It’s a trial with all the hallmarks of a great blockbuster movie.
Two siblings, Adam and Lauren Cranston, whose father is the former deputy commissioner of the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), along with lawyer Dev Menon and referrer Jay Onley, are on trial after pleading not guilty to being involved in scheme that defrauded the Commonwealth of more than $105 million between March 2014 and May 2017.
The Offence of Conspiracy to Defraud the Commonwealth
The Daily Telegraph by Carla Hildebrandt
Monday 28 December 2020
A BUSINESSMAN who admitted blackmailing members of an alleged $100m tax scam syndicate says the group's accused kingpin Adam Cranston - the son of a former deputy tax commissioner - threatened him with a rifle and sent him “deeply upsetting” anti-Semitic emails about the death of Jewish women in the Holocaust, court documents reveal.
Stunning details have come to light after Daniel Hausman entered a guilty plea, with an agreed statement of facts stating how he allegedly recruited veteran journalist Stephen Barrett to help blackmail the syndicate out of $25m.
A SYDNEY businessman who blackmailed members of an alleged $100m tax scam syndicate says accused kingpin Adam Cranston threatened him with a rifle and sent him “deeply upsetting” anti-Semitic emails about the death of Jewish women in the Holocaust, according to court documents.
Vatican says $2.3 billion transferred to Australia 'like science fiction'
The SEC’s “token” enforcement action against Ripple for XRP Francine McKenna, The Dig
Pope formally strips Vatican secretariat of state of assets ABC
There are lots of ways to describe the subject matter of economics, but the ponciest way is to say it’s about “the study of incentives”. It’s true, but a less grandiose way to put it is that conventional economists are obsessed by prices and not much else.
If you’ve heard someone being accused of knowing “the price of everything, but the value of nothing”, that phrase could have been purpose-built for economists. Read on and you’ll see why economists so often make bad predictions and give bum advice.
They often can’t see past the price tag
Why much of what we're told about the effects of taxes is off beam
Paul Davis On Crime: My Q&A With Legendary FBI Profiler John Douglas.
When I got to Quantico at 32, I was the youngest of all the agents. The Behavioral Science Unit had about eight or nine agents and I was assigned to teaching criminal psychology. We had road schools two weeks at a time going from one city to another. I told my partner, let’s go into the prisons and conduct these interviews of Ed Kempner, Charles Manson and David Berkowitz. We went into the prisons and conducted the interviews as I wanted to be a good instructor
Abusive conservation easements have been a topic on this blog for some time now. See here. DOJ and the IRS have noised about criminal prosecutions, but until this past week none have surfaced. Now, we have two criminal cases with a pre-wired plea on the filing of the criminal informations. See DOJ Press Release: Atlanta Tax Professionals Plead Guilty to Promoting Syndicated Conservation Easement Tax Scheme Involving More Than $1.2 Billion in Fraudulent Charitable Deductions , here.
Relevant excerpts from the press release are:
According to court documents, from at least 2013 through 2019, S. Agee and C. Agee, then partners at an Atlanta accounting firm, marketed, promoted, and sold together with co-conspirators, investments in fraudulent syndicated conservation easement (SCE) tax shelters. The SCE tax shelters were designed to produce tax deductions for high-income taxpayers through partnerships that purported to make “real estate investments.” In truth, the partnerships were a sham, lacking economic substance and serving no legitimate business purpose. The placement of conservation easements over the real estate was a foregone conclusion, which fraudulently enabled the investors to shelter their income from the IRS with no economic risk and to claim substantial tax deductions to which they were not entitled. S. Agee, C. Agee, and their co-conspirators marketed the SCE tax shelters by promising investors that for every $1 invested in the partnership, the investor would receive more than $4 in charitable tax deductions.
First Criminal Cases from Abusive Syndicated Conservation Easements
Fifth Circuit Denies Rehearing En Banc in Controversial Client Identity Privilege Case
I have previously reported on the Fifth Circuit’s rejection of the client-identity privilege (a subset of the attorney-client privilege) in Fifth Circuit Rejects Attorney-Client Identity Privilege for Law Firm Documents (Federal Tax Crimes Blog 4/26/20), here. See Taylor Lohmeyer Law Firm P.L.L.C. v. United States, 957 F.3d 505 (5th Cir. 2020), here.
On December 4, 2020, the Fifth Circuit denied rehearing en banc. The vote was 9 to 8. Six of the judges dissenting to denial of rehearing en banc filed a dissenting opinion. The denial and dissenting opinion are here.
The panel opinion was controversial. Amicus briefs on petition rehearing en banc were filed by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, here, and by the American College of Tax Counsel, here.
UK Taxman in 'staggering' failure to prosecute evaders
Govt urged to focus on tax avoidance promoters
- UK tax evasion prosecutions fall by half in 5 years (21 Dec 2020)
- UK HOUSE OF LORDS Economic Affairs Committee Report - New powers for HMRC: fair and proportionate? (19 Dec 2020)
- UK Government must keep working to tackle tax avoidance promoters, says Lords committee report (19 Dec 2020)
- Fifty Years of Tax Cuts for Rich Didn’t Trickle Down, Study Says (18 Dec 2020)
- The end of empire and the rise of tax havens (18 Dec 2020)
- The Economic Consequences of Major Tax Cuts for the Rich (18 Dec 2020)
- The Measure of Financial Regulators’ Independence (18 Dec 2020)
- SEC Issues Multiple Whistleblower Awards Totaling Over $3.6 Million (18 Dec 2020)
- Credit Suisse Charged Over Money Laundering in Cocaine Ring (17 Dec 2020)
- Crony Capitalism- Waste, Negligence and Cronyism: Inside Britain’s Pandemic Spending (17 Dec 2020)
- Report of the Independent Investigation into the Financial Conduct Authority’s Regulation of London Capital & Finance plc by The Rt. Hon. Dame Elizabeth Gloster DBE (17 Dec 2020)
- INDEPENDENT REVIEW INTO THE FSA AND FCA'S HANDLING OF THE CONNAUGHT INCOME FUND SERIES 1 AND CONNECTED COMPANIES REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT REVIEWER (17 Dec 2020)
- FCA responds to independent reviews into its regulation of London Capital & Finance and Connaught (17 Dec 2020)
- Report of the Independent Investigation into the Financial Conduct Authority's Regulation of London Capital & Finance plc – The FCA Response (17 Dec 2020)
- Report of the Independent Review into the FSA and FCA's handling of the Connaught Income Fund Series 1 and connected companies – The FCA response (17 Dec 2020)
- Boohoo boss promises 'to make everything better' (17 Dec 2020)
- How oil majors shift billions in profits to island tax havens (15 Dec 2020)
- UK Overseas Territories: adopting publicly accessible registers of beneficial ownership (14 Dec 2020)
- SEC Awards More Than $300,000 to Whistleblower with Audit Responsibilities (14 Dec 2020)
- Wealthy Norwegians Are Moving To This Remote Tax Haven (14 Dec 2020)
- £13.8bn at risk in FTSE 100 tax disputes (14 Dec 2020)
- 'Tax the wealthy to pay for coronavirus' (9 Dec 2020)
- Under Boris Johnson, corruption is taking hold in Britain (9 Dec 2020)
- THE BREXITERS Who Fled Britain (9 Dec 2020)
- Call for windfall tax on PPE firms to fund £500 bonus for frontline staff (7 Dec 2020)
- Shareholders can't force businesses to act morally. But governments can (6 Dec 2020)
- Covid: Argentina passes tax on wealthy to pay for virus measures (6 Dec 2020)
- HMRC payments to tax evasion whistleblowers up 63% (4 Dec 2020)
- US justice department investigates alleged 'bribery for pardon' scheme at White House (2 Dec 2020)
- Italian mafia probe shows banks exposure to massive alleged laundering scheme (2 Dec 2020)
- Capital gains tax on French properties to soar for UK residents post-Brexit (2 Dec 2020)
- Tesco hands back £585 million in tax relief (2 Dec 2020)
- How private equity fat-cats who rub shoulders with A-list celebrities and royalty triggered Debenhams' downfall by selling its stores and leasing them back before taking £1.2BILLION in dividends (2 Dec 2020)
- More PwC Tax Propoganda: Stability in uncertain times The Total Tax Contribution (TTC) of the 100 Group for 2019/20 (2 Dec 2020)
- Introduce a mansion tax on high value properties (2 Dec 2020)
- Use of marketed tax avoidance schemes in the UK (1 Dec 2020)
- HMRC acts on tax avoidance advertising (1 Dec 2020)
- THE TAX MAN COMETH Robert Mercer, William Barr & Trump’s Chinese Bank Account (1 Dec 2020)
