Marc Toberoff, a tightly wound man with thinning hair and an expansive grin, is an attorney who specializes in suing movie studios on behalf of artists and writers. For 11 years he has represented the heirs of the late Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman, in a campaign to regain the rights to the original superhero from Warner Bros.
WASHINGTON -- The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on Friday made public what it calls the most extensive collection of records on offshore accounts in history, encouraging sleuths to ferret out possible tax evasion.
The online portal, called the Offshore Leaks Database, contains hundreds of thousands of records showing corporations set up in so-called "tax-haven" countries, gleaned from the contents of about 2.5 million emails and financial documents that ICIJ said it received in early 2012. Over the past year, the data have been used by journalists around the world to detail alleged tax evasion by billionaires, oligarchs, emirs, princes and multinational corporations on nearly every continent.
Publication of the documents may heighten scrutiny of some of the world's largest financial institutions and their clients. Governments worldwide have renewed efforts to stamp out tax avoidance as fiscal authorities, including those from Europe and the United States, confront record budget deficits and slow-growth economies.
Click here to search the Offshore Leaks Database.
A 2012 report by the Tax Justice Network (TJN) found that untaxed wealth invested in offshore tax havens ran between $28 and $32 trillion dollars, equal to two years? worth of U.S. economic output. The report estimated that if the money were to have been invested in home countries, even at low rates of return, it could have generated hundreds of billions of dollars per year in tax revenue.
The TJN report also described the secrecy enveloping the world of offshore tax havens as a "subterranean system that ? is the economic equivalent of an astrophysical black hole."
The new ICIJ OffShore Leak Database provides a small window into that world for the public to peruse. The database contains documents covering 30 years from the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, Singapore, Hong Kong, Samoa, Seychelles, Mauritius, Labuan and Malaysia. According to ICIJ, the information came from a leak of documents from two offshore service companies, Singapore-based Portcullis TrustNet and British Virgin Islands-based Commonwealth Trust Limited (CTL).
The documents have been used to unearth stories, starting in April 2013, about tax evasion by politicians in Canada, France, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan and the Philippines; how offshore companies are used to hide the foreign investors in London's real estate market; the use of tax havens to buy and sell on the fine art market; the involvement of companies like Deutsche Bank to help create offshore entities; arms trading in war zones; and how the world's ultra-rich hide their money from taxation.
In making the database freely available, ICIJ hopes to engage the public in its ongoing work to expose the use of offshore tax havens by international corporations and wealthy individuals. Readers are encouraged to contact journalists if they come across promising leads.
Tax havens are nations that offer favorable tax treatment to assets held within their boundaries, often offering zero or near-zero tax rates with very few questions asked. Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Dubai and the micro-state of Jersey, off the coast of England, are just a few of the countries that host corporate entities and trusts created by the world's wealthy and powerful to shield their money from taxes in their home-country.
While the transactions listed in the database likely are legal in countries considered to be tax havens, use of offshore accounts by a corporation or individual often are decried as tax evasion in home countries, regardless of the circumstances.
In some cases, authorities have targeted offshore accounts when accusing banks of facilitating illegal tax evasion.
UBS, Switzerland?s largest bank, in 2009 avoided criminal prosecution by entering into a deferred-prosecution agreement and paying $780 million to settle allegations it defrauded the U.S. government. The bank admitted it participated in a scheme to defraud the federal government by "actively assisting or otherwise facilitating" tax evasion by Americans from 2000 to 2007.
Peter Kurer, then-chairman of UBS, said at the time: "UBS sincerely regrets the compliance failures in its U.S. cross-border business that have been identified by the various government investigations in Switzerland and the U.S., as well as our own internal review. We accept full responsibility for these improper activities."
Thousands of wealthy U.S. customers eventually turned themselves in. The Swiss government also turned over the identities of U.S. account holders to U.S. officials.
In 2010, Deutsche Bank, Germany?s largest lender, agreed to pay $554 million to U.S. authorities to settle criminal accusations that it helped create fraudulent tax shelters for clients from 1996 to 2002 that deprived the U.S. Treasury of revenue. The bank admitted wrongdoing and entered into a non-prosecution agreement.
At the time, the bank said it was ?pleased that this investigation, which concerned transactions that ceased more than eight years ago, has come to a resolution.?
?Since 2002, the bank has significantly strengthened its policies and procedures as part of an ongoing effort to ensure strict adherence to the law and the highest standards of ethical conduct,? it added.
In response to growing allegations of evasion, the U.S. in 2010 enacted the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) to enlist financial institutions in the government?s fight to recoup lost tax revenues.
FATCA forces foreign banks to report information on overseas accounts held by U.S. individuals and businesses, and foreign corporations in which U.S. taxpayers hold a substantial ownership stake.
Other nations are now following suit. The eight leading industrialized nations that comprise the Group of Eight (G8) are due to discuss efforts to combat tax dodging at their coming meeting June 17-18 in Northern Ireland.
?The upcoming G8 summit is poised to deliver a hammer blow to offshore corporate tax avoidance," Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said.
?The G8 summit should take advantage of the emerging international consensus that we can no longer allow profitable multinational corporations to play one country off another, ducking corporate taxes and leaving other taxpayers to pick up the slack,? he added.
Banks that structure and facilitate offshore corporate entities designed to minimize tax payments may feel the brunt of the pressure.
A review by The Huffington Post of the ICIJ database, which comprises only a portion of the total data trove in the leak, revealed that UBS was linked to more than 3,000 offshore accounts. It allegedly served as a "master client? -- defined by the ICIJ as "an intermediary or go-between who helps a client set up an offshore entity? -- or as a "nominee shareholder," a shareholder who is not the real owner or beneficiary of the corporation.
The bank declined to comment.
The database shows Deutsche Bank linked to more than 1,000 offshore accounts. A spokesman declined to comment.
Though not all of the offshore accounts listed in the database are currently active -- many are listed as defunct or dissolved -- the data covers three decades of offshore accounts, potentially providing tax authorities with a road map to discover tax cheats.
A slew of ICIJ-inspired reporting in April had dramatic effects.
Herbert Stepic, Raiffeisen Bank International chief executive, resigned his post after news reports alleged he had numerous offshore accounts.
A month later, police in South Korea raided the home of business titan Lee Jay-Hyun, CJ Group chairman and a billionaire grandson of Samsung founder Lee Byung-Chul, as part of a tax evasion probe.
The revelations unearthed by ICIJ and journalists around the world also prompted stern responses from a number of European leaders, and in some cases helped lead to calls for changes in laws to promote banking transparency and prevent tax evasion.
In May, British Prime Minister David Cameron said at a White House press conference that ?we need to know who really owns a company, who profits from it, whether taxes are paid.?
Algirdas ?emeta, the European commissioner for taxation, said: ?Recent developments, fueled by the outcome of the Offshore Leaks, confirms the urgency for more and better action against tax evasion."
?emeta further called for European nations operating as tax havens, including Luxembourg and Monaco, as well as protectorates controlled by European countries like the British Virgin Islands, to adopt the European Union's standard of banking transparency.
After ?emeta's statements, Luxembourg announced that it would end secret banking for investments by European nationals. Britain's overseas territories also announced that they would begin sharing banking information with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
In Washington, ongoing congressional hearings on American companies' use of offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. corporate taxes appeared to reach an apex in May, when Apple CEO Tim Cook testified before Levin?s Senate investigative subcommittee on the company?s aggressive use of strategies allegedly for the sole purpose of minimizing taxes.
?We pay all the taxes we owe, every single dollar. We not only comply with the laws, but we comply with the spirit of the laws,? Cook said.
LONDON (Reuters) - Britons' real net incomes fell to their lowest level in a decade in the year ending in March 2012, annual data from the country's labour ministry showed on Wednesday.
Average net incomes including social benefits fell 3 percent during the 2011/12 tax year to their lowest level since 2001/02 on an inflation-adjusted basis.
"Income fell as earnings and benefit income grew more slowly than the cost of living as measured by RPI (retail price inflation)," the Department for Work and Pensions said.
The fall in living standards is likely to have continued into the current tax year, as wages have continued to grow at a slower pace than inflation, and many benefits have been raised by less than the rate of inflation.
The proportion of Britons in absolute poverty - defined as a weekly income of under 251 pounds - rose by one percentage point to 17 percent in 2011/12.
However the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a leading economic think tank, said the figures may be slightly less bleak than at first glance as the Office for National Statistics has said RPI overstates inflation due to outdated statistical methods.
Looking at changes in the cost of living as measured by the modernised RPIJ index, also produced by the ONS, median net incomes are the lowest since 2004-05, the IFS said.
(Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by Catherine Evans)
GAINESVILLE, Fla. ? The murder trial of George Zimmerman in the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin is scheduled to begin today in Sanford, Fla. Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder for last year?s shooting death of the unarmed African-American teenager. Zimmerman?s defense team has argued that their client was acting in self-defense when the teenager was shot. The University of Florida Levin College of Law has faculty who can address the sometimes-difficult legal issues surrounding this case, including criminal law, self-defense, and race and race relations.
University of Florida Levin College of Law experts available
Bob Dekle, Senior Legal Skills Professor; Director, Criminal Prosecution Clinic
Cell: 386-365-4611
Email: dekle@law.ufl.edu
Areas of expertise include issues related to criminal law, self-defense, evidence, police tactics and interrogation.
Michelle Jacobs, Professor of Law
Office: 352-273-0940
Email: jacobsm@law.ufl.edu
Areas of expertise include issues related to critical race theory and criminal law.
Kenneth Nunn, Professor of Law; Associate Director, Center on Children and Families
Office: 352-273-0910
Email: nunn@law.ufl.edu
Areas of expertise include criminal law, criminal procedure and race and race relations.
Katheryn Russell-Brown, Chesterfield Smith Professor of Law; Director, UF Levin Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations
Office: 352-273-0912
Email: russellbrownk@law.ufl.edu
Areas of expertise include issues related to race and crime, criminal law.
Jennifer Zedalis, Senior Legal Skills Professor; Director, Trial Practice Team
Office: 352-273-0814
Email: zedalis@law.ufl.edu
Areas of expertise include issues related to criminal law and trial practice.
lawlevin college of lawtrayvon martinUFUF college of lawUniversity of Florida
KABUL (Reuters) - Insurgents launched a pre-dawn attack on Afghanistan's main international airport in the capital, Kabul, on Monday, police said, with explosions and gunfire heard coming from an area that also houses major foreign military bases.
There were no immediate reports of casualties and there was also no early claim of responsibility for the attack.
Attacks on the heavily guarded airport, used by civilians and the military, are relatively rare and would represent an ambitious target for insurgents, with recent assaults staged against less well-protected targets.
The airport, by comparison, is home to a major operational base for NATO-led forces that have been fighting Taliban and other insurgents for 12 years and is bristling with soldiers and police, guard towers and several lines of security checkpoints.
Police said the attack appeared to be centered on the military side of the airport, to the west of the civilian terminal.
"Gunmen have entered a house under construction in the west of Kabul airport and are fighting with security forces," Kabul police spokesman Hashmatullah Stanekzai said.
"Their target is Kabul airport and all roads to it are sealed," he said.
A spokesman for the Afghan Air Force, which is also based at the facility, also said the airport was the target of the attack. There are also a number of logistics bases in the area.
The attack began at about 4.30 a.m. (2400 GMT). Embassies in the diplomatic zone in the centre of Kabul were quickly locked down and emergency alarms were heard ringing loudly from the British embassy.
Reuters witnesses reported hearing explosions at the airport, with reports of rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire. Blasts still being heard an hour after the attack was launched.
Concerns are mounting over how the 352,000-strong Afghan security forces will cope with an intensifying insurgency once most foreign combat troops leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
The airport attack came soon after assaults on the International Organisation for Migration in Kabul and against the International Committee of the Red Cross in the eastern city of Jalalabad.
Four people were killed and three wounded in those attacks.
In April 2011, a rogue Afghan air force officer shot and killed eight U.S. servicemen and a civilian contractor in the worst attack at the airport since the war began.
(Additional reporting by Dylan Welch and Omar Sobhani; Writing by Dylan Welch; Editing by Paul Tait)
Rockford Fire responded to a structure fire at 121 Washington Street in the early morning hours Sunday.? Upon arrival they found a detached garage behind the home fully engulfed.? Firefighters took control of the fire within ten minutes of being there.
In total, the fire resulted in $25,000 in damage including a car that was in the garage.? There were no injuries to residents or firefighters.?
An investigation was completed but the cause of the fire is unknown at this time.
Reduced brain volume in kids with low birth-weight tied to academic strugglesPublic release date: 10-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jim Barlow jebarlow@uoregon.edu 541-346-3481 University of Oregon
EUGENE, Ore. -- (June 10, 2013) -- An analysis of recent data from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of 97 adolescents who were part of study begun with very low birth weight babies born in 1982-1986 in a Cleveland neonatal intensive care unit has tied smaller brain volumes to poor academic achievement.
More than half of the babies that weighed less than 1.66 pounds and more than 30 percent of those less than 3.31 pounds at birth later had academic deficits. (Less than 1.66 pounds is considered extremely low birth weight; less than 3.31 pounds is labeled very low birth weight.) Lower birth weight was associated to smaller brain volumes in some of these children, and smaller brain volume, in turn, was tied to academic deficits.
Researchers also found that 65.6 percent of very low birth weight and 41.2 percent of extremely preterm children had experienced academic achievement similar to normal weight peers.
The research team -- led by Caron A.C. Clark, a scientist in the Department of Psychology and Child and Family Center at the University of Oregon -- detected an overall reduced volume of mid-brain structures, the caudate and corpus callosum, which are involved in connectivity, executive attention and motor control.
The findings, based a logistic regression analyses of the MRIs done approximately five years ago, were published in the May issue of the journal Neuropsychology. The longitudinal study originally was launched in the 1980s with a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (National Institutes of Health, grant HD 26554) to H. Gerry Taylor of Case Western University, who was the senior author and principal investigator on the new paper.
"Our new study shows that pre-term births do not necessarily mean academic difficulties are ahead," Clark said. "We had this group of children that did have academic difficulties, but there were a lot of kids in this data set who didn't and, in fact, displayed the same trajectories as their normal birth-weight peers."
Academic progress of the 201 original participants had been assessed early in their school years, again four years later and then annually until they were almost 17 years old. "We had the opportunity to explore this very rich data set," Clark said. "There are very few studies that follow this population of children over time, where their trajectories of growth at school are tracked. We were interested in seeing how development unfolds over time."
The findings, Clark added, provide new insights but also raise questions such as why some low-birth-weight babies develop normally and others do not? "It is very difficult to pick up which kids will need the most intensive interventions really early, which we know can be really important."
The findings also provide a snapshot of children of very low birth weights who were born in NICU 30 years ago. Since then, technologies and care have improved, she said, meaning that underweight babies born prematurely today might have an advantage over those followed in the study. However, she added, improving NICUs also are allowing yet smaller babies to survive.
Clark now is exploring these findings for early warning clues that might help drive informed interventions. "Pre-term birth does mean that you are much more likely to experience brain abnormalities that seem to put you at risk for these outcomes," she said. "They seem to be a pretty strong predictor of poor cognitive development as children age. We really need to find ways to prevent these brain abnormalities and subsequent academic difficulties in these kids who are born so small."
###
Co-authors were Kimberly Andrews Espy, professor of psychology and vice president for research and innovation, and dean of the graduate school at the UO; Hua Fang of the University of Massachusetts Medical School; Pauline A. Filipek and Jenifer Juranek, both of the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston; and Barbara Bangert, Maureen Hack and Taylor, all of Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Case Medical Center, in Cleveland.
About the University of Oregon
The University of Oregon is among the 108 institutions chosen from 4,633 U.S. universities for top-tier designation of "Very High Research Activity" in the 2010 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The UO also is one of two Pacific Northwest members of the Association of American Universities.
Source: Caron "Carrie" Clark, assistant research professor of psychology, 541-346-8079, carrie4@uoregon.edu
Links:
AUDIO: Clark on primary message of study (26 seconds): http://bit.ly/11ifpsD
Department of Psychology: http://psychweb.uoregon.edu/
Child and Family Center: http://cfc.uoregon.edu/index.htm
Follow UO Science on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/UniversityOfOregonScience
UO Science on Twitter: http://twitter.com/UO_Research
More UO Science/Research News: http://uoresearch.uoregon.edu
Note: The University of Oregon is equipped with an on-campus television studio with a point-of-origin Vyvx connection, which provides broadcast-quality video to networks worldwide via fiber optic network. In addition, there is video access to satellite uplink, and audio access to an ISDN codec for broadcast-quality radio interviews.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Reduced brain volume in kids with low birth-weight tied to academic strugglesPublic release date: 10-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jim Barlow jebarlow@uoregon.edu 541-346-3481 University of Oregon
EUGENE, Ore. -- (June 10, 2013) -- An analysis of recent data from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of 97 adolescents who were part of study begun with very low birth weight babies born in 1982-1986 in a Cleveland neonatal intensive care unit has tied smaller brain volumes to poor academic achievement.
More than half of the babies that weighed less than 1.66 pounds and more than 30 percent of those less than 3.31 pounds at birth later had academic deficits. (Less than 1.66 pounds is considered extremely low birth weight; less than 3.31 pounds is labeled very low birth weight.) Lower birth weight was associated to smaller brain volumes in some of these children, and smaller brain volume, in turn, was tied to academic deficits.
Researchers also found that 65.6 percent of very low birth weight and 41.2 percent of extremely preterm children had experienced academic achievement similar to normal weight peers.
The research team -- led by Caron A.C. Clark, a scientist in the Department of Psychology and Child and Family Center at the University of Oregon -- detected an overall reduced volume of mid-brain structures, the caudate and corpus callosum, which are involved in connectivity, executive attention and motor control.
The findings, based a logistic regression analyses of the MRIs done approximately five years ago, were published in the May issue of the journal Neuropsychology. The longitudinal study originally was launched in the 1980s with a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (National Institutes of Health, grant HD 26554) to H. Gerry Taylor of Case Western University, who was the senior author and principal investigator on the new paper.
"Our new study shows that pre-term births do not necessarily mean academic difficulties are ahead," Clark said. "We had this group of children that did have academic difficulties, but there were a lot of kids in this data set who didn't and, in fact, displayed the same trajectories as their normal birth-weight peers."
Academic progress of the 201 original participants had been assessed early in their school years, again four years later and then annually until they were almost 17 years old. "We had the opportunity to explore this very rich data set," Clark said. "There are very few studies that follow this population of children over time, where their trajectories of growth at school are tracked. We were interested in seeing how development unfolds over time."
The findings, Clark added, provide new insights but also raise questions such as why some low-birth-weight babies develop normally and others do not? "It is very difficult to pick up which kids will need the most intensive interventions really early, which we know can be really important."
The findings also provide a snapshot of children of very low birth weights who were born in NICU 30 years ago. Since then, technologies and care have improved, she said, meaning that underweight babies born prematurely today might have an advantage over those followed in the study. However, she added, improving NICUs also are allowing yet smaller babies to survive.
Clark now is exploring these findings for early warning clues that might help drive informed interventions. "Pre-term birth does mean that you are much more likely to experience brain abnormalities that seem to put you at risk for these outcomes," she said. "They seem to be a pretty strong predictor of poor cognitive development as children age. We really need to find ways to prevent these brain abnormalities and subsequent academic difficulties in these kids who are born so small."
###
Co-authors were Kimberly Andrews Espy, professor of psychology and vice president for research and innovation, and dean of the graduate school at the UO; Hua Fang of the University of Massachusetts Medical School; Pauline A. Filipek and Jenifer Juranek, both of the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston; and Barbara Bangert, Maureen Hack and Taylor, all of Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Case Medical Center, in Cleveland.
About the University of Oregon
The University of Oregon is among the 108 institutions chosen from 4,633 U.S. universities for top-tier designation of "Very High Research Activity" in the 2010 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The UO also is one of two Pacific Northwest members of the Association of American Universities.
Source: Caron "Carrie" Clark, assistant research professor of psychology, 541-346-8079, carrie4@uoregon.edu
Links:
AUDIO: Clark on primary message of study (26 seconds): http://bit.ly/11ifpsD
Department of Psychology: http://psychweb.uoregon.edu/
Child and Family Center: http://cfc.uoregon.edu/index.htm
Follow UO Science on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/UniversityOfOregonScience
UO Science on Twitter: http://twitter.com/UO_Research
More UO Science/Research News: http://uoresearch.uoregon.edu
Note: The University of Oregon is equipped with an on-campus television studio with a point-of-origin Vyvx connection, which provides broadcast-quality video to networks worldwide via fiber optic network. In addition, there is video access to satellite uplink, and audio access to an ISDN codec for broadcast-quality radio interviews.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 10-Jun-2013
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