Have you seen Senator Clinton decry the way that American companies have “offshored” so many jobs? It’s a cry that rings true in Ohio, and probably in Pennsylvania and Indiana. But as the Clinton tax reports finally trickle out, it appears there’s an issue that’s much bigger in them than the amount they’ve earned, what they’ve donated, or what they payed. It appears the Clintons have offshored their own fortune or at least a good hunk of it.
The first example (that appeared only briefly in the press, then mysteriously disappeared) is the fact that report that Clinton has an interest in a Cayman Islands account:
In the increasing bitter, down to the wire, struggle for the Democratic candidacy, the media and Senator Obama have both now latched on to information that shows former president Bill Clinton has a substantial financial stake in three Cayman Islands-registered investment entities…The investments, with Yucaipa Companies, a Los Angeles-based holding company that was founded in 1986 by its billionaire chairman, Ronald Burkle, are believed to offer the former president a fairly risk-free potential yield in the order of tens of millions of dollars…At issue is how the money should be treated for taxation purposes.
There is a part of this report that is questionable, though. Like Andorra and Leichtenstein, the Cayman Islands is a tax haven. There aren’t many tax treaties to cover the issue of how those funds will be taxed. So this continued statement in the article doesn’t reflect the best opinions of experts in the field:
Although ultimately former president Clinton will have to pay US taxes on income earned through the funds, experts point out that, because there is no domestic taxation system in the Cayman Islands, the way the funds are financed could be used to minimise tax liabilities incurred.
Tax treaties generally defer to local authorities the determination of what is taxable, and in the Caymans, anything goes.
The company was founded by Clinton “bundler” Ronald Burkle (over a million and counting) in the United States in 1986, but then offshored to the Cayman tax haven. Will the extent of that investment ever be revealed? Probably not! It has been only about a month since the temporary (albeit ineffective) attempted shut down of Wikileaks for revealing banking information from tax shelters. All that fuss accomplished was to make the banks (the defacto rulers of the Caymans, Andorra and Leichtenstein) more careful about their records.
Then there is there investment in a holding company headquartered in Dubai–again something that’s not illegal, but decidedly unpatriotic! It’s also a great way to obscure donations from foreign agents, although there’s no evidence of that.
How can Clinton run on a platform that includes eliminating offshore tax shelters and maintain several of her own? This statement by a Clinton spokesperson is questionable if not patently untrue:
Jay Carson, a spokesperson for Sen. Clinton’s presidential campaign, said the Yucaipa global fund was organized in the Cayman Islands to attract foreign investors. “Each investor or partner in the fund pays the taxes they owe in their home country. For U.S. citizens like Bill Clinton, that means he pays U.S. taxes on his income from this fund, which he does,” said Carson.
…While this statement, from the same article, is obvious:
“No average person has interest and funds in the Cayman Islands. This is all the above-average, non-tax-paying, super rich,” said Jack Blum, an attorney and leading expert on offshore tax havens.
Why has this not made lead headlines? Of course, it was released on Friday evening. But even beyond that, my guess is that the Clintons are pulling the old Obi Wan Kenobi trick: “Nothing to see here; move along now.” And MSM plays along, looking at the numbers and not the context of the reports.
But I’m left wondering two things: First, was there any connection between the attempt to protect tax-sheltering banks last month and the release of these documents? And second, how can labor (and union members) support a candidate whose “chief strategist” lobbies for Columbia, whose husband gets an award from Columbia’s union-terrorizing president, and who puts a hunk of their fortune in companies that offshore jobs and funds?
