Massimiliano Sammarco and the position of tax havens on Russia

MASSIMILIANO SAMMARCO TAX HAVENS - These days there is a lot of talk about blocking and freezing the assets of the great Russian "entrepreneurs"! There is a problem, however, some Western European countries and not, have legal tax structures that for decades have allowed the possibility of hiding huge assets through sophisticated systems of anonymity, bearer bonds, trusts and tax havens. How to solve this problem to make sanctions more effective?

Dutch tax system

To better understand what we are talking about we see, for example, the Dutch tax system (which you can also read Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, then Switzerland and the United Kingdom):

a) it has a system whereby the state can directly deal with the taxation of large groups that decide to settle on Dutch territory (for this reason there are many multinationals, the list of which is very long);

b) the BV is a holding company which, according to internal rules, is not taxed on the dividends and capital gains it receives from its worldwide resident subsidiaries;

c) in the years 80,90 and part of 2000 the Netherlands Antilles were the arrival terminal of all funds, dividends, capital gains, profits that came from the BV;

In other words, the BV was formed, the shareholder of the BV was an empty box in the Netherlands Antilles, that is a company with bearer bonds that were then deposited in a trust (also in the Netherlands Antilles) with Beneficial Owner (last owner) whose identity could never be known. Thus the BV received dividends and capital gains as mentioned in point b) did not pay taxes in the Netherlands and redistributed dividends to the company in the Netherlands Antilles where in turn no taxes were paid and then the Beneficial Owner created his local safe and from there with the same tool could reinvest in other activities in the world.

d) A partire dalla metà degli anni 2000 ECOFIN ed UE hanno cominciato a stringere un po' la mano su queste operazioni ma la trattativa segreta sulla tassazione delle multinazionali e la BV (con l’esenzione sui dividendi e le plusvalenze) sono ancora lì come in Lussemburgo, Malta, Irlanda, Regno Unito e Svizzera.

The EU must help the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Ireland, Malta and also the UK and Switzerland to find Moscow’s money

The protectorates of these countries, in the various exotic archipelagos of the world, continue to work quietly with banks around the world. The trusts are there and the bearer bonds are there!
For decades, therefore, the wealth of Olanda&co has been based on being a legalized tax haven in the EU!!! Activities that, as you can see, are evasive practices provided for by specific state agreements with their protectorates and not!

Remember the Panama Papers. The investigation has put in a row operations, in some cases to the limit of the legality, put in existence from 14 international companies charged from rich customers in managing billions of dollars capitals. In most cases, the main activity was to create «offshore» and «trust» structures in tax havens such as Panama, Dubai, the Cayman Islands and in countries where confidentiality is protected from tax controls, such as Monaco and Switzerland.

The cards that the consortium has come into possession are 12 million documents, obtained by 14 financial services companies in countries such as the British Virgin Islands, Panama, Belize, Cyprus, United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Switzerland.

In some cases there would be the extremes for accusations of corruption, money laundering and tax evasion; but in most cases, according to the «BBC», the documents would demonstrate the use of secret societies to buy goods - even legally - secretly, in the UK and elsewhere.

Would be 95 thousand the offshore societies behind these purchases, to evidence a failure of the government of London in predisposing a register of the properties offshore in spite of the announcements. And here we can also read Holland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta and Switzerland.

A quote to itself also Switzerland that continues to be the largest "authorized" Tax Paradise in the heart of Europe!

So we are sure that under these conditions we will really be able to freeze and block all Russian funds without the full cooperation of these countries?

Forse il sequestro di una barca potrebbe solo far sorridere un “imprenditore” russo.