Free Republic

JEFFREY Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell made more than $100 billion together but the vast fortune may be hidden from victims in mystery offshore accounts, the pedophile's former mentor has claimed. While the Epstein estate has been valued at $635 million, his old boss Steven Hoffenberg dismisses that amount and says it’s more likely to be over $100 billion. Hoffenberg, who was the criminal mastermind between the pair fleecing hundreds of millions out of investors in one of the world’s biggest Ponzi schemes, took Epstein under his wings in the eighties, teaching him everything about forensic accounting. The 75-year-old said that...

NASA says it will spend more than $250 million hiring private companies to transport scientific missions to the moon. These privately operated missions, part of the US space agency’s broader rush back to the moon, are designed to gather data about the lunar surface and pilot technologies for landing robotic explorers. Three companies—Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, and Orbit Beyond—have been awarded contracts for missions into 2021. Orbit Beyond has the earliest target date for its mission, in September 2020.

Offshore outsourcing can be a traumatic event for employees -- both for those who lose their jobs and for those who survive. It's HR's job to figure out the real impact it's having on employees -- a task that may benefit from new technology. President Donald Trump became a harsh critic of the H-1B program during his campaign for president and invited IT workers who had trained visa-holding replacements to speak at campaign rallies. Trump promised to make changes to the H-1B program, and his administration is now denying roughly one in five of the H-1B visas sought by IT...

The federal government’s failure to study risks of oil spills in the powerful Gulf Stream is “stunning” and “beyond foolish” given the stakes and current’s force, drilling opponents said this week. Packing more power than all of the world’s freshwater rivers combined, the Gulf Stream flows about 55 miles off the South Carolina coast. Yet federal regulators haven’t done computer simulations of how oil spills would interact with this mighty river in the sea, The Post and Courier reported earlier this year in its investigative project “Into the Gulf Stream.” Critics said this omission is particularly glaring in the wake...

The Trump administration took a major step Friday toward allowing testing for offshore oil and natural gas under the Atlantic Ocean... The announcement is an early step toward potentially allowing offshore drilling in the Atlantic for the first time in decades.

People talk about the fires of Hell. I would offer the example of two men who have been there, done that, and survived to tell the tale. One is Mike Williams, an electronics technician aboard the Deepwater Horizon when it exploded and caught fire. The other is Anthony Gervasio, the chief engineer of the offshore supply vessel Damon B. Bankston, which was alongside as the well began to blow out. The boat begins to go sideways and stops. There is a painter line still attached to the rig, and people are being dumped out of the life raft. The rig's...

California will block the transportation through its state of petroleum from new offshore oil rigs, officials told Reuters on Wednesday, a move meant to hobble the Trump administration’s effort to vastly expand drilling in U.S. federal waters.

News that Morris Dee’s Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) transferred some $5 million offshore in 2014 caught many by surprise. For example, tax expert Amy Sterling Casil, CEO of the nonprofit consulting firm Pacific Human Capital, upon learning of the transactions, said: I’ve never known a U.S.-based nonprofit dealing in human rights or social services to have any foreign bank accounts.… I am stunned to learn of transfers of millions to offshore bank accounts. It is a huge red flag and would [be] completely unacceptable to any wealthy, responsible, experienced board member who was committed to a charitable mission who...

he Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a liberal, Alabama-based 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable organization that has gained prominence on the left for its "hate group" designations, pushes millions of dollars to offshore entities as part of its business dealings, records show. Additionally, the nonprofit pays lucrative six-figure salaries to its top directors and key employees while spending little on legal services despite its stated intent of "fighting hate and bigotry" using litigation, education, and other forms of advocacy. The Southern Poverty Law Center is perhaps best known for its "hate map," a collection of organizations the nonprofit deems "domestic hate groups"...

Tim Cook, J.P. Morgan, and George and Amal Clooney should realize that some[i] of the millions they are donating to the Southern Poverty Law Center is going to end up in the Cayman Islands or other offshore secrecy havens. The SPLC is a big business that raises far more than it spends, and is building up assets in places that offer secrecy as a marketing point. We know this thanks to some admirable (and often tedious) digging through publicly available documents filed with the IRS by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Joe Schoffstall of the Free Beacon deserves much credit:...

outhern Poverty Law Center Transfers Millions in Cash to Offshore Entities Left-wing nonprofit pays lucrative six-figure salaries to top management BY: Joe Schoffstall August 31, 2017 5:00 am The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a liberal, Alabama-based 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable organization that has gained prominence on the left for its "hate group" designations, pushes millions of dollars to offshore entities as part of its business dealings, records show. Additionally, the nonprofit pays lucrative six-figure salaries to its top directors and key employees while spending little on legal services despite its stated intent of "fighting hate and bigotry" using litigation, education,...

In another move to free up domestic energy supplies, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday aimed at lifting the Obama administration’s offshore drilling restrictions.For decades, bad policies have blocked access to America’s abundance of domestic resources, yet America has still managed to be a global energy leader. Trump’s executive order, “Implementing an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy,” could unleash further success in the energy sector.The economic potential sitting just off America’s coasts is enormous. The Outer Continental Shelf is awash with natural resources, containing an estimated 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.Realizing...

Trump warned companies of “retribution or consequences” for leaving the U.S. Donald Trump warned U.S. companies of “retribution or consequences,” such as a massive tariff, if they leave the country. In a series of early morning tweets Sunday, Trump said companies with offshore factories would face a 35% tax on products they want to sell back in the U.S. “The U.S. is going to substantialy [sic] reduce taxes and regulations on businesses, but any business that leaves our country for another country, fires its employees, builds a new factory or plant in the other country, and then thinks it will...

It might not be a great time to start offshore drilling, with oil prices as depressed as they are, but it might just be a great time to buy an offshore drilling rig for a cut-rate price—in fact, you might be able to get one for only one tenth of what they cost in 2011. This is the cost coup recently pulled off by Ocean Rig, a company controlled by shipping billionaire George Economou, who has landed a drillship—the Cerrado—for only US$65 million at auction, which represents less than 10 percent of the estimated price when it was built over...

What would Hermione Granger say? Actress Emma Watson has been named in the so-called "Panama Papers" as having used a company based in a Caribbean tax haven to handle her money, it was revealed Tuesday. The 26-year-old, who is taking a break from acting to work as a United Nations goodwill ambassador and women's rights campaigner, is a shareholder in one of approximately 200,000 offshore corporations whose information was published online Monday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

Bernie Sanders loves to denounce the tax dodges of the wealthy (even as he pays 13.4% income tax on a $200K+ income), so it would be interesting to hear what he has to say about John Kerry, the current secretary of state and former Democratic Party nominee for president.  An analysis of public documents by the Daily Caller News Foundation indicates that Kerry and his wife liberally use offshore tax havens.  Richard Pollock writes: … a DCNF investigation has confirmed that the former Massachusetts Democratic senator and his billionaire wife, using an elaborate set of Heinz family trusts, have...

The Obama administration unveiled new regulations on offshore drilling on Thursday, rules that were several years in the making. The regulations stem from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, a well blowout that resulted in the death of 11 workers and one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. The regulations call for new well-control measures, limits the volume of fluids that can be injected into wells, and requires heightened well monitoring. ExxonMobil and other companies say the rules will impose costs as high as $25 billion over the next decade, pushing many offshore projects...

he prime minister of Iceland resigned on Tuesday, succumbing to political pressure two days after an enormous leak of documents from a secretive Panamanian law firm about offshore shell companies and tax shelters. The resignation of the prime minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, was the first prominent political fallout from the document leaks known as the Panama Papers, which have shed a harsh light on the private financial activities of many rich and powerful people.

A network of secret offshore deals and vast loans worth $2bn has laid a trail to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. An unprecedented leak of documents shows how this money has made members of Putin’s close circle fabulously wealthy. Though the president’s name does not appear in any of the records, the data reveals a pattern...The documents suggest Putin’s family has benefited from this money – his friends’ fortunes appear his to spend….. The Panama Papers disclose that Kovalchuk and Bank Rossiya achieved the transfer of at least $1bn to a specially created offshore entity called Sandalwood Continental. These funds came...

The massive Leviathan gas field was discovered in Israel’s offshore Levant Basin over six years ago, and while it theoretically puts Israel on the global energy map for the first time and could change the geopolitical dynamics of the entire Middle East, the Israelis themselves seem to be doing everything in their power to keep it from coming online. Its owners—U.S.-based Noble Energy and Israeli partner Delek Group—along with their shareholders are probably wondering if gas is ever going to come out of this giant of giants. At stake is a massive gas field worth $5-$6 billion and believed to...