Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/01/06/boring-and-deadly.html
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Want to know how we got to where we are now? This thread helps place a lot of pieces of that puzzle.
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Obligatory:
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I prefer the Trump version 
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Corporations and wealthy private individuals benefit from this, but the biggest practitioners are probably governments. There are lots of corrupt countries where the leadership is siphoning off the country’s wealth into personal accounts. Putin just for example is said to be one of the wealthiest people on the planet. He may not need to hide from the tax authorities because he controls the tax authorities, but he does need to conceal the siphoning and probably diversify his holdings into places outside Russia.
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He’s actually said to be the richest. By far.
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Let me guess, everyone who tries to figure out how much money he has ends up committing suicide by shooting themselves in the back of head 3 times while handcuffed?
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That’s a mighty big set of error bars on his wealth. His net wealth probably fluctuates quite a bit with the global oil market.
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I think there’s a sort of reverse-Heisenberg principle here. The more certain you are of how much money Putin has, the most certain Putin is of where you are.
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I am reminded of the “Corruption is why we win.” scene from Syriana.
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Saul Goodman was my first thought too.
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Or certain government agencies, such as covert intelligence agencies.
If all you want to do is raise kids, cohabit,share income, and do the things married people do, the state wants to make sure there’s no immigration fraud, you’re the same color (until recently) and opposite genders(some places). But if you want to hide your income stream for criminal purposes, no problem! Pay your money, recieve rubber stamp. Good to know what the priorities are!
This is so true. I am an accountant, and an auditor by profession. I used to audit defense contractors, and now I audit state and local governmental entities.
Watching shit go down, knowing it’s there, and that literally nobody gives a shit, is the worst. I can’t count the number of times in my career, I knew folks were playing this kind of game, and being told there is no political will to do anything about it. This was more true for federal defense contracts than for my smaller state related audits. The smaller the city/entity, the more people seem to care.
We see this shell game. Just last summer I had to trace 6 LLC’s created and shelled all together to take advantage of a tax break off of a state/federal grant building project. I hate this kind of grift, because you have to have money to engage in it. This isn’t some mom and pop trying make ends meet. This was some assholes, paying lawyers to draw up six different LLCs, from two law firms, to stack them together so we would have a hard time seeing what was going on.
All to take money from state and federal grants, to a community project that helped those in need. I fucking hate these people.
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I’m willing to bet there are a few churches involved - going back to the days when those two organizations were not as separate as they appear to be today.
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