{"id":185354,"date":"2019-03-17T13:08:36","date_gmt":"2019-03-17T13:08:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=185354"},"modified":"2019-03-21T07:24:14","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T07:24:14","slug":"hot-off-the-press-israels-three-largest-banks-pay-hundreds-of-millions-in-fines-for-helping-us-citizens-evade-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=185354","title":{"rendered":"Hot Off the Press: Israel\u2019s Three Largest Banks Pay Hundreds Of Millions In Fines For Helping US Citizens Evade Taxes"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Eve Mykytyn \u2013 gilad.co.uk March 17, 2019<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Following a few mild words of dissent by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, the US House of Representatives was almost united in affirming the special relationship between Israel and the US. See, for ex<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 So how is\u00a0\u201cour most reliable and most important ally\u201d treating us? If \u2018our’ includes the US treasury, the answer is that Israel\u2019s banks have been accused of and have admitted to actively colluding with wealthy US taxpayers to avoid US taxes.<\/h5>\n
On March 12, Israel\u2019s third largest\u00a0 bank, Mizrahi Tefahot, agreed to pay $195 million<\/a><\/span> to the United States to settle charges that the bank knowingly aided tax evasion by US citizens from 2002 until 2012<\/span><\/a>.<\/h5>\n
Israel\u2019s largest bank, Leumi paid a $400 million dollar fine for similar \u201ccriminal activity<\/span><\/a>\u201d that spanned the period from at least 2000 to 2011. Hapoalim<\/span><\/a>, Israel\u2019s second largest bank is presently negotiating a settlement with the US Justice Department. The total settlement<\/span><\/a> from all three banks will amount to over $1 billion.<\/h5>\n
As conceded by the banks, these tax avoidance schemes have been going on for decades. Israel\u2019s Supervisor of Banks, Hedva Ber<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0noted the longevity of this practice: \u201cTwenty years ago, Israeli banks did not ask customers about the source of their money and did not ask if they had paid taxes or not.\u201d But the issue is not limited to banks failing to inquire about the source of funds, these admissions of actively aiding tax evasion show that \u201cIsraeli banks<\/a><\/span>\u2026..for decades helped Diaspora Jews evade taxes and launder money on a major scale.\u201d<\/h5>\n
According to Hevda Ber, for many years Israeli banks<\/a><\/span> provided essentially the same services to foreigners that Swiss banks gave, minus Switzerland\u2019s banking secrecy laws. Actually, according to the settlements and to criminal cases against US taxpayers, Israel\u2019s banks not only did indeed offer American customers secrecy for bank accounts, (Leumi <\/span><\/a>admitted to failing to send statements to the US addresses of over 2400 customers) but also provided ways for US citizens to bring untaxed income back to the US without paying US taxes.<\/h5>\n
For instance, for over twelve years in the 1970s and 1980s, the Antar family, owners of the discount electronics chain Crazy Eddie, laundered money<\/a><\/span> through Bank Leumi. Sam Antar\u00a0 described to The Times of Israel how he and his family transferred a total of about\u00a0 $10 million in unreported cash by handing a briefcase full of cash to a Bank Leumi employee in New York and then receiving an equivalent suitcase the next day on an El Al flight to Israel.<\/h5>\n
Here was the challenge of withdrawing that money as described by Anton.\u00a0 \u201cSay I had $10 million in Israel, and I needed to use that money over here in New York. They couldn\u2019t wire me the funds because the account is secret. This money is hidden from the US government to evade income taxes.\u201d\u00a0 So, according to Antar, Bank Leumi in New York would give him a low interest rate loan secured by Antar\u2019s assets in Israel. The paperwork for the loan concealed the fact that Antar had money deposited in Israel.<\/h5>\n
Similarly, and according to court documents<\/span><\/a>, Elie Waknine, of Huntington Beach, California, held millions of dollars in an account at Bank Leumi.\u00a0 Waknine\u2019s tax returns falsely claimed he did not have any foreign accounts.\u00a0 Bank Leumi did not send bank mail to Waknine\u2019s home in the United States. Leumi allowed Waknine to access his accounts through certain \u2018loans\u2019\u00a0 issued by Leumi\u2019s U.S. branch that were secretly secured by funds in his undeclared accounts in Israel.<\/h5>\n
The Times of Israel<\/span><\/a> notes that the fact that three of Israel\u2019s major banks have been under criminal investigation by the US Justice Department for allegedly helping thousands of US citizens launder money and evade taxes has garnered remarkably little public attention. The Jewish press covered the\u00a0 Mizrahi Tefahot settlement, but the New York Times gave only a short summary and I could find no mention in the Wall Street Journal.<\/h5>\n
In comparison, the\u00a0 2016 Panama Papers leak of offshore bank account holders led to street protests around the world<\/span><\/a>, the resignation of Iceland\u2019s prime minister, and countless investigations<\/a><\/span>.<\/h5>\n
According to David Shuste<\/a>r<\/span>, a lawyer who represents a number of American citizens who had undisclosed bank accounts in Israel, the lack of publicity is understandable because none of the actors involved are interested in the limelight.The Department of Justice\u2019s goal is tax enforcement and the banks are \u201cgoing to say as little as possible. The more they say, the more evidence can be brought against them.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Mr. Shuster may be right, but he fails to account for the dearth of reporting about Israel\u2019s banks as compared to the Panama Papers or even the recently uncovered money laundering activities of certain European banks<\/span><\/a>. I suspect in the present atmosphere of heightened paranoia over anti Semitism, the press may be reluctant to touch a financial scandal in which most of the participants are Jewish. Maybe they have taken into consideration that much of the outrage<\/span><\/a> over Omar\u2019s observations about Israel was over her accusation that \u201cit\u2019s all about the Benjamins.\u201d<\/h5>\n
To assist Gilad Atzmon in his efforts to expose the real nature of Zionism go to the source page<\/a><\/span> and scroll down to make a donation.<\/em><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Omar recently observed \u201cit\u2019s all about the Benjamins”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=185354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":185356,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185354\/revisions\/185356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=185354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=185354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=185354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}