Lichtgeschwindigkeit 7710
Vom Dienstag, 7. November 2017
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13 Millionen Dokumente. Was soll das?
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Liebe Benutzerin, lieber Benutzer der täglichen LICHTGESCHWINDIGKEIT. Der Schwall des Täglichen ist niemals konstant. Der folgende Beitrag gibt einige aktuelle Originalpublikationen im Zitat wieder, weil das gesamte NEUIGKEITS-GESCHWALLE der investigativen WEST-Journalisten zunächst nur LÄRM ist und keinerlei Konsequenzen der deutschen Bundesregierung oder der EU in Brüssel und Strassburg zeitigt oder fordert oder ankündigt.
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MOMENTAN ist PARADISE PAPERS publizistischer LÄRM.
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Eine Zeitung in der Zeitung kam mit der heutigen Süddeutschen Zeitung, 6. November 2017, heraus, betitelt:
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„PARADISE PAPERS
Die Schattenwelt des großen Geldes“
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Dieses Material hat die Süddeutsche an andere internationale Medien weitergegeben. Es werden konkrete Schattenwirtschafts- und Steuerbetrüger bzw. „Steuersparmodelle“ genannt. Im Prinzip wird lediglich eine in Fachkreisen bekannte GROSS-KAPITAL-Kriminalität, wie sie von PANAMA PAPERS bekannt sind – es beläuft sich in strittigen Graubereichen internationaler und nationaler Fiskalregeln.
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Die Politik unternimmt nichts gegen den kapitalistischen Rechtsbruch.
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Und die Süddeutsche Zeitung titelt am Montag, 6. November 2017 mit Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermaier, Nicolas Richter:
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„Trump-Minister verdient an Russland-Geschäften. Geheime Dokumente aus Steueroasen zeigen US-Handelsminister Ross profitiert von einer Firma, die mit der Familie von Kreml-Chef Putin verbunden ist. Die Paradise Papers enthüllen auch, wie Apple und Nike Steuern sparen – und die Queen Geld anlegt“
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Kurz – na und? – welche politischen Maßnahmen liegen nahe? Was macht nun der Bundestagspräsident Wolfgang Schäuble? oder sein Freund, Jean-Claude Juncker, „der Sparmodellentwickler“?
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Unser augenblicklicher Bundesfinanzminister, PETER ALTMAIER, CDU, den wir ja eigentlich als Kanzleramts-Chef von Bundeskanzlerin Merkel kennen, zuckte mit den Achseln
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Deutschlandfunk.de am 6. November 2017:
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„Paradise Papers: Die Steuertricks der Superreichen – Wer wird genannt und warum?
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Briefkastenfirmen und Steueroasen haben für reiche Nutznießer den Charme des Verborgenen. Doch vormals geheime Daten werfen Licht auf Steuervermeidung in großem Stil. Genannt werden auch Prominente mit sozialem Image. Die „Paradise Papers“ haben es in sich.
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Die Enthüllungen können das Gerechtigkeitsempfinden normaler Steuerzahlern erschüttern, Behörden auf neue Spuren bringen und Befürworter schärferer Regeln unterstützen.
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Millionen Unterlagen über Steueroasen und Briefkastenfirmen wecken neue Zweifel an Steuer- und Geschäftspraktiken von Politikern und Prominenten – ein Überblick:
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Was sind die „Paradise Papers“?
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13,4 Millionen Dokumente. Sie wurden der Süddeutschen Zeitung (SZ) laut den Angaben des Blatts von unbekannter Seite zugespielt. Die Zeitung teilte sie mit dem Netzwerk investigativer Journalisten ICIJ.
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Reporter arbeiteten weltweit rund ein Jahr lang mit den Daten, die von der auf den Bermudas gegründeten Kanzlei Appleby stammen, einer Treuhandfirma und aus Firmenregistern von 19 Steueroasen.
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Was zeigen die „Paradise Papers“?
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Sie zeigen laut den Medien, wie Reiche über Briefkastenfirmen oder andere Geschäfte in intransparenten Steueroasen wie Isle of Man, Malta oder Bermudas Steuern vermeiden oder Gewinne machen. Das heißt nicht, dass die Praktiken illegal sein müssen.
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Nicht unbedingt. Vor gut eineinhalb Jahren erschütterten etwa bereits die Panama Papers die Öffentlichkeit.
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Immer noch ziehen die Veröffentlichungen über das Vermögen zahlreicher Politiker, Sportler und anderer Prominente in Offshore-Firmen weltweit Konsequenzen nach sich, werden Banken durchsucht oder Betroffene juristisch belangt.
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Welcher Fall ist politisch am brisantesten?
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Wohl die Verbindung des US-Handelsministers Wilbur Ross zu russischen Oligarchen. Er ist laut SZ über diverse Fonds auf den Kaimaninseln an einer Reederei beteiligt, die einen russischen Energiekonzern zu ihren größten Kunden zählt.
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Der Trump-Minister selbst wies zurück, dass er die Verbindungen zu einer mit Russlands Präsident Putin in Beziehung stehenden Firma verheimlicht habe.
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Welche internationalen Fälle stechen noch hervor?
Etwa der von U2-Sänger Bono, der sich unter anderem für mehr Entwicklungshilfe der Industriestaaten einsetzt. Wie Bonos Sprecherin laut Medien bestätigte, ist er Minderheitsinvestor eines in der Kanalinsel Guernsey angesiedelten Unternehmens, das ein Einkaufszentrum in Litauen betreibt.
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Auch der angebliche Fall eines der engsten Parteifreunde und Förderers des kanadischen Premiers Justin Trudeau fällt auf: Viel Geld soll er an einen mysteriösen Trust auf den Kaimaninseln übertragen haben.
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Selbst Hinweise auf die britische Queen werden genannt. Ihre Vermögensverwalter sollen über einen Fonds auf den Kaimaninseln in eine Firma investiert haben, die Haushaltsgüter auf Raten verkauft – bei enorm hohen Zinssätzen.
Die SZ erinnert an ein Steuerstrafverfahren gegen die Töchter des verstorbenen Pharmaunternehmers Curt Engelhorn. Sie sollen laut den damaligen Vorwürfen der Ermittler 440 Millionen Euro Schenkungssteuer hinterzogen haben, nachdem Engelholm ihnen über ausländische Trusts ein Vermögen zukommen gelassen hatte.
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Die bayerischen Finanzbehörden einigten sich in einem 2015/2016 ausgehandelten Deal mit den Töchtern auf eine Steuernachzahlung von 145 Millionen Euro.
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Laut SZ sollen die „Paradise Papers“ zeigen, dass der Familie weitere Trusts oder Briefkastenfirmen zuzuordnen seien.
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Existieren weitere Hinweise auf Deutsche?
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Ja. So hat der Glücksspiel-Unternehmer Paul Gauselmann eine Tochterfirma eines deutschen Spiele-Entwicklers auf der Isle of Man gegründet, für die Appleby-Anwälte Geschäftsbedingungen und Lizenzvereinbarungen entwickelten und die dort genehmigt wurde.
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Die Gauselmann-Gruppe bestätigte dies laut SZ. Von der Insel aus werde Online-Glücksspiel vertrieben, das in Deutschland weitgehend verboten sei. Die Gauselmann-Gruppe betont laut SZ, dass alles legal sei.
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Gibt es auch Hinweise auf weltweit bekannte Firmen?
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Ja. So baute laut SZ der Sportartikelhersteller Nike erst auf den Bermudas und dann in den Niederlanden ein System auf, das dem Konzern außerhalb der USA Milliarden Euro an Steuern erspare.
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Der Computergigant Apple war laut SZ bestrebt, einen Geschäftssitz in einem Land zu finden, in dem keine Steuern anfallen. Beide Firmen hätten auf Anfrage betont, sich ans Recht zu halten, so die Zeitung.
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Hat sich im Kampf gegen Steueroasen nichts getan?
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Doch. Unter anderem starten Ende September Deutschland und 49 weitere Staaten einen automatischen Austausch von Informationen, der Finanzbehörden Einsicht in Auslandsgeschäfte ihrer Bürger gibt.
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Auch Konten von Treuhändern, Trusts und Stiftungen, die Reiche gern zur Verschleierung ihrer Geschäfte nutzen, fallen darunter. Auch einstige Steueroasen und Inselstaaten mit ihren Briefkastenfirmen machen mit, etwa die Kaimaninseln und Liechtenstein.
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Ab September 2018 sollen sich mehr als 100 Länder beteiligen. Ein nach den Panama Papers verabschiedetes Gesetz, das das steuerliche Bankgeheimnis abschafft, tritt in Deutschland 2018 in Kraft.
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Ist damit alles scharf genug geregelt?
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Aus Expertensicht: Nein. „Weitere Anstrengungen werden erforderlich sein“, sagt auch ein Sprecher des Finanzressorts. Die Regierung begrüßt die neuen Veröffentlichungen – denn sie unterstütze die eigene Linie, weitere Schlupflöcher für Steuersünder zu schließen.
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Nötig seien etwa Regelungen für eine Mindestbesteuerung. Zunächst rief die Regierung die Medien auf, die Originaldaten für die Finanzbehörden zur Verfügung zu stellen.“
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Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer of Süddeutsche Zeitung contributed research – hier wurde von Redakteuren der Süddeutschen Zeitung recherchiert und herausgefunden, wie internationale Schwarz+Graugeld-Bewegungen in schwerwiegenden Multirollenspielen von westlichen Schlüsselpersonen auch mit Vladimir-PUTIN-Organisationen aufgebaut worden sind (die Süddeutsche Zeitung hat sich starke internationale Medienverlage ins Boot gezogen, wie die NEW YORK TIMES:
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nytimes.com am 6. November 2017:
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„The Paradise Papers
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A series of stories that reveal the offshore financial dealings of some of the world’s biggest corporations and wealthiest people. Nearly 100 news organizations in an international collaboration examined more than 13 million leaked documents from a law firm, an offshore services company and corporate registries from tax havens.
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After becoming commerce secretary, Wilbur L. Ross Jr. retained investments in a shipping firm he once controlled that has significant business ties to a Russian oligarch subject to American sanctions and President Vladimir V. Putin’s son-in-law, according to newly disclosed documents.
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The shipper, Navigator Holdings, earns millions of dollars a year transporting gas for one of its top clients, a giant Russian energy company called Sibur, whose owners include the oligarch and Mr. Putin’s family member. Despite selling off numerous other holdings to join the Trump administration and spearhead its “America first” trade policy, Mr. Ross kept an investment in Navigator, which increased its business dealings with Sibur even as the West sought to punish Russia’s energy sector over Mr. Putin’s incursions into Ukraine.
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Partnerships used by Mr. Ross, whose private equity firm has long been the biggest shareholder in Navigator, have a 31 percent stake in the company. Though his personal share of that stake was reduced as he took office in February, he retained an investment in the partnerships valued between $2 million and $10 million, and stood to earn a higher share of profits as a general partner, according to his government ethics disclosure and securities filings.
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Mr. Ross’s stake in Navigator has been held by a chain of companies in the Cayman Islands, one of several tax havens where much of his wealth, estimated at more than $2 billion, has been tied to similar investment vehicles. Details of these arrangements surfaced in a cache of leaked files from Appleby, one of the world’s largest offshore law firms, which administered some 50 companies and partnerships in the Caymans and elsewhere connected to Mr. Ross.
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The Appleby documents, obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, were shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media organizations, including The New York Times. They show how the Bermuda-based Appleby worked to help the wealthy elite, from Russian oligarchs to Middle Eastern princes, as well as multinational corporations like Apple and Nike, avoid billions of dollars in taxes.
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In addition to Mr. Ross, the files contain references to other members of the Trump administration, including Gary D. Cohn, the chief economic adviser who was associated with 22 Bermuda entities while an executive at Goldman Sachs, and Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, who was a director of a Bermuda-based joint venture with the government of Yemen when he ran Exxon Mobil’s operations there. There is no evidence of illegality in any of their dealings.
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Mr. Ross emerges as a particularly valued client for the offshore law firm, whose records provide more insight into his financial holdings beyond the public ethics disclosures he made upon joining the Trump administration. His ethics agreement filed in January listed the partnerships he intended to keep, but not the investments they held. Previously, Navigator had been mentioned in a separate, 57-page description of his holdings for the year that ended in December 2016, but with no hint of its ties to Sibur.
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Sibur’s top ownership — including Gennady Timchenko, who is Mr. Putin’s friend and judo partner and is subject to American sanctions, and Kirill Shamalov, who is married to the Russian president’s youngest daughter — makes it “a company with crony connections” in Moscow, said Daniel Fried, a Russia expert who served in senior State Department posts in Republican and Democratic administrations.
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Another of Navigator’s major customers is PDVSA, the Venezuelan state oil company, controlled by the authoritarian regime of Nicolás Maduro. The Trump administration imposed sanctions on PDVSA this summer.
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In a written response to questions by the Times, James Rockas, a spokesman for Mr. Ross, said that Navigator’s relationship with Sibur began before Mr. Ross joined the board in March 2012, and that he had never met the Russian oligarchs who are Sibur’s major shareholders. Public records show that Mr. Ross’s firm became a major investor in Navigator in November 2011, three months before the company chartered its first ships to Sibur.
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“Sibur was not under sanctions at the time the contract was signed and is still not subject to sanctions,” Mr. Rockas said.
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More broadly, he said that Mr. Ross “recuses himself from any matters focused on transoceanic shipping vessels, but has been generally supportive of the administration’s sanctions of Russian and Venezuelan entities.”
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Secretary Ross has never had to seek, nor received, any ethics exemption,” Mr. Rockas said, “and he works closely with Commerce Department ethics officials to ensure the highest ethical standards.”
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It is perhaps unsurprising that Navigator would have a relationship with a major Russian company during Mr. Ross’s tenure. Much like President Trump, whose company sought approval for a hotel project in Moscow as recently as last year, Mr. Ross has long shown an appreciation for the untapped potential of Russian markets when seeking investment opportunities. His involvement there dates at least to the 1990s, when he was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the board of the U.S. Russia Investment Fund, established to promote American business interests in Russia.
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In addition to Navigator, his firm also acquired a German rail car company, VTG, which pursued an expansion strategy in Russia before Mr. Ross sold his stake in 2016. And Mr. Ross led a private bailout of the Bank of Cyprus, long regarded as a favorite financial haven of wealthy Russians, after the worldwide economic crisis crippled the Cypriot banking system.
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In the wake of reports of Russian interference in the United States presidential election, multiple investigations have explored potential business ties between Russia and members of the Trump administration. While several Trump campaign and business associates have come under scrutiny, until now no business connections have been reported between senior administration officials and members of Mr. Putin’s family or inner circle.
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During Mr. Ross’s confirmation process, he was asked repeatedly about his business ties to Russia, mostly related to his former role as vice chairman of the Bank of Cyprus, where he dealt with Russian investors but also forced some of them out of the bank. He was also asked about his investment in another shipping company, Diamond S, and whether its dealings with China could pose a conflict with his government duties. But he faced no questions about Navigator and its significant financial relationship with Sibur.
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Mr. Rockas did not respond to questions about the current status of Mr. Ross’s investment. If Mr. Ross stands to benefit, albeit indirectly, from a Russian firm controlled by members of Mr. Putin’s inner circle, it poses a potential conflict with his role as the lead cabinet member on trade policy, ethics experts said. Richard W. Painter, who served as chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush White House and has emerged as a frequent critic of the Trump administration, said that while Mr. Ross’s continued investment in Navigator would not violate any laws, it created other ethical concerns.
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“Apart from those legal issues,” Mr. Painter said, “I’d be very concerned that someone in the U.S. government was making money from dealing with the Russians.”
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As for Navigator, its leadership sees blue skies ahead with one of its key investors now at the helm of American trade policy.
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On Nov. 30 of last year, hours after being nominated as commerce secretary, Mr. Ross celebrated at Gramercy Tavern, an upscale Manhattan restaurant, at an event hosted by Navigator. He and David J. Butters, Navigator’s chief executive, arrived early to a private room and had a chat.
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“Your interest is aligned to mine,” Mr. Butters recalls Mr. Ross saying, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, “The U.S. economy will grow, and Navigator will be a beneficiary.”
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Mr. Ross’s foray into transoceanic shipping took off in 2011, when his private equity firm, WL Ross & Co., assembled teams of investors to acquire major stakes in Diamond S Shipping and Navigator Holdings. Both firms specialized in chartering tankers to petroleum companies that need to move gas, oil and petrochemicals around the world. With Mr. Ross’s involvement, they would expand their business interests in China and Russia.
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The investments — eventually totaling more than $600 million in Diamond S and about $240 million in Navigator — were in keeping with Mr. Ross’s strategy of scooping up shares in undervalued companies and turning them around. It is a business model that has earned Mr. Ross, a 79-year-old Ivy League-educated son of middle-class parents from New Jersey, the sobriquet of “king of bankruptcy.”
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Over a lengthy investment career that included a stint running the bankruptcy advisory practice at the British banking firm Rothschild, he has breathed new life into textile, steel and auto-part businesses. While at Rothschild in the early 1990s, he led a group of bondholders in a restructuring of the floundering Trump casinos in Atlantic City, preserving a stake for Mr. Trump because, as he reportedly assured disgruntled investors, the Trump name was “still very much an asset.”
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Mr. Ross’s business practices have occasionally drawn criticism for moving American jobs overseas in an effort to improve profits. A Reuters analysis of Labor Department statistics found that his takeovers shifted 2,700 jobs in automotive, textiles and mortgage finance to, among other places, China, India, Mexico and Nicaragua.
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In the statement to The Times, Mr. Ross’s spokesman said, “Private equity firms have a responsibility to their investors to optimize corporate structures, and Secretary Ross has decades of experience that he is now using to benefit American workers.”
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As worldwide shipping concerns, Diamond S and Navigator did not have much of a labor footprint in the United States when Mr. Ross and his investors took over. But the way both companies did business would pose potential conflicts with American interests in other ways.
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Alongside Mr. Ross, another large investor in Diamond S was a company controlled by the Chinese government, according to securities filings. And Navigator signed a charter agreement with Sibur shortly after Mr. Ross’s firm made its investment. Sibur said in a statement that any negotiations with Navigator over the years were carried out by its executives, not its major shareholders, and that “no meetings were held with Mr. Ross.”
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Initially, Navigator chartered two vessels to Sibur, and later increased the fleet to four. The relationship proved to be so profitable that Navigator’s chief executive, Mr. Butters, told investors in a 2016 conference call how Navigator benefited as Sibur beat out American competitors in the growing European energy market.
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“Russia is pipelining as much natural gas as needed into Europe, and liquids are being shipped into all areas of the continent in increasing amounts, all in competition with longer-haul U.S. exports,” Mr. Butters said.
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Putin Connections
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As one of the largest gas companies in Russia, Sibur is not just any private business.
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It was created by the Russian government and maintains a close dependency on Moscow, even after its sale in 2010 to Mr. Timchenko and Leonid Mikhelson, The two men are typical of Russian moguls who have benefited from state-owned assets and are expected to remain loyal to the Putin government, said Amos J. Hochstein, a top energy diplomat under the Obama administration.
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“When you start doing business with Russian energy companies like Gazprom and Sibur, you’re not just getting into bed with the company,” Mr. Hochstein said. “You’re getting into bed with the Russian state.”
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The ties to the Russian president, however, proved to be a double-edged sword for Sibur’s owners. In 2014, after Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine, American and Western allies imposed economic sanctions on key Putin associates, including Mr. Timchenko. A few months later, the United States barred banks from providing new financing to another gas company, Novatek, belonging to Mr. Mikhelson.
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Sibur itself was not targeted. But financial institutions, including Bank of America and the Royal Bank of Scotland, backed away from loans to the company, according to news reports at the time. Moscow stepped in to help in May 2014, when a government-backed financial consortium bought a shipping terminal from Sibur and pledged to expand export capacity, while allowing Sibur to remain the terminal’s sole exporter of gas.
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Then, in September 2014, as sanctions pressure was growing, Mr. Timchenko reduced his holdings in Sibur by selling a 17 percent stake to a junior shareholder, Mr. Shamalov. A year earlier, Mr. Shamalov, whose father is a friend and former business partner of Mr. Putin’s, had married the Russian president’s daughter Katerina. His Sibur purchase, which pushed the 32-year-old Mr. Shamalov’s investment to more than 20 percent of the company, was financed by a $1.3 billion loan from the state-backed Gazprombank. Mr. Shamalov sold part of his stake in April, reducing it to 3.9 percent.
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Most of these financial machinations were carried out through offshore companies on Cyprus, where Mr. Mikhelson and Mr. Timchenko held their investments in Sibur and did business with several Cypriot banks. During the summer of 2014, Mr. Ross had become the Bank of Cyprus’s vice chairman, though there is no indication that he crossed paths with the two oligarchs during his tenure there.
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His position at the bank required him to step down from the board of Navigator, however, even as he retained his investment in the company. His close associate at WL Ross & Co., Wendy L. Teramoto, took his place at Navigator and, later, left to join Mr. Ross as chief of staff at the Commerce Department.
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Despite the reluctance of Western financial institutions to do business with Sibur and its owners, Navigator’s relationship with Sibur continued to grow.
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From 2014 to 2015, the portion of Navigator’s total revenue that came from Sibur jumped to 9.1 percent from 5.3 percent, making the company one of its top five clients, according to securities filings, before dipping to 7.9 percent last year.
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Ethics Disclosures
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As WL Ross & Co. expanded over the years, it used Appleby, the offshore specialist, to set up an increasing number of entities in tax havens, many in the Cayman Islands. This British territory in the Caribbean levies no corporate or personal income tax on money earned outside its jurisdiction, and requires little disclosure of corporate ownership. By 2014, Mr. Ross and his investment company were among Appleby’s top 20 clients.
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After he was nominated as commerce secretary, Mr. Ross filed an agreement with the federal Office of Government Ethics saying he would resign from WL Ross & Co. and divest from 80 companies and partnerships, but would keep a stake in nine others that held assets in “real estate financing and mortgage lending” and “transoceanic shipping.” The underlying assets were not specified.
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His financial disclosure form offered more detail, including a list of assets that had been held by each of the partnerships that he retained. Navigator Holdings appeared in connection with four Appleby-managed Cayman partnerships. Mr. Ross’s ethics filing valued his stake in those partnerships at between $2.05 million and $10.1 million, a fraction of the partnerships’ combined 31.5 percent stake in Navigator, which, based on the firm’s recent stock price, was worth roughly $179 million. In all, WL Ross & Co. remains Navigator’s largest shareholder, according to the shipping company’s most recent annual report.
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Federal ethics law requires officials to recuse themselves from matters that would have “a direct and predictable” effect on their financial interests or cause a reasonable doubt about their impartiality. During his confirmation hearings, Mr. Ross sought to reassure senators that he would avoid any conflicts of interest between his continued business holdings and his cabinet post.
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“I intend to be quite scrupulous about recusal and any topic where there is the slightest scintilla of doubt,” he said.
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Sasha Chavkin and Martha M. Hamilton are reporters for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
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Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer of Süddeutsche Zeitung contributed research.“
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Der vorstehende New York Times-Bericht ist aktuell und entspricht den Einzelheiten des einleitenden Süddeutsche Zeitung-Textes. Es gibt aber ein Bild davon, wie gründlich und umfangreich THEMEN bei der nytimes.com bereitet werden. Und dazu folgt weiterer Output:
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Cremlin Cash Behind
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Billionaire’s Twitter
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Facebook Investments
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Leaked files show that a state-controlled bank in Moscow helped to fuel Yuri Milner’s ascent in Silicon Valley, where the Russia investigation has put tech companies under scrutiny. By Jesse Drucker
In the fall of 2010, the Russian billionaire investor Yuri Milner took the stage for a Q. and A. at a technology conference in San Francisco. Mr. Milner, whose holdings have included major stakes in Facebook and Twitter, is known for expounding on everything from the future of social media to the frontiers of space travel. But when someone asked a question that had swirled around his Silicon Valley ascent — Who were his investors? — he did not answer, turning repeatedly to the moderator with a look of incomprehension.
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Now, leaked documents examined by The New York Times offer a partial answer: Behind Mr. Milner’s investments in Facebook and Twitter were hundreds of millions of dollars from the Kremlin.
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Obscured by a maze of offshore shell companies, the Twitter investment was backed by VTB, a Russian state-controlled bank often used for politically strategic deals.
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And a big investor in Mr. Milner’s Facebook deal received financing from Gazprom Investholding, another government-controlled financial institution, according to the documents. They include a cache of records from the Bermuda law firm Appleby that were obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and reviewed by The Times in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative journalists.
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Ultimately, Mr. Milner’s companies came to own more than 8 percent of Facebook and 5 percent of Twitter, helping earn him a place on various lists of the world’s most powerful business people. His companies sold those holdings several years ago, but he retains investments in several other large technology companies and continues to make new deals. Among Mr. Milner’s current investments is a real estate venture founded and partly owned by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser.
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Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites have become a major focus of federal investigations into Kremlin interference in the 2016 election. Federal prosecutors and congressional investigators are examining how Russians linked to the Kremlin turned the sites into garden hoses of bogus news stories and divisive political ads, and whether they coordinated with the Trump campaign.
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No one has suggested that Mr. Milner or his companies had any connection to the propaganda operation. For his part, Mr. Milner said in a pair of recent interviews that the Russian government money was no different from the financing he had received from his many other investors around the world.
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Even so, his use of the state-directed apparatus employed by so many Russian oligarchs to enrich themselves shows how the Kremlin has extended its long financial arm not only to his company but to some of America’s technology giants.
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“Kremlin-connected institutions make investments with strategic interests in mind — not just commercial interests but state interests as well,” said Michael Carpenter, the Russia director at the National Security Council during the Obama administration, who is now senior director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. “They go hand in hand.”
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Mr. Carpenter added, “Oligarchs who receive significant amounts of financial support from Russian banks like VTB or Sberbank or Gazprombank have to pass above a political threshold, meaning such support requires the explicit or tacit approval of those at the top of Russia’s crony capitalist system.”
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There is nothing illegal about foreign state-owned institutions investing in American companies. VTB and Gazprom said the transactions were both sound investments, not motivated by political considerations.
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As Mr. Milner sees it, the story is similarly simple — “nothing more than business,” he said, adding: “We are getting money, and we are putting them in Facebook and Twitter. We are making money for our limited partners, and we are giving money back to them. For me, it’s a commercial arrangement.”
(A statement from DST Global, Mr. Milner’s venture capital firm,
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The Path to Silicon Valley
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Mr. Milner, 55, studied theoretical physics at Moscow State University before moving to the United States, where he attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1990s and then worked for the World Bank in Washington.
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He returned to Russia and in the late 1990s and worked as an executive at Bank Menatep, which was founded by Mikhail B Khodorkovsky, the oil tycoon who was stripped of his company, prosecuted and imprisoned after a televised confrontation with President Vladimir V. Putin.
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Mr. Milner eventually teamed with Alisher Usmanov — an Uzbek-Russian oligarch close to the Russian prime minister, Dmitri A. Medvedev — and a former Goldman Sachs executive to build a large stake in Mail.ru, a Russian internet company that now trades on the London Stock Exchange.
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Mr. Milner’s initial American investments came as he served on an innovation commission set up in 2009 by Mr. Medvedev, who was Russia’s president at the time and is something of a tech enthusiast, famously touring Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., with Steve Jobs.
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In May 2009, Facebook announced an investment of roughly $200 million by Mr. Milner’s company, Digital Sky Technologies, and said the company planned to spend at least $100 million buying additional stock. Eventually, Mr. Milner’s new venture capital firm, DST Global, also amassed a significant stake in Facebook.
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“A number of firms approached us, but DST stood out because of the global perspective they bring,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said at the time.
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The documents reviewed by The Times reveal that DST brought something else as well: a connection — through a succession of shell companies — to the Kremlin.
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Ties to the Russian State
In those years, as part of its diplomatic “reset” with Moscow, the Obama administration was encouraging Russia to learn from the American technology industry. Importing tech knowledge, the theory went, would ease Russia’s dependence on exporting oil and gas.
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For the Facebook deal, it was Gazprom, the state-controlled natural-gas giant, that became the bridge. The company, a vital component of the Putin government, has employed its financial subsidiary, Gazprom Investholding, to reclaim assets privatized during the 1990s.
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Gazprom Investholding is “used for politically important and strategically important deals for the Kremlin,” said Ilya Zaslavskiy, a contributor to the Kleptocracy Initiative, a project of the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. Both VTB and Gazprom Investholding’s parent, Gazprom, are under United States sanctions stemming from Russia’s support of separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
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Over several years, Gazprom Investholding and a subsidiary made hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to a company called Kanton Services, according to records from the Panama Papers, the trove of leaked documents from the law firm Mossack Fonseca. Kanton, in turn, owned one of the DST investment vehicles used to buy shares of Facebook. While it is unclear precisely when Kanton first received its stake in the DST entity, Kanton received $197 million of the Gazprom Investholding loans three months before Facebook announced its first deal with Mr. Milner, the records show. Kanton, based in the British Virgin Islands, had numerous ties to Mr. Milner’s backer, Mr. Usmanov.
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Kanton was owned by a longtime Usmanov business associate, and was controlled by Matthias Bolliger, a director of numerous subsidiaries of Mr. Usmanov’s main holding company, USM Holdings, according to an Appleby memo and the Panama Papers. And an email sent by a trust company on the Isle of Man used by Mr. Usmanov referred to Kanton as a “private investment company, (facebook and twitter).”
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In the interviews, Mr. Milner said his investors’ identities were not generally public information. And he sought to distance his company from Mr. Usmanov. “I had no knowledge of him using state funds to invest with us,” he said. What’s more, he said, Mr. Usmanov had many potential sources of financing, making it impossible to know whether money from Gazprom Investholding was even used to finance his stake in Facebook.
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To demonstrate this, Mr. Milner set out a series of clear plastic cups with labels like “Alleged Russian government funds,” “Mr. Usmanov” and “Facebook.” He pulled out a large bag of green M&M’s, filled several cups and proceeded to shift the M&M’s from one cup to another. “Money is fungible,” he explained, adding, “You can’t just say that this specific dollar went all the way to Facebook.”
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A spokesman for Mr. Usmanov, Rollo Head, did not address specific questions. But in a statement, he insisted that there are clear streams of money that do not mingle. Mr. Usmanov, he said, “did not borrow from or use state or quasi-state funds to make investments in Facebook.”
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Lucrative ‘Synergies’
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The Facebook deal was a case study in the way Russia’s oligarchs have mixed public and private roles for their own, and their government’s, benefit: Even as he was investing in Facebook, Mr. Usmanov was general director of Gazprom Investholding.
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In fact, Mr. Usmanov had often intertwined his government position with his personal deals, according to a report by the global investigations and security firm Kroll. Kroll described those arrangements as “synergies.”
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The Kroll report — a “reputation audit” — had been commissioned by Mr. Usmanov as he set out to burnish his image a year before his deal with Mr. Milner to invest in Facebook. Kroll investigators, relying on public records and interviews, detailed a long and colorful history: time in prison in Uzbekistan (he was later exonerated) and past associations with alleged Russian organized crime figures, according to a draft copy of the report reviewed by The Times.
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The investigators also recounted a dizzying number of deals — involving mining, media and technology companies, often with the assistance of the Kremlin and Mr. Medvedev. “Usmanov looks set to end the Putin era as the ‘most improved’ oligarch over the past eight years,” one source told Kroll.
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Kroll investigators found that, for some investments, Mr. Usmanov turned to Kanton, the company that would be a part of Mr. Milner’s Facebook investment.
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A Facebook spokeswoman, Vanessa Chan, declined to answer specific questions about the deal with DST, calling it a “passive investor” and noting that the company had invested and cashed out several years ago.
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Gazprom Investholding called the loans “prudent,” saying they were “provided for general corporate purposes” at above-market rates. The company did not answer a question about what role, if any, Mr. Usmanov played in the loans, except to say that as its general director, he “operated in accordance” with the company’s charter.
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To complete the Facebook deal, DST used a pair of lawyers based in Cyprus and Britain who have also set up offshore entities for Russian oligarchs close to Mr. Putin, according to the Panama Papers, United States securities filings and records from Appleby. DST did not answer questions about how it came to use the two lawyers.
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After the Facebook deal, Mr. Milner became a fixture in Silicon Valley, spending about $100 million on a 25,000-square-foot house in Los Altos Hills and investing $7 billion in more than 30 companies, including Spotify, Airbnb and Groupon.“
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Dietmar Moews meint: Ich bedauere – anbetracht der PARADISE PAPERS-Berichte, die ich seit gestern Nacht im Radio hörte und so weiter, wird begeistert von den Publizisten der SKANDAL hochgejubelt. Indes Sinn?
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Liest man von APPLE oder FACEBOOK, verliert man doch die Hoffnung und die Vorstellung, dass diese KAPITALRIESEN mit ÜBERMACHT-STRUKTUREN lediglich noch aus ästhetischen Befindlichkeiten überhaupt geltendes Recht zu berücksichtigen Lust haben, an welchem Ort sie zufällig ihren Firmensitz MOBIL machen.
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Was nun daraus folgt.
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Sehr nett, der meist verlässliche PETER ALTMAIER in der Tagesschau des ARD-Staatsfernsehens, er sagte sinngemäß als aktueller Bundesfinanzminister:
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„Wenn ich es bisher richtig verstanden habe, geht es bei den PARADISE PAPERS um eine Masse bislang nicht bekannter Finanzgeschehnisse in einem noch nicht näher juristisch erfassten GRAUBEREICH“.
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Ja, wer wäre schon überrascht, wenn ein TRUMP-Minister mit PUTIN-Geld zu tun hätte. Denn, jeder sollte doch wissen, dass der ganze TRUMP als mehrfacher PLEITE-Immobilist vollkommen von russischen Kunden abhängig ist – TRUMP ist SCHULDNER von russischen GLÄUBIGERN.
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TRUMP ist abhängig von sehr hoch bezahlenden Etagen-Mietern im TRUMP-TOWER von Manhatten, die nur kurzfristig ihr Mietverhältnis stornieren müssten – und schon wäre TRUMP insolvent. Das nennt man erpressbar.
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Ja – was sollen da PARADISE PAPERS, die keinerlei Konsequenzen zur Folge zu haben scheinen?
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