Free Republic

Sometimes in Washington, stealth is more important than strength. In recent years, hedge fund managers, who oversee those secretive and lightly regulated pools of billions of dollars of investment capital, have gotten increasingly worried about whether Washington will change tax rules for offshore investors. Many hedge funds set up subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands and other low-tax locales so their investors can pay lower taxes on a certain amount of their activity. If Congress were to make a grab for that money by changing the tax rules governing the hedge funds, it could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in...

I note from Bloomberg News that last year the former president received 2.8 million from a partnership with Ron Burkle. There are actually three Cayman Island accounts that Burkle pays Clinton from. To date, former President Clinton has received 15.5 million from Burkle's efforts. The link for this information can be found: HERE. Wikipedia describes the Burkle and Clinton Cayman Island relationship as follows: "..Recent calls for the release of Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former president Bill Clinton's tax returns have brought to light the fact that President Clinton is expecting a $20,000,000 payout from Burkle's supermarket...

What happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas -- especially if you're the wife of presidential candidate. Just ask Janet Huckabee, who attended a middleweight prize fight this last weekend in Vegas -- where she stayed at the Hooters Casino Hotel. That eye-opening combination -- a title bout in Sin City, which celebrates gambling, drinking and all things wild, along with a hospitality chain favoring buxom waitresses in low-cut garb -- could potentially shock the armies of evangelical conservative Christians who have made her husband, the former governor of Arkansas, the only remaining GOP opponent to party front-runner John...

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee’s visit to Grand Cayman at the weekend to give a paid speech to the Young Caymanian Leadership Awards (YCLA) banquet has caused a stir in the United States, where he is still campaigning against seemingly impossible odds for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr Huckabee was also the keynote speaker at the YCLA banquet in 2000 but all concerned have declined to comment on how much he is being paid for his appearance. However, since he left the governor’s office in Little Rock, Arkansas, a year ago, Mr Huckabee’s primary source of income has reportedly been...

GRAND CAYMAN, Cayman Islands — Mike Huckabee said he was having such a good time here in this sun-splashed tourist resort that it may take a S.W.A.T. team to get him out of his hotel room at the Ritz Carlton and head back to the snowy campaign trail in Wisconsin. He had faced questions late last week about why he was leaving the trail – Wisconsin votes Tuesday — to come and give a paid speech. Speaking to reporters here before he delivered the speech, he said that Senator John McCain, his chief rival, was taking two days off while...

Former President Bill Clinton's decision to reconsider a business relationship with California billionaire Ron Burkle reflects concern those financial dealings may embarrass his wife's presidential candidacy. Securities and Exchange Commission documents and financial- disclosure forms filed by Hillary Clinton show that Bill Clinton, 61, has a financial stake in three investment entities registered in the Cayman Islands by Burkle's Yucaipa Cos. LLC. In 2004, Hillary Clinton, a New York senator, said she wanted to ``close the loopholes'' for ``people who create a mailbox, or a drop, or send one person to sit on the beach in some island paradise and...

GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands — Hurricane Dean spared the Cayman Islands the worst of its fury on Monday as it headed for a collision course with Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, sending tourists fleeing for the airports and locals searching for higher ground. Dean was already a powerful Category 4 storm as it raked the Cayman Islands. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said it could grow into a monstrous Category 5 hurricane before slashing across the Yucatan Peninsula and emerging in the Gulf of Campeche, dotted with oil rigs. Dean was several days from Texas and its path still uncertain, but the...

Two years ago, former senator John Edwards of North Carolina, gearing up for his second run at the Democratic presidential nomination, gave a speech decrying the "two different economies in this country: one for wealthy insiders and then one for everybody else." Four months later, he began working for the kind of firm that to many Wall Street critics embodies the economy of wealthy insiders -- a hedge fund. Edwards became a consultant for Fortress Investment Group, a New York-based firm known mainly for its hedge funds, just as the funds were gaining prominence in the financial world ... run...

In the hunt for Saddam Hussein's billions, investigators have identified five networks of more than 100 companies used to launder money skimmed from Iraqi oil sales. Saddam's gangster regime set up shell companies in Switzerland, Jordan, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg and Panama, according to investigators. Those company networks and their banking affiliations were used to enrich the former Iraqi strongman, his sons Uday and Qusay, and other family members. "Ultimately, the money was stolen from the Iraqi people," said Taylor Griffin, spokesman for the Treasury Department, which is heading the government's laundering probe along with U.S. Customs, the Secret Service and various...

United States of America Cricket Association WORLD CRICKET LEAGUE QUALIFIER – AMERICAS CHAMPIONSHIP 2006 WCLQ SQUAD Steve Massiah - Captain (New York Region) Jignesh Desai - Vice Captain (Southwest Region) Khawaja Shuja - (Central West Region) Chintan Patel - (Atlantic Region) Abhishek Pawar - (Southwest Region) Akeem Dodson - (New York Region) Sushil Nadkarni - (Central West Region) Niraj Shah - (Central West Region) Carl Wright - (Atlantic Region) Steve Pitter - (New York Region) Fauad Hasan - (Northwest Region) Gowkaran Roopnarine - (Atlantic Region) Lennox Cush - (New York Region) Imran Awan - (Atlantic Region) Mustaq Muhhamed - Coach...

'The Parsky team" is now famous -- as well as infamous -- in Rancho Santa Fe. There is another "Parsky team" in the secrecy- shrouded Caribbean tax haven of the Cayman Islands, but that's barely known at all, just as its creators intended. Until recently, multimillionaire Gerald "Gerry" Parsky -- chairman of the University of California board of regents and George W. Bush's main advisor in California -- was better known in the state than he was in Rancho Santa Fe, where he has occupied a horsy estate for 16 years. He takes his own jet in the morning to...

Tropical Storm Warning Issued for Caymans Tropical Storm Warning Issued for Cayman Islands; Residents Begin Preparing for Worst By JAY EHRHART The Associated Press GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands - A tropical storm warning was issued for the Cayman Islands on Saturday and residents, many of whom had not removed the hurricane shutters from earlier storms this season, began preparing for the worst. The system could become Tropical Storm Wilma on Sunday, which would make it the 21st named storm of the season, tying the record for the most storms in an Atlantic season, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said....

RAMALLAH, West Bank - As Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat lay fighting for his life yesterday in a French hospital, his wife, Suha, was locked in a bitter dispute with Palestinian officials over the fate of his vast secret fortune. Arafat's assets have been estimated at anything between $200 million by Forbes to $6 billion by Israeli intelligence. The bonanza is managed in a complex network of bank accounts, holding companies and stocks whose details are known only to his closest confidant, financial adviser Mohammed Rashid. Suha Arafat has access to some of the money, but even she does not know...

Urgent US military intervention needed in Grand Cayman The following is the full text of an open letter from Mr Timothy Adam Chief Executive, Cable & Wireless (Cayman Islands) Ltd Wednesday, September 15, 2004 Grand Cayman urgently needs military intervention to restore and to preserve law and order. This needs to happen TODAY. No doubt US authorities are already aware of the widespread looting that has occurred. I have heard sporadic attempts at looting continue to occur. I got caught in traffic right beside a site where police had shot several times at a looter and had detained him, and...

Hurricane Ivan Hammers Jamaica, Heads for Caymans Sat Sep 11, 2004 12:01 PM ET By Horace Helps KINGSTON, Jamaica (Reuters) - Deadly Hurricane Ivan ripped Jamaica with powerful winds, torrential rains and huge waves on Saturday, tearing away houses and washing out roads before heading toward the tiny Cayman Islands and Cuba. With winds of 155 mph and a death toll already at 29 -- mostly on the devastated southeastern Caribbean island of Grenada -- Ivan gave Jamaica's 2.7 million people a small, last-minute reprieve when its center took a sudden westward turn. That kept the most catastrophic winds off...

It looks like the Cayman Islands are about to be devastated by Ivan. Please send thoughts and prayers to this tiny island. Email good thoughts to: studio@vibefm.ky They are broadcasting live at this station as long as possible: http://www.vibefm.ky/ (Click on the "vibe is streaming live" link in the upper left corner. Thanks.

"Like many well-to-do Americans from that period" -- the 1980s -- "Kerry went looking for a tax shelter." This comes from John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best. According to the book, Kerry "invested between $25,000 and $30,000" in a "scheme known as a 'straddle' that involved forward contracts to buy and sell certain commodities through companies in the Cayman Islands." The book reports that Kerry's Cayman Islands tax shelter scheme didn't pan out. An embarrassed Kerry had to abandon it with apologies. "I thought it was a way to try to...

Tropical storm Claudette formed today in the eastern Caribbean. It is moving very rapidly and is expected to make landfall between the northern tip of Nicaragua and Houma, Louisiana, including western Cuba, the Cayman Islands, and Jamaica sometime within the next week or so. The official forecast has it becoming a hurricane on Thursday before moving over the Yucatan Peninsula. Previous tropical storm live threads, for Ana and Bill, were posted in the News/Activism forum, and did not garner significant attention because they got buried. Being stupid, I didn't notice that the "weather" topic is in this forum. Post news...

P AUL Deakin studied the pictures of the 9/11 terrorists with disbelief as he realised that among them was the man who had become his friend.For four weeks the maths teacher from the North of England and Ziad Jarrah, the man who seized controls of the fourth hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, had shared a bungalow as they learned how to fly in Florida.They had watched Friends together on TV and gone out to local bars at weekends to play pool.But while all Paul had wanted was a private pilot's licence Jarrah had another purpose. He was to become...