act.” This further weakened the Bill of Rights, but did not eliminate the requirement for search warrants. Data MiningThe 4th Amendment requirement for search warrants has become the key issue in a political battle between the Bush administration and Congress. Law enforcers desperately want authority to engage in widespread “data mining.” New computer search-engine technology now allows massive databases to be easily mined for information. Data mining is routinely used by private companies for marketing and credit reporting purposes. It is also used by government agencies to pursue tax evaders and criminals using their own databases, such as FinCEN. However, using government computers to browse private sector databases is illegal, since judges refuse to issue a blanket warrant allowing the random search of all information of all American citizens. The media has produced hundreds of stories about “warrantless wiretapping” during terrorist investigations. However, the central issue is not terrorism, but the desire by federal agencies to engage in unlimited data mining. There are numerous examples where agencies already conduct private sector data mining without obtaining search warrants or complying with federal laws such as the Privacy Act. This was revealed in a 2005 report from the General Accounting Office, which reviewed the policies of five government departments in regards to data mining and found clear violations of federal law. The report did not delve into data mining details, but a graphic toward the end shows that the IRS already mines data from state driver’s license records and telephone databases.[3] Credit Card Money LaunderingIn recent years, the IRS became aware of the widespread use of credit cards to evade taxes and launder money. Credit card payments are not scrutinized like bank deposits, and records exist in computers separate from traditional banking records. Thousands of small businessmen discovered that they can mail a customer check as a payment to their personal credit card account, so that taxable income disappears from their business books. In addition, criminals can mail money orders purchased with cash to pay credit card bills. This is small-time money laundering, yet the problem is massive and IRS and other federal agencies have no legal authority to sift through credit card records without a specific warrant, while banks have no obligation to report suspicious activities. The credit card payment process is completely automated, so payments are accepted even if the payee name does not match the cardholder. Credit cards were a favorite method of obtaining money from secret overseas bank accounts until 2004. Customers used them to pay for anything and even take cash advances using a system outside traditional banking channels. This infuriated the IRS until they found a judge with no fondness for the Bill of Rights, probably one with serious tax problems. He brazenly waived the 4th Amendment and issued a blanket summons to secure all offshore transaction data from MasterCard International Inc. and Visa USA for 31 countries that are known tax havens.[4] A blanket summons for all records is certainly a violation of the 4th Amendment and the Privacy Act. In these cases, the IRS does not pursue a lead against a specific taxpayer; it uses data mining to fish for information. Now that a legal precedent has been set, the IRS wants access to all domestic bank credit card computer systems for data mining. This would allow income claimed on returns to be matched with spending. In addition, airline travel, automobile fuel charges, and hotel stays could be matched against travel claims.
|
May 13, 2008
Datamining your life
Few Americans pay attention to the Bush administration’s effort to better monitor terrorist communications. In short, federal authorities want to indirectly void the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which requires a warrant signed by a judge before they can search a person’s home and other personal information. This seems harmless to most law abiding citizens, so why is this opposed by many in the U.S. Congress? The answer is that most people have skeletons in their closet, as New York Governor Eliot Spitzer recently demonstrated. Congressmen know that the U.S. government wants to learn every detail about everyone’s private life through the growth of massive computer databases and new search technology that allows “data mining.”
Prior to the “war on terror,” the “war on drugs” was the excuse to gradually errode the U.S. Bill of Rights. Since drug lords do business in cash, a database called the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) was established to monitor cash transactions in the USA.
A good example occurred in 2003 when famous talk show radio host Rush Limbaugh was investigated. He had become addicted to pain killers and purchased them on the black market with the help of his maid. He withdrew cash 30 to 40 times from his bank account at amounts just under the $10,000 bank reporting requirement. FinCEN tipped off federal officials and an investigation was launched. "I was not laundering money. I was withdrawing money for crying out loud," Limbaugh said in his three-hour broadcast, soon after he returned from five weeks of drug rehab.
The IRS Loves Data Mining
Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is a recent example of a prominent American whose career was destroyed by intrusive government surveillance. He had harmed no one, yet his desire to have sex with beautiful women is deemed criminal. Like most Americans, he had violated one of thousands of federal statutes that can be legally interpreted as a heinous offense. On the other hand, this particular case is ironic since Spitzer was known for abuse of statute intent during his years as a federal prosecutor. 
April 02, 2008
Mark Morford on torture and the state of AMERICAN EMPIRE
Tax my rich white torturer
Schools? Health care? As if. Your taxes pay for brutality and Wall St. bailouts. Feel better?
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Just so we have this straight: You are not paying taxes merely to fund torture and bomb-dropping and the killing of countless innocents in Iraq in a futile and lost war that's not really a war and is far more of a massive fiscal, tactical and moral failure which will end up costing the nation an estimated $3 trillion, burn through any remaining sense of national dignity and leave repercussions that will last for generations.
Ha. You should be so lucky. Because your tax money is right now also funding the Fed's unprecedented and rather shocking multibillion-dollar bailout of rich bankers and fund managers who have, through their greed and excess and with the implied blessing of former Chairman Alan Greenspan (whom many consider the architect of the collapse in the first place), helped bring about what is shaping up to be the worst fiscal crisis since World War II.
There now. Don't you feel better? Isn't it a good time to be an American? And is it not, despite the notorious dishonesty of the players involved, still a bit hard to believe?
Yes, I know it's George W. Bush. I know its Dick "Satan Loves You" Cheney. I know it's Wall Street. Hence, I know expectations are at rock bottom. But as far as torture is concerned, it's still profoundly disturbing to watch the world's most powerful leader, the president of what was once considered the most reasoned, humanitarian nation on the planet and the one that ostensibly set the ethical bar for all nations, actually veto a bill that would've banned some of the most brutal forms of torture known to man, techniques we know for a fact do not work.
Repeat: Torture does not work. Waterboarding does not work. It merely coerces the tortured into telling you what you want to hear. The CIA knows it. Torturers know it. God knows it. No matter, because America is apparently still being run by inbred white collar thugs who would blind their own mothers for an uptick in Exxon share prices.
By the way, it has also come to pass that this same president, amid an appalling laundry list of scientific and environmental abuses, has actually worked firsthand to worsen the quality of the very air itself.
It's as true as it is disgusting. It turns out that Bush himself stepped in to force the already troubled Environmental Protection Agency to defy its own mandate, its own scientific recommendations, ordering it to raise the limits for allowable ozone (it was about to recommend the exact opposite), all for the benefit of his pals in Big Energy.
No president ever dared such a move before. In fact, Bush's action was so unprecedented, so galling, so against the very structure of government itself that an army of White House lawyers had to scramble to rewrite the legal justifications for the lower air standard. Do you smell that? That's the scent of the most shamelessly foul leader of the free world. Breathe deeply, because it ain't over yet.
So then, torture, pollution, more war, Wall Street megalomania, incompetence like some sort of satanic mantra. If you had any lingering doubt that Bush was an arrogant and petulant man-child with the mind of a violently overpampered 10-year-old, please abolish it now.
Ah, but wait. It's not all bad. After all, Congress — with the eager support of the infuriatingly mindless Democrats, by the way — just rushed through an economic stimulus package, costing even more billions of dollars we do not have just so the IRS can rush you a check for a few hundred bucks, presumably so you can race right out and make a down payment on that foreclosed three-bedroom two-bath hunk of shiny tract home hell in Antioch — "The Finest Slum this Side of Stockton" — with enough left over for a burrito and some vodka. Voila! Economy saved. Or maybe not.
Do you feel stimulated? Do you feel reassured? Oh wait, I'm sorry, gas is now $4 a gallon and therefore by the time you actually made it to your tract slum and back, well, your stimulus has evaporated into a gassy vapor, just like your shares in Bear Stearns. Whoops.
Maybe now is when the real dark period begins. Sure the last seven years of the inept Bush regime have been miserable and shameful, sure we've been humiliated, mortified a thousand ways from Sunday by an administration that would yank the legs off a dog if it meant a thank-you note from Dubai.
But now Bush is in his final year. This is both the good news, and also the very, very bad news. Because we are now in the death throes of the worst administration in modern history, entering the period of serious consequences, of economic collapse, environmental impact, record oil prices, international recoil, rashes, boils, inexplicable vomiting. Fun for the whole family.
Know this for a fact. Bush does not care. He is detached, supercilious, viciously ignorant of anything but how beautifully he has served his corporate masters, of how he has raked in billions of dollars for Halliburton and Lockheed Martin and Exxon and the coal industry, mercenary armies and military manufacturers and his dad's Saudi friends. He is on no one's side but theirs, and he always has been.
Some say this pain, this fiscal crisis, this enormous instability will last a few years. Some say no way, it will be at least a generation or two before we can right this ship of state again, so deep are the wounds and so insane is our national debt and so violent the damage to our reputation, our identity, our enfeebled infrastructure.
But I'm more with those who say, no, the truth is we will never truly recover, that America's former ranking as Gilded and Irreproachable Empire No. 1 is dead and gone. India and China are dramatically changing the game, peak oil is nigh, fresh water is the new gold, the planet itself is in paroxysm, Mother Nature is quickly revealing her hand — or rather, maybe just that one big, stormy middle finger.
But maybe this is the best news of all. Because the sort of gluttonous empire Bush so disgustingly represented was doomed to failure. The center could not hold. Dubya may not have hastened the apocalypse like the evangelicals desperately prayed he would, but he certainly is hastening the end of the bloviated American ego.
So maybe the real question is not can we return to our former ill-gotten superpower glory, insular and unparalleled and reckless and arrogant, or even peaceful and defensive and ironclad. The true question is, do we have the slightest clue what we want to become instead?
March 13, 2008
More on Suspicious Activity Reports
They don't tell you much about SARs - they came in as part of the Patriot Act. Now Hankie Poo knows where ALL the bigger money is.
Through one SAR, the found out that MOSSAD was sending in cells of people, who were posing as art salesmen and setting up DEA agents, so suddenly nothing more was seen of those reports PUBLICALLY.
Score another one for the Big BoyZ in DC .. Another friggin brilliant plan of theirs. They got this plot from Executive Orders, btw.
And this is from a mainstream newspaper, so I suspect something is UP.
Veeger
Right now, feds might be looking into your finances
Banks tip off government to possible money laundering, fraud
By Thomas Frank
USA TODAY
The same type of information that raised suspicions about New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is reviewed every day by authorities to find traces of money laundering, check fraud, identity theft or any crime that may involve a financial institution.
As concerns about fraud and terrorist financing grow, an increasing number of suspicious deposits, withdrawals and money transfers are being reported by banks and others to the federal government. Banks and credit unions as well as currency dealers and stores that cash checks reported a record 17.6 million transactions to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network in 2006, according to a report from the network, a bureau of the U.S. Treasury Department.
"I don't think Americans understand that their financial transactions are being reported and routinely examined," said Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The Treasury Department's database now contains records of more than 100 million financial transactions going back to at least 1996, said network spokesman Steve Hudak.
Teams of agents from the FBI, IRS, Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies regularly review newly filed financial reports and launch investigations. Federal and local authorities search the database to find information about people that can help ongoing probes. Treasury Department analysts study the reports to detect trends in fraud and issue reports alerting financial institutions.
"The government has access to untold volumes of records and can draw all sorts of conclusions about us, and many are going to be wrong," Steinhardt said.
Bankers disagree. "For the typical bank customer, this means very little because there's nothing they're doing that's likely to be viewed as out of the ordinary," said Richard Riese, head of regulatory compliance for the American Bankers Association.
The reporting system dates to the early 1970s when federal agents sought to pinpoint drug dealers by looking for people making large cash deposits.
Financial institutions have long been required to report cash transactions over $10,000. Those reports — simple notices of a deposit or withdrawal — account for more than 90% of the records the enforcement network gets each year.
Far more controversial are secret "suspicious activity reports" filed by financial institutions and reviewed by teams of agents spread around the country. The investigation of Spitzer began when a bank spotted potentially suspicious transfers from several accounts and filed reports with the IRS, according to a federal official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official did not want his name used because he's not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
The number of suspicious activity reports soared from 413,000 in 2003 to 1 million in 2006, according to the enforcement network.
Federal law requires the reports to remain secret. They are written by officers at financial institutions who specialize in detecting suspicious activity, such as a series of large transactions.
f
The analysis can protect customers by spotting unusual withdrawals that may indicate fraud, said Robert Rowe, senior regulatory counsel of the Independent Community Bankers of America.
Many of the reports are a waste, said Riese of the bankers association. "We're reporting on a lot of things everybody knows law enforcement doesn't have the resources to pursue," he said.
Hudak said the "vast majority" of reports "are filed for a good reason. … There are law enforcement officials and investigators who use these reports and read them every day."
Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com
Blackwater updates
Background first:
Iraq expels American security contractor Blackwater
March 12, 2008
Blackwater was used in New Orleans after Katrina.
For more on Blackwater, see the work done by The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill.
Also see:
Private Contractors Outnumber US Troops in Iraq by T. Christian Miller of the Los Angeles Times.
Reasons contractors in Iraq are bad news:
- Questionable jurisdiction…no wait, completely free from any legal jurisdiction, according to Order 17 Paul Bremer put in place just before leaving.
- Hides true number of troops and casualties from American public
- Breaks down military order…can refuse to provide troops needs when under fire
- Morale buster.
- Minimum wage troops performing alongside contractors performing similar duties for much more money.
Iraq expels American security firm
By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer
Monday, September 17, 2007
The Iraqi government Monday ordered Blackwater USA, the security firm that protects U.S. diplomats, to stop work and leave the country after the fatal shooting of eight Iraqi civilians following a car bomb attack against a State Department convoy.
The order by the Interior Ministry, if carried out, would deal a severe blow to U.S. government operations in Iraq by stripping diplomats, engineers, reconstruction officials and others of their security protection.
The presence of so many visible, aggressive Western security contractors has angered many Iraqis, who consider them a mercenary force that runs roughshod over people in their own country.
Sunday’s shooting was the latest in a series of incidents in which Blackwater and other foreign contractors have been accused of shooting to death an unknown number of Iraqi citizens. None has faced charges or prosecution.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki late Monday and the two agreed to conduct a “fair and transparent investigation” and hold any wrongdoers accountable, said Yassin Majid, an adviser to the prime minister. Rice was expected to visit the Mideast on Tuesday.
Majid made no mention of the order to expel Blackwater, and it was unlikely the United States would agree to abandon a security company that plays such a critical role in American operations in Iraq.
A State Department official confirmed the call but said he could not describe the substance. The U.S. clearly hoped the Iraqis would be satisfied with an investigation, a finding of responsibility and compensation to the victims’ families — and not insist on expelling a company that the Americans cannot operate here without.
Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf said eight civilians were killed and 13 were wounded when contractors believed to be working for Blackwater USA opened fire on civilians Sunday in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Mansour in western Baghdad.
“We have canceled the license of Blackwater and prevented them from working all over Iraqi territory. We will also refer those involved to Iraqi judicial authorities,” Khalaf said.
He said witness reports pointed to Blackwater involvement but added that the shooting was still under investigation. One witness, Hussein Abdul-Abbas, said the explosion was followed by about 20 minutes of heavy gunfire and “everybody in the street started to flee immediately.”
U.S. officials said the motorcade was traveling through Nisoor Square on the way back to the Green Zone when the car bomb exploded, followed by volleys of small-arms fire that disabled one of the vehicles but caused no American casualties.
According to TIME.com, which obtained a U.S. incident report, a separate convoy arriving to help was “blocked/surrounded by several Iraqi police and Iraqi national guard vehicles and armed personnel.”
American officials refused to discuss Iraqi casualties, nor would they confirm that Blackwater personnel were involved. They also refused to explain the legal authority under which Blackwater operates in Iraq or say whether the company was complying with the order. It also was unclear whether the contractors involved in the shooting were still in Iraq.
While Blackwater has recently undertaken an effort to improve its image by emphasizing its humanitarian efforts and vision for “a safer world,” it didn’t immediately step forward to defend itself Monday. Several messages left with officials were not returned, and vice chairman Cofer Black, a former director of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, declined to comment when reached at his Virginia home.
The incident drew attention to one of the controversial American practices of the war — the use of heavily armed private security contractors who Iraqis complain operate beyond the control of U.S. military and Iraqi law.
The events in Mansour also illustrate the challenge of trying to protect U.S. officials in a city where car bombs can explode at any time, and where gunmen blend in with the civilian population.
“The Blackwater guys are not fools. If they were gunning down people, it was because they felt it was the beginning of an ambush,” said Robert Young Pelton, an independent military analyst and author of the book “Licensed to Kill.”
“They’re famous for being very aggressive. They use their machine guns like car horns. But it’s not the goal to kill people.”
In one of the most horrific attacks of the war, four Blackwater employees were ambushed and killed in Fallujah in 2004 and their charred bodies hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River.
But Iraqis have long complained about high-profile, heavily armed security vehicles careering through the streets, with guards pointing weapons at civilians and sometimes firing warning shots at anyone deemed too close. And Iraqi officials were quick to condemn the foreign guards.
Al-Maliki late Sunday condemned the shooting by a “foreign security company” and called it a “crime.”
Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani described the shooting as “a crime about which we cannot be silent.”
“Everyone should understand that whoever wants good relations with Iraq should respect Iraqis,” al-Bolani told Al-Arabiya television. “We are implementing the law and abide by laws, and others should respect these laws and respect the sovereignty and independence of Iraqis in their country.”
Defense Minister Abdul-Qadir al-Obaidi told Iraqi television that “those criminals” responsible for deaths “should be punished” and that the government would demand compensation for the victims’ families.
Despite threats of prosecution, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told Alhurra television that contractors cannot be prosecuted by Iraqi courts because “some of them have immunity.”
In April, the Defense Department said about 129,000 contractors of many nationalities were operating in Iraq — nearly as many as the entire U.S. military force before this year’s troop buildup.
About 4,600 contractors are in combat roles, such as protecting supply convoys along Iraq’s dangerous, bomb-laden highways.
Blackwater, a secretive North Carolina-based company run by a former Navy SEAL, is among the biggest and best known security firms, with an estimated 1,000 employees in Iraq and at least $800 million in government contracts.
In May 2007, a Blackwater employee shot and killed a civilian who was thought to be driving too close to a company security detail.
Last Christmas Eve, an inebriated Blackwater employee shot and killed a security guard for an Iraqi vice president, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials. The contractor made his way to the U.S. Embassy where Blackwater officials arranged to have him flown home to the United States, according U.S. officials who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The contractor has been fired and Blackwater is cooperating with federal investigators, company spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell has said.
___
AP correspondents Deborah Hastings in New York, Mike Baker in Raleigh, N.C., and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
Did Washington Inquiry Into Blackwater Hasten Its Potrero Retreat?
Is it just a coincidence that Blackwater beat a retreat out of Potrero on the eve of a Washington inquiry into claims that it violated tax and labor laws? On March 7th we learned that Blackwater pulled its application for the Potrero mercenary camp, and then, in an Associated Press article by Anne Flaherty that appeared March 10th, it was reported that a senior House Democrat has called for a far-reaching federal investigation into Blackwater Worldwide, alleging that the private security contractor violated tax and labor laws by classifying its guards as independent contractors rather than company employees.
It is very possible that the company decided to cut its losses out in the West in order to concentrate on the upcoming inquiry in the East, which it knew was developing ever since Blackwater reps have faced the Klieg lights of Congressional questionings. If the inquiry in the East goes badly for the company, it won’t be able to afford to even purchase the egg ranch out here an hour’s drive from downtown San Diego.
The AP article quoted Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell calling Waxman’s charges “completely without merit, ” and then she continued: “Blackwater’s classification of its personnel is accurate, and Blackwater has always been forthcoming about this aspect of its business with its customer, the U.S. government.”
However, Rep. Henry Waxman, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said Blackwater’s claims on its business status “appear dubious.” Waxman requested that the Internal Revenue Service and the Labor Department investigate whether Blackwater defrauded the government of tax revenue and violated labor laws. He did this with letters sent Monday, the 10th, to the agencies. Further, Waxman asked the Small Business Administration (SBA) to determine whether the company had violated federal regulations by claiming it was eligible for small business preferences. Waxman is a Democratic House representative from California.
“The implications of Blackwater’s actions are significant,” Waxman said in a memorandum to the Committee. “Committee staff have estimated that Blackwater has avoided paying or withholding up to $50 million in federal taxes by treating its guards as independent contractors rather than employees.”
Waxman asserted that Blackwater’s claim as a small business has earned it more than $144 million in contracts, despite being one of the largest private military contractors and receiving nearly $1.25 billion in federal business since 2000.
Blackwater mouthpiece Tyrell stated that the company “looks forward to continuing its cooperation with all inquiries that may result from these letters” and that “the company regrets the chairman’s decision to publicly air misleading information.”
Blackwater is unlike other security companies operating in Iraq in that it claims that the guards that it trains, equips and deploys to Iraq and elsewhere are independent contractors, not company employees - independent contractors that are hired directly by the federal government, the article reported. Naturally, with U.S. law, companies must pay Social Security and other federal taxes on employees.
Waxman raised this very issue last year, the article said, after he obtained a March letter from the IRS that warned that the company’s classification of a security guard as an independent contractor was “without merit.” This had been the result of an inquiry filed by a Blackwater guard. Upon Blackwater’s appeal, the company alleged that it had received assurances from the SBA that its security guards did not have to be classified as company employees.
The article continued:
the primary factor in determining whether a worker is an employee or independent contractor is the degree of control the business has over its worker. Incorrectly classifying a worker could mean steep penalties for the company, including a $25,000 penalty if the IRS determines an appeal is frivolous or groundless. In its March letter to Blackwater, the IRS noted the company paid all of the guard’s travel expenses and signed a written agreement detailing the type of work required. “A worker who is required to comply with another person’s instructions about when, where and how he or she is to work is ordinarily an employee,” the IRS stated in the letter. Waxman said Blackwater is trying to have it both ways. In defending itself against last year’s shootings involving its security guards, company officials asserted that they retained tight control of its guards and even fired some 122 guards in Iraq due to improper conduct. At the same time, Blackwater contends it does not have enough control over its guards to classify them as company employees, Waxman said.
Blackwater may very well have to pay the federal government millions of dollars. If so, it had a cover to pull the Potrero plan without admitting that it was retreating due to the community’s pressure. It is simply cutting its losses. And the Potrero operation would have been so much easier and cheaper if everyone had just shut up and gone about their own business.
Share This!Waxman Asks IRS To Investigate Blackwater
By Patrick O'Connor
Aides on the Oversight Committee estimate the security firm has failed to pay $50 million in federal taxes since 2000 under the guidelines of its contract with the State Department, according to an internal memorandum distributed to panel members Modnay. Waxman first notified Blackwater CEO Erik Prince in October 2007 that he believed the company had evaded paying millions of dollars in federal taxes for improperly classifying the security guards who work for his firm. As evidence, committee aides cite more than $144 million in small business set-asides the firm has claimed since 2000 and a series of previous legal arguments, including an IRS ruling from March of last year.
The private security firm has been in the congressional crosshairs since Democrats took power. Prince was forced to testify before the Oversight panel last fall about his company's contracts with the federal government after U.S. media outlets chronicled a spasm of violence in Iraq involving Blackwater security personnel.
Stephen M. Ryan, a lawyer in the Washington office of McDermott, Will & Emery who represented Blackwater before Congress last year, was out of the office Monday morning and unavailable to comment on the oversight chairman's request.
The firm has received nearly $1.25 billion in federal contracts since 2000, according to the Oversight memorandum.
Copyright 2008 POLITICO
House Democrats are calling for an investigation into whether a controversial private security firm working in Iraq and Afghanistan violated federal small-business contract size standards.
In letters to the Internal Revenue Service, the Small Business Administration and the Secretary of Labor, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) claimed Blackwater Worldwide had improperly classified its security guards as independent contractors in order to be eligible for federal small-business contracts, among other benefits.
Blackwater says Waxman's claims were unwarranted.
In the past eight years, the company has received about $144 million in federal small-business contracts, despite earning more than $1.25 billion in government business, according to Waxman.
By listing its employees as independent contractors, Blackwater has also sidestepped anti-discrimination and affirmative action laws applied to federal contractors, Waxman said. He added the company has issued contradictory statements on the degree of control it exercises over its security guards overseas.
Last year, Congress tightened rules on federal contractors in Iraq following reports of civilian deaths involving Blackwater workers. In March 2004, four Blackwater workers were killed and dragged through the streets of Fallujah, Iraq.
Sen. John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, has pressed the Bush administration to investigate the company since October. He says Blackwater has avoided over $31 million in taxes by classifying its employees as contractors.
Inc.com, 2007. All Rights Reserved
October 04, 2007
hello ms simson, you might be interested in these.
Why Did George Bush let Abdullah Mehsud Go?
http://www.johnmccrory.com/wrote...te.asp? this=464
Can "terrarists" be 'Reprogrammed'?
http://surrealist.org/ betrayalof...terrorists.html
us black ops in pakistan ??
http://www.globalpolitician.com/...79&cid=1& sid=27
If you do one thing then I suggest you watch this and learn about the biggest scam in the world. http://video.google.com/videopla...earch& plindex=0
September 22, 2007
Four-month federal income tax evasion case ends without convictions
by Attorney Lowell (Larry) Becraft, Jr.
According to Joel Hansen, the Independent American Party's attorney, of the 189-count indictment against nine defendants in Las Vegas, the government did not get a single conviction. Several of the defendants were acquitted. The government was unable to convict any of the other defendants on any charge but did manage to hang the jury of five of the defendants, so the government can retry those defendants if they choose to attempt it.
Robert Furman - Not guilty on all charges.
Ronald Ruggles - Not guilty on all charges.
Myra Buonomo - Not guilty on all charges.
Joel Axberg - Not guilty on all charges.
Debra Rosenbaum - Not guilty on 8 counts of 7201. Hung jury on 371.
Danielle Alires - Not guilty on 371. Hung jury on bank fraud and 7201.
Robert Kahre - Hung jury on all counts.
Lori Kahre-Rasmussen - Hung jury on all counts.
Alexander Loglia - Hung jury on all counts.
Click here and here for the full story.
Labels: ed elaine brown irs tyranny show the law
posted by The Freedom FellowshipSeptember 14, 2007
Four supporters of Plainfield tax protesters Ed and Elaine Brown were arrested yesterday and charged with helping the Browns "obstruct justice", in the words of the U.S. Marshal for New Hampshire.
The comments are must reads. They highlight all the aspects of the case which are falling under the radar.
read more | digg story
