So, in a post-911 world, it's not even possible to categorically determine the owner of an international cargo ship due to the fact that mazes of opaque offshore (shell) company ownership is still not just possible and easy, but effectively "the norm".
No invasion or bombing of any country is going to affect the facilitation of terrorist funding anywhere near the action of restricting trade for companies that have these byzantine ownership structures that shield the actual owners and profiteers from identification. Anything other than shutting this farcical, gaping, cargo-ship sized hole in "international business" is, purely and simply, only theatrical effort against terrorism. It's actually worse than that because it's appearing to do something; claiming that efforts are being made, whilst it continues unabated.
This comment is hilarious - you are aware that there is no "post 911 world" in 90% of the world, right? Its just a blip in a history book. Pretty sure any regulation which was put in place in America after 911 has nothing to do with any of the countries which are involved in this story.
Yeah... that's very good point. From my point of view as Polish citizen 911 is a problem that US developed for itself through their actions in the Middle East.
I don't want to sound insensitive, 3 thousand people is of course a tragedy, but on a scale of entire Earth I think it is preposterous for US citizens to get obsessed after this one when more kids are dying to malaria every single day or for multitude of other problems.
Looking from my point of view, it is that US rallies for some causes where it seems to suit US interests. There are so many countries that need help but in recent years whether a country gets US presence seems largely dependent on whether there is oil there and US is all too happy to turn their face away if the government of the oil-rich country is collaborating with US. This is a sore to many eyes and I just can't help to remember it whenever I hear of US trying to seem to be beneficiary in something.
This unfortunately adds fire to the trouble in the Middle East. If you are islamic radical it is extremely easy to recruit people by showing them factual, real, undeniable misbehavior of US. This lack of moral grounding is exactly the reason why actions by US do not bring expected effects. Local population treats US forces with resentment not because they are fundamentally anti-US but because they see US as a corrupt replacement for their current corrupt government.
A larger lesson is that you want somebody teach virtuous behavior you need to be able to show the virtue yourself or you are not going to achieve very much in terms of results.
---
Also, my experience about downvotes is this kind of comment even if genuinely to show what's an example of sentiment outside of US, will typically get a lot of upvotes during US night time and then gets suddenly killed when US wakes up.
Just an interesting thing I noticed which, for me, validates the whole point that US doesn't like to acknowledge resentment it gets from most of the world and that US problems aren't actually the same as world problems regardless of how US would like to portray it.
> I think it is preposterous for US citizens to get obsessed after this one when more kids are dying to malaria every single day or for multitude of other problems.
Heck, many US citizens don't seem to care that about the same number of people killed on 9/11 are dying every 2 days in the US from a virus that their leader continually downplays as he dithers about recommending quack "cures" that will somehow magically make up for his incompetence in handling said virus.
Edit: to be clear, I was not defending Trump. I've never supported him, although I'm not afflicted by this burning obsession with him so many have. I'd delete this comment if I could.
I was just confused about the fact that the user referred to "we" Americans a few comments ago, and now used the term "they". I thought it was some kind of trolling - someone taking on different personnages in different comments.
It honestly didn't occur to me that there would be a political reason for it, or I wouln't have bothered responding.
I do agree with your sentiment here, but to clarify: 272,000 children died of maleria in 2018, or 745 per day. Still a terrible number, and I don't think anyone would say that its okay if it takes a week for as many children to die from malaria as were lost on 9/11, but statics do matter
Yeah, you are right. I thought I remember the number but was too lazy to actually find it again. You caught me:) Still, not too far off.
But death is just one aspect. The kids could be better educated and really, this doesn't cost as much as one would portray especially now with remote schooling when a single teacher can "service" a large number of kids with no need for physical presence. The technology is there, we just need a little push to make better use of it. Better educated populations tend to produce less violence and I like to think better future.
I agree with some of your foundational sentiments, but as long as we're deviating from the topic of discussion, Poland's hands have been far from clean, too, the past 100 years. What Poles did to European Jews was truly horrific (US immorally turned many of them away, but we didn't slaughter them wholesale like many Poles did in places like Jedwabne).
By the way, as you likely know, it's illegal now in your country to even mention the fact that Poles willingly participated in the Holocaust in such places (whereas I'm free to describe My Lai and Abu Ghraib).
Right now, the US has power, and often misuses it just like Poland has at times when it has had power. China often misuses its power. It's almost like there's something to do with power, abuse, and corruption.
> it is that US rallies for some causes where it seems to suit US interests
Let me introduce you to the concept of the nation-state.
> to get obsessed after this one when more kids are dying to malaria every single day or for multitude of other problems.
For the same reason as we treat murder victims differently than people who die from some tragic but preventable disease. Are those two on the same moral plane to you?
> validates the whole point that US doesn't like to acknowledge resentment it gets from most of the world
Interestingly, the US is up and awake, yet you have not been downvoted into grey, and many of the comments disagreeing with you have been. So you were wrong here.
Edit: To the folks downvoting because I mentioned downvotes, I respect and applaud your adherence to HN guidelines. But please be sure to downvote the parent comment for moral consistency, since he brought it up in the first place.
Do you know what happened in Jedwabne? That was not an organized nation state attack on its minority, it was pent up hate in the local population that was released with an aggreement of o Nazi occupation force because people felt they can do whatever they want and decided to act on their hatred.
For hundreds of years Poland did not govern its own territory and was split between neighbors who were not interested in resolving any of the growing problems between minorities and poles.
At the time of Jedwabne Poland as nation state did not exist, the government was truly symbolic, on emigration. Before II WW there was barely 20 years of Polish government during which time there was much other problems (ever heard of Russia invading Poland after WW1?) There was in fact a lot of racism towards Jews in that time but no organized efforts or pogroms. This only came after the government was removed and replaced by Nazi occupation.
If you compare it to current US situation, if the government stopped working completely, I am sure as hell there would be civil war between white and black population. Without damper from effective government there would be no more civility that was here during Nazi occupation.
Also, regardless,
one nation state abusing power is no excuse for another doing the same.
Resolving any kind of problem with a background of hostilities must start with ceasing of at least some of them. You can't keep escalating the conflict under pretense the other side did that in the past and call yourself peace force at the same time.
> it was pent up hate in the local population that was released with an aggreement of o Nazi occupation force because people felt they can do whatever they want and decided to act on their hatred
In my opinion much more damning than the actions of a government - not necessarily explicitly supported by the population.
> Do you know what happened in Jedwabne? That was not an organized nation state attack on its minority, it was pent up hate in the local population that was released with an aggreement of o Nazi occupation force because people felt they can do whatever they want and decided to act on their hatred.
Yes, I'm well aware. That's a perfect example of absolute power. The local populace were free to do as they wanted, with no constraints.
BTW, do you know what happened in Iraq? It was "pent-up anger" about 9/11, directed at the wrong people.
But as you say, none of this excuses Jedwabne or Iraq.
> At the time of Jedwabne Poland as nation state did not exist, the government was truly symbolic, on emigration. Before II WW there was barely 20 years of Polish government during which time there was much other problems (ever heard of Russia invading Poland after WW1?) There was in fact a lot of racism towards Jews in that time but no organized efforts or pogroms. This only came after the government was removed and replaced by Nazi occupation.
And I could come up with a bunch of excuses here for US behavior. BTW, claiming Poland was a "people" and not a "nation-state" is a complete cop-out for Poland's Holocaust atrocities.
> If you compare it to current US situation, if the government stopped working completely, I am sure as hell there would be civil war between white and black population.
No. Black US population is about 15%. It wouldn't be a civil war - it would be a massacre, which is why I and many others have been trying against all hope to calm down current tensions. I've worked in an "intersectional conflict zone" - I know what people can do to each other. It can absolutely happen in the US if we don't take care.
> one nation state abusing power is no excuse for another doing the same.
Yes, I totally agree.
BTW, I noticed you didn't address any of my other points.
You're missing the point. The reference to 9/11 was meant to indicate that since then tracing transactions worldwide got a lot stricter due to pressure from US to international banking systems.
> when more kids are dying to malaria every single day or for multitude of other problems.
Not in America.
> US rallies for some causes where it seems to suit US interests.
Yes, we act in support of national interests, like every country.
> There are so many countries that need help but in recent years whether a country gets US presence seems largely dependent on whether there is oil there and US is all too happy to turn their face away if the government of the oil-rich country is collaborating with US.
America is not out to save the world and this is a good thing. There is nothing worse than some outsider coming in to save the poor savages from their own evil selves. It’s not our job to pass judgement on others or to fix every problem in the world, unless it is in the national interest (even then I’d say the US has too many interests but that’s another issue).
> This unfortunately adds fire to the trouble in the Middle East. If you are islamic radical it is extremely easy to recruit people by showing them factual, real, undeniable misbehavior of US.
This is laughable. Compare The US to the regimes in that area in terms of “misbehavior”. America has nothing to be ashamed of there.
> I think it is preposterous for US citizens to get obsessed after this one when more kids are dying to malaria every single day or for multitude of other problems.
This is like saying it’s preposterous to get obsessed with kids dying from malaria when more people die from heart disease.
You can care about more than one thing.
Not surprising the one tragedy that happened in front of our faces on national television affected us a lot.
Currently, every person must die of something at some point.
The tragedy is when somebody's life is cut short well before their natural end for reasons that could be easily fixed / avoided if we just applied ourselves better.
That is why heart disease and malaria are two entirely different things in my opinion. Heart disease happens mostly to older people who had their entire life to make right choices but were maybe, like me, too lazy to do it, while kids who die of malaria are basically completely innocent and had no saying or influence on their situation.
It also seems fighting malaria is much easier than fighting heart disease.
Now, I agree that we could and should do better to invest more into researching how we can make advanced age more satisfying to population of the earth and this means also learning how to help with heart problems en masse and not just to people who have enough funds to get adequate care and enough intelligence to prevent large portion of the risk in the first place.
Malaria is just one of the examples. I don't say we should put everything away and just focus on it. I would like that we identified where we could spend a relatively small portion of GDP to get a lot of good. Just imagine how much good could happen if entire world spent 5 times more money on health and health-related research than on military. Would you be willing to spend 10% of your income to get better health and longer when you are old? I would, for sure.
> The tragedy is when somebody's life is cut short well before their natural end for reasons that could be easily fixed / avoided if we just applied ourselves better.
of course you will be down voted (if not flagged) when americans wake up, its precisely their denial and ignorance which enable their government to continue to make the world a worse place through direct or indirect military intervention, hard/soft coups through support of opposition parties, systematic undermining of free press in other countries, etc. Be it the middle east, south america, africa, etc. while simultaneously being able to feel good about themselves or at the very least hold on to their delusional idea of american exceptionalism. Meanwhile the entire world perceives the US as a bully, liar and rogue nation that will only ever prioritize their own interests over anyone elses detriment.
To be honest, all people tend to be in denial and ignorant. You are ignorant. I am ignorant. Everybody is ignorant of overwhelming majority of what is happening in the world or our heads would immediately explode.
Singling out US and US citizens for this is wrong and unfair.
What I am talking about is a series of bad decisions with repercussions that should be predictable. I mean, if you constantly cheat and are dishonest with family you live with it is no surprise that at some point they will stop liking you? Don't act stupid repeating how good and fantastic you are. Don't blame the family for not liking you. If you want people to genuinely like you then start acting the part without strings attached and hidden interests.
FWIW I'm downvoting because your grab-bag of opinions about 9/11 and America is irrelevant to GP's point and high-grade flamebait, not because it's trite and poorly reasoned.
>I don't want to sound insensitive, 3 thousand people is of course a tragedy, but on a scale of entire Earth I think it is preposterous for US citizens to get obsessed after this one when more kids are dying to malaria every single day or for multitude of other problems.
>will typically get a lot of upvotes during US night time and then gets suddenly killed when US wakes up.
I don't know about the downvotes, but you're presenting a false equivalency that doesn't make any sense and is kind of insulting to me as an American. Specifically about Malaria, which a US president has created a program to address https://www.usaid.gov/global-health/health-areas/malaria. America sends billions of dollars worth of aid and supplies around the world every year. But to hear Europeans talk about it, the only thing America does is cause problems for them with our imperialism.
Sometimes I wish America would just listen to Europe and let them fend for themselves. Let their navies handle global piracy and securing global shipping lanes for their interests. Let their armies deal with Russian and Chinese saber rattling and the effect that will have on trade. Sometimes I wish I could go back and tell the government to let European militaries spend their own money to launch and maintain GPS systems that the entire western world has been given and using for the past 40 years, paid for by American taxpayers.
>A larger lesson is that you want somebody teach virtuous behavior you need to be able to show the virtue yourself or you are not going to achieve very much in terms of results.
Very ironic, since you're doing the same thing to America / Americans. What part of you and your society is so virtuous that you feel the need to give America a lesson on how to be virtuous?
US has lost its high moral standing in the world in the same way that Google lost its standing with the technologists on HN. But those on the inside tend to be oblivious to these facts.
Your proposal that the US leave Europe to fend for itself was couched as a threat. I think it would be a worthwhile experiment. Not as a punishment, but as a liberation.
Would bad things happen? Of course! Different bad things than happen now, perhaps. Then again, maybe a lot of the same bad things. Would good things happen? Who could doubt it? How absurd to think that everything is better if controlled by the US.
And, as a USian, I'm willing to accept lessons on virtue from any corner. When you reach a point that you think nobody has anything to teach you, you're cooked. Virtue lives everywhere in the world. Seek it out. Foster it. Let it foster you. Virtue cannot be monopolized.
> And, as a USian, I'm willing to accept lessons on virtue from any corner.
If that's the case, prepare to accept lessons from phony, hypocritical people, because in my experience those are the ones most eager to hand out lessons on virtue to all comers.
> When you reach a point that you think nobody has anything to teach you, you're cooked
Learning new knowledge is an entirely different dish than moral teachings. I'm 100% willing to admit it when I'm wrong and learn new facts and perspectives from all people, even folks that I have fundamental disagreements with.
But I'm also very unlikely to accept any kind of teachings on "virtue" from such people. I find them generally to be not virtuous.
Actually virtual people tend to be more humble, and you have to seek out their input.
I get the point you are trying to make, but the pedant in me wanted to point out that Europe does have a GPS alternative up and running (Galileo) so that they aren't dependent on US satellites.
> you are aware that there is no "post 911 world" in 90% of the world, right?
In the financial world, there definitely is. Because of how 9/11 was bankrolled, AML laws were severely tightened. Quoting the subject line of the relevant EU directive [1]:
"[...] prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing"
Which is the point that the grandparent was getting to.
Edit: To be more specific, in today's financial world, technically, shell companies should be pointless because any bank transacting with such a company is required to know the beneficial owner, ie the natural person ultimately behind that company (no matter how many layers).
If you have eight figure net worth or access to same from external sources it's not particularly difficult to start your own offshore bank.
It's also pretty easy to buy a passport and create a fake identity.
And not that much harder to create nominee directors who will never be vetted. And/or to create "legitimate" businesses with interests in art, property, and other high-value items - including in-game currencies - which can be used to transfer assets in creative ways.
And if you've been following the history of Wirecard you'll understand how easy it is to create a legitimate cover story for what appear to have been some rather less legitimate background operations.
And even if you go with a traditional bank, KYC is mostly box ticking. And some of the biggest banks have been directly implicated in money laundering, AML laws and all.
> If you have eight figure net worth or access to same from external sources it's not particularly difficult to start your own offshore bank.
An eight figure net worth is not even close when it comes to considering starting an own bank.
Furthermore, offshore today means just one thing: "red flag". Because of AML rules, the list of Non-Cooperative Countries or Territories [1], and FATCA/CRS reporting, the only people still going through the hassle of using offshore to hide something are people who really want to hide something -- hence the red flag.
Finally, banks don't exist by themselves. They need other banks to partner and transaction with. For example: say you are a bank in the British Virgin Islands. Now try to buy stock on the NYSE. For that, you need a bank with access, and no bank with access would partner with some shady outfit.
> And if you've been following the history of Wirecard
Wirecard is a scandal beyond comparison. It is unfathomable to me how this could have gone on so long.
To contrast that, working for a bank myself, I was involved in numerous audits by financial regulators, and you wouldn't believe the level of detail they went into. Any flaw or inconsistency -- no matter how trivial, at what org level, or even across levels or topics -- was brought up.
But perhaps that was just coincidence, and we had the luck of being audited by most the diligent of auditors.
> And even if you go with a traditional bank, KYC is mostly box ticking.
Absolutely not true, at least not with the banks I'm familiar with (and our peer group services mainly high-net-worth clients).
Every single client can be subject of an AML audit. Any irregularity in a record will be construed as an overall failure of AML policies in the institution. You don't just "tick the boxes" with high-risk clients. Background checks happen. Plausibility checks happen.
> And some of the biggest banks have been directly implicated in money laundering, AML laws and all.
Laws cannot prevent crime, they can only deter crime. Yes, big banks are occasionally still involved in money laundering, but compare this to 20 years ago. The incentives are diminishing.
> Because of AML rules, the list of Non-Cooperative Countries or Territories [1], and FATCA/CRS reporting
Swiss, Czech bearer instrument companies were a thing pretty recently. Cypriot trusts were a thing just a few years ago (maybe still are?). Or do you define offshore as only those weird and incomprehensible third world countries half a world away? I'm pretty sure people thought the lists were meaningful in 2013, too, and yet they have grown since then -- and the structures used to get around them have changed as well.
The whole subthread is somewhat meaningless in the context of the article, though, because it would be ridiculous to expect Lebanon to have the same level of insight into company ownership as say, Austria, Germany, or the US.
> the only people still going through the hassle of using offshore to hide something are people who really want to hide something -- hence the red flag.
Offshore means tax optimization, and anonymous companies may be nothing more than an attempt at keeping competition from guessing your game plan. E.g. real estate investors. I suppose those might be red flags in countries with funny ideas about taxation (the US, parts of Europe).
> Wirecard is a scandal beyond comparison. It is unfathomable to me how this could have gone on so long.
I take it you haven't heard about the HSBC's drug cartel money laundering? From the perspective of a small business, stuff like that makes KYC/AML look like unneeded and annoying security theatre.
(All of the below assumes that a bank is involved, as banks are the subjects of the relevant regulations. If a bank isn't involved -- which is rarely the case -- anything goes.)
> Swiss, Czech bearer instrument companies were a thing pretty recently. Cypriot trusts were a thing just a few years ago (maybe still are?).
Not sure about the bearer instrument part (especially with the Czech Republic being subject to EU rules), but I'm quite familiar with the Cypriot trusts, and (1) banks must know their Beneficial Owners and (2) those BOs do get reported to their home countries with FATCA resp. CRS reporting.
And of course, you're right -- there are still ways to get around them. But those ways have become increasingly difficult, to the point where many banks simply don't bother with that business segment anymore because the headaches outweigh the potential profits. Getting past a red flag, while operating legally is not impossible, but why bother.
> The whole subthread is somewhat meaningless in the context of the article, though, because it would be ridiculous to expect Lebanon to have the same level of insight into company ownership as say, Austria, Germany, or the US.
That's a fair argument. I have to admit that I interpreted the question more in the sense that someone (not necessarily Lebanon) should have this information.
> Offshore means tax optimization, and anonymous companies may be nothing more than an attempt at keeping competition from guessing your game plan. E.g. real estate investors. I suppose those might be red flags in countries with funny ideas about taxation (the US, parts of Europe).
Hiding something from the competition, or other nosy parties, is my best guess as well. There are legitimate ways of optimizing taxes, but it's become increasingly difficult to hide assets from your home government. (The running joke is that the United States is the last tax haven, as it's the only country not to share information with other countries.)
> I take it you haven't heard about the HSBC's drug cartel money laundering? From the perspective of a small business, stuff like that makes KYC/AML look like unneeded and annoying security theatre.
I'm familiar with that one, and many others. Wirecard in my opinion still stands by far because there were credible reports of malfeasance going back years, and BaFin went after the reporters instead.
As I said earlier, these laws can't prevent crime, they can only deter it. You're still going to have bad actors, at many possible levels (even at the C-level, as we saw with Wirecard).
It's just become increasingly difficult, with diminishing payoffs. Coming back to the original statement I was challenging: doing shady stuff post-9/11 was far more difficult than pre-9/11, and it's become even more difficult since (although admittedly, the recent development is motivated by taxation).
If you mean purchasing a bank for such a sum: indeed, the price can be cheap.
But then you own a bank, and have to be in full regulatory compliance, which today is an immense burden. You need an officer for this, a responsible person for that, you need risk management, accounting, etc.
My argument is that nobody with 8 figures net worth would put up with that hassle just to hide an investment (because you can do that with comparatively less hassle by other means), but if someone is willing to actually operate that bank, why not.
The first iteration of the aforementioned EU directive was published in 2005 [1]. Before that, individual countries had tightened their individual rules.
The Wikipedia page on money laundering [2] details the consequences of 9/11 on regulation quite well. The keyword there is the "Financial Action Task Force", whose recommendations the EU directive aimed to implement.
That seems to be a narrow interpretation of what OP originally meant as "post 911 world". While direct consequences of that event are localized and ripple effects definitely affected way more than 10% of the world.
Think the direct impact on allied countries who had to send troops to Afganistan. Think airtravel security (theatre). Think financial regulation. Darn.. think the following Middle East interventions by Western Allies. You could say that Syrian civil war today with millions of refugees had direct impact of 911 and subsequent western (and not so western) intervention in Middle East.
> you are aware that there is no "post 911 world" in 90% of the world, right?
Actually for the Western and Western-allied world this is wrong. 9/11 marked the begin of the dismantling of citizen rights in too many countries - from such relatively harmless things as stricter rules on flights and mandatory body searches to justifications for nation-scale espionage or, with the Brits, even allowing the government to lock people up for not revealing passwords.
In some ways this comment is spot on, but in many others it's not. England, Australia, France and Germany all had unprecedented terror attacks in the years since 9-11. All of those have put in place much increased physical, telecommunications and financial surveillance, except maybe France (I don't know about France). Perhaps not post-9-11 world outside the U.S., but definitely a world in terror from the governments' point of view. From an average citizen POV, it's probably more like 'Didn't something happen a few years ago at an Ariana Grande concert?'.
> ..., Germany all had unprecedented terror attacks in the years since 9-11.
Germany hasn't - we've had much worse terror attacks in the years before 9-11. I'll just mention the Oktoberfest attack or the attack on the munich olympic games. In terms of collective scare, the RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion) far eclipses any terror risk after 9-11. Even today, more people get killed by Nazi supporters than other terrorists.
We still have put a lot of restrictive measures in place, but it's more that 9-11 and terrorism act as a convenient leverage to impose those measures and not the actual danger.
By that reasoning you might say the US had a huge role in 9/11 because the Bin Laden issue station failed to identify and prevent his attacks. I wouldn't say that, they did the best they could with the budget they had, and the approvals they were (or weren't) given.
there absolutely is a post 9/11 world, because 9/11 affected a country that has outsized power and influence on the world stage. Relevant to this discussion, massive changes in financial regulation significantly impacted how money moved and how trade can be co ducted internationally. Let's also not forget the decades long wars in the middle east triggered by 9/11, with all the netions involved and the widespread feonts the "war on terror" engages in. Especially in the Middle East, 9/11 mattered, because it mattered to the US and allies, and the US and allies responded with invasions.
The world is a very difference place post 9/11 whether you believe it or not.
I mean 9/11 did prompt NATO's article 5 to get invoked. 9/11, Article 5, & the ensuing war certainly changed the landscape for North America and Europe. Other world powers like China took notice as a result.
Don't forget the heightened fears around that time, which were stoked by the 2004 Madrid & 2005 London train bombings.
So although post 9/11 is often viewed as US centric, it undoubtedly affected much of Europe, and it's ripples were felt throughout much of the developed world. While many nations might not have 9/11 in the forefront of their minds, like Americans do, they probably have had their foreign/domestic policy influenced as a result of 9/11's side effects & view the threat of terrorism very differently to a pre 9/11 world.
> you are aware that there is no "post 911 world" in 90% of the world
Are you aware that any major national event that has a large impact on one of the world's greatest powers will have fallout that affects the rest of the world?
I'd think after debacles like Iraq, that should be obvious.
I think you are misunderstanding the the post 9/11 concept. While the event itself was small in the grand scheme, I think the reaction is more impactful than you give it credit for. It caused a meaningful shift in the geopolitical strategy of the world's largest economy and military power.
The 9/11 world is very obvious in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria.
If that's the case, then I believe you're mistaken. This incident would be a good catalyst for any (90% or 10%) country to ensure their ports are more secure.
(I'm aware of the breathlessness of the comment, and I was going to edit it tone it down a bit, but people had already started replying - I'll stand by it as-is.)
The nature of "corporation law" is at the heart of a lot of intractable issues, from tax policy to shipping to trade.
Non Natural "persons," corporations and other legal entities, can own each other. They can be part owned.
They can be owned, taxed and regulated in jurisdictions of their own choosing. Effectively, this allows groups (clumps of legal entities) to be structured such that tax liabilities, other liabilities, transparency requirements, and such are chosen a la carte. Transparency requirements of entity type A in jurisdiction X. Tax liabilities of entity type B in jurisdiction Y. etc.
There has never been a reform of this system. It just keeps growing in complexity. At this point considering these "loopholes" is hopelessly naive.
This kind of detailed & complex structure is very open to regulatory capture. Politicians, who tend to think in principles or ideals can't translate their opinions into legislative details effectively. Companies, who can, have a powerful position. Accountants and lawyers, who actually understand the implications of details, have a strong interest in the complexity itself.
The whole thing is premised on ideas like "company A is a commercial company" or "company A is an American company." Those just aren't true. Company A is a legal entity, that forms part of a commercial company. The "group" is the company. Company A is also not american or any other nationality. Part of the group may be subjects to parts of american laws. As a whole though...
Anti-terrorism is only the tip of the iceberg. Embargo avoidance. Tax avoidance. Liability avoidance. Labour law avoidance.
For a startup analogy, consider the cliche "You set the price, I'll set the terms." You can fund or buy a company at any nominal "price," but the terms define what that price means. EG. price X with a 10X preference term makes price irrelevant in many circumstances.
This is the game regulators and legislators are playing with corporation laws.
We need to be realistic about what the UN is, why it exists and what it can realistically do. Taxes are far outside the UN's scope. It's even outside the EU's scope (currently), and the EU has a lot more authority over members and economic issues generally.
In any case, it's not the rates that matter. It's corporation law, which determines what a company is for tax purposes. It's also corporation tax law, which is strategically byzantine. Individual countries (especially the US) can fix this, it's just hard.
For example, corporation law acknowledges Google's claim that "Google Ireland" is not related to "Alphabet" and that arbitrary amounts (many billions)paid by Alphabet to Google Ireland (ostensibly IP royalty payments) are ordinary business expenses. If US corporation law considered them one entity, they would owe the corporate tax rate.
Besides that... maybe corporate profit tax is just a bad solution. It has never really worked well. Historically such estate-like taxes have been a more solid approach. "Every grain flour owes its lord $n per year." In modern terms, you could say that Amazon owes x% (say 1%) of its market cap. In theory, this doesn't distinguish between profitable companies that can afford to pay from unprofitable ones that can't. In practice, (a)neither does the current system and (b)shares are money too.
For analogy, consider gambling taxes. You can try to charge the gambler on wins. Because of the nature of gambling, this needs to be netted against losses somehow. Meanwhile, requiring gamblers to keep records is a lost cause. The opportunities for tax evasion, the complexity of needed rules... it makes the whole thing unworkable.
Over time, various countries have moved to taxing casinos themselves with an excise-tax-like machine. Instead of gamblers paying on wins, casinos pay on wins. This is easy to manage, requires one paragraph of tax law and produces a predictable and steady stream of taxes.
Structure is what matters, not rates, not moral rhetoric. This is why politicians have such a hard time dealing with it.
Right, my whole point is that tax havens / structuring like you have with Google Ireland would be less useful if there was a global minimum corporate tax rate.
I hold no illusions about the capacity of the UN to wield real power. But if UN member countries agree to this global minimum and sanction anyone who doesn't, it achieves the goal, no?
Tax havens are a classic example of Tragedy of the Commons. Since we don't actually have an institution with global powers that can effectively prevent such situations via global regulation, we need to do the next best thing – bully everyone into behaving better. Sure, sanctions hurt everyone in the short run, but in the long run it's worth it if we can stop spending a ludicrous amount of human capital on what is effectively dodging societal obligations at an unprecedented scale.
>If UN member countries agree to this global minimum and sanction anyone who doesn't, it achieves the goal, no? ... Tragedy of the Commons.
Not quite. At a very theoretical extreme, maybe... but it is (IMO) so theoretical that any efforts in that direction will yield nothing. IE, "going after tax havens" sounds good, but will do little. Multiple jurisdictions is not a solvable problem in practical terms. Even if it was solved, you would still need to deal with the main issues to get a good result.
The main issue is the way corporate law works. In reality, Alphabet owns all of it subsidiaries. It shouldn't really matter that one is in Ireland, and if you read the "abstract" of relevant legislation it sounds like it doesn't. In corporate (and corporate tax) law, they are treated in different ways for different purposes. That's why we don't get a (Profit)X(Tax Rate) result.
"Profit" is just as ethereal as "domicile."
In my opinion... I would abandon corporate income taxes entirely. Investors that buy Facebook or Amazon aren't in it for profits. Amazon reported about $11bn net income last year. Its market cap has increased by about $500bn... and $700bn so far this year. In theory these gains are taxed under CGT. In practice, CGT also runs into the swamp of corporation law.
This is like the problem with taxing gamblers. Stop trying to figure that out. Tax the casino instead. Tax either the market cap or the gains in market cap. Allow public companies to pay their taxes in shares.
..not saying any of this is simple... just saying that we can't win at whack-a-mole.
In my particular suggestion, it runs against the grain of tax policies. Tax policies (since the 70s) try to be "efficient," for a somewhat technical economic definition of the term. "Neutral" would be more descriptive. Taxing market cap makes bad investments worse. Even though profits are low, they are still taxed and ownership is diluted.
The reason that I think this is ok is because cash is what matters in reality, not profits.
...ultimately though... all this goes over the heads of 99% of politicians, and nearly anyone that doesn't have a vested interest.
>> But why are we discussing the ship's property anyway?)
Fair response. It started from commenting on how corporate law shields and obscures ownership or interest from liability. In this case its liability for blowing up Beirut. The game is usually about tax liability, but it's a similar game.
My point is that when lawlessness in relation to tax occurs... it's usually enabled by corporation law, and the obscurity inherent in it. Something similar seems to have happened here, at least if this article is accurate.
the Russian man variously described as the owner or the operator of the Moldovan-flagged MV Rhosus, is said to have abandoned the vessel in Lebanon after declaring bankruptcy. The vessel’s deadly cargo had been purchased from the country of Georgia by a Mozambican firm that produces commercial explosives, via a British middleman trading firm linked to Ukraine.
The ownership of the Rhosus, and the companies that ordered the nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate to be transported halfway around the world in a rickety ship, are obscured by layers of secrecy
As soon as they tighten regulations on shell companies and awful lot of wealthy people might have to start paying tax. Those people also happen to be highly influential in the world of global politics. Sitting in their ivory towers, a devastating explosion in a 3rd world country miles away won't change anything.
It's a sad reflection of the world we live in today.
Hey, don't mangle your metaphors! The ivory tower is full of tweed-wearing humanities and economics professors that nobody pays attention to. You must be thinking of some other building, full with fat cats. :P
>awful lot of wealthy people might have to start paying tax
I doubt they will. Most likely outcome is their tax consultants will have to get craftyer. Closing loopholes and tax havens is a continuous game of whack a mole where the authorities are always a step behind.
If there is always another loophole and these attempts at closing them don't matter, they wouldn't collectively be spending billions of dollars in lobbying to keep the current status quo. It's pretty clear that legislation can make a substantial dent in the amount of revenue that can be collected via taxes.
>it's not even possible to categorically determine the owner of an international cargo ship due to the fact that mazes of opaque offshore (shell) company ownership is still not just possible and easy, but effectively "the norm".
Panama, Liberia, Uzbekistan, etc. etc. have better things to care about than keeping accurate paper trails about corporate ownership to make life easy for tax auditors in air conditioned first world offices.
Unless you can somehow magically make them rich enough to solve all their big problems to the point where opaque chains of ownership seems worth caring about the symptom will persist.
The sea is not 'owned' by any country and changing the existing regulations that work (for some form of 'work', but one that is stable in a large context) with something else that works better is an iterative process with a very long iteration time.
And then sits in port for years until it blows up.
Do remember that the bigger problem here wasn't a sea-unworthy ship that had to be impounded, but the fact the explosives were not safely stored or disposed of. That's not directly the fault of the ship's owner.
That’s more or less what happened with the stuff in Beirut. It was confiscated and it was sitting there in the port for 6 years! Sitting there and not being handled properly...
"No invasion or bombing of any country is going to affect the facilitation of terrorist funding anywhere near the action of restricting trade for companies that have these byzantine ownership structures that shield the actual owners and profiteers from identification"
Oil companies do this all the time. Just look at the crazy web of businesses and flags flown for the various companies evolved in the BP oil spill. Oil tankers regularly fly random counties' flags because they won't be boarded or inspected.
Does seem like the rise of the Uber-wealthy/shipping-magnates that act independent of any specific nation has made the idea of states-as-actors kind of obsolete.
Until 911 we simply lived by the fact that you could obscure monetary flow using shell companies.
With 911 it became crystal clear that this also obscures monetary flow of deadly criminal actors, deadly at scale and deadly at random targets, 911, Madrid, ...
Wouldn't you think that this would change policies and create a push to more transparency of monetary flow?
Currently the policy values the option of tax evasion at scale higher than the option of controlling in the sense of understanding money flow.
Yes you would, and in fact there's been a lot of work done on this and a lot more work to be done. Switzerland has been pushed into radically revising it's financial privacy laws. The era of secret numbered Swiss bank accounts is pretty much over. Many banks have fallen foul of anti-money laundering regulations and fined billions of dollars. It's not great that they violated the rules, but the fact they have been held to account is huge progress.
Nobody can snap their fingers and change how every country in the globe regulates their businesses though. The basic principle of companies owning other companies is too fundamental to abolish, and if you can create one link then you can make chains and these can be complex. There are no magic wands to solve this, so it's going to take perseverance and hard work, and continuing pressure on politicians.
BTW, that's quite a myth. There were never bank accounts where the banks didn't know who the client was. But not everybody at the banks had access to the info what account belonged to which person.
Of course if you as a foreign country could get info about your own citizens having bank accounts is a different question (and that has luckily changed in recent years).
The money flows to the terrorists wasn't through complicated shell companies though, was it? Iirc, they were using the Hawala system of informal banking that relies on family/tribal relationships to quickly transfer funds without leaving traces anywhere Western authorities might see them.
Most of the intelligence and terrorism laws that were set in place specifically target non-americans and international surveillance so I don't really get your point.
I’m confused: a random boat shows up in a random port and some sort of supernatural “no sparrow fall” system is going to magically decide that somehow it’s of interest? The dots can’t even be connected backwards.
There is literally no participant in the article who has any connection to the United States, not even the city involved. It’s likely given the dramatis personae that none of them may ever have set foot in the US in their lives. Yet somehow this is a matter of US law???
And how again is this somehow connected with some incident on the other side of the planet 20 years ago?
There was a big shift in the intelligence community after 9/11 that is well documented and also reaches in all kinds of other areas (banking, travel records).
If you only think the intelligence apparatus of the US only watches within the border of the country that's a bit naive. Especially after what we know about the Snowden leaks (International submarine cables tapped, dragnet like collection of communications in all countries,...). The fact that there's no Americans involved is irrelevant to the question in this case.
"My name is Alan Glashwiecz, of Smoot, Sedgwick Associates. Am I correct in thinking that you are the Manfred Macx who is a director of a company called, uh, agalmic dot holdings dot root dot one-eight-four dot ninety-seven dot A-for-able dot B-for-baker dot five, incorporated?"
"Uh." Manfred blinks and rubs his eyes. "Hold on a moment." When the retinal patterns fade, he pulls on his glasses and powers them up. "Just a second now." Browsers and menus ricochet through his sleep-laden eyes. "Can you repeat the company name?"
"Sure." Glashwiecz repeats himself patiently. He sounds as tired as Manfred feels.
"Um." Manfred finds it, floating three tiers down an elaborate object hierarchy. It's flashing for attention. There's a priority interrupt, an incoming lawsuit that hasn't propagated up the inheritance tree yet. He prods at the object with a property browser. "I'm afraid I'm not a director of that company, Mr. Glashwiecz. I appear to be retained by it as a technical contractor with non-executive power, reporting to the president, but frankly, this is the first time I've ever heard of the company. However, I can tell you who's in charge if you want."
"Yes?" The attorney sounds almost interested. Manfred figures it out; the guy's in New Jersey, it must be about three in the morning over there.
Malice – revenge for waking him up – sharpens Manfred's voice. "The president of agalmic.holdings.root.184.97.AB5 is agalmic.holdings.root.184.97.201. The secretary is agalmic.holdings.root.184.D5, and the chair is agalmic.holdings.root.184.E8.FF. All the shares are owned by those companies in equal measure, and I can tell you that their regulations are written in Python. Have a nice day, now!" He thumps the bedside phone control and sits up, yawning, then pushes the do-not-disturb button before it can interrupt again. After a moment he stands up and stretches, then heads to the bathroom to brush his teeth, comb his hair, and figure out where the lawsuit originated and how a human being managed to get far enough through his web of robot companies to bug him.
...
One of his e-mail accounts is halfway to the moon with automatic messages, companies with names like agalmic.holdings.root.8E.F0 screaming for the attention of their transitive director. Each of these companies – and there are currently more than sixteen thousand of them, although the herd is growing day by day – has three directors and is the director of three other companies. Each of them executes a script in a functional language Manfred invented; the directors tell the company what to do, and the instructions include orders to pass instructions on to their children. In effect, they are a flock of cellular automata, like the cells in Conway's Game of Life, only far more complex and powerful.
America is the one taking charge in all the invasions and stuff in the relevant region, and the financial regulation relevant here was a 9/11 response. Its fair to call this a post 9/11 world
Non American here, do you really believe whatever events happened to Israel or France compare to 9/11. The scale and destruction of 9/11 is on a whole different level.
Do you really believe 9/11 compares to the Yom Kippur war of '73? Lots of people dying on a single day vs. even more people dying in a few weeks. (Although most of the casualties weren't on the Israeli side.)
What makes Yom Kippur war of '73 so special, if you are looking at just fatalities, why not talk about the Indian famines where millions died because of British policies.
But I dunno how is it possible to compare this with the long list of terror attacks Israel had between 1989-2008 or the emotional effect on the EU policies of the club terror attacks in Paris.
This is bad and this is bad, and all of these had a major effect on how the world looks nowadays. I wouldn't put the focus only on 9/11.
My theory is that secrecy jurisdictions, shell companies etc, are opaque to the legal system but transparent to intelligence agencies.
Under that arrangement, politicians and the very rich still get a way to retain their privacy and avoid taxes, which I assume they are very effective at lobbying for, but the risk of terrorism is minimised.
The usual sorry tale of rickety ships, dubious owners, shady ports of registry (I didn't even know Moldova had a harbour for seagoing ships, but turns out that they have, since 2006, after a territorial exchange with Ukraine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Giurgiule%C8%99ti), crews stranded aboard for months because the owner doesn't care etc. Be that as it may, the blame for storing 2750 tons of a dangerous chemical in a warehouse without proper safety measures in a port located at the heart of Beirut for six years still rests firmly with the Lebanese authorities...
I really enjoyed the adventure game Disco Elysium. It is set in a weird-fiction alternate-universe shipping port.
The cosmic horror and sci-fi stuff are window dressing to a plot that is mainly focused on the legal and illegal business, politics, privateering, exploitation, espionage and criminality that goes on in an international dockyard. It’s really really good with lots of story telling and the right amount of gaming challenges.
(I’ve not come across the term freeport before, but I am guessing this overlaps with what you meant.)
You're using the term 'adventure' quite liberally. Disco Elysium is, at best, a really drunken, long-winded and exposition-heavy stroll in a pretty mundane harbor area the size of a single city block.
It's not really even that weird of a fiction. Everything is extremely based on reality, with a mere facade of "look we changed the names of everyday things! they are now strange!"
Disco Elysium has a lot of fundamental mechanics in it that are unfamilar to many players - and they are ones I've not seen outside of some very indepth RPGS (text, pen and paper varities).
It is fundamentally less about a story and more about experiencing a world and a character in that world, and in that sense it's a very traditional RPG. One of the reasons that a world builder renames things is to give a clue to the player that things operate differently in a world then they are used to - and that is very true in Disco Elysium.
The physical world in Disco Elysium that we have access to is very small and it forces us to go over the same areas and same characters again and again - because it's not the physical world that changes but our knowledge of it and our ability to interact with it.
There are enough weird things in there, it's possible to miss them, but discovering really changes your whole outlook on the world. Things like: the Pale, the Insulindian Phasmid & the Mega Rich Light-Bending Guy in the shipping container.
Some skills are also kinda magical if you invest enough points, Interfacing & Inland Empire could be explained by your imagination, but it's hard to argue that Esprit De Corps (cutaway to what is happening to Precinct 41) & Shivers (Have conversations with the city of Revachol itself) aren't a bit supernatural.
The game is like an episode of Breaking Bad set in New Crobuzon.
The concept of the Pale is utterly horrifying. It pretty much has no involvement with the game at all and I think that’s a brilliant thing.
The concept is there, lurking in the background of various plot lines, but it’s never actually part of a mission. You are left to your own imagination as to, at first, how seemingly horrific it is.
To later learn that the pale is expanding — at an unknown rate you are led to believe is like a rising tide — and will eventually destroy the world and no one really seems to care or talk about it as an issue that much puts all the other noir detective and soap opera plots and subplots in a fascinating light. The citizens of Revechol are a little insane, we get to guess a bit about why and can also deduce they are in denial.
Someone on gamepedia has pieced together this description from expository dialogue in the game:
What does the pale look like? It's acromatic, odourless, featureless. The pale is the enemy of matter and life. It is not like any other — or any thing in the world. It is the transition state of being into nothingness. Where matter borders the pale, the resulting border is an uproar of matter, rising into the pale. Rolling. Evaporating even, a great vision. The area of transition between the world and the pale is called porch collapse: A grey coronal mist, cold vapour, marked by spores of an opportunistic microorganism.
Pale is difficult to describe and measure, as it's something whose fundamental property is the suspension of properties: physical, epistemological, linguistic. The further into pale you travel, the steeper the degree of suspension. Right down to the mathematical — numbers stop working. No one has yet passed the number barrier since the discovery of the pale and it may be impossible.
In fact, one of the few measurable effects of the pale is that it is expanding at an unknown rate.
Totally agree, discovering what the Pale was, had a real impact on me that I don't think any other piece of fiction has ever had on me, it's like a sinking feeling, like: ow, oh no, this is what the world is?!
It's very cool in a fiction sense, but also mechanically in the game, you start as someone who has lost all their memories, which sets the character on the same knowledge level as the player, and you slowly uncover how the world works through playing. It's close enough to earth that things slowly begin to make sense, and you get lulled into a false sense of familiarity. Just as you think you have a handle on reality, the rug gets pulled away from underneath you and you fall into the Pale, a total break with anything familiar. It recontextualizes everything.
There is a line where either Joyce or Soona tells you about inter-isolary travel where she explains you that you need to aim your path through the Pale really carefully because it's possible to miss your destination and just continue sailing through the Pale forever. Which is supremely horrifying to me.
It seems that both the author of Neverending story and of this game had been exposed to experience Alzheimer in their beloved ones... great children book, but with a lot of dark undertones.
I mostly agree, with one caveat: The Mega Rich Light-Bending Guy is partially an easter egg and, iirc, doesn't really affect the world in any way. At most, it's a commentary on wealth inequality.
The Phasmid and the Pale are fairly core to the world and story, though.
> the blame for storing 2750 tons of a dangerous chemical in a warehouse without proper safety measures in a port located at the heart of Beirut for six years still rests firmly with the Lebanese authorities...
By order of the judge, the cargo was brought ashore in 2014 and placed in Warehouse 12 at the port,[32] where it remained for the next six years.[16][17][23][33] The MV Rhosus sank in the harbour in February 2018.[34]
Customs officials had sent letters to judges requesting a resolution to the issue of the confiscated cargo, proposing that the ammonium nitrate be either exported, given to the army, or sold to the private Lebanese Explosives Company.[b][17] Letters had been sent on 27 June and 5 December 2014, 6 May 2015, 20 May and 13 October 2016, and 27 October 2017.[17][36] One of the letters sent in 2016 noted that judges had not replied to previous requests, and "pleaded":[17]
In view of the serious danger of keeping these goods in the hangar in unsuitable climatic conditions, we reaffirm our request to please request the marine agency to re-export these goods immediately to preserve the safety of the port and those working in it, or to look into agreeing to sell this amount ...
Any of the ones that cared but lacked authority may as well not exist, and any of the ones that have the authority but didn't use it correctly are proven inept by this; so _all of them_.
I don't understand why so much effort is spent on who initially owned the ship or the ammonium nitrate.
No matter what they were guilty of, it's the Lebanese government that confiscated 3000 tons of explosive material and stored it in conditions that lead to the explosion. It was their ammonium nitrate when it blew up and their responsibility.
All this "who owned that ship" stuff smells of finger pointing to hide the real guilty parties.
Sources for this claim, in case someone doesn't believe the op here. Official requests to move/dispose/sell the nitrate were made 6 times over 6 years [1] [2].
Blaming the company that owned the ship is does nothing but shift responsibility from those responsible for storing 2400 tons of explosives near a residential area. There will always be reasons why the government chooses to seize cargo, taking over 6 years to move dangerous cargo, and storing it in shoddy conditions, is on the government. Perhaps if this had happened shortly after seizing the cargo the company could be more accurately blamed.
It’s because there are ongoing investigations to understand why the AN had been ordered.
There had been suggestions that it was meant for Beirut, to be used by Sunni militants or Hezbollah, and the final destination of Mozambique was a cover.
Mix that with HA and the real ship owner doing business with the same Tanzanian bank.. the whole thing becomes stinky.
Look at it this way: the explosion is one thing - a terrible tragedy to be sure, and not really caused by the ship owners or operators. But it seems to have cast light on a really shady world of arms dealing and international crime that, in the end, might be a bigger story than the explosion itself.
Yes I am. It became the property of the Lebanese government in 2014 and it blew up in 2020. Any attempts to blame the explosion on the original transporter are pure propaganda.
>There had been suggestions that it was meant for Beirut, to be used by Sunni militants or Hezbollah, and the final destination of Mozambique was a cover.
Aha. So? Good job confiscating it then. Lousy (or criminal) job not getting rid of it after.
Besides, did those "suggestions" only surface after the explosion by any chance?
- Grechushkin (Russian) was transporting ammonium nitrate from Georgia to Mozambique
- Grechushkin Ordered a last minute stop in Beirut to pick up additional cargo in the form of trucks, but the plan was abandoned when the first loaded truck almost broke the deck
- Lebanese officials then detained the ship for safety reasons
- Grechushkin declared bankruptcy and disappeared and the ship was impounded
- The ammonium nitrate was moved to a warehouse at the port and the ship eventually sank behind a breakwater, where its wreckage remains
- 4 years of complicated secrecy, corruption, shell companies, and “flags of convenience” involving Cypriot shipping magnate Manoli, the Portuguese illicit arms trafficking Vieira family, the Mozambique ruling elite, and Ukranian middle-man company Savaro, stymied solutions
- Lebanon then tried to offload the material to several organization including the Lebanese army and a local explosives manufacturer but they refused
- Lebanon then tried to return the cargo to Georgia but did not for unknown reasons
- On July 20, 2020, two weeks prior to the explosion, Lebanese security services warned the president that there were serious flaws with the storage of the ammonium nitrate
The "then disaster" part maybe could be fleshed out a bit more - from other reporting, it seems the proximate cause of the explosion was that they had a welding crew fixing the security problems, namely a missing door, and they accidentally set off fireworks also stored in the same warehouse (!).
So ironically, it seems that it was the attempt to secure the stuff that ultimately caused the disaster.
To me, the biggest revelation is that Grechushkin wasn't the owner. If you lease a vessel, it should be seaworthy. Manoli was the owner, how could he provide a broken ship? So the attention on Grechushkin is exaggerated.
Tangential to the primary issue, but TFA mentions the crew being detained on the ship for 10 months after docking, which is absolutely mind-blowing. I assume they weren't completely oblivious to the contents of their cargo. Imagine not only sailing, but then trying to sleep for ten extra months aboard a ship carrying thousands of pounds of explosive fertilizer. Insane.
hell we just did it with crews of many cruise ships in the US and likely elsewhere[0] the numbers being over 100,000 in total. Most were stranded in US ports because of arduous restrictions by the CDC and the home countries of the crewmen.
So yeah, it might not be an explosive but being trapped on ships with a potential to be sick isn't exactly fun. Sadly a lot of this has to do with out of sight out of mind, these crews are not generally seen by people even though when out on a cruise you physically see them each day.
I wonder why the crew had to remain onboard for 10 months. Were they being held for the debts? Could they not afford to fly out? They didn't have to stay in Lebanon if it was a question of visas or what-have-you.
The big story for me is in the last paragraphs: this wasn't the full shipment exploding:
> According to three European intelligence sources investigating the blast, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity, the amount still stored in the warehouse by August may have been smaller than the initial 2,750 tons. They said the size of the explosion was equivalent to as little as 700 to 1,000 tons of ammonium nitrate.
That means to me someone, somewhere is building bombs.
1000 tons of CLEAN ammonium in good shape. It's rather hard to explode all mass of pure ammonium or even ANFO in mines, it's routine to find unexploded pellets all over the place. It's even harder to explode whole mass of ammonium which sat for several years in humid conditions (ammonium nitrate is VERY higroscopic).
I was wondering about that too, especially since when investigating the state of the cargo they found out that already in 2015 "most of the one-ton bags containing the ammonium nitrate — approximately 1,900 — were ripped and had their contents spilling out". So some of it may have surely been stolen over the years, but not 1500-2000 tons...
Yeah, consider logistics of stealing 1000 tons of something. If it's not organized big truck removal, you are looking at ferrying max 200-300kg at a time with small car, loading one ton of fertilizer with shovel will also take more than a hour during which thieves can be nabbed. After two years in humid environment you can't use shovel anymore, you have to use pickaxe to split it apart into large chunks (and explosion risk is relatively high for such operation). That's why no company was interested, it was not easily useful for anyone.
Ammonium nitrate is incredibly common. It has applications both in agriculture (fertilizer) and commercial blasting ops - so not hard to come by in general. That said, in this case you may be right.
I don't know why this is downvoted. I think it would be pretty naive to think that Hezbollah or some other terrorist group in Lebanon wouldn't be massively excited to have a few thousand tons of the main ingredient of explosives fall in to their lap.
TFA also mentioned the Mozambique explosives company buying it had links to Hezbollah but I'm guessing a lot of people didn't read the article, which is too bad, it's a really good article.
I'm not sure how accurate the explosion size estimate is, but I suppose, not so much. And there are several factors that might have dampened the explosion (proximity to ground, water, etc)
Aside: These issues with shady ownership and responsibility are going to continue to be quite the issue. In the US, the current administration just relaxed rules for liquid-natural-gas transport on rail. Specifically, the LNG cars can now go 50mph+ in heavily populated areas, with no limit on the number of LNG cars [0]. When an issue occurs and someone dies, I suspect there will be a similarly long chain of shell companies for these LNG cars.
anecdotal evidence here, but I grew up on a farm. I know exactly what ammonium nitrate is. Here in America the ATF does almost everything it can to keep you from storing or purchasing any more than a sack at a time unless you can prove youve got the soy or corn to feed with it.
a quick Wiki shows Agriculture in Lebanon is the third most productive sector in the country after the tertiary and industrial sectors. It contributes 3.6% to GDP and employs around 4% of the active working population.
Is it feasible for a subset of 216,000 people to steal this chemical rampantly over five years? absolutely. it never goes bad, and you can trade it with neighboring farmers almost like a barter system for things like seed, dung and tractor parts. Should you ever store it? absolutely not, but im willing to venture Lebanese farmers arent millionires and dont really care.
if just 300 people strated looting this chemical theyd only need 20 pounds a piece. theres 3000 tonnes right there.
TL;DR: i do not think this is being used to make explosives.
Yeah, removing 3000tons of fertilizer with typical truck would take 8 years if you could steal one ton daily every single day. Can you imagine stealing one ton every single day? Also in 2015 bags were already ripped, so probably very hard to lift with forklift and probably already in one solid piece, so no shoveling. Stealing all of this would required big organised action with too much bribery. I don't say nothing was stolen, but probably less than 10 tons over 5 years.
I read last week about unconfirmed reports that the fire was caused by workers welding a door. It would be tragically ironic if a report that highlighted security concerns about a missing door is what caused the explosions.
In a July 20, 2020, report to the president and prime minister — just two weeks prior to the explosion — Lebanese security services warned that there were serious security flaws at the facility that left the ammonium nitrate open to theft.
One door of the unguarded warehouse was missing, while there was also a hole in the southern wall, the report said.
Ammonium nitrate is notoriously hard to detonate, I would rule it out but I think any evidence of such chains of events, or otherwise, has been vaporized.
Apparently there was a secondary cache of fireworks stored next to the ammonium nitrate. Probably placed there under the assumption that if there's already an astronomic amount of explosive material they might as well store it in one place. Which completely overlooks the fact that the fireworks made a perfect primer for the detonation as ammonium nitrate is actually somewhat difficult to set off on its own. That's why we often see large amounts of it going off somewhere making the news every few years - it's misleadingly safe to store. Similarly, diesel won't catch a spark but I'm not going to advocate storing fireworks in a storehouse of the stuff.
There's only so many arms manufactuers and shipping companies and supporting businesses who are willing to work the bottom of the barrel market. The first world is always on their back because they're the people who do things "wrong" enough (they and their customers would say "right") to meet the price points of the third world. This is like the shipping equivalent of the local bottom dollar machinery moving service that has cash discounts and is always getting hassled by the DOT for clapped out trucks and questionable load permits.
Until the whole world is rich enough to not have to cut corners this kind of stuff (the shipping story, the chain of events leading to the explosion in downtown Beirut is exceptional which is why they're so pissed off about it) is normal.
This is pretty much Murphy's Law in action. Murky business dealings, poor governance and mismanagement is a norm in big parts of the world. Then from time to time things go wrong, and that is just statistics.
Once a government authority seizes cargo, the authority takes on the entire responsibility,incompetence notwithstanding. Should have scuttled it offshore.
Sure, but it has to do with something potentially much more interesting. Sometimes, things that remain hidden become public due to sheer bad luck, like seems to have happened here.
Is that the sort of outfit that you would order nearly 3000 tons of stuff from? They were registered as dormant. The level of corruption all the way through this chain of events is quite something.
> The new revelations show how, at almost every stage, the Rhosus’ deadly shipment was connected to actors who used opaque offshore structures and lax government oversight to work in the shadows.
This is an apt description of the international shipping industry as a whole. Flags of convenience, shells upon shells upon shells, where nobody knows who they work for, or who should be sued, fraudulent certification, all enabled by port authorities who are hesitant to seize incompliant ships.
It seems like richer countries could start refusing docking privileges to ships that fly flags of convenience. This would at least curtail some of the nefariousness.
We in the US should thank our lucky stars that massive and endemic corruption which is rampant overseas is not present here in the United States. I have long since lost the idea that the rest of the world will ever modernize and institute the rule of law.
I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not, but I think corruption has taken its toll on the United States. Maybe not to the same extent as other countries, but there is certainly room for improvement.
The homemade bomb used by ABB to murder eight people at the Norwegian government building on 22 July 2011 was made by common fertilizer components; so called ANFO, which is ammonium nitrate mixed with fuel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANFO
And Timothy McVeigh used ammonium nitrate with nitromethane to blow up a federal building in Oklahoma city.
What's your point? That terrorists use shitty explosives if they can't get the good stuff like Semtex?
Meanwhile, much larger amounts of ammonium nitrate are used as fertilizer. Makes me wonder why the Lebanese authorities didn't sell the stuff as fertilizer to get rid of it.
Just a small excerpt of human nature. So much underhanded crap going on in this world to enrich a few individuals while billions struggle on trying to make an honest living.
So if I manufacture boulders and some dumbass stores one at the top of a steep incline it’s my fault if that boulder rolls into town and crushes people? That doesn’t make sense to me.
Perhaps the journalists could have avoided a lot of the loaded terminology such as "actors", "opaque", "mysterious, "shadows", and many related adjectives.
Rickety ships being used to ship explosive precursors by people trying their best to hide their involvement in that activity, to people implicated in illegal arms trading, seems like a pretty important story.
If you are saying 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate was being transported for military or militant use, that to me is pretty crazy but interesting.
But you'd need to say it rather than imply something Qanon style. What is going on?
My theory. It's a ricky ship transporting ammonium nitrate for use farming or mining. To differentiate you'd have to see if this counterfeit ammonium nitrate really does cost more to be mining grade or it's just in the name and is for farming.
How would illegal arms play out in an alternate theory?
Well, the article says pretty much right at the start:
"The ultimate customer for the ammonium nitrate on the ship, a Mozambican explosives factory, is part of a network of companies previously investigated for weapons trafficking and allegedly supplying explosives used by terrorists.The factory never tried to claim the abandoned material."
No invasion or bombing of any country is going to affect the facilitation of terrorist funding anywhere near the action of restricting trade for companies that have these byzantine ownership structures that shield the actual owners and profiteers from identification. Anything other than shutting this farcical, gaping, cargo-ship sized hole in "international business" is, purely and simply, only theatrical effort against terrorism. It's actually worse than that because it's appearing to do something; claiming that efforts are being made, whilst it continues unabated.