4/01/2012
Lawsuits test UBS advice on offshore bank accounts
Lawsuits test UBS advice on offshore bank accounts
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Thu, Mar 22 2012- HIGHLIGHTS-UK's Osborne presents 2012 budget
Wed, Mar 21 2012Related Topics
Dark clouds are seen over Swiss bank UBS logo on the company's buiding at Paradeplatz in Zurich, March 3, 2012.
Credit: Reuters/Christian Hartmann
Fri Mar 30, 2012 3:44pm EDT
(Reuters) - The case of a wealthy U.S. businessman who pleaded guilty to evading taxes but then sued the Swiss bank where he hid his money is scheduled to go to trial on May 8, the first major test of civil legal challenges to Swiss banks that sold offshore private banking services to help Americans evade taxes.
The civil suit, filed against UBS AG in federal court in Santa Ana, California - and another filed against UBS in federal court in Chicago - will probe whether clients can legally rely on their private bankers' assertions there is no need to disclose the accounts on their tax returns or sign required disclosures.
Tax lawyers describe the suits, emerging from a crackdown by federal authorities on Swiss banks, as the first of their kind in the United States to assert that Swiss bankers made improper assertions to their U.S. clients about the tax implications of their offshore accounts.
In the California case filed in 2008, Russia-born American billionaire Igor Olenicoff accuses UBS of fraud in handling some $200 million he kept in offshore accounts and wrongfully advising him he did not have to report them to the tax-collecting IRS. Olenicoff pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 2007 and to lying on his tax returns by failing to disclose his offshore accounts, and paid $52 million in back taxes. His suit seeks $500 million in damages.
The Chicago case, which seeks class-action status, was filed in June 2011 on behalf of former UBS clients Matthew Thomas of California and Himanshu Patel of Arizona. Thomas and Patel previously paid back taxes, interest and penalties to the IRS related to their Swiss accounts. They accuse UBS of fraud and breach of fiduciary duty for allegedly telling them that their accounts, opened when the two worked overseas during the last two decades, did not have to be disclosed to the IRS.
UBS argues in both cases that its clients have a duty to know what to declare on their U.S. tax returns. A UBS spokeswoman in New York, Karina Byrne, declined to comment specifically on the lawsuits, but said the bank "does not give any tax advice to our clients, and we encourage clients to seek third-party tax advice."
U.S. INVESTIGATION UNDER WAY
The two cases are unfolding at a time when U.S. authorities are conducting a major investigation into the Swiss banking industry. The U.S. Justice Department has indicted one Swiss private bank, Wegelin, and charged scores of Swiss bankers and their American clients with tax evasion.
In 2009, UBS averted indictment and paid a $780 million fine to the U.S. Justice Department as part of a deferred-prosecution agreement in which it admitted to fraud and conspiracy in helping about 19,000 wealthy Americans hide up to $20 billion in secret bank accounts.
Olenicoff's name had been provided to the U.S. Justice Department earlier. The other two plaintiffs came forward to the IRS through voluntary disclosure programs, created in the wake of the UBS probe, that drew in 33,000 U.S. taxpayers with unreported accounts in Switzerland and elsewhere.
It is legal for U.S. residents to hold offshore bank accounts, but the IRS requires taxpayers to disclose the accounts on their tax returns as well as to sign special disclosures provided by the banks, known as W9 forms.
Under a U.S. Treasury program known as qualified intermediary, banks are required to collect the W9 forms and withhold taxes - typically 28 percent to 31 percent - on proceeds from U.S. securities held in client accounts and to send that money to the IRS.
If clients refuse to sign the disclosures, the banks must sell any U.S. securities held in the offshore accounts, a process that triggers a tax bill for the client and a requirement that the bank report the sale and the client's identity to the IRS.
UBS admitted as part of its agreement in 2009 that it did not collect or require clients to sign the forms, while concealing their identities from the IRS under Swiss bank secrecy laws. Olenicoff, a property developer whose wealth was estimated by Forbes in March 2012 at $2.6 billion, argues in part that UBS told him he did not have to sign the disclosures and that the investment accounts he was in complied with U.S. tax laws.
FIDUCIARY DUTY
In March 2010, the judge in Olenicoff's case rejected UBS's motion to dismiss the case, noting that "while banks typically do not owe fiduciary duty to their depositors, there are some situations where a fiduciary duty is owed."
Thomas and Patel allege that UBS never told them they had to sign W9s and failed to withhold required taxes on U.S. securities in their accounts.
David Deary, a Dallas-based lawyer for Thomas and Patel, said the potential number of plaintiffs in his case, which would cover American customers of UBS from 2002-2008 who entered voluntary disclosure programs with the IRS, could reach 25,000.
"Our clients simply followed UBS's advice that they did not have to declare and pay taxes on the investment income," he said.
Some tax experts, including Jay Soled, an accounting professor specializing in tax at Rutgers University, say potential plaintiffs might not come forward for fear of airing dirty laundry about their own taxes.
The cases against UBS may differ in one key way from the fraud and breach of fiduciary duty claims filed in recent years against some accounting, auditing and law firms by wealthy Americans who had bought tax shelters. Plaintiffs in those civil cases, which resulted in hefty settlements, were bolstered by legal opinions from the law firms blessing their invalid shelters - something the UBS clients lack, tax lawyers said.
Larry Campagna, a tax lawyer at Chamberlain Hrdlicka in Houston, said most juries would be unsympathetic to a wealthy U.S. resident who relied on a foreign banker for tax advice.
But Jonathan Strouse, a tax lawyer at Holland & Knight in Chicago, said that even if Swiss bank clients had a duty to know they should have reported the secret accounts on their tax returns, they could still have "false representation" cases against banks which gave them improper information. "A lot of the clients had huge tax bills, and they're going to be looking to get back anything they can from the banks," Strouse said.
(Reporting by Lynnley Browning in Fairfield, Conn. Editing by Amy Stevens, Howard Goller and Richard Chang)
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Lawsuits test UBS advice on offshore bank accounts
Lawsuits test UBS advice on offshore bank accounts
Related News
- Swiss stocks - Factors to watch on March 30
Fri, Mar 30 2012- Supreme court unlikely to delay healthcare ruling
Mon, Mar 26 2012- Obama healthcare law faces high court hearing
Fri, Mar 23 2012- UPDATE 6-UBS grabs Merrill rainmaker to head investment bank
Thu, Mar 22 2012- HIGHLIGHTS-UK's Osborne presents 2012 budget
Wed, Mar 21 2012Related Topics
Dark clouds are seen over Swiss bank UBS logo on the company's buiding at Paradeplatz in Zurich, March 3, 2012.
Credit: Reuters/Christian Hartmann
Fri Mar 30, 2012 3:44pm EDT
(Reuters) - The case of a wealthy U.S. businessman who pleaded guilty to evading taxes but then sued the Swiss bank where he hid his money is scheduled to go to trial on May 8, the first major test of civil legal challenges to Swiss banks that sold offshore private banking services to help Americans evade taxes.
The civil suit, filed against UBS AG in federal court in Santa Ana, California - and another filed against UBS in federal court in Chicago - will probe whether clients can legally rely on their private bankers' assertions there is no need to disclose the accounts on their tax returns or sign required disclosures.
Tax lawyers describe the suits, emerging from a crackdown by federal authorities on Swiss banks, as the first of their kind in the United States to assert that Swiss bankers made improper assertions to their U.S. clients about the tax implications of their offshore accounts.
In the California case filed in 2008, Russia-born American billionaire Igor Olenicoff accuses UBS of fraud in handling some $200 million he kept in offshore accounts and wrongfully advising him he did not have to report them to the tax-collecting IRS. Olenicoff pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 2007 and to lying on his tax returns by failing to disclose his offshore accounts, and paid $52 million in back taxes. His suit seeks $500 million in damages.
The Chicago case, which seeks class-action status, was filed in June 2011 on behalf of former UBS clients Matthew Thomas of California and Himanshu Patel of Arizona. Thomas and Patel previously paid back taxes, interest and penalties to the IRS related to their Swiss accounts. They accuse UBS of fraud and breach of fiduciary duty for allegedly telling them that their accounts, opened when the two worked overseas during the last two decades, did not have to be disclosed to the IRS.
UBS argues in both cases that its clients have a duty to know what to declare on their U.S. tax returns. A UBS spokeswoman in New York, Karina Byrne, declined to comment specifically on the lawsuits, but said the bank "does not give any tax advice to our clients, and we encourage clients to seek third-party tax advice."
U.S. INVESTIGATION UNDER WAY
The two cases are unfolding at a time when U.S. authorities are conducting a major investigation into the Swiss banking industry. The U.S. Justice Department has indicted one Swiss private bank, Wegelin, and charged scores of Swiss bankers and their American clients with tax evasion.
In 2009, UBS averted indictment and paid a $780 million fine to the U.S. Justice Department as part of a deferred-prosecution agreement in which it admitted to fraud and conspiracy in helping about 19,000 wealthy Americans hide up to $20 billion in secret bank accounts.
Olenicoff's name had been provided to the U.S. Justice Department earlier. The other two plaintiffs came forward to the IRS through voluntary disclosure programs, created in the wake of the UBS probe, that drew in 33,000 U.S. taxpayers with unreported accounts in Switzerland and elsewhere.
It is legal for U.S. residents to hold offshore bank accounts, but the IRS requires taxpayers to disclose the accounts on their tax returns as well as to sign special disclosures provided by the banks, known as W9 forms.
Under a U.S. Treasury program known as qualified intermediary, banks are required to collect the W9 forms and withhold taxes - typically 28 percent to 31 percent - on proceeds from U.S. securities held in client accounts and to send that money to the IRS.
If clients refuse to sign the disclosures, the banks must sell any U.S. securities held in the offshore accounts, a process that triggers a tax bill for the client and a requirement that the bank report the sale and the client's identity to the IRS.
UBS admitted as part of its agreement in 2009 that it did not collect or require clients to sign the forms, while concealing their identities from the IRS under Swiss bank secrecy laws. Olenicoff, a property developer whose wealth was estimated by Forbes in March 2012 at $2.6 billion, argues in part that UBS told him he did not have to sign the disclosures and that the investment accounts he was in complied with U.S. tax laws.
FIDUCIARY DUTY
In March 2010, the judge in Olenicoff's case rejected UBS's motion to dismiss the case, noting that "while banks typically do not owe fiduciary duty to their depositors, there are some situations where a fiduciary duty is owed."
Thomas and Patel allege that UBS never told them they had to sign W9s and failed to withhold required taxes on U.S. securities in their accounts.
David Deary, a Dallas-based lawyer for Thomas and Patel, said the potential number of plaintiffs in his case, which would cover American customers of UBS from 2002-2008 who entered voluntary disclosure programs with the IRS, could reach 25,000.
"Our clients simply followed UBS's advice that they did not have to declare and pay taxes on the investment income," he said.
Some tax experts, including Jay Soled, an accounting professor specializing in tax at Rutgers University, say potential plaintiffs might not come forward for fear of airing dirty laundry about their own taxes.
The cases against UBS may differ in one key way from the fraud and breach of fiduciary duty claims filed in recent years against some accounting, auditing and law firms by wealthy Americans who had bought tax shelters. Plaintiffs in those civil cases, which resulted in hefty settlements, were bolstered by legal opinions from the law firms blessing their invalid shelters - something the UBS clients lack, tax lawyers said.
Larry Campagna, a tax lawyer at Chamberlain Hrdlicka in Houston, said most juries would be unsympathetic to a wealthy U.S. resident who relied on a foreign banker for tax advice.
But Jonathan Strouse, a tax lawyer at Holland & Knight in Chicago, said that even if Swiss bank clients had a duty to know they should have reported the secret accounts on their tax returns, they could still have "false representation" cases against banks which gave them improper information. "A lot of the clients had huge tax bills, and they're going to be looking to get back anything they can from the banks," Strouse said.
(Reporting by Lynnley Browning in Fairfield, Conn. Editing by Amy Stevens, Howard Goller and Richard Chang)
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We welcome comments that advance the story through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. For more information on our comment policy, see http://blogs.reuters.com/fulldisclosure/2010/09/27/toward-a-more-thoughtful-conversation-on-stories/Comments (0)Be the first to comment on reuters.com.Add yours using the box above.
Security breach hits U.S. card processors, banks
Security breach hits U.S. card processors, banks
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Mon, Mar 26 2012Analysis & Opinion
A MasterCard logo is seen on a door outside a restaurant in New York in this February 3, 2010 file photo. MasterCard Inc is investigating a potential security breach related to a third-party vendor and has alerted banks and law enforcement officials, the company said on March 30, 2012. The credit-card processor said the issue involves a company based in the U.S. and is also being reviewed by an independent data-security organization.
Credit: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton/Files
By Lauren Tara LaCapra and Carrick Mollenkamp
Fri Mar 30, 2012 9:30pm EDT
(Reuters) - The U.S. Secret Service is investigating a major cyber intrusion at an Atlanta-based payment processor that could expose millions of MasterCard, Visa, American Express and Discover cardholders to fraudulent charges.
Processor Global Payments Inc said on Friday it had found "unauthorized access" into its system early in March and notified law enforcement and financial institutions.
Payment network operators MasterCard Inc, Visa Inc, American Express Co and Discover Financial Services confirmed they were affected, along with banks and other franchises that issue cards bearing their logos.
A spokesman for the Secret Service said the agency is leading investigations into the case but declined to give any details.
Though Global Payments is far from a household name, middlemen such as the company are prized targets for hackers because of the vast amount of sensitive financial information they handle.
The company's stock fell more than 9 percent on the news before trading was halted. It said it would discuss the breach in a phone call for investors on Monday.
It was not immediately clear how Global Payments was penetrated or how many accounts were exposed. Consumers who detect fraud usually can be reimbursed. That leaves merchants on the hook financially, though they could file claims against Global Payments.
Analysts said MasterCard and Visa are unlikely to face costs from the breach, but MasterCard shares fell 1.8 percent to close at $420.54 and Visa shares dropped 0.8 percent to $118.
The security breach is just the latest in a long string of incidents that have put the personal information of millions of credit and debit cardholders at risk.
Individual banks and processors said they had not yet determined the full extent of the breach, but the blog Krebs on Security, which first reported the breach, said it was "massive" and could affect more than 10 million cardholders.
Some industry experts suggested the figure might be much lower, perhaps on the order of tens of thousands. Bernstein Research analyst Rod Bourgeois noted that Global Payments is a relatively small player in the transactions services industry, servicing 800,000 merchants with a 3.5 percent market share. By contrast, the largest competitor, First Data, services millions of merchants, with 22.6 percent of the market.
JPMorgan Chase & Co, as well as American Express and Discover, which issue their own cards, said they are monitoring customers' accounts and would issue new cards to anyone whose information may have been compromised.
Citigroup Inc said it has been notified by processors of the breach. Bank of America Corp declined to comment on the matter and Wells Fargo & Co said it was too early to comment on the impact.
Banks and processors emphasized customers would not be held liable for any fraudulent charges that may occur.
Michael Simonsen, chief executive of real-estate research company Altos Research, said he may have been a victim.
Simonsen said he was contacted by Bank of America last week about his Visa card. Although there were no unauthorized transactions, the representative told him a vendor or law enforcement agency had flagged his account as compromised and so he would receive a new one.
"It was very unusual," he said.
PROCESSING PIPELINE
Global Payments, which has about 3,700 employees, was spun off from information-services firm National Data Corp in 2001. For the fiscal year ended May 31, Global Payment reported revenue of $1.9 billion, up 13 percent from the year-earlier period. According to a company presentation in January, it estimated fiscal 2012 revenue at about $2.15 billion.
Global Payments is scheduled to report fiscal third-quarter results on Wednesday and an improvement is expected. On Wednesday, Sterner Agee raised its stock price target for Global Payments to $65 from $58.
Global Payments is one of dozens of companies that operate along the payment-processing chain, between the time a person swipes a card to pay and the time the payment is delivered.
The account number, expiration date and possibly the cardholder's name is sent from the point of payment to a processor, which then connects to Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover. Information is then sent to the card issuer — often a bank — which ultimately authorizes the transaction.
The actual transfer of money occurs later.
Processing companies, which perform millions of authorizations each day, are supposed to encrypt card information. But a breach could occur if someone gains access to the system and identifies a gap in the encryption.
The information that was likely collected illegally from Global Payments is called Track 1 and Track 2 data. A person improperly using the information can transfer the account number and expiration date to a magnetic strip on a card and then try to use the card on a website.
Thousands of U.S. banks that issue credit and debit cards receive daily alerts regarding breaches, said Thomas McCrohan, an analyst with Jane Capital Markets.
The illegal use of the data could be stymied if an online merchant asks for the three or four digits printed on a card known as the "CV code."
"The systems can all be made tighter, but if they're too tight no transactions would ever be approved," said Edward Lawrence, a director at Auriemma Consulting Group, a payment systems consultant. "You still have to allow commerce to occur."
Rep. Mary Bono, a California Republican who chairs the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade, condemned the Global Payments breach and urged Congress to adopt stronger data-security legislation this year.
"You shouldn't have to cross your fingers and whisper a prayer when you type in a credit card number on your computer and hit 'enter,'" she said in a statement.
RIPPLE EFFECTS
The breach is the first major instance this year of consumer information put at risk by technological flaws or hacking, but there are plenty of examples of massive data breaches in recent years affecting banks, retailers, technology companies and payment processors.
Last June, Citigroup said computer hackers breached the bank's network and accessed data of about 200,000 cardholders in North America.
Sony Corp also reported several recent attacks, including one last year in which hackers accessed the personal information on 77 million PlayStation Network accounts.
Google Inc suffered a major attack on its Gmail accounts in 2011 that it said appeared to originate in China. Attacks against Gmail users involved direct attempts to compromise accounts by tricking users into revealing information - so-called "phishing" - or by gathering their passwords from other websites, rather than compromising Google systems, according to the company.
Separately, TJX Co Inc and Heartland Payment Systems Inc have had their systems compromised.
On Friday, retailers were already beginning to look for fraudulent purchases from the compromised card accounts stemming from the Global Payments breach. They will bear the financial brunt of those crimes under rules worked out with the card associations and issuers, analysts said.
"Our merchant community is sitting here girding itself and looking at their own fraud-prevention strategies and bracing for the influx of bad transactions," said Tom Donlea, managing director for the Americas at the nonprofit Merchant Risk Council. "After Heartland and after the Sony breach, there was an increase in fraud activity."
(Reporting by Lauren Tara LaCapra, Carrick Mollenkamp and Jed Horowitz in New York, Joseph Menn in San Francisco, Ben Berkowitz in Boston, and Rick Rothacker in Charlotte, North Carolina; writing by Lauren Tara LaCapra and Joseph Menn; editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Andre Grenon, Phil Berlowitz and Richard Chang)
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We welcome comments that advance the story through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. For more information on our comment policy, see http://blogs.reuters.com/fulldisclosure/2010/09/27/toward-a-more-thoughtful-conversation-on-stories/Comments (3)McBob08 wrote:Mar 30, 2012 10:13pm EDT -- Report as abuseRudyHaugeneder wrote:Ooops. If this data becomes part of the public domain, consumers won’t spend and the economic system brakes and also breaks. Ooops.
Mar 31, 2012 1:12am EDT -- Report as abuse
Curveball AKA Rafid Ahmed Alwan Al-Janabi – Mans Whose Weapons Of Mass Destruction Lies Led To 100.000 Deaths Confesses All – 1 April 2012
“Curveball”, the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi’s lies used to justify the Iraq war.
He tries to defend his actions: “My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime’s oppression.”
The chemical engineer claimed to have overseen the building of a mobile biological laboratory when he sought political asylum in Germany in 1999. His lies were presented as “facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence” by Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, when making the case for war at the UN Security Council in February 2003.
But Mr Janabi, speaking in a two-part series, Modern Spies, starting tomorrow on BBC2, says none of it was true. When it is put to him “we went to war in Iraq on a lie. And that lie was your lie”, he simply replies: “Yes.”
US officials “sexed up” Mr Janabi’s drawings of mobile biological weapons labs to make them more presentable, admits Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, General Powell’s former chief of staff. “I brought the White House team in to do the graphics,” he says, adding how “intelligence was being worked to fit around the policy”.
As for his former boss: “I don’t see any way on this earth that Secretary Powell doesn’t feel almost a rage about Curveball and the way he was used in regards to that intelligence.”
Another revelation in the series is the real reason why the FBI swooped on Russian spy Anna Chapman in 2010. Top officials feared the glamorous Russian agent wanted to seduce one of US President Barack Obama’s inner circle. Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI’s head of counterintelligence, reveals how she got “closer and closer to higher and higher ranking leadership… she got close enough to disturb us”.
The fear that Chapman would compromise a senior US official in a “honey trap” was a key reason for the arrest and deportation of the Russian spy ring of 10 people, of which she was a part, in 2010. “We were becoming very concerned,” he says. “They were getting close enough to a sitting US cabinet member that we thought we could no longer allow this to continue.” Mr Figliuzzi refuses to name the individual who was being targeted.
Several British spies also feature in the programme, in the first time that serving intelligence officers have been interviewed on television. In contrast to the US intelligence figures, the British spies are cloaked in darkness, their voices dubbed by actors. BBC veteran reporter Peter Taylor, who worked for a year putting the documentary together, describes them as “ordinary people who are committed to what they do” and “a million miles” from the spies depicted in film. He adds: “What surprised me was the extent to which they work within a civil service bureaucracy. Everything has to be signed off… you’ve got to have authorisation signed in triplicate.”
Would-be agents should abandon any Hollywood fantasies they may have, says Sonya Holt at the CIA recruitment centre. “They think it’s more like the movies, that they are going to be jumping out of cars and that everyone carries a weapon… Yes we’re collecting intelligence but we don’t all drive fast cars. You’re going to be writing reports; you’re in meetings so it’s not always that glamorous image of what you see in the movies.”
Written by Jonathan Owen
www.indepedent.co.uk link to original article / thanks to www.activistawake.com link to article by Pat Donworth
Gregg Prescott: Imminent Mass Arrests of Globalists, Bankers and Political Elite 2012 April 1
Steve: Note that the flow of these events is exactly as has been predicted for the introduction of NESARA. Although Gregg does not bring that side of it out, it’s most likely that all these events are those predicted by our galactic and other sources sources as leading to the start-up of NESARA.
Imminent Mass Arrests of Globalists, Bankers and Political Elite
Last updated on March 31, 2012 EDT by in5d Alternative News
by Gregg Prescott, M.S.
www.in5d.com
www.maya12-21-2012.com
www.HolisticCancerResearch.comIn a recent interview with David Wilcock, Insider ‘Drake’ stated a comprehensive plan to arrest all corrupt globalist, banksters and the political elite within a 72 hour period involving the closing down of U.S. borders and satellite communications to prevent and out of country money transfers. Drake added that a transition plan is already in place to convert the U.S. dollar to one that is not based on fiat currency. Additionally, we can expect to see the release of many suppressed technologies that will make our modern life seem like the Stone Age.
Drake mentioned that other countries and non-aligned nations have already stepped outside of the financial control of the G5 and G20 in a new financial system that was implemented on Monday.
The insider also stated that JP Morgan, Bank of America and Citibank are on the verge of collapse adding that the Euro is set to collapse, which in turn, would collapse the dollar. To finance this changeover in currency, Drake stated that there are old funds held by patriotic entities that have enough money and valued assets to pay for our national debt 4x over, adding, “This is not collateral accounts, this is private accounting. The end result will be the end of taxation, the release of suppressed technology and prosperity for all.
Continuity of goods and services should still remain in tact, and while there may be a few short discontinuations of services, they should occur for any long periods of time. It may be a good idea to have a small stockpile of basic necessities, such as water, canned food, toilet paper, etc…
In recent alternative news, as seen here on in5d, we have shown numerous articles on the plethora of bankster resignations in the past several months. According to Drake, many of these people gathered their families and a large quantity of money and moved overseas. Drake added that these people will be hunted down no matter where they are on this planet. In regard to the elite, Drake stated that “There’s gonna be some hangings. There’s gonna be some people jumping out of windows” but added that he does not want to see the riotous lynch mobs emanating from our society.
“The idea of the police state will not exist as it does now,” stated Drake. According to this insider, the FEMA camps will not be used for the general population, but for the corrupt politicians, banksters and global elite.
Drake stated that “there’s gonna be a 72 hour shutdown. no one will be able to fly or use any satellite technology to prevent the crooks from leaving the United States and from pilfering money electronically.” While shutting down the satellites may affect cell phone service, internet connectivity and even possibly the use of automobiles, this will be done as a preventative measure to ensure that the elite do not pilfer any money to offshore accounts.
Drake stated there will be a specific education channel will be televised for the educating and reeducating of people to our new society, adding there will be county, state and national positions created due to the number of people getting ousted from office as these politicians will be temporarily replaced with interim officials appointed on a temporary basis.
At this point in time, it is unclear who will be appointed to any specific position along with who will be the people making these decisions.
The ramifications of this event will lead other countries to follow suit in a global revolution.
What can you do?
Once we begin this transition phase, there will be a great need for the reeducation of people. As part of the in5d family, your knowledge in many of these spiritual and metaphysical areas will be a great asset to those who have been brainwashed their entire lives.
Imagine being blind your entire life, then by some miracle, your eyesight was restored. This is what it will be like for those people who have been blinded by a reality that was constructed to keep us subservient, controlled and conformed.
On in5d Connection, we have a ton of groups that can be used in the reeducation of society. In addition, we are going to be adding some software that will enable us to use the “Broadcast” function as our own online in5d Station! For example, we can schedule broadcasts for Groups or we can do live interviews with people such as George Kavassilas, Jordan Maxwell, Michael Tsarion etc… or we can use it to schedule reeducation classes. It’ll be an awesome alternative to television while being much more informative. Additionally, we can set up schedules for members to air their own broadcasts at in5d Connection on a daily and weekly basis.
I’ll need to upgrade the software but this will not affect its functionality at all. I’ll also need to upgrade the server to something that will be able to handle this type of software in large numbers. As soon as I’m able to save enough to get this going, it’ll come to reality, so start thinking about what stations you’d like to have or see and we can talk about it in my Miscellaneous in5d Group, in5d Suggestions and Ideas.
Our in5d family will be playing a huge role in educating society in many areas of life and we will be looking for leaders and innovators to help us usher in the Golden Age!
On a local level, you can talk to your neighbors and hold small assemblies to share your knowledge.
As I stated in the past, “Once the bottom of the pyramid unites, the rest will collapse.”
Get your seat belts on, folks!
CIA Secret Prison: Polish Leaders Break Silence About Black Site
CIA Secret Prison: Polish Leaders Break Silence About Black Site
By VANESSA GERA
March 31, 2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/31/cia-secret-prison-polish-_n_1393385....
WARSAW, Poland — For years, the notion that Poland could allow the CIA to operate a secret prison in a remote lake region was treated as a crackpot idea by the country’s politicians, journalists and the public.
A heated political debate this week reveals how dramatically the narrative has changed.
In a string of revelations and political statements, Polish leaders have come closer than ever to acknowledging that the United States ran a secret interrogation facility for terror suspects in 2002 and 2003 in the Eastern European country.
Some officials recall the fear that prevailed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and defend the tough stance that former U.S. President George W. Bush took against terrorists.
But the debate is sometimes tinged with a hint of disappointment with Washington, as if Poland’s young democracy had been led astray – ethically and legally – by the superpower that it counts as a key ally, and then left alone to deal with the fallout.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Thursday that Poland has become the “political victim” of leaks from U.S. officials that brought to light aspects of the secret rendition program.
In his most forthcoming comments on the matter to date, Tusk said an ongoing investigation into the case is proof of Poland’s democratic credentials and that Poland cannot be counted on in the future in such clandestine enterprises.
“Poland will no longer be a country where politicians – even if they are working arm-in-arm with the world’s greatest superpower – could make some deal somewhere under the table and then it would never see daylight,” said Tusk, who took office four years after the site was shuttered.
“Poland is a democracy where national and international law must be observed,” Tusk said. “This issue must be explained. Let there be no doubt about it either in Poland or on the other side of the ocean.”
To some, it sounded like a long-delayed admission that Poland allowed the U.S. to run the secret site, where terror suspects were subjected to harsh interrogation tactics that human rights advocates consider torture.
“This statement is quite different from any others,” said Adam Bodnar, a human rights lawyer with the Helsinki Foundation in Warsaw. “From the general context, he’s kind of admitting that something is in the air. You can feel that this is an indirect confirmation.”
For years Polish officials and the public treated the idea that the CIA ran a prison in Poland as absurd and highly unlikely – even after the United Nations and the Council of Europe said they had evidence of its existence. Polish officials repeatedly rebuffed international calls for serious investigations. The idea slowly only began to get serious consideration after Polish prosecutors opened an investigation into the matter in 2008.
A new breakthrough came Tuesday when a leading newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, reported that prosecutors have charged a former spy chief, Zbigniew Siemiatkowski, for his role in allowing the site. Siemiatkowski was reportedly charged with depriving prisoners of war of their freedom and allowing corporal punishment.
Siemiatkowski has refused to comment, telling The Associated Press he was bound by secrecy laws on the matter. But he did not deny the report.
The issue is hugely sensitive because any Polish leaders who would have cooperated with the U.S. program would have been violating Poland’s constitution, both by giving a foreign power control over part of Polish territory and allowing crimes to take place there.
Any officials who were involved could – in theory – be charged with serious crimes, including crimes against humanity.
Former U.S. President George W. Bush writes in his memoir “Decision Points” that he ordered the CIA to subject about 100 terror detainees to harsh interrogation techniques, arguing the methods did not constitute unlawful torture and that they produced intelligence that prevented further attacks. Neither he nor the CIA have officially said where the “black sites” were based, but intelligence officials, aviation reports and human rights groups say they included Afghanistan and Thailand as well as Poland, Lithuania and Romania.
Former CIA officials have told the AP that a prison in Poland operated from December 2002 until the fall of 2003, and that prisoners were subjected to harsh questioning and waterboarding in Stare Kiejkuty, a village set in a lush area of woods and lakes. Human rights groups believe about eight terror suspects were held in Poland, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks; Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi national charged with orchestrating the attack in 2000 on the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors; and Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian terror suspect.
Poland is the only country that has opened a serious investigation into the matter, something which Bodnar says is a sign of maturing in this 23-year-old democracy, with prosecutors, journalists and human rights lawyers all trying to seek truth and accountability.
“Poland deserves credit for this step, as the first European state to begin to deal with CIA torture on its own soil,” said Cori Crider, legal director for Reprieve, a British human rights group.
The Polish leaders in office at the time – former President Aleksander Kwasniewski and former Prime Minister Leszek Miller – have vehemently denied the prison’s existence.
But they nonetheless have voiced support for the rendition program in principle, arguing that the U.S. and its allies were at war with terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks and that tough measures were needed.
“I will always stand on the side of hurt women, children and the victims of attacks,” Miller said in a radio interview this week. “I won’t shed tears for murderers. A good terrorist is a dead terrorist.”
Even former President Lech Walesa, the iconic democracy fighter, said he is “against torture … but this is war and war has its particular rules.”
Miller, the head of the Democratic Left Alliance, an opposition party, has been the main target of criticism by political opponents this week. Some even say he should face the State Tribunal, a special court charged with trying state figures.
Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, a senator who was the foreign minister when the site operated, said Miller should take responsibility for what happened 10 years ago.
“About a CIA prison in Poland, if it existed, I didn’t know,” Cimoszewicz said on Radio RMF FM. “But everything indicates that the CIA used a villa in Stare Kiejkuty.”
Human rights lawyers and activists welcome the new openness.
“There is some satisfaction here,” said Bodnar. “The most important thing is accountability. Intelligence agencies cooperate with each other, but after this they will remember that they need to obey the constitution and that some things they cover up could become public at some point.”
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Vanessa Gera can be reached at http://twitter.com/VanessaGera
Gasp! Credit Cards are vulnerable to hacking?
That ranks high in the “No duh!” category. That’s why I use cash whenever possible. You can’t hack a $20 bill.