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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow to Hide 400 Million?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/30/magazine/how-to-hide-400-million.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0<snip>
A few weeks after she realized her husband was finally leaving her, Sarah Pursglove flew down to the Bahamas to figure out how much money he really had. Like many women married to very wealthy men, she didnt know much about the family accounts. Her husband, a Finnish entrepreneur named Robert Oesterlund, had sworn to a Canadian court that his immediately calculable net family property totaled just a few million dollars. Pursglove was skeptical. She could come up with several family purchases worth more than that off the top of her head. There was the 165-foot yacht, Déjà Vu that cost a few million dollars a year just to keep on the water. There was the $30 million penthouse at the Toronto Four Seasons, which was still being renovated. It wasnt their only home. The Déjà Vu wasnt even their only yacht.
Pursglove grew up in a working-class family. She did not consider herself to be a complicated person, or a greedy one. Recent events in her life had, however, inculcated a newfound habit of suspicion. Her husbands tirades, his frequent absences and threats to leave, had led inexorably to the day when she tailed him through the streets of Toronto and caught him picking up an interior designer for what appeared to be a romantic ski getaway. She had been with Oesterlund since she was 25 and scraping by as a cruise ships photographer. Now, as she assessed her crumbling marriage and girded for divorce, she wondered what else she didnt know.
Her first answers came that morning in the Bahamas, as she quickly rifled through papers in their soon-to-be-former vacation home. She didnt have long: The caretaker, Pursglove suspected, was loyal to her husband and would soon alert him that she was there. In a pile of mail was a statement from a bank in Luxembourg showing an account with at least $30 million in cash. She had never seen it before. There were two laptops one with baby photos of their younger daughter, which she set aside. In a cupboard were documents concerning not only Xacti, the internet company she and Oesterlund had built, but also oddly named corporations in other states and countries. Finally, there was a statement from their accounting firm. She had never seen that before, either. The accountants seemed to think her husband was worth at least $300 million.
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ret5hd
(20,482 posts)Dustlawyer
(10,494 posts)Every Republican President does this so all the Plutocrats have to do is wait for a Republican to win. I am sure they do their best to help them along. This is how GE can make billions and pay no taxes.
While our government is almost broke and they push to end our "entitlements", the uber wealthy are socking away the trillions offshore. They keep the IRS on such a small budget so all they can do is go after us little folks. The other regulatory agencies are in the same financial bind to where they cannot regulate the industries they are supposed to. Oil refineries "self report" because the EPA and OSHA do not have the manpower to do their jobs.
Meanwhile, the Plutocrats and corporate titans buy up almost every politician to preserve and enhance their ability to make and keep more money at our expense.
The super wealthy buy the media companies to spread propaganda and not report the truth of what they themselves are doing. We swallow that crap and vote to perpetuate the system!
How do we get out of this mess?