Jack Lew, Citigroup and the Ugland Truth

[unhappycamper]

http://billmoyers.com/2013/03/08/jack-lew-citigroup-and-the-ugland-truth/



n this Aug. 3, 2012 photo, the Ugland House, the registered office for thousands of global companies, stands in George Town on Grand Cayman Island.

Jack Lew, Citigroup and the Ugland Truth
arch 8, 2013
by Michael Winship

Along with its sandy beaches and quality snorkeling, the Cayman Islands’ reputation as an offshore tax haven for corporations, banks and hedge funds has become so well-known its financial institutions now are featured in travel brochures as yet another tourist attraction.

So as we traveled across the Caribbean this week — including a stretch paralleling the south coast of Cuba past Guantanamo Bay and the Sierra Maestra mountains, where Castro and his revolutionaries once hid out — we made a stop in George Town on Grand Cayman Island. A short walk along the shore took us to 335 South Church Street, a location made famous by Barack Obama a few years ago and more recently, Jack Lew, during his confirmation hearings to become Secretary of the Treasury.

There you’ll find Ugland House, a five-story office building that, according to a 2008 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), houses 18,857 corporations, about half of which have billing addresses back in the States. It’s the business world equivalent of one of those circus cars that’s packed with more clowns than you thought possible. In 2009, Obama said of Ugland House, “either this is the largest building in the world or the largest tax scam in the world.”

~snip~

Wheels within wheels. One of the thousands of entities registered at Ugland House is Citigroup Venture Capital International, a private equity fund in which our new Treasury Secretary Jack Lew invested $56,000 while he was an executive at Citigroup. He sold the investment, at a loss, for $54,118 in 2009 when he joined the Obama administration. Asked at his Senate confirmation hearing whether he knew that Citigroup had a presence in the Caymans – 121 subsidiaries, in fact, including the fund in which he had invested — Lew professed, “I do not recall being aware of any particular Citigroup subsidiaries located in the Cayman Islands.”

[Leslie Valley]

1. On 2/9/13 I posted an almost identical article from the NYTimes

Before Lew was confirmed....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014394532

Much like your post (12 hours later, not 1 comment) it was met with roaring indifference.

I guess if it's "our guy" it's all good.

At least we thought we knew what to expect from Romney.

IDK about you, but maybe I'm in the wrong place.

[westerebus]

2. At this point, some of us have very limited expectations.

It's not the comment count that matters in the economic forum. It's the information flow. Welcome, Leslie.