LAW INC. 

As one of the cogs in the wheel of democracy, the legal system is portrayed as providing justice, ethics and fairness. The public is acutely aware that it does not.  Justice, ethics and fairness are being sacrificed to rapacious business instincts favoring those with the ability to pay.  

The pursuit of money before justice, fairness and ethics turns the legal system on its head.

Moreover, corporations with accomplices from the lairs of legal chicanery scheme to line their own pockets, fleece the public and undermine democracy making highly visible mockery of the idea that the system is about justice, ethics and fairness at all. Contrived laws are nothing more than competitive barriers to entry or in perverse way, a license to make lying, cheating, stealing and even manslaughter legal.  

There is a lesson to be learned here from the biblical story of Jesus Cleansing the Temple of its authorities who were taking advantage of the poor who came to worship. The story has nothing to do with religion regardless of who it is attributed to, and everything to do with screwing a compliant public who were just looking for a little help from someone or something they thought offered a ray of hope. This story in Huffpost has an interesting take on the Cleansing the Temple story, and these quotes yet another. 

“Equal justice under law is not merely a caption on the facade of the Supreme Court building, it is perhaps the most inspiring ideal of our society. It is one of the ends for which our entire legal system exists...it is fundamental that justice should be the same, in substance and availability, without regard to economic status.” - Lewis Powell, Jr. Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

 

“It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for law, so much as a respect for right.” - Henry David Thoreau

 

“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.” - Benjamin Franklin

 

“If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected--those, precisely, who need the law's protection most--and listens to their testimony.” - James Baldwin

 

“Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

“The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.” - Raymond Chandler

 

“You know, the courts may not be working any more, but as long as everyone is videotaping everyone else, justice will be done.” - Marge Simpson

Corrupt, unethical, unjust, unfair, and exploitive practices work wonderfully in dictatorships if one is at the top of the food chain, or if the food chain is so large they can carve out a piece for themselves at various levels.  

A democracy however is more complex. Talking about the "rule of law" as if it is the end game wholly divorced from just outcomes is simply propaganda trying to mask what is wrong with the system. And while the rule of law may be trumpeted by learned persons in visible positions in society, the underlying rot of enforcement absent justice cannot be hidden from anyone. Kind of like fleecing worshipers in the temple.

In order for continued injustice to prevail, a sense of helplessness, poverty, education denied, coercion and the constant threat of force must be used to keep the public in line. Without these steps, nothing in a democracy can be isolated from disruption if its citizens wake up and will no longer put up with it. In such cases citizens must be overwhelmingly bamboozled. 

“Propaganda is to a democracy what a bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” - Noam Chomsky.  Media Control - The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda

Secondly they must be kept desperately chained to jobs, debt and family which severely limits their flexibility and choices. Hence the need for millions of illegal immigrants to undermine wages even further and provide an insurance policy against an outbreak of democracy.

“Poverty is power, just not for the poor.”  – p2p.media

Third they must be hoodwinked into addressing issues that are lower in the priority of their daily lives, the kind of sleight of hand magicians use to mask what one hand is doing while the other hand is being watched. For example, forcing discourse about white supremacy, racial divides, and so on when the most urgent problem to solve first is high paying jobs, steady employment, a strong economy with a thriving domestic manufacturing base, and a social safety net.  

If those tactics fail, the government must either declare martial law, start a war, or create a legal environment that makes everything subject to crippling and costly attacks. The obvious solution to everyone but those in a position of authority is to try to fix things from the bottom up.

And in this process the greatest mistake those doing the bamboozling can make is believing their own BS. 

"the first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool." To avoid self-deception scientists must bend over backward to report data that cast doubt on their theories. Feynman applied this principle specifically to scientists who talk to the public:  I would like to add something that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the laymen when you're talking as a scientist. . . . I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, [an integrity] that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen." - Richard Feynman. Caltech 1974 commencement address.

The lawyerly squeals, oinks and snorts going on at the trough of lucre while assisting in rigging the system for their clients makes them highly visible targets. As can be seen in targets link, someone is investing time, energy and money keeping these lists, which along with the thousands of links to articles discussing what is going on, prove a significant number of people are wise to the scheme and upset with the behavior. Information is a weapon as the recent events disclosing Facebook's data gathering operations shows.  

INJUSTICE PRACTICE

When you look at the craft and deviousness in the establishment and operation of tax havens, (and here, page 48, line 2) or in the examples of protecting scofflaws like Bill Cosby who admitted to drugging women to abuse them sexually (58 women have come forward) and Jeffrey Epstein to minimize prosecution for the abuse of unsuspecting female children, claiming it is the law and so on, it is clear that the legal profession can be a partner in unjust behavior.

Jeffrey Epstein groomed and exploited underage girls who he sexually assaulted among a litany of other indignities he inflicted on them.  He left the sex toys he used on these young girls for his butler to clean up and their testimony indicates he passed these children around to his friends. Lawyers defending Epstein planned on attacking his underage victims, in some cases suggesting they had mental health or character issues, in order to obtain settlements favorable to their despicable client Epstein.  

Rather than buying the story that it is the rule of law, how about going in and having a good look at your 12 year old impressionable daughter and think of a pig like Cosby or Epstein lying on top of her naked body and sexually abusing her. With that image in your mind now think of the lawyer blaming your daughter for what Bill Cosby or Jeffrey Epstein are doing to her. I don’t know about you, but I see them both lying on top of your naked 12 year old daughter, one with his penis out and the other with his/her wallet out. Legal fees as a pedophile sex toy - nice. 

I suppose another test of the righteousness of the legal practice in these cases would be to ask them to send their daughters to someone like Harvey Weinstein to lie to her and abuse her so she can get a job in the movie business, or maybe they could look up Jeffrey Epstein and send their 12 year old daughters to him to see if he can school them in becoming women, or why not send their sons to Kevin Spacey to see what he can do for them?

It also should be noted that the tax havens around the world were not created by plumbers, cooks, or day care workers. They were created by lawyers and so when one is looking for someone to throw rocks at all that is needed is to get over the fairytale that these things magically created themselves somehow. If the legal profession is willing to craft laws that make it possible for individuals and corporations to lie, cheat, steal, and abuse innocent people and collect fees defending those laws, they are as guilty as their clients that paid them to do so.

PREFABRICATING LAWS WITH FLAWS THAT
PROTECT THE RICH AND CRUSH THE POOR

While not all laws fit into this category, in many cases laws are tactically designed to facilitate manipulation by those with deep pockets and the resources to exploit their deliberate weaknesses. The result of this activity is a barrier to entry for those lacking the resources to challenge such laws, tilting the outcome in favor of those with the resources to pay for legal practitioners to put their fingers on the scales. Bad laws and subsequent rulings relying on their precedents build up like atherosclerosis in the body of the nation, eventually resulting in a national malaise difficult to recover from.

The creation of laws as a form of fraud on the public has been perfected in the United States. An organization called the American Legislative Exchange or ALEC states that it: 

"works to advance the fundamental principles of free-market enterprise, limited government, and federalism at the state level through a nonpartisan public-private partnership of America's state legislators, members of the private sector and the general public.  ALEC provides a forum for state legislators and private sector members to collaborate on model bills—draft legislation that members may customize and introduce for debate in their own state legislatures.” 

The only thing missing from ALEC’s description is the vision of the legal sharks circling the body of these laws both in the stage of their creation and their passage, all of which will produce victims or “prey” for years to come. The production of laws for mass manipulation and control of the public are like tsunamis designed to drown the masses, with only their sponsors having lifeboats and the lawyers and corporate beneficiaries all sharks swimming in the debris feeding on the victims of those swept away in the deluge.

Unlike a tsunami however with ALEC’s model bills the waters never recede and the cost of repealing them is so daunting, their abuse may continue forever with severe ramifications on society.  Once a law is on the books, it accumulates legal decisions that set precedents that are like arteriosclerosis, controlling the flow of blood to the body politic, supposedly to create consistency, but in fact resulting in the slow death of the host. 

Deliberately crafting and interpreting laws in a way that permits corrupt and unethical practices to occur, allowing wrongdoers to claim their actions are “legal” under these laws is a deliberate and willful fraud. Doing so undermines public trust in its institutions and their belief in the society they live in.  

And if you really want to get entirely angry at the corrupt system our politicians and lawyers have put together, read the Buzzfeed investigation into the Global Super Court they have put together.

“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.” - Tacitus - The Annals of Imperial Rome

CORRUPTION’S TOLLBOOTH

As touched on, laws can be deliberately crafted so as to avoid being just, fair or to allow a practice that is morally impermissible to become legal, allowing a particular group to exploit a nation and its people for their own gain. The idea that something is “legal” is sold as having some moral authority the public is supposed to accept. However what if the law is a deliberate and calculated fraud? What is its authority, moral or otherwise? The Vietnam war was simply an illegal and criminal act and everyone who went participated in an act of mass murder.  The majority were duped and now to preserve their mental health they have to engage in massive self deception.  Maybe its time to call a spade a spade.

"The legal profession is increasingly a cartel in which lawyers as legislators and regulators spew out endless reams of new statutes and rules requiring an ever larger number of lawyers to argue, judge and arbitrate them. Legal costs to society are more egregious and less excusable than medical costs, and produce far less desirable results. The criminal justice system is an unspeakable cesspool. Here government can do something." – Conrad Black, National Post, November 11, 2016 

As an example, under the law it is entirely possible to move a corporation’s assets and profits from trade in one country to an offshore tax haven and pay little or no tax. Laws can be purposely crafted to make this activity legal, or even more perversely, be so designed as to permit back doors that make off shoring a gray but still legal activity and allow its participants to claim it is within the law. 

Lawyers and accountants have a particular language that they use in describing morally questionable schemes which they impart to their clients to legally frame discussions of tax avoidance so that they never have to admit discussing tax strategies that are criminal in nature. Tax avoidance is framed as tax planning, operating efficiency, best use of funds, and development of global market planning and so on. 

A particularly neat trick is to place money in a tax haven in a corporation there whose shares are owned by a professional nominee. In this circumstance the professional nominee in law is the owner of the shares and the scofflaws hiding money in the nominee’s corporation can legally testify under oath in court in their own countries that they do not own any assets in the tax haven. The tax haven itself assures people who take advantage of these schemes that in their history it has never happened that a nominee absconds with their clients’ funds. Of course if you are a member of a cartel you simply have to know enough about the nominee and every member of his family and have associates murderous enough to eliminate any trace of the nominee and his or her DNA off the face of the earth to have some additional insurance. 

The very idea that a domestically incorporated corporation has international rights, as if the rest of the world is simply the jurisdiction of the country of incorporation, begins to cloud the entire issue of using tax havens and tax avoidance strategies seem legitimate, when they are not. 

In fact making a law “gray” means it is slightly more costly to defend, kind of like treating wounds that joyously never heal and give the gift of the need for perpetual treatment generating fees, drugs and the interaction of a specialist. In these circumstances you will always need the lawyers and their services. What if they have friends in enforcement who at calculated intervals leak, and stir the clients up like frightened monkeys? Oh geez, more fees. No matter how these tax avoidance schemes are drafted they severely damage the country that loses the profits and use of assets to tax havens. 

It is pure fantasy to suggest the clients are completely to blame for this and the poor lawyers are innocent victims when in fact the lawyers who specialize in arranging these type of deals are the real culprits since they offer the skills to create them. The public must hold those responsible for their crafting, passage into law and their ongoing avoidance for the damage done to the nation affected.   

"Corporate ethics and compliance may be similar, but their cores are different. From the perspective of corporate social responsibility, we cannot say that there is no need to question a company's actions just because they are not a crime under the law." - Yanosuke Hirai 

"Big business is not dangerous because it is big, but because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy.” - Woodrow Wilson, 1912 et. al.

CLOSER TO HOME
 
A source I trust unreservedly provided his/her first-hand knowledge of dealings in our legal system that confirm Singapore’s belief it must be monitored and under completely independent scrutiny, like any other public institution subject to corruption. These behaviors include:

• Situations in which prosecutors and defenders work together to decide cases before they ever go to pretrial. An attorney and a prosecutor agree in advance what the outcome of the case will be, which may include trading one client’s outcome in court for another to even the negotiations.  The defendant client may be lied to about what has been agreed in order to extract additional fees from the client. In one example of how this works my source said he sat in the office of a defense attorney while he made a deal with a prosecutor in between arranging lunch at the club for his client not to be convicted and then immediately phoned the client and told the client the prosecutor was intent on maximizing penalties, which would raise costs for his legal defense. Defense counsel pressured the desperate client to commit to coming up with a substantial amount of money to have the fictitious outcome changed. If the client had balked the same barter apparatus would be used to punish him, which spreads the word to hire this lawyer or else suffer the consequences. Given that the lawyer did nothing more than rig the outcome in advance, it appears that in some cases a lawyer’s reputation may be nothing more than a carefully scripted persona which a number of people benefit from supporting. My source said counsel told him the judges presiding over these matters comply with what defense and prosecutors recommended.
  
  Why and how compliance on the bench works my source said he was not privy to, nor did he say he knew who if anyone other than the attorneys collecting these fees are sharing them with the prosecutor and judges involved. While pretrial discussions to lessen caseloads may be normal, shaking down the clients surely cannot be.
  
  If these clients are in the drug trade, the amount of money available as history shows, can be staggering. In addition to the cash available, so are the drugs, and in the case of criminal enterprise defendants, quid pro quo violence. In another article, links are included that show back scratching between criminals and members of the legal system has occurred on an ongoing basis, and that information is only what has been discovered and reported and not what actual independent oversight could reveal. Client privacy on one hand and national security on the other are used to shield disclosure to the mere peons of the world. 
  
  
• In another example, a well-known lawyer with a penchant for gambling but not winning took serious cases for which he would assure the outcome if enough money was paid. He also could arrange to have traffic and drunk driving offenses taken care of, in some cases with a private visit to a judge in his or her chambers.  Apparently the lawyer’s gambling losses mounted to the point that his markers were substantial and he had to try and fix too many matters. The sheer desperation of his situation and his brazenness lead to a criminal investigation of his practice. My source said he/she was questioned by the police about involvement as a client in one of these cases.
  
  
• In another example, evidence damaging to a client with deep pockets was withheld to help the client to avoid an unfavorable decision in a family matter. Lawyers for both sides as a well as a judge and experts brought in to provide opinions all participated in suppressing this material. Lawyers defending the children expressed fear of retribution should they challenge the judge and powerful counsel, and recommended against the material coming out. Keeping the material secret would have created justification, flimsy as it is, that the material was not seen. Eventually the material came out and was disseminated in a way that denial of sight would not work, compelling the police and other agencies to intercede. The fact that the lawyers for the defense, the judge and expert witness were all walking lockstep to prevent this from occurring, and jointly attacked the other party who had children to defend raises questions as to who was being paid for what, or could there have been another goal for suppressing critical information protecting children?  
  
  On one hand withholding information damaging to one side seems to be a problematic tactic in many types of cases, but when all the parties line up to withhold such information something else rotten is happening as well.  The problem is not simply an accident, but appears to be a learned and deliberate tactic that is widely used to control the entire legal process, as these few examples show (e.g. 1), (e.g. 2), (e.g. 3), (e.g. 4), (e.g. 5). 
  
  The importance of the legal profession participating in these situations cannot be underestimated. The only reason, but not a justification, to withhold evidence is to win a case, as if winning at all costs is a reputation building tactic and a wallet liner. However if lawyers are supposed to be examples of forthright citizens, then being seen to be withholding evidence comes with consequences damaging everyone.
  

• A situation in which an admitted murderer could not pay a “proper amount” of legal fees for his defense so counsel found a client willing to pay those fees in exchange for the assurance by counsel that the murderer would be very grateful and feel obliged to assist them in the future. In another article I made reference to American intelligence agencies’ well documented involvement in the drug trade. Providing protection to the dealers facilitates reciprocal arrangements, such as murdering targets of the intelligence agencies for political or military purposes. The benefit is that the murders can be as easily covered up and dismissed by the intelligence agencies in the same way the intelligence agencies involvement in drug dealing is. Lawyers providing a system (defense + prosecution + bench collaboration?) to defend against serious crimes in exchange for large sums of cash, substituted or misdirected fees, or mercenary services, are all of the same model the intelligence services use.
  

• A situation in which a lawyer encouraged criminal activity which he/she said he/she could successfully defend in exchange for a percentage of the profits. The client did not agree, recognizing the fact that the lawyer could take the payments in cash for as long as it lasted, deny any agreement existed and in a question of credibility, the lawyer would have the upper hand over the client.  It would have been easy for to counsel to cover his/her tracks by tipping off the crown to a criminal act, which would lead to another arrest and in the trial if there was no plea deal, substitute the onside judge for an offside judge who throws the book at the client. Then counsel could plead bad luck for what happened and go for a larger share of the pie in round two.
  
  
• A situation in which a bouncer killed a brawler outside a bar and who was able to lower his legal fees for his defense by finding someone to “take care of” a person allegedly having an affair with a person related to counsel, quid pro quo. My source said as an ironic aside unbeknownst to counsel the person to be taken care of was a former client, a scoundrel to be sure, but who obviously had bad boy appeal to the person with whom the affair occurred. (He was unable to sit down after taking a bullet in his posterior apparently while jumping out a window in a failed criminal interaction in a major seaport city.) Perhaps having his ass shot up by a member of the mob provided a bad boy appeal to certain types of women, although I would think his longevity would be an issue. Or on the other hand perhaps not, he may not have been expected to be around long enough to complicate things.
  
  
• A situation in which a lawyer counseled on ways to avoid prosecution for possession of commercial quantities of drugs. One proposed solution for distributing drugs from the dealer’s home from time to time was to hide the drugs in an overcoat obviously much too large for the dealer, and leave the coat in an entranceway hallway. If the dealer was ever raided, he/she could claim no knowledge as to the contents of the coat pockets and who owned it, claiming someone attending one of many parties may have left it. It is a reasonable argument that one would not search a guests’ clothing, assuming the guest would return for their coat. This provides a plausible OJ defense, which would be even more plausible if a cooperating judge was on the bench and allowed the defense to be persuasive. The closeness of judges to counsel, many coming from the same firms, raises the possibility of these situations arising. 
  
  Singapore’s solution is to surveil these situations in great detail and if a crime is suspected, lawyers’ and judges’ communications can be monitored and once it is clear a crime is occurring, use the Prevention of Corruption Act to audit their complete finances. Even hiding their own paperwork in client’s files will not work.  The recent cases investigating Trump should make it abundantly clear  privileged communications must be looked at with a completely jaundiced eye.

• A situation in which at a friendlier time a lawyer admitted to being partners with his client and once the deal was concluded lied about legal terms of the agreement he was party to and sued the party he and his client had made a deal with. My source said the matter was reported to the legal authority that should be responsible for looking into conflicts with lawyers, and they did nothing but disparage the accuser. The lawyer’s partner was simultaneously engaging in defrauding the US government over a lengthy period of time and at a later date in another matter started an enterprise defrauding patients with a debilitating long term illness for millions of dollars, falsely posing as a medical doctor. 
  
  The defrauding of the US government and terminally ill patients left a paper trail of fraud and deceit. Of particular interest, in the case of defrauding the US government, the client was partners with another firm that participated in crafting the scheme to defraud the US government and divvy up the ill-gotten gains.  The ill-gotten funds were held in escrow in the event that the parties were caught and were forced to pay duties and any penalties owing. The client and the partner in the scheme to defraud the US government ended up suing each other over the division of the ill-gotten gains held in escrow, and my source said it was interesting to see the cryptic wording both parties engaged in in their court filings to avoid coming out and directly saying the money they defrauded the US government of should be divided this way. Clearly the body responsible for regulating the affairs of counsel were more concerned about maintaining the farce that their members are above reproach than investigating malfeasance which lead to serious criminal activity the lawyer protected had some hand in counseling. It is also interesting to consider how lawyers for both sides could tiptoe around defrauding the US government and not be complicit in the fraud.  The lawyers involved were members of the family of the parties in the scheme, and both were members of prominent firms.
  
  
• A situation in which a lawyer acted for a client who lied about the terms of a transaction involving leased property, and a license impacting a government regulatory authority.  The lawyer and client attempted to mislead the courts on what was a well-documented matter, so that the client could swindle the government for monies not owing. My source told me he handed this same lawyer a large sum of cash, if I remember correctly, more than $10,000 in a paper bag at the courtroom door on another matter and that he kept a picture of the money, the bag it was in and recorded the transfer at the hand off. Moreover, counsel for the government, who I believe to be highly reputable, knew in advance that the government in fact was privy to the entire transaction impacting the government regulatory authority and that a senior member of the government had provided the wording in the real estate lease in question. The only way to reasonably launch a lawsuit in this matter would be if the lawyer and his client believed the government did not know what was going on, or they believed the judge was in their pocket and would side against the government absent damning testimony. If memory serves me the amount sought was in the neighborhood of $750,000.
  
  
• A trusted source laid out in great detail how he/she paid a major law firm to write a set of municipal laws with flaws, and what it took to put those laws on the books. The laws had a non-obvious back door used to avoid the impact the law created would have on his/her business. He/she said passing this law was amazingly simple since the source had created relationships with politicians ready to introduce the law, lobby for its passage and the source had money to PURCHASE the news coverage required to enlist public support, praising the law and the politicians behind it. The law was propagandized as being in the public interest, which garnered additional news coverage. The process works exactly as designed by ALEC.
  
  Neither the laws created nor the news about them have to actually be in the public interest, they simply must be capable of being framed that way in public discourse so as to give that appearance.  J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI understand perception equaling reality:  
  
  
  "Purpose of counter-intelligence action is to disrupt and it is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge. If facts are present it aids in the success of the proposal but the Bureau feels … that disruption can be accomplished without facts to back it up."  - J. Edgar Hoover
  
  
  Politicians push these laws through for many reasons, from payoffs to publicity. Payoffs can be future employment, seats on corporate boards, lobbying positions in the future, campaign support, financial favors, public image building etc., especially in an election year.
  
  
• My source told me that in the same way he/she was able to craft a law that did not meet its advertised purpose he/she spoke to the Chief of Police of a city of 4,000,000 people who once told him/her their legal department had a similar law on the books that was completely unconstitutional but the people these laws affected were either too dumb or too poor to fight them. He said the city's legal department had been successfully prosecuting these laws for many years. When you add up the budgets for enforcement, and all of the legal and enforcement costs such laws generate, you pretty much can understand the game.
  
  
• In another example, my source was involved in investigating gaming licenses for a major foreign firm. At a meeting with a key person in the government gaming authority responsible for issuing gaming licenses that person stated that there were additional fees for the application process, which could be expedited should they use his expertise. His “consulting” fee was $15,000.00 and he stated that the application also had to be prepared by a particular major law firm which required a retainer of $50,000.00 to prepare it.
  
  When my source questioned why that particular law firm had to be used he said he was told this firm did all of the licenses that had been approved to date and had the specialized expertise to navigate the approval process, expertise no other firm possessed.  He said if they wanted a license in a timely basis with assurance it would be approved, they should pay the fees.
  
  Two things were obvious; this process revealed first that the licensing process had been corrupted. Secondly, a number of the firms that already held licenses were taking a percentage of the wagers, which was illegal in the jurisdiction in question. Those firms could only operate the way they were if the people in the regulatory body responsible for their licenses either profited directly, or were paid to look the other way. It also raises the question as to the law firm being in cahoots with the licensee in designing a strategy that allowed the licensee to skate on the edge of the law or step over it just far enough to increase profits and still be defensible.
  
  A number of firms that were licensed by the gaming authority lost their gaming licenses for breaking the gaming laws. Unknown to the gaming official asking for a consulting fee, one of the people he met with had a seat on a foreign gaming commission and was legally obligated to report any request for bribes to them as well as officials in the home jurisdiction. This eventually resulted in substantive changes in the gaming authority's operation. As an aside, what was interesting is the manner in which the gaming authority handled the matter. Rather than publicly exposing corruption in the gaming authority which would have severely damaged its public trust, it made  dramatic changes in its operating structure which allowed for the displacement of officials suspected of criminal activity while preserving the appearance of unquestioned integrity.
  
  
• I was involved discussions about setting up a business in a tax haven, and as a part of those discussions I noted counsel politely scripted language that could potentially change tax planning from an "its the law" activity, although not ethical, moral, just or right activity, to criminal tax avoidance. For example, if someone were to say they did not want to pay the government taxes in their jurisdiction of residence, wanted to know how to set up a scheme to avoid doing so, they would be in violation of the law. But if their language were scripted to suggest that their business had immediate plans to operate in multiple jurisdictions and for purposes of business efficiency it would be better to have an intermediary jurisdiction offshore, this would get around the semantics problem.

With regards to these cases, some may question why they are not being reported to the authorities or the group charged with policing their own profession. Read everything I document in all of the linked articles in my site and you decide if there is any point in doing that or simply educating the public on how to catch and observe these practices, document them fully, let the anger and horror build, and then at the right time confront the situation in every way possible that an outraged populace has to respond. 

 

THE LAW, OVERSIGHT, AND TOO SELF-RIGHTEOUS TO INVESTIGATE? 

Some years ago, John Hanam, founding Director of Singapore’s Central Narcotics Bureau and his wife Lillian were guests in our home for dinner. John Haman was one of the architects of Singapore’s drug laws, which are regarded as being singularly tough globally. John Hanam’s sister and members of their intelligent and interesting family have been friends for many years. 

The stories about Singapore's tough laws are well known, and I was curious in knowing how Singapore’s tough laws were developed.  In the course of the evening I asked John Hanam about the creation of these laws.  John Hanam explained that he was a numbers guy by profession and said Lee Kuan Yew (“LKY”) the founding Prime Minister of Singapore dispatched him around the world to survey the legal systems of numerous countries and come up with a report on which laws would impact corruption and the trade in illicit drugs in Singapore.

John Hanam said his report included a number of extremely onerous laws in the report he delivered to LKY in spite of which he was told to implement the laws as he described them in his report. He confessed that he was shocked at that directive given the harshness of some of the positions he outlined, expecting at least some debate and discussion, but said there was none. LKY pushed through a comprehensive anti-drug and anti-corruption framework covering the country’s laws, their enforcement, the public service and public outreach.  

John Haman said one step in dealing with corruption and the illicit drug trade is to confront the problem of the business being conducted in cash and other forms of payment obscured as to their origin. In order to follow the trail of illicit funds Singapore’s Prevention of Corruption Act places:

"the burden of proof on an accused to show that they acquired their wealth legally and any unexplained wealth disproportionate to known sources of income is presumed to be from graft and can be confiscated. The Prevention of Corruption Act provides for extra-territorial jurisdiction, so that the actions of Singaporean citizens and corporations overseas are treated the same as actions committed in Singapore, regardless of whether such corrupt acts have consequences for Singapore.”

Another step John Hanam said Singapore took to stamp out corruption was to provide stringent oversight of the systems that administer Singapore’s laws and defend law breakers, which includes lawyers, judges, prosecutors and the enforcement divisions. John Haman said this group professes honesty, and under the refuge of that inference they presume to be exempt from the external oversight necessary to prevent their inflicting considerable ill on a nation, which includes facilitating corruption at the highest levels of the legal system, government and corporations.

Singapore’s Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) is solely responsible for the investigation of corruption in Singapore and answers directly to the Prime Minister, not the Attorney General, which should help to prevent illicit interference from the legal community. The legal community is regarded as providing a public service to the community and is as susceptible to corruption as anyone else in a position of authority. It cannot avoid the scrutiny of Singapore’s Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, which is as it should be. 

To facilitate transparency and public trust, no agency responsible for the disposition of justice should be allowed to self-regulate without oversight. And that oversight to be legitimate must have representation of a mix of citizens rich or poor and selected randomly. There are those that would argue that only those trained in the profession should be allowed to provide oversight, since they are trained in the nuances of the profession they are regulating. Singapore begs to differ and so should you.  All oversight should be external to the body being regulated.

"People do what you inspect, not what you expect" - Louis V. Gerstner Jr. Chairman of the Board. IBM

Public trust in public institutions is lowest in democracies. And although capitalism and democracies coexist, the public perception of their institutions is highest in Scandinavian countries which many regard as being more socialistic. Denmark, ranked as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, has similar anti-corruption laws to those in Singapore and which are also strictly enforced. Denmark is also regarded as having one of the most honest legal systems, and yet a lack of observable corruption is not an indication that there is no corruption.

The constant stream of disclosures about the secret use of tax havens makes that abundantly clear. Secrecy hides corrupt and unethical practices and enables them to flourish. And in every case there will be lawyers and law firms engineering their operation and feigning innocence, shifting blame to their clients for failing to disclose to them the true nature of their business. 

 “There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.”  -  Joseph Pulitzer

Another point John Hanam emphasized was that a critical component of Singapore’s anti-corruption effort was enjoining its citizens in fighting corruption, reporting it when they suspect it and strongly condemning those involved.  A quote by LKY reflects that reality:  

 “The strongest deterrent is in a public opinion which censures and condemns corrupt persons; in other words, in attitudes which make corruption so unacceptable that the stigma of corruption cannot be washed away by serving a prison sentence.”- Lee Kuan Yew 

“Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.” - James Madison, Public Opinion, December 19, 1791 

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A PRIVILEGED CONFESSIONAL  

Lawyers can be like lamps to moths full of treachery and deceit, along with all those wronged by the moths. The files and communications of this group are a treasure trove of secret and damning information. In a world in which average citizens, innocent people with no criminal past whatsoever are routinely surveilled for pernicious purposes, expecting the communications of drug dealers, murderers, frauds, terrorists and tax scofflaws among a host of other people deserving of scrutiny, including those that counsel them, to avoid oversight is ludicrous. Singapore placed the oversight of this group in a completely independent agency precisely so that they could be observed in secrecy. 

It is certain intelligence agencies have records of all of these communications, ostensibly justifying their snooping with the claim illicit funds finance terrorist activities, crimes against the state and so on. If the spy agencies and their contractors are willing to spy on friends and allies, it would take real hubris to believe they are not spying on law firms and their clients. 

When you look at the leaks attributed to employees that ensnared firms providing services in offshore entities, and if you have any sense at all of how intelligence services operate, you cannot exclude their role in making these leaks happen. They are one heck of a way to shake down scofflaws to ensure compliance. 

The Mueller investigation of Russian interference in the election of Trump is a good example of this. To date the investigation has not shown any proof that Trump was elected by Russian interference.  What it is doing however is threatening every politician by showing unlimited resources can be thrown at them and their associates' activities, even using laws so obscure counsel had to wear dust masks to open the books to find anything completely unrelated to the original purpose.  It also shows the spy agencies with their unlimited technology have access to all of their files, which is proven by the fact that virtually any decent hackers can get at their communications, and that with this information a compliant press can be manipulated into destroying the target. I would say J. Edgar Hoover's skulduggery is now a mainstream information weapon in the intelligence community's disruption arsenal. 

What it also does is dump all of those investigated into a pit of fee vipers, the legal community, who are only too happy for the conflict. Given the legal system's hooks into the fabric of the nation and their influence over politics it is unlikely the nation will see them willing to change their behavior any time soon.  

And finally what it does is create a massive trove of information that the whistle blowers of the world can see and eventually, one way or another potentially disclose.  Moreover, one would have to be really delusional to believe that anyone learning what is going on will not do something about it in the future when they know how to.  

<Click> for commentary on believing anything the government says.

SLOPPINESS IN THE CONFESSIONAL

One example I forgot to mention included a law firm a source was dealing with. The source was supposed to drop off some signed papers early in the morning. When the source arrived at the law firm its front doors were open. No one was in the offices. The source checked in a number of offices and the staff room looking for someone in the building and came across the file room. It had thousands of client files. The source decided to teach the firm a lesson for poor security and reorganized a fair number of files, changing folder locations and the files in the folders including numerous files slated for filing. There is no way the firm's staff could overlook the cockup and yet they never once mentioned they had been subject to a breach. So not only is deliberate and undetectable spying a threat, sloppiness is another.  

DISGUST IN THE CONFESSIONAL

In addition, while lawyers' licentiousness may be aroused by the lure of fees, low wage employees that work at the firm may shockingly express dismay at some the activities engaged in, with predictable consequences in the future.

WHAT TO DO

The colonists freed themselves from the imperial rule of Britain, to have a new and better life based on grand ideas. Those ideas were not perfect, but of all the nations on earth at the time, the colonist struggle for independence and freedom from oppression inspired what developed into one of the most advanced and powerful nations in history.

Unfortunately self interest and greed have screwed it up. Maintaining grand ideas is work and requires self sacrifice. My bet is if you are really honest in private, and if you are making a good living and are comfortable, and have children and grandchildren you are concerned about, you may not want to disrupt that comfortable position to experiment with something new, possibly risking everything in the process. That dilemma has placed the world where it is today, and it is understandable.

The problem is, we need a new way of doing things and no one really wants to upset a position of advantage. But if we don't, the people who have managed to corrupt things at the top will end up screwing everyone, you, me, and far more worrying, the future of our children. Three of the most effective smart guys I have ever studied looked at the problem this way:

If you read all of the links in this site it should be plain to see that almost all of what is documented is not well known. Secrecy and lack of publication is used to hide it.  This is what you do about it:

• Where it is legal to do so, record every conversation you have with a lawyer and in court proceedings. If your right to protect yourself in that way has been blocked by the courts, bring a second person to court with you who is not part of the case to monitor the proceedings. Afterwards, while everything is fresh in your mind, make extensive notes of everything that occurs, as accurately as you can. When you are done, sign and date them and have a third person witness them and keep these documents in a safe place. If they are Word documents, back them up and if you have a scanner, scan and save a copy of the signed originals or take a clear photograph of these documents from your phone and save them off your phone to a USB stick. Keeping an accurate record of events and conversations is not a concept that has any jurisdictional boundaries.  James Comey did it and so did Andrew McCabe.
  
  
• When you encounter any behavior by an individual or corporation that you believe is wrong, unethical or in any way prejudices or interferes with your rights, make detailed notes, protect them as described above, and then send a written copy to the person or corporation you believe are violating your rights or behaving unethically. Ask for a written response. When and if you get it, respond logically and with as much clarity as possible and continue the correspondence until the matter is resolved satisfactorily. This record is important.  
  
  
• When a issue appears on a local regional or national level that in your opinion violates your sense of right, fair play or ethical boundaries, again write to the offending parties, again protecting the documentation. Follow it through as always.
  
  
• Read all of the links in this article. Understand how laws may be purposely and deceitfully crafted to exploit you and other members of society. A law that is crafted to injure, destroy, deny or simply fail to protect you is a fraud. Simply writing about it and objecting is not enough. Do not expect anyone, especially the lawyers that wrote this law and the courts that uphold it to protect you from it. You must protect yourself. You do that by withholding your money and your ability to document everything. If you are accurate in detecting corrupt, unethical and abusive behavior you will get public support. If you are attacked for doing so, even better, especially if the attack is full of lies and misrepresentation. Think of David vs Goliath. 
  
  
• Do not expect the media to publish your concerns. More than likely they will not. They are setup to protect their advertisers, sponsors and the status quo. Read the story of the Boston Globe's reporting on abuse in the Catholic Church in Boston. Watch the movie about it to get an idea of the effort made to suppress the story. This type of suppression is even worse when it comes to corporate advertisers who support a compliant media with advertising dollars. In upcoming articles I will show you how to self publish and to self promote. p2p.media is not a pretty site. Making a pretty one is easy if you want to spend the time, but that is for another article.

• Understand the power of exposure and attention. Secrecy is the weapon of scoundrels. That weapon can be destroyed. Never give up and never conform. 

“Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.” - James Madison, Public Opinion, December 19, 1791