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25 Jul, 8 tweets, 3 min read
NEW: The Tom Barrack charges show how wildly successful foreign dictatorships were at secretly swaying the Trump administration—and why so many illicit foreign agents targeted the White House. nbcnews.com/think/opinion/…
Just look at what Tom Barrack—Trump’s close friend, advisor, fundraiser—allegedly did secretly on behalf of the UAE dictatorship:

—Change Trump’s speeches
—Lobby for pro-UAE staffing/policy
—Funnel internal White House discussions to the UAE
—Publicly whitewash the UAE regime
One question: What did Tom Barrack get in return for flipping into a secret foreign agent for the UAE, whispering in Trump’s ear?

One potential answer: Look how much money—$1.5 billion—his private equity firm received from UAE (and Saudi) sources.

nbcnews.com/think/ncna1274…
Nor is it surprising that the UAE dictatorship was behind this incredible operation to co-opt an American president’s close friend.

Just look at everything else the UAE does to whitewash its regime in the US—especially via American think tanks.
But tally Tom Barrack up as the latest in a long, long litany of figures close to Trump who secretly worked at the behest of corrupt foreign regimes, oligarchs, and dictatorships:
Remarkable how *little* coverage these bombshell allegations got.

This was a foreign dictatorship secretly co-opting a person extremely close to an American president. And it did so incredibly successfully—at least, until last week.

+1 There’s definitely a terminology issue with these charges about Tom Barrack acting as a foreign agent for a dictatorship.

Hell, he’s facing the same charges as Maria Butina—and not many refer to Butina as a simple “lobbyist.”
ICYMI

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More from @cjcmichel

Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
24 Jul
Teddy Roosevelt: First president to host a Black man at the White House, yet someone who thought the 15th Amendment was a “mistake” and that 90% of Jim Crow was justified, with Black Americans “altogether inferior to the whites.”
Still strange the US’s crushing of Filipino independence efforts doesn’t have more resonance in 21st century America—everything from widespread use of water-boarding, to efforts to cover up torture reports by Roosevelt’s administration.
(These are from: penguinrandomhouse.com/books/117455/t…)
Read 11 tweets
Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
20 Jul
‘He and two other defendants are accused of acting and conspiring to act as agents of the UAE between April 2016 and April 2018.’
Yet another high-level Trump official charged with secretly acting as a foreign lobbyist: justice.gov/opa/pr/former-…
Said it before, but absolutely amazing how the Trump campaign(s) breathed new life into FARA.

Legislation effectively dormant for 75 years—and then Trump came into the picture, and all of his sycophants couldn’t stop themselves whenever a foreign government came knocking.
Read 9 tweets
Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
16 Jul
NEW: For years, the US’s “golden visa” program allowed anyone with a bit of dirty money to buy American residence—and eventual American citizenship.

But that may finally be about to change.

Alongside the great @apmassaro3: foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/16/oli…
Traditional offshore havens—Cyprus, Malta, etc—get plenty of attention for their "golden visa" or "golden passport" systems.

But look at the U.S. version. Look at how cheap it is, how easy it is to access—and how much further an American passport can go.

foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/16/oli… Image
It's not just price (and passport) that makes the U.S. "golden visa" program so appealing for kleptocrats.

Kleptocrats can provide whatever information they want about the source of their money, knowing they'll rarely, if ever, be turned down by American authorities. Image
Read 7 tweets
Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
28 Jun
Fantastic dive into Canada's overlooked role as an international money laundering ("snow-washing") haven of its own: …aredservices-ex.objectstore.gov.bc.ca/ag-pssg-cc-exh…

Real estate and lawyers play an outsized role—a familiar playbook.
The Canadian government's claims that Canada has a "robust and comprehensive anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing regime" are "simply not credible."
In Canada, "relatively simple strategies like [using lawyers and real estate] probably work as well today as they did 20 years ago... From a launderer's point of view, why try harder when old strategies still work perfectly well?"
Read 8 tweets
Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
25 Jun
Great paper from @S_de_Oliveira on placing Africa (and African elites) in broader offshoring context:

Some highlights below (1/n)
Foreign direct investment in Africa could be as low as a *quarter* of African capital flight per year:
Context:

—Per the OECD, "an estimated 10 trillion Euros are currently held in offshore accounts."

—Offshore accounts are now "the most important instruments in the contemporary globalized financial system."

—Offshore is not "a violation of the system, but the system itself."
Read 5 tweets
Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
24 Jun
One of the (many) things we discuss on the klepto reputation-laundering front in this week's episode: universities.

Specifically, how kleptos have turned to Western universities to whitewash their reputation, impact future scholars, and gain access to Western policy-makers.
On the topic of oligarchs, kleptocrats, and the like using American and British universities to launder their reputations, can't recommend enough this paper:

Quick thread pulling out the highlights. (1/n)
One of the key challenges in monitoring financial flows into American/British schools is actually disentangling "foreign" and "domestic" flows.

I.e., Qatar- and China-linked funding use Western shell companies or offshore entities to obscure the source of the money.
Read 13 tweets

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