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Paul R. Hollrah, O.E.

Obama’s Double-Edged Sword
July 16, 2009

In a July 14 editorial titled “Picking on the Swiss,” the Wall Street Journal criticizes the Obama Administration for attempting to require the Swiss Bank, UBS, to turn over to the IRS the names of some 52,000 US taxpayers who currently maintain secret accounts with the bank.

 

According to the Journal, “This sort of fishing expedition expressly violates the U.S.-Swiss treaty on sharing tax information. The original treaty dates back 30 years, and under the pact the Swiss regularly provide the IRS with information on specific cases. But what the IRS is attempting here is a mass search of U.S. taxpayers merely for banking in Switzerland.”

 

In response, the Justice Department argues that “UBS systematically marketed its private banking services in order to avoid U.S. taxation,” which, in fact, they did.

 

The Journal concludes, “Apart from the diplomatic ramifications, the government's request for so broad a swath of information could well run afoul of the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable search. The Obama Administration should use the court reprieve to rethink the whole case.”

 

Actually, it is surprising that the IRS, currently supervised by Obama’s tax-cheating Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, would actually pursue such information. The last thing that Obama needs is for U.S. authorities to have the names of UBS’s American clients, a list that could then be compared with Obama’s Federal Election Commission filings from the 2008 election.

 

Here’s a bit of background, and why it represents a double-edged sword for Obama.

 

In a July 22, 2008 article in The Nation magazine, titled, “Attack of the Global Pirate Bankers,” it was disclosed that Robert Wolf, CEO of UBS Americas, had been “outed” in six months of hearings conducted by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, then chaired by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI).

 

So, aside from being CEO of UBS’s North American subsidiary, exactly who is Robert Wolf? Wolf is, along with the world’s most evil man, George Soros, one of Obama’s two top financial backers. He is also a highly influential member of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors.

 

In it’s article, The Nation tells us, “Last week in Washington we got a rare look inside the global private banking industry, whose high purpose it is to gather up the assets of the world's wealthiest people and many of its worst villains, and shelter them from tax collectors, prosecutors, creditors, disgruntled business associates, family members, and each other.”

 

According to a Statement of Facts in the June 2008 criminal trial of former UBS executive Bradley Birkenfeld, UBS took significant steps to help American clients manage their Swiss accounts without alerting U.S. government authorities. For example, the Statement of Facts described how UBS advised American clients to withdraw funds from their accounts using Swiss credit cards that “could not be discovered by U.S. authorities,” to “destroy all off-shore banking records existing in the U.S.,” and to “misrepresent the receipt of funds from their Swiss accounts...as loans from the Swiss bank.”

 

The Nation reported that, “To achieve these results, UBS established an elaborate formal training program,” which coached UBS bankers on how to avoid surveillance by U.S. Customs and law enforcement, how to falsify visas, how to encrypt communications, and how to secretly move money into and out of the U.S. undetected. It was, as I suggested in a July 28, 2008 column titled, “Who Owns Barack Obama,” the perfect instrument for funneling illegal foreign contributions into the coffers of an ambitious and unscrupulous American politician.

 

I suggested, just for the sake of argument, that a billionaire international financier who wished to influence the outcome of the American presidential elections, could transfer unlimited sums of money through this device. A U.S. recipient, such as the Obama campaign, could receive hundreds of thousands of individual contributions via Swiss credit card transfers, with fictitious payees being entered by teams of paid staffers working in a “boiler room” setting. The owners of the Swiss accounts would receive periodic statements indicating: a) debits of varying amounts, up to $2,300 each, and b) offsetting credits provided by the wealthy, but unnamed, “international financier.”

 

For most of the super wealthy, especially those attempting to hide income and assets from U.S. authorities, an unexplained debit and credit of $2,300, or less, would not even raise an eyebrow. In super rich circles, $2,300 is “chump change.” So who would ever know the source of such contributions? No one. Would such a plan be bold, audacious, perhaps insane? Absolutely! But then, the Obama campaign for President of the United States was itself...bold, audacious, and insane.

 

Subsequent to the publication of that column I received an e-mail from Kenneth Timmerman of Newsmax asking what proof I had of my allegations. I indicated that I had no specific proof but that, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...it’s almost certainly a duck.

 

Timmerman sent a team of investigators to the Federal Election Commission and what they found was absolutely astounding. In an October 20, 2008 article in Newsmax, Timmerman provided details from FEC records that gave substantial weight to my theory. In studying Obama’s FEC filings, Newsmax found more than 2,000 donors who had given substantially more than their $4,600 limit ($2,300 in the primaries and $2,300 in the General Election). The law requires that such excess contributions must be returned to the donor within 60 days of the donor going over his/her limit. However, many of the donors contacted by Newsmax said that they had not been contacted by the Obama campaign and that they had not received refunds.

 

For example, FEC records show that Sandra Daneshinia, a self-employed caregiver of Los Angeles, made 36 separate contributions totaling $7,051.12. Thirteen of her contributions were later refunded. However, in an odd coincidence those 13 refunds, in amounts such as $233.88 and $201.44, came to an even $2,300, the maximum amount allowable in any one election.

 

One contributor interviewed by Newsmax, Ronald J. Sharpe, Jr., a retired schoolteacher from Rockledge, Florida, is reported to have given $13,800...$9,200 over his limit. However, Mr. Sharpe does not remember giving that much money to Obama, nor has anyone from the Obama campaign ever contacted him about a refund.

 

But these are relatively minor infractions compared to 66,383 highly suspicious contributions, from 37,265 donors, whose contributions were not rounded to even dollar amounts. For example, John Atkinson, an insurance agent in Burr Ridge, Illinois, gave a total of $8,724.26. He gave in odd amounts such as $188.67, $1,542.06, $876.09, $388.67, $282.20, $195.66, $118.15, and one of $2,300.

 

Of the 66,383 contributions in odd amounts, 44,410 were in unrounded amounts of less than $100, some 15,270 contributions were in unrounded amounts of between $101 and $999, and 704 contributions were in odd amounts greater than $1,000.

 

Lest anyone suggest that these 37,265 donors either emptied their piggy banks or emptied their pockets and purses periodically and just sent it all to Obama, pennies and all, allow me to suggest something a bit more sinister. I suggest that those 66,383 contributions are the proceeds of foreign currency conversions, smuggled into the country as UBS credit card receipts, converted to U.S. dollars, and reported to the FEC in the name of other unsuspecting Obama donors.

 

If some American taxpayers are hiding taxable income from the IRS through the use of a Swiss bank account, it’s only fair that they be identified and punished. Every American taxpayer who pays his/her taxes in full would agree with that. However, if the United Bank of Switzerland is ultimately forced to turn over the names of its 52,000 American depositors, and those names are then compared with UBS credit card receipts received by the Obama campaign, there’ll be hell to pay. It’s a double-edged sword for Obama and it couldn’t happen to a better guy.

 

Given the newsworthiness of the underlying story, the Wall Street Journal may wish to reevaluate its editorial stance. The uncovering of a few thousand tax cheats is small potatoes compared to the unearthing of the largest electoral fraud in history...a fraud that facilitated the purchase of the presidency of the United States.


About Paul R. Hollrah, O.E.
Paul R. Hollrah is a freelance writer. He is a member of the Civil Engineering Academy of Distinguished Alumni at the University of Missouri - Columbia and a Senior Fellow at the Lincoln Heritage Institute. He currently resides in Tulsa, Oklahoma.