A new leak of data from the embattled law firm Mossack Fonseca shows it scrambling to contain the crisis triggered by the April 2016 leak of the Panama Papers and attempting to field demands for information from authorities in numerous countries — with the glaring exception of the United States.
At long last, the U.S. may be moving toward preventing the types of anonymous shell companies that criminals, kleptocrats, and arms dealers have long sought. But just as Delaware, the country’s leading anonymous shell company provider, gets on board with new transparency measures, Congress has taken a significant step back, gutting a bill that could have potentially ended the U.S.’s role as the world’s anonymous company capital.
House Republicans this week axed a key passage in a bill that is deemed crucial in the fight to stop kleptocrats, drug traffickers and terrorists from laundering money through the US.
The original legislation would have forced anyone setting up a company in the US to tell authorities who the actual owner was. Law enforcement, anti-corruption groups and national security experts say this is essential in fighting crimes that range from child trafficking to Russian election hacking; America’s opaque incorporation laws can otherwise make it impossible to find out who is behind a company benefiting from such crimes.
Fresh disclosures that President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen used a shell company to receive huge payments from a firm linked to a Russian oligarch as well as two multinational corporations have highlighted the United States’ position as a leading global enabler of corporate secrecy.
Tax activists this week criticized a U.S. government move to exempt large defense contractors from a financial disclosure rule meant to fight international tax dodging, saying the need for a national security exemption was unproven.
The Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition’s criticism came after the U.S. Treasury and Internal Revenue Service sided in late March with defense contractors that had asked the agencies for the exemption.
Houston hosts hundreds of massage parlors described in sleazy online sex forums like RubMaps.com that generate about $107 million in illicit revenues each year, according to a new study by Vanessa Bouche, a Texas Christian University political science professor and human trafficking expert.
