Previously unreleased report obtained via freedom of information battle says Pezzullo exceeded ‘boundaries of normal public service practice’
Rex Patrick - The mandarin who got caught. Mike Pezzullo inquiry details revealed
A business owned by an Australian rich-lister with a personal fortune well above $50 million is suspected of laundering money for the Comanchero bikie gang, according to a NSW Police intelligence report.
Police relied on the intelligence after the founder sued to recover a wad of cash and his mobile phone, which he said was worth $500,000 a month to the business.
Officers seized the goods after pulling over the founder, whose car they found at a standstill in a confusing intersection near Double Bay in Sydney’s east, about 1.30am on October 2.
In a backpack, they discovered a bundle of $50 notes held together by a rubber band, totalling $8450, which an officer said raised suspicion of a drug offence.
“I pay $6 million in taxes,” the founder, who cannot be identified legally, replied. “Me sell drugs is absurd. It’s absolutely absurd.” The company’s general manager, who was a passenger in the car, described the money as petty cash used to pay actors for a social media photoshoot.
The business is the biggest brand of its kind in Australia, the NSW Supreme Court heard. The founder has featured on a reputable newspaper’s “Rich List” and bought a home for well over $10 million. Searching the car was authorised because of a Firearm Prohibition Order issued to the founder in 2020, the court heard.
“You are associated with Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs,” stated the order, which referenced a drug possession offence and a past apprehended violence order. A constable on the scene also used a police database to access a recent intelligence report about the founder’s company.
“It’s highly likely that [Company X] is involved in [organised crime network] money laundering,” it said. Police had information suggesting the business was “used by the Comancheros as a front”.
The intelligence report said that after 13 “persons of interest” visited the company’s business address in September, a staff member was admitted to hospital with an injury he blamed on a fight club. The founder had declined to assist with police inquiries.
The police who pulled his car over kept his phone, which he had given them to show his digital driver’s licence. “You’ll hear from my lawyer, bro,” he said.
His lawyers asked police not to extract any data from the device and applied to the court for its urgent return, arguing that the phone was vital to the business as it was used as a two-factor authenticator to process transactions.
Justice Sarah McNaughton found on October 22 that the firearm search powers did not allow police to seize other items found incidentally. The judge found there was insufficient evidence to ground a reasonable belief that a serious offence had been committed.
McNaughton also rejected a police claim that having to seek a crime scene warrant in similar circumstances would “lead to the complete paralysis of operational policing”. NSW Police was ordered to hand back the phone and cash, which the judge accepted was to pay for photoshoot expenses.
After 16 years in power, could Viktor Orban finally be unseated?
This week, Politico has an exclusive interview with Frank Bisignano, who serves as Commissioner of the Social Security Administration and as the “newly invented” Chief Executive Officer of the IRS. Politico’s report also includes comments from six IRS employees on Bisignano’s tenure.
Next up: Bisignano’s scheduled appearance at a Tax Day Senate hearing. Links and more, below the fold.
IRS CEO defiant as Washington asks who’s running things
In an interview with POLITICO, Frank Bisignano says he’s focused on improving the tax agency’s tech capabilities and not on questions about his role at the IRS.
Nam Presents “Justice in Tax Enforcement” Today At Duke
Jeesoo Nam (USC) presents Justice in Tax Enforcement at Duke today, as part of its Tax Policy Seminar hosted by Larry Zelenak:
The IRS has limited resources with which to pursue enforcement actions against people who have underpaid on their taxes. Given such limitations, the agency can only pursue a small subset of underpayers. How should the agency decide who to pursue?
This Article argues that the answer to this question depends on a fundamental issue of justice. Is the decrease in well-being that underpayers experience when tax laws are enforced against them good or bad from the standpoint of justice? When taxpayers underpay, they are illegally keeping money that they should have paid to the government to instead spend on themselves. When the government enforces the law, it deprives such underpayers of the use of their illegally gotten gains. Surprisingly, theories split on whether this deprivation is intrinsically good or bad. On a desert-based theory of justice, when people underpay on their taxes, they take for themselves more than they deserve. Thus, depriving underpayers of illegally appropriated cash is good from the standpoint of justice. It brings those underpayers back to the level of well-being they deserve. On a welfarist theory of justice, such deprivation is bad because all deprivation is bad, even deprivation of illegally gotten gains. This Article teases out the implications of these competing perspectives for the question of how the IRS should choose who it targets in its enforcement actions.
Taxing times for Albanese and Taylor as parties seek to match voter expectations
What I learned from my first few weeks as a Green MP? Most politicians have no clue how tough things are out there
Want to know which sites are selling your data?
ZDNET – “This free privacy tool gave me answers. Data is gold, and some companies go to great lengths to collect it, store it, and sell it. But you can put an end to it.
[Note – sort of] There’s a service called Global Privacy Controlthat offers extensions and/or links to browsers and apps that support the cause. This service began in 2020 and was inspired by the California Consumer Privacy Act, which gives California residents the right to opt out of any business that would sell their data. Currently, GPC is available for:
- Brave Privacy Browser
- Disconnect
- DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser
- Mozilla’s Firefox (currently, this only applies to the Nightly release)
- Privacy Badger
- Global Privacy Control (GPC) Inspector(Chrome extension)
Prominent Convicted Tax Shelter Lawyer Fails on Appeal in CDP Case Involving Restitution Based Assessments
I start with a caveat: although this posting is on April 1, sometimes called April Fools Day, this is intended as a serious discussion.
“If Artemis II is successful, the astronauts will be the first humans to reach the moon’s orbit in more than 50 years, and their path around its far side will take them farther into the universe than any human being has previously traveled.”
Gamage Presents “Confronting The Tax-And-Oligarchy Catch-22” Today At Toronto
David Gamage (Missouri) presents Confronting The Tax-And-Oligarchy Catch-22 at Toronto, as part of its James Hausman Tax Law and Policy Workshop Series hosted by Ben Alarie:
Why have taxes on concentrated wealth weakened across decades, even though polling typically shows strong majority support? This Article argues that the answer lies in a structural dynamic we call the tax-and-oligarchy catch-22. Taxing extreme wealth is among democracy’s most direct tools for constraining oligarchic power, yet extreme wealth reliably finances the political work of blocking, diluting, or unwinding such taxes. The catch-22 operates through political optionality. When the wealthiest households can defer tax indefinitely, they preserve capacity for campaigns, litigation, lobbying, and producing expert doubt about reforms that might reach them. Every dollar of deferred tax is a dollar available to lobby against its own eventual collection. Progressive Era reforms were designed to interrupt this dynamic. For decades they partially succeeded. But the constraints have eroded, and today’s largest fortunes face minimal effective taxation.
This Article responds with a democratic tax firewall, an approach that treats durability as a first-order design constraint rather than an afterthought. Drawing on political science, history, and recent state-level campaigns, we identify design choices that can help reforms resist quiet erosion and show how sustained technical preparation can position reformers to act when political windows open.
