Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

June 20, 2016 By Fausta

The impending disaster Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean

There’s always an impending disaster. In the case of the Rio Olympics, it looks more likely than most.

ARGENTINA
Argentina gripped by mystery: the ex-minister, a convent and bundles of cash. Ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and the church face tricky questions after José López was found trying to stash $8.9m in cash at a nunnery at 4am. Cristina says she doesn’t know who gave him the money:

El dinero que Lopez tenia en su poder alguien se lo dio. Y no fui yo. Ni ninguno de los miles de militantes q integran este espacio político

— Cristina Kirchner (@CFKArgentina) June 17, 2016

BOLIVIA
Why Bolivia turned away Bill Gates’ chicken donation. It’s about more than a few ruffled feathers

BRAZIL
Brazil ‘mass rape’ video: Seven suspects to be charged

Brazil’s Rio state declares financial disaster before Games

New Plan to Fix Brazil’s Royal Mess: Restore the Monarchy. How did that work out the first time?

Brazil Gets Worst Possible Resignation On Eve Of Olympics

Brazil President Michel Temer Says Graft Claims Are ‘Lies’

CHILE
Chile’s government, in major defeat, will cease work on key labor reform

The reform, aimed at strengthening organized labor in the South American country, was initially passed by the Senate in March after a bruising battle that opened divisions within the governing Nueva Mayoria coalition.

But Chile’s Constitutional Tribunal in April rejected a provision of the bill that said companies could only negotiate with legally designated unions during collective wage talks.

It also struck part of a measure that prohibited companies from extending many benefits to non-unionized employees.

COLOMBIA
Colombian President Threatens Bloodshed if FARC Peace Deal Fails. Critics Claims Juan Manuel Santos Has Become Too Close with Guerrilla Leaders

Colombia’s pilot crop substitution program to begin on July 10

On the one hand, Colombia sheds cocaine capital image as economy grows

On the other hand,

Colombia nadando en cocaína x culpa del desgobierno y #SantosNosAnunciaGuerra si no se aprueba su acuerdo impunidad pic.twitter.com/HFQLYYrOm3

— Honorio Henriquez (@honohenriquez) June 17, 2016

World Economic Forum in Medellin, Colombia

CUBA
FedEx Downsizes Cuba Ambitions in Amended Flight Request

Stonegate Bank is Breaking the Law by issuing a credit card for use in Cuba.

“Check it out, Mildred!” Rejoice, Cubans, Rejoice! Hark, Hark! Dolce & Gabbana coming soon to the historic center of Old Havana!

GUATEMALA
Guatemala ex-president and deputy face fresh corruption charges

JAMAICA
IMF approves US$80-m disbursement for Jamaica. From the IMF statement,

Jamaica’s economic reform programme supported by the fund’s Extended Fund Facility has made major strides in restoring macroeconomic stability, pursuing fiscal consolidation, reducing public debt and undertaking significant tax policy reforms, building financial sector resilience, and tackling structural issues.

MEXICO
Mexican minister says ties with Canada could strengthen if Trump elected

PANAMA
Panama Papers awarded Investigation of the Year

‘Panama Papers’ firm demands prosecution of suspect in Switzerland

PARAGUAY
Killing of Mysterious Figure Part of Larger Narco War in Paraguay?

PERU
Mrs. Ollanta Humala, Peru: first lady banned from going abroad (emphasis added)

A judge in Peru has banned First Lady Nadine Heredia from leaving the country while she’s investigated for allegedly hiding undeclared campaign contributions. The order handed down Thursday night prevents Heredia from travelling [sic] abroad for four months, as her husband, centrist President Ollanta Humala, leaves office in July.

Heredia has been dogged for years by accusations that she hid large contributions from socialist Venezuela that funded her husband’s 2006 and 2011 campaigns.

PUERTO RICO
Orlando shooting victim’s death takes a toll on Puerto Rico town

Puerto Rico could see hundreds with Zika birth defects, CDC says

URUGUAY
Uruguay: ex-Guantanamo detainee traveled legally to Brazil. He gets around.

VENEZUELA
Beautiful essay: The Last Flight



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Filed Under: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Carnival of Latin America, Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Fausta's blog, Guatemala, Jamaica, Latin America, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Venezuela Tagged With: Abu Wael Dihab, Jorge Rafaat Toumani, Mossack Fonseca, Nadine Heredia, Ollanta Humala, Otto Perez Molina, Roxana Baldetti

April 6, 2016 By Fausta

Argentina: Lazaro Baez busted

“Who the hey is Lázaro Báez?,” you may ask.

Lázaro is a leading government contractor and associate of former president Cristina Kirchner,

Argentine prosecutors alleged that Mr. Báez, whose flagship construction company was set up days before Mr. Kirchner took office in 2003 and who made hundreds of millions of dollars through public projects, transferred money abroad through a global network of shell companies. Officials of Mrs. Kirchner’s administration have said the allegations had political motivations.

For Mossack Fonseca, when it rains, it pours,

Many of these firms were set up in the U.S. state of Nevada by the Mossack Fonseca law firm at the center of global scrutiny.

(No, Báez is not on the list.)

The Panama-based law firm has denied any wrongdoing. On Tuesday, it said that it has no legal liability for the actions of the companies and that it has been the victim of a massive data breach. Mossack Fonseca, which acted as a “resident agent” for the companies, told The Wall Street Journal in 2014 that the companies had “no ties whatsoever to Lázaro Báez or corruption scandals in Argentina.”

The memes are up,

Lázaro Báez #MartesIntratable pic.twitter.com/BChQG5pa64

— Juan Turralde (@juan_turralde91) April 6, 2016

A congresswoman presented a legal complaint against Cristina Fernández de Kirchner on charges of illicitly acquiring wealth and forging public documents, but Cristina says her family has no offshore accounts, instead of answering the actual charges.

Which, by the way, is a swipe at Macri, and a presumption of guilt on a common business practice.

For background (in Spanish) on the Kirchners, here’s Jorge Lanata’s La ruta del dinero K (The Route of the K-Money)

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Filed Under: Argentina, corruption Tagged With: Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Fausta' blog, Jorge Lanata, Lázaro Báez, Mossack Fonseca

April 5, 2016 By Fausta

Venezuela: Seen in the Panama Papers

The Panama Papers show Venezuelans among Mossack Fonseca’s documents (emphasis added),

The insider files also illustrate what happened in Venezuela over the last 15 years with the enormous flow of oil money. The Panama Papers reveal that Mossack Fonseca created tailor-made corporate structures for several Venezuelan clients who wanted to conceal their presence in incorporated companies, or else sought to generate external debt through transactions with shell companies – often owned by themselves – that could later be submitted to the relevant agencies in the Venezuela of controlled exchange rates

For now, the ICIJ Power Players page only lists Jesús Villanueva and Víctor Cruz Weffer.

From the information released at the ICIJ website, it is not clear who the several clients are.

I’ll be posting more on the PP by country this week.

——————————————————

In other Venezuela news,
Spain’s ABC reports that they have positive proof of Hugo Chavéz’s direct financing of Spain’s Podemos party by transferring €7million to its creator, the CEPS foundation (link in Spanish)
Chávez pagó 7 millones de euros para «crear en España fuerzas políticas bolivarianas».
El «comandante» firmó la entrega de fondos a la fundación de Iglesias, Monedero y Errejón para propiciar en nuestro país «cambios políticos afines al Gobierno bolivariano»

[Chávez paid 7 million euros for “creating in Spain a bolivarian political army”
The “comandante” assigned the funds to Iglesias, Monedero and Errejón’s foundation to bring about in our country “political changes agreeable to the bolivarian government”]

The article states the €7million was in addition to any other fees Podemos founders Iglesias, Monedero and Errejón received from Chávez, which were detailed last year in the Wall Street Journal’s article, How Hugo Chavez Helped Inspire Spain’s Far-Left Podemos Movement. For instance,

Dividing his time between Madrid and Caracas, Mr. Monedero appeared often on Venezuelan state TV. From 2006 to 2009 he was employed by Centro Miranda, a Caracas-based think tank funded by the government to advise its leaders. He toured the country to monitor Mr. Chávez’s socialist programs, touting them on Venezuelan TV as “the political path Southern Europe should follow” to shore up the welfare state.Mr. Monedero said he was paid an additional €425,000 ($482,885) for work in 2010 to help the Chávez regime and allied governments in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua develop a proposal for a single Latin American currency.

Mr. Iglesias, a former Communist who in 2012 called Venezuela “one of the healthiest democracies in the world,” established a separate tie to the regime. In 2008 he joined the board of a Madrid-based think tank, the Center of Political and Social Sciences, that lists the Venezuelan government as the source of more than 60% of its income from 2004 to 2012. Mr. Errejón joined the board in 2013.

The WSJ reported then,

Podemos officials say the party relies on crowdfunding and has never received money from CEPS.

I doubt that the revelations will alter Spain’s or Venezuela’s political landscapes (it certainly hasn’t since the publication of the 2015 WSJ article), but, as a commenter mentioned on Facebook, €7million is a lot of toilet paper.

Time capsule post: Spain, moving towards Chavismo?

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Filed Under: Communism, Spain, Venezuela Tagged With: Fausta' blog, Mossack Fonseca, Panama Papers, Podemos

April 4, 2016 By Fausta

The Panama Papers

Hashtag #PanamaPapers

No, the Panama Papers is not the title of a John Grisham thriller, it’s today’s top story in many LatAm countries and across the world.

What are they?
The Panama Papers are a huge trove of legal records from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm, revealing

the secretive offshore companies used to hide wealth, evade taxes and commit fraud by the world’s dictators, business tycoons and criminals.

They were

initially obtained by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and subsequently the subject of a yearlong investigation, led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and involving more than 100 publications from nearly 80 countries

Süddeutsche Zeitung [WARNING: MUSIC STARTS RIGHT AWAY] About the Panama Papers

The ICIJ report: Giant Leak of Offshore Financial Records Exposes Global Array of Crime and Corruption.
Millions of documents show heads of state, criminals and celebrities using secret hideaways in tax havens

In this story

  • Files reveal the offshore holdings of 140 politicians and public officials from around the world

  • Current and former world leaders in the data include prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, the president of Ukraine, and the king of Saudi Arabia

  • More than 214,000 offshore entities appear in the leak, connected to people in more than 200 countries and territories

  • Major banks have driven the creation of hard-to-trace companies in offshore havens

Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project OCCRP report: ICIJ/OCCRP Panama Papers project yields unprecedented access to high level offshore corruptionOne of the biggest leaks in journalistic history reveals the secretive offshore companies used to hide wealth, evade taxes and commit fraud by the world’s dictators, business tycoons and criminals.

How big was it?

The sheer scale of #PanamaPapers. pic.twitter.com/HFtSfHxe2t

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) April 4, 2016

Who’s in it?

A Who's Who for #PanamaPapers. (so far…) pic.twitter.com/2oJT71Xsr0

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) April 4, 2016

Ian Bremmer is tweeting lots of clever graphs on the PP.

More:
Time.com

With more than 2.6 terabytes of data comprising more than 11.5 million documents, the release of Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca’s records this week represents one of the largest data leaks in history—bigger than both the intelligence records revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden three years ago and the U.S. diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks in 2010.

“Venezuela” shows up on 241,000 documents in the Panama. PapersLeaked files include names of ex-presidential security chief and wife, who amassed a fortune
Panama Papers: Who did what

Macri and Messi, too?

The Panama Papers leak explained

A new word: Putinophobia!

“It is clear that the degree of ’Putinophobia’ has reached such a level that it is impossible a priori to speak well of Russia,” Mr. Peskov said in comments carried by state news agencies.

O Globo (link in Portuguese) says that Russia’s accusing former CIA agents of being behind the leak.

How secret offshore money helps fuel Miami’s luxury real-estate boom

Video below the fold,
[Read more…]

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Filed Under: Panama, taxes, Vladimir Putin Tagged With: Fausta's blog, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists ICIJ, Mossack Fonseca, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project OCCRP, Panama Papers, Süddeutsche Zeitung

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