Dubai is currently the go-to destination of shady money. It’s the next Monaco/Swizerland. The local rulers have de facto control over government, jurisdictional and businesses. Any money is welcome as long as the right parties get their share - the rule of the law does not apply as long as you hire the right lawyer and advisors. It’s still the US ally in Middle East and so far, Dubai/UAE has had a blind eye on their lax money-laundering practice.
Here is a good article from The Economist on the situation. I apologise for the low quality of photo of the page.
Not blocked here on 3. You’re right in that the networks often have the “adult content” filter (porn, gambling etc.) turned on, but you should be able to turn it off pretty easily. I suspect it’s that filtering that’s blocking archive.org for you
> The local rulers have de facto control over government, jurisdictional and businesses
> ...the rule of the law does not apply...
All of these should be red flags - even if you yourself are shady, you want strong property rights and rule of law, not whatever the local despot feels like doing that day.
The article above is 12 years old. You will be shocked -- shocked! -- to hear that the prince doing the torturing was judged innocent, while the brothers who published the tape were convicted of blackmail.
Indeed. If the Chinese & Indians fail to take advantage of this situation it will be a showcase of incompetence and corruption by Asian governments.
The checklist fir being an attractive investment target is large country, stable government (check, check), strong property rights and fair treatment of foreigners (don't know, don't know). If Americans start confiscating assets, then the Asians have an opportunity to absorb a lot of money if their governments can be held in check.
The problem is that especially in the case of China foreigners do not have any practical justice in the court. It is the rule of the party, not rule of the law. Any party member gets preferential treatment over a foreigner, as they know strings to pull and people to bribe.
China excels in certain categories, and protecting the rich and connected is one of those. If you get too rich and powerful independent of the government maybe you can go back to being in trouble too.
Indian Justice System is largely seen as fair, but it is tooooooooooooooooooooo slow.
Cases take years to be concluded. Sometimes, even decades. The backlog is huge and the relatively very low cost of suing creates a lot of civil suits. In the US, losing a case means paying the costs of the winning side usually - In India the costs are calculated at a ridiculously low rate, that does not deter frivolous cases at all.
Also, the Indian Govt is known for its over zealous taxation of foreign entities - termed tax terrorism. Hardly a tax haven.
Switzerland has some people leaking the egregious money laundering and connections to bad people parking their money there. And I want to applaud those people. Insider leaking that info is an important world wide defense against the moneyed rich getting too much power.
I think the idea is to transit your money through there to launder it. part of a internation shell company game. sure the money coming from businesses and companies there look shady but not enough to cause anyone to investigate it as enough powerful and politically connected people from multiple countries would not like it to be looked at.
I don't think OP's characterization is accurate at all.
Rule of law very much exists in the UAE. So much so that they have carved out a distinct common law system (so called DIFC courts) which effectively provide English language common law as a service. This was explicitly done to make investment and commercial activity in the country attractive, and within DIFC boundaries (and IIRC at this point nation-wide) supersedes the authority of Dubai's own courts on a whole range of matters.
Those 'financial free zones' basically function like charter cities so international investors do not have to deal with the domestic Shariah law system.
If that's a non-rhetorical question no they don't because that's a criminal matter, not a commercial one that was handled in an Emirati court in 2009. But distrust as a consequence of failures of the domestic system where exactly why they bothered to built an entire parallel judicial system largely in the decade afterwards.
In 2019, in DIFC, the anti-money laundering officer, whose job is to stop money laundering, was sacked on whistle blowing instead of money-laundering stopped:
DIFC harly has a reputable track record. While on a paper it might sound independent, in reality is it just another extension to Sheik’s tentacles. Any compliance is just lip services.
Long before Dubai registered on the map, their speciality was gold smuggling towards India. It's also no coincidence their entire economy is run by British expats, the native citizens are an indolent rentier class that just skims off the top.
There's less appeal if you're an American since the USG taxes you anywhere in the world, but if you're Canadian there's a lot of appeal to live there for a few years as a resident.
The people I've known in this category do something like this:
- Canadian Citizen
- Move to Dubai
- Trade crypto, make eight digit returns, liquidate funds
- Move back to Canada eventually without having had to pay tax on those funds
You can't do this as a US citizen without renouncing citizenship, but you can do this for most countries in the world (at least that's what people doing this have told me, I haven't looked into it that deeply myself).
It's more complex. If you just move to Dubai you will be considered a resident for tax purposes based on your links back to the Old Country. Examples of such links include if you own a property, have a bank account, have healthcare policies and registration, or if you are a member of a society or group. So, having links boils down to either owning a substantial asset back in Canada or continuing to being a part of day-to-day operations there.
This use to be popular with working at sea for 6 months to avoid taxes until it changed. You could be sailing around the world for the next two years any income you make would be taxable even if you renounce your citizenship (unless you take another citizenship or become a resident in a physical location)
So you could do this but for the effort you would be better off trading cryto from Canada avoiding popular exchanges and not reporting
My understanding was you could legally move to the UAE for a time as a Canadian citizen and do what I described.
It seems easy enough to not have day to day operations in Canada during that time. This seems like a way better option than tax evasion and prison imo.
If you are willing to completely cut ties. No bank account, no property, no memberships, no ties at all. Then you have to wait for a period of time. It won't be easy and they may retroactivity tax you.
If you got married had a family took another citizenship and lived for many years away your plan could work.
The easiest legally would be to set it up under a company and pay a much lower tax rate.
I don't think this is unique to Canadians. Please correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the US the only country that makes you file your taxes in the home country no matter if you live abroad.
Not great company - though you have to escape Eritrea in the first place, they don’t allow young people to leave (coworker I used to work with escaped and would talk about what it was like).
In practice no way anyone living abroad pays taxes to Eritrea (and probably few would go back given the risks).
It isn't normal (at least in a democracy) for the local rulers to have that kind of control over businesses. "Jurisdictional" I presume means that they don't have an independent judiciary either. Those things matter quite a bit.
> It isn't normal (at least in a democracy) for the local rulers to have that kind of control over businesses.
Democracies are preventing businesses from operating in russia. What exactly makes democracies so special that it isn't beyond corruption or evil? People have said democracies don't commit genocide, democracies don't invade and steal territory, democracies don't enslave, etc. When the truth is that democracies have committed the greatest genocides, stolen the most land, committed the worst evils. I've yet to get a satisfactory response. Russia is a democracy and the current bogeyman was elected. It's like people are so brainwashed by propaganda that they can't see the truth.
> When the truth is that democracies have committed the greatest genocides, stolen the most land, committed the worst evils.
Yeah... re-read history without the biases, and you'll see that that is absolutely false.
> Russia is a democracy and the current bogeyman was elected.
Well, Russia has elections. It also jails those who are trying to run against Putin, and Putin controls the media. So you wind up with the trappings of democracy without the reality. (At least today. I think the original election that he won may have been fair.)
> Yeah... re-read history without the biases, and you'll see that that is absolutely false.
I have re-read history. Who has committed more genocides than the US? What non-democratic country has nuked a city? I don't think I'm the one with the bias here. Just in the post cold war era, almost all the invasions have been carried out by democracies.
> Well, Russia has elections. It also jails those who are trying to run against Putin, and Putin controls the media. So you wind up with the trappings of democracy without the reality.
Right. And who do you think controls the media in other democracies?
> (At least today. I think the original election that he won may have been fair.)
So ultimately, democracy gave us Putin? So democracies are bad.
Instead of just blindly accepting propaganda, maybe you should ask why the propaganda doesn't align with facts and reality. Perhaps, as socrates said, democracies are not good to begin with.
> Right. And who do you think controls the media in other democracies?
Nobody “controls” the media. Any clown can start a media company and many do, across the full spectrum of opinion. Media also has far less share of communications now anyway. Everyone can publish, as you are here. Go ahead, write what you want. I’m far more likely to be arrested in eg Russia than you are in eg US. Remember https://www.iraqbodycount.org/ ? That’s still up and nobody is in jail. Try post this a few times in Russia and see how that goes: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukra...
Just a few years ago we had Trump banning certain media outlets he disagreed with from the White House. Or the UK government attacking hard disks at the Guardian with an angle grinder. You could say that neither of these governments are “democratic”, but then it becomes somewhat of a no-true Scotsman argument. We have to accept that control of the media happens in democracies. It’s not as bad as in Russia, but it is an overt goal of many democratic governments, and many media outlets go along with it in the name of access.
He could ban it from while White House but not from your house. It’s not control like where you go to jail, it’s minor influence over very few selected places.
Every elite seems to want to cement their power and we have to combat it, always. But democracies in general don’t have “control” in any way recognisable to Russians, Chinese, North Koreans. In South Africa we had the most corrupt shit going on and the media drive politicians nuts. There’s some doublespeak and us/them but that’s just humans for you. In Russia those journalists would be dead or in exile. 30 years ago in SA we had some of that. Incomparable to political influence over media in a democracy, which is typically only over part of it. Not all.
Besides you don’t need to control the media. That’s far too much work. Just have an alternative that your tribe prefers. It seems you can make up any shit and a lot of people will take it as gospel.
Who controls the media in the US? Not the president. That's an improvement over Russia.
Who has done more genocides than the US? Seriously? Imperial Spain. The Mongol Horde. The Muslim conquest of much of the near east. Imperial Japan. Soviet Russia. Nazi Germany. The Aztec Empire. That's with about two minutes' thought. If I were a historian or bothered to do research, I'm sure I could expand the list.
Your bias is blinding you. Take an actual look at actual history.
> Who controls the media in the US? Not the president. That's an improvement over Russia.
Is it? The people who control the media also control the president. Don't think it is any better.
> Who has done more genocides than the US? Seriously?
Yes. Show me one nation/empire that genocided an entire continent full of peoples. Completely wiped out dozens of peoples, cultures and languages. To a point where we don't even know the etymology and meanings of the names of a bunch of states, cities, etc.
> Imperial Spain.
Not even close. There are tens of millions of full blooded native americans all over spanish colonies. There are hardly any in the US.
> The Mongol Horde.
Who did the mongol horde genocide? The russians? Ukrainians?
> The Muslim conquest of much of the near east.
Who did the muslims genocide? Persians? Spanish?
> Imperial Japan.
Who did the imperial japanese genocide?
> Nazi Germany.
Are you claiming nazi germany committed more genocide than the US? They committed 1 genocide. Now compare that to the dozens of peoples we wiped out.
> That's with about two minutes' thought.
It shows. 2 minutes seems about right. There have been dozens of native american nations wiped out. Dozens of native languages wiped out. Dozens of native cultures. Show me another peoples who wiped out a continent full of nations. I'll wait.
> Your bias is blinding you. Take an actual look at actual history.
Says the person who claims imperial japan committed more genocides than the US. Imperial Japan committed 0 genocides. US committed dozens. Are you going to claim imperial japan nuked more cities too?
It seems like you are confused about what the word genocide actually means. It doesn't mean conquering. It doesn't even mean killing a lot of people. It has a specific meaning which makes it one of the most evil acts in human history.
qiskit, it's silly to compare the situation in russia with the democratic world and see some equivalency. Russia kills the opponents of the leaders, they actively subvert opponents in the sense of killing them with poison, put them in prison, shoot them down in the night.
Not sure what yardstick of horrors matter to you, but the Soviets were definitely in the running for “winning” the trophy for most senseless murder in the 20th century — no small feat.
Here is a good article from The Economist on the situation. I apologise for the low quality of photo of the page.
https://twitter.com/moo9000/status/1504425086073413639