Money and Privilege – Scofflaws & Tax Evaders

 

It’s no secret that you are rich enough – however you generated that wealth – its very easy to believe that that the laws intended for everybody else simply don’t apply to you. Pay your taxes? Not if you are wealthy enough to hide your assets or able to hire a cadre of the finest legal tax specialists on earth. There are so many jurisdictions – from Switzerland to South Dakota and Florida – willing to help make your wealth untraceable and untaxable. If you are within the group of insiders controlling the government (or are effectively pulling the strings to run the government), your main concern is less about evading taxes than the risk of a coup d’état or other unpleasant removal from political power that would immediately result in a confiscation of your money… if the new regime can find it.

Such corruption varies from controlling legislation, pulling favorable government contracts, having a de facto exemption from pollution regulations and even criminal acts, evading taxes without fear of hot pursuit, the capacity to dispense favors to friends, family and important business contacts and the ability to turn government wrath on your enemies. In some countries, notably the Northern Triangle in Central America (Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala), criminal cartels are effectively in control of their respective governments. Russia has Vladimir Putin, purportedly having salted away billions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts. 

But as illustrated by the latest “big spill” of exceptionally private information generated from leaks from enabling law firms and other sources, “Hundreds of politicians, executives, celebrities, religious leaders and drug dealers have been hiding their investments in mansions, exclusive beachfront property, yachts and other assets for the last quarter-century, according to a review of nearly 12 million files obtained from 14 international firms.

“The report, released Sunday [9/3] by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, involved 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries. It’s being dubbed ‘Pandora Papers,’ because the findings shed light on the previously hidden dealings of the elite and the corrupt, and how they have used offshore accounts to shield assets collectively worth trillions of dollars.

“Among more than 330 politicians identified as beneficiaries of the secret accounts are Jordan’s King Abdullah II, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Ecuadorean President Guillermo Lasso and former associates of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Russian President Vladimir Putin… Business titans called out in the report include Turkish construction mogul Erman Ilicak and Robert T. Brockman, the former chief executive of software maker Reynolds and Reynolds… Many of the accounts were designed to evade taxes and conceal assets for other illicit reasons, according to the report…

“The report follows a similar project released in 2016, ‘Panama Papers,’ compiled by the same group of journalists. The latest bombshell is even more expansive, encompassing nearly 3 terabytes of data — the equivalent of roughly 750,000 photos on a smartphone — leaked from 14 service providers. The records date to the 1970s, but most of the files are from 1996 to 2020… The investigation dug into accounts registered in offshore havens, including the British Virgin Islands, Seychelles, Hong Kong and Belize. But some of the secret accounts were scattered around in trusts set up in the U.S., including 81 in South Dakota and 37 in Florida.” Michael Liedtke and Jonathan Mattise writing for the October 4th Associated Press.

The power of corruption, where the desire to make money trumps any effort to protect society from evils that may threaten a nation’s very existence. And where the players making money are themselves the economic size of entire countries, common in the world of social media, the consequences are horrific. Supporting lies, destabilizing those particularly vulnerable to disinformation (including children), releasing as truth dangerous medical disinformation and providing a ready platform for those gathering to overthrow the government are particularly the out of control behemoths in that social media space, none worse than trillion-dollar-valued Facebook/Instagram.

Sure, Facebook has engaged in token efforts to take down a very small percentage of the most destructive and hate-filled forces that deploy across its platform – something to tell Congressional committees and law enforcement investigators when they ask – but what remains is staggeringly destructive. Russia has found that platform particularly useful in spreading election disinformation and medical falsehoods aimed at keeping Americans at each other’s throats. Likewise, overseas, you can see parallel distortions on Facebook resulting in genocide in Myanmar. Facebook alone has been one of the primary instruments against COVID vaccines as well as masking and social distancing initiatives. In a way Facebook, has become the major co-conspirator in the negligent homicide-by-disinformation of gullible COVID victims.

One example, repeated hundreds of thousands of times in the US, maybe millions: “[Louisiana Dr. Vincent Shaw] said one of the biggest issues is social media, as evidenced by the many patients who describe what they saw on Facebook in deciding against getting vaccinated. That mindset has spawned memes about the many Americans who got their degrees at the University of Facebook School of Medicine… ‘I am like, ‘No, no, no, no, no.’ I shake my head, ‘No, no. That is not right, no, no. Stop, stop, just stop looking at Facebook.’’” Heather Hollingsworth writing for the Associated Press, October 4th.

Reports that Facebook ignored its own internal reports that Instagram addiction and concomitant plunging self-esteem (body shaming) among American teens was creating patterns of mental issues, including suicide. The source of those reports: “Frances Haugen was identified in a ‘60 Minutes’ interview Sunday [9/3] as the woman who anonymously filed complaints with federal law enforcement that the company’s own research shows how it magnifies hate and misinformation… Haugen, who worked at Google and Pinterest before joining Facebook in 2019, said she had asked to work in an area of the company that fights misinformation, because she lost a friend to online conspiracy theories.

“‘Facebook, over and over again, has shown it chooses profit over safety,’ she said. Haugen, who will testify before Congress this week, said she hopes that by coming forward the government will put regulations in place to govern the company’s activities… She said Facebook prematurely turned off safeguards designed to thwart misinformation and rabble rousing after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump last year, alleging that contributed to the deadly Jan. 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol.

“Postelection, the company dissolved a unit on civic integrity where she had been working, which Haugen said was the moment she realized ‘I don’t trust that they’re willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous.’…At issue are algorithms that govern what shows up on users’ news feeds, and how they favor hateful content. Haugen said a 2018 change to the content flow contributed to more divisiveness and ill will in a network ostensibly created to bring people closer together.

“Despite the enmity that the new algorithms were feeding, Facebook found that they helped keep people coming back — a pattern that helped the Menlo Park, Calif., social media giant sell more of the digital ads that generate most of its advertising… Facebook’s annual revenue has more than doubled from $56 billion in 2018 to a projected $119 billion this year, based on the estimates of analysts surveyed by FactSet. Meanwhile, the company’s market value has soared from $375 billion at the end of 2018 to nearly $1 trillion now.” Liedtke and Mattise writing another piece for the October 4th Associated Press. Indeed, fomenting and encouraging anger, hatred and even seditious violence creates more consumer usage of Facebook’s platforms. And more usage means more advertising revenues. 

But Facebook has purportedly and repeatedly lied to its own shareholders, Congress and several regulatory and law enforcement agencies about the scope of its purposeful policy not to stop such malevolent social media postings; that would be bad for business. There are some very serious legal consequences for Facebook should those policies be proven (which seems inevitable). But at the least we know that the sheer size of Facebook’s platform, their reach all over the globe, combined with their seeming laissez faire attitude allowing society-destroying postings, makes Facebook one of the most dangerous forces on earth, particularly threatening to the United States and its underlying democratic principles. Sorry, Facebook, it’s time to take you down!

I’m Peter Dekom, and while Facebook seems far and away the most malignant social media giant on earth, the other behemoths in that social media space are not too far behind.