After a nearly two-decade long federal government career which culminated in four long and successful years of cracking down on U.S. persons who dare to have bank accounts where they live, Jennifer Shasky Calvery has resigned from her position as director of FinCEN to join HSBC, says Reuters.
FinCEN (the Financial “Crimes” Enforcement Network) is the agency of the U.S. Treasury Department which imperiously refuses to use its clear statutory authority to exempt emigrants and accidental Americans (not even eight-month-old babies) from pointless, duplicative FBAR paperwork and threatens us with life-altering fines for innocent errors, while HSBC is a London-headquartered bank which laundered billions for Mexican drug cartels while burying ordinary accountholders under byzantine “anti-money-laundering” procedures. I’m sure Ms. Shasky Calvery will fit right in at her new office.
Early media reports have not clarified where Ms. Shasky Calvery will be located for her new posting, but for her sake she’d better hope it’s not at the head office in the UK — where she’d get to experience for the first time the misery she inflicted on the rest of us with that clunky, barely-functional online-only system for filing FBARs. (Meanwhile, Homelanders who want to file paper forms for their ordinary, law-abiding financial activities continue to be able to do so.)
Just when I think it can’t get any more bizarre, it does.
This is just like U.S. Ambassador to Canada “Not after Canadian Grandmas” Jacobson becoming Vice-Chair of BMO American operations. Maybe even worse.
For our international friends, BMO is one of the Big Five Canadian banks with operations in the U.S.
We and Baby Elle are deemed to be the suspicious ones while this kind of unscrupulous nonsense is going on at such senior levels.
I don’t think even Orwell could have conceived this happening.
Meanwhile, why are Snowden and Greenwald so silent on FATCA? I tweeted them numerous times and e-mailed Greenwald when he was still at the Guardian.
Where was the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network when the criminal banksters running big Wall Street banks brought the world financial system to the brink requiring massive taxpayer bailouts to prevent total collapse? To this day, not a single one of them has faced any consequences for what they did. FinCEN could vanish tomorrow and nobody would even notice.
I don’t find it at all “bizarre” that this woman now goes to work for HSBC. We all need to wake up and realize that FinCEN, the major banks, the politicians, the IRS and The Treasury are all part of an interconnected mafia. Different mafia families, but all working together, just like the real mafia does. All employing the same subversive mafia-like techniques of extortion, threats, fines, penalties, secrecy and going after the weakest and those with the least defence. The entire FATCA and FBAR story is like a chapter right out of the mafia handbook. The banks, like HSBC, all agreed to play this diabolic FATCA game, under the guise of preventing tax evasion, when they themselves are and have been guilty of the most egregious financial crimes themselves. Birds of a feather flock together…
@ O’Connor
Right you are!
No doubt there has been real risk of 8 month old babies in other countries as vehicles for money laundering!
I am trying to think of some concept of balance. Within the borders of the US it has been said that it is better to let 10 guilty go free then 1 innocent declared guilty. In our case, something like not justified to burden the 10 to capture the one guilty – actually much greater numbers. Although some may say something similar about US gun laws burdening the many to thwart the few – although that is life and death. May someone dig up such balance principle and highlight injustices for US persons overseas.
“… just like the real mafia does.”
Uh, they are the real mafia! A shakedown is a shakedown is a shakedown.
Her reward for going easy on HSBC. Following the law is only for the little people.
Let’s see… she lacks integrity, morality, dignity, humanity, compassion and a conscience. A b*tch like her will be well-qualified to work at HSBC.
Revolving door. Same deal as with defence and other porkbarrel domains
Well, even if she does go to work at HSBC London, she probably won’t be in the same boat as us. Really wealthy temporarily immigrant employees in the U.K. can benefit from non-dom status for years, although the benefits taper off. She would have to pay a sum to the U.K. government but it would be deductible from her U.S. taxes, and she could very well end up being only fully subject to U.S. regs during her time in London.
HSBC, though. That lot should have had their license yanked. What’s next, the head of the EPA going off to work for Volkswagen?
I’m trying to remember the name of the US government official who regularly issued lots of public threats against those living outside the US with local legal bank accounts, whose CV bragged that she previously defended the Marcos estate against the IRS and then switched sides?
Here we are, it was Kathryn Keneally, Asst Attorney General, Tax Division (April 6, 2012 up to June 5, 2014 );
https://www.dlapiper.com/en/us/people/k/kathryn-keneally/?tab=experience
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/8155-another-fox-guarding-the-henhouse-obamas-doj-tax-division-assistant-attorney-general-nominee
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2013/02/01/jack-townsend-warnings-on-continued-government-patience-for-offshore-account-ostriches-13113/comment-page-2/#comment-978172
Armed with her experience defending the estate of Ferdinand Marcos, Kenneally was very keen on herding all “UStaxableperson” minnows, with legal local accounts and no US tax owed, living outside the US to rush to enter the OVDI/P minnow decimation factory;
http://federaltaxcrimes.blogspot.ca/2013/01/warnings-on-continued-government.html
@Blaze
Like you, I often wonder why Glenn Greenwald turns a blind eye to FATCA. It’s not like he’s unaware. This recent Intercept article mentions it (semi-favourably) and several commenters try to set the author straight: https://theintercept.com/2016/04/17/heres-a-way-to-shut-down-panama-papers-style-tax-havens-if-we-wanted-to/?comments=1#comments I think FATCA is simply on the list of things that Greenwald just isn’t interested in – so surprising given its assault on privacy and the fact that Greenwald must be filing in those forms every year….
HSBC escaped US money-laundering charges after UK intervention
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/11/hsbc-us-money-laundering-george-osborne-report