Should Barack Obama have intervened in the European Union referendum debate?



So why intervene?



Intervention in European Affairs






Playing the long game




Is he right to do so?



What do you think?



© R Simmons. All Rights Reserved.

The Tax Files- The Truth is (finally) out there

A conspiracy to cover up a truth, a truth reaching into the lives of every man, woman and child on this planet with key players at all levels of government and business: the truth about the existence of extra-terrestrials.  It sounds fantastical at first, that such a wide ranging conspiracy could exist in the world, but such a conspiracy does exist with its truth being of financial origins rather than extra-terrestrial ones.  It relies on silence being maintained and a careful balance of legality and discretion, its players keen to keep it that way.

But the silence is over and the truth is out. In the biggest ever leak of confidential documentation since the embassy cable leak of 2010: 11.5 million tax and financial documents have been passed to the German paper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

The documents come from one source, the Panamanian legal firm Mossack Fonseca. This firm administers wealth and sets up legitimate companies in offshore tax jurisdictions, operating in over 42 countries including the popular tax havens of Switzerland, Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands.

The ICIJ has spent the last six months sifting through the massive amounts of documentation but the revelations from the files investigated so far have been explosive.  Current and former heads of state, prominent businessmen, senior politicians, heads of committees and organisations have been implicated.

The highest profile individuals implicated include Vladimir Putin, the Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, the president of Ukraine Petro Porshenko and the Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson (who has been forced to resign his position as a result of these revelations).  However the list of individuals implicated grows by the day.

We can expect strong denials from the implicated, a raft of resignations and the suppression of all utterances of the story in the more extreme governments like Russia and China.  The damage done will vary on the party or persons being implicated.

The obvious question is, how long has this been going on?

It is highly likely that this has been going on for many years, as a succession of individuals from the past and present have successfully moved money free of tax to these tax havens , keeping it out of the hands of the international tax system.

The worrying thing is, it’s totally legal and above board.

A tax haven is a country where certain taxes are collected at a reduced rate or not at all. These countries operate in an environment of total financial secrecy. Individuals and organisations can be assured of total discretion and secrecy in investments and companies which are incorporated in these locations often pay little or no tax. Financial services organisations (like Mossack Fonseca) exist in these countries to help individuals circumvent the payment of things like income tax or corporation tax.

What can the British government do to combat this?

As I confirmed previously, using tax havens in this fashion is completely legal, no laws have been broken it is just the exploitation of loopholes in existing legislation.  There is however a moral and ethical illegality, it is not right for these individuals or organisations to exploit laws to deprive countries and governments of legitimate tax revenue.

Closing the tax laws for everyone would ultimately prove to be counterproductive and would involve the re-writing of hundreds of laws and treaties to close the loopholes at potentially high cost.  There is also no guarantee that this would solve the problem, as new loopholes may be found by those multinational organisations whose finances allow for the recruitment of individuals who can examine tax law. This allows these organisations to continue and become richer.

The British Government can instead exercise the moral imperative with itself in the same way that it did with the governmental expenses scandal.  The records of any MP or member of the House of Lords implicated should be published and there should be significant political pressure for that individual to close down these financial instruments and make reparation to the Inland Revenue.  The house can then preclude any future instances by writing a constitutional code requiring the declaration of any and all offshore investments or prohibit the investment of any MP/ Lords money into offshore tax avoidance financial instruments.

The laws of incorporation of UK businesses are far simpler and less prone to loopholes. It is there that the UK government can make the legislatory changes which will enable it to make headway in solving this issue.

Many of the tax havens of the world are former British crown dependencies and overseas territories.  Unable to exert direct pressure on these governments, they can use the existing association of the Commonwealth to force these countries to exercise greater financial responsibility and increased taxation.

By highlighting and addressing its error in this matter, the British government can show the world that it is a transparent, morally and ethically sound government. It can say to the world: do as we do. Though it may not change anything, it is important that we act in a just, fair and transparent way.


© R Simmons. All Rights Reserved.

Six Steps from The Kremlin- The Murder of Boris Nemtsov

Lies, greed, political intrigue, corruption at the highest levels of government, conspiracies of silence and ultimately murder. In terms of a good story the murder of Boris Nemtsov has more in common with a bestselling thriller novel, than it does with real life, but unlike the plot of some blockbuster Hollywood movie, this scenario is being played out today in Moscow.

Boris Nemtsov, father of four, environmentalist, nuclear scientist and most notably, outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin was shot in the back four times by an as yet unknown assailant just yards from the heart of the Russian seat of government, the Kremlin.

At the time of his murder, he had been arranging a massed rally of opposition supporters in Moscow, protesting against the alleged Russian military support and involvement in the Ukrainian civil war.  He had been attempting to unite the factions of the opposition movement and it was claimed that he had proof of Russian involvement in Ukraine.

In an article, published in Russia on the tenth of February 2015, Mr Nemtsov stated that “I am afraid that Putin will kill me”. To the untrained observer, this shocking turn of events would seem to implicate Mr Putin directly in Mr Nemtsov’s death.

However the real truth of the matter has yet to be brought to light.

This murder is just the latest in a long line of politically motivated murders stretching back to the murder of Sergey Yushenkov at his Moscow home in April 2003 and seemingly continuing with Mr Nemtsov’s murder at the weekend.  Individuals who have had connections with Mr Putin in the past or in the present have been targeted, opposition politicians have been assassinated, even foreign journalists are not safe on the streets of Russia today. Four people have died in Moscow alone under similar circumstances to Mr Nemtsov’s over the past ten years.

These murders are not endemic to Russia itself and have occurred in this country with the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko with the radioactive compound Polonium in London and the suspicious death of Boris Berezovsky, former Kremlin power broker turned Putin critic at his London home in 2013.

Statements of denial from the Kremlin are as regular as the morning paper. During this time the truth has been blurred, covered and cloaked in lies and rhetoric. That being said, Mr Putin deserves his day in court, even if it is in the form of this blog. For if we are to claim that we live in a fair and objective society, we must first practice what we preach.

So, what if Mr Putin was not directly responsible for the deaths of these individuals?

Who would be the most likely group to gain from discrediting the Russian government? Well the most obvious candidate, aside from half of the world’s countries would be the Russian opposition movement itself. By killing prominent individuals within their ranks, they could hope to engender a change in public opinion in Russia, polarizing anti-Putin sentiment both internally and internationally.  The big issue with this is that the opposition movement remains a largely factional one, with no obvious unity and no means at their disposal to enact this heinous agenda.

An international power seeking to discredit Russia would have both means and opportunity.  The obvious candidate for this would be the United States, in collusion with its allies within the European Union. However, agitating the Great Russian bear into a state of war would not be beneficial to them as most of their member states are in the firing line.  Destabilizing Russia would be of greatest benefit to countries like China or the members of the oil producing nations of the Middle East.

A Russian economy in ruins or a Russia in a state of War would be both beneficial politically and economically to both of these groups. China could complete its great rehabilitation into international society and score untold political points by stepping in to mediate an end to the crisis. The oil producing nations of the Middle East would no doubt benefit from an interruption to or an ending of Russian gas supplies to the European Union.  But would the benefits of this course of action justify the means?

The murder of a popular opposition politician, beloved by many Russians and a contemporary of Mr Putin would place his government in an increasingly hostile position, in terms of the amount of damage it could cause to Russia itself.  Mr Putin may continue to deny his involvement but the world it seems has already made up its mind on the matter.

The murder and the subsequent protests, with its high media exposure may force Moscow to change its policies, but then again it may not. The mechanism of political change often relies on opposing forces and in Russian politics, opposition can often mean imprisonment and even death, as the weekend’s events has proven.

But what would such public killings achieve? Russia has ostracized itself from the international community, alienated  many of its former satellites, caused irreparable harm to its own internal structure all to preserve the myth of the Soviet ideal and the failings of one man and one man alone: Vladimir Putin.

So is it worth it? Internal damage of the sort now being inflicted would only be risked if the truth was potentially more damaging both to Russia and Mr Putin himself.

Only then could you make the sort of calculations that end human lives. Only then could you entertain such notions.

Boris Nemtsov was a patriot, a man who believed passionately in Russia and like Boris the perpetrators of this crime may also believe passionately in Russia. But that is where the similarities end. He exercised his right to free speech, under the lawful government of his country and was ultimately killed for it. Four bullets may have ended his life, but those four bullets may have started a chain reaction in his beloved Russia leading to the creation of a fairer, freer Russia for Boris’s four children.


© R Simmons. All Rights Reserved.