The beginning of the newspaper The Independent and an article written by Borzo Dragahi highlights a research prepared by a group of researchers who say that dirty money from Russia and Europe is flooding the real estate market in Dubai.
The research, released this week and co-authored by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) and a coalition of news organizations led by Norwegian news site E24 and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, shows that while Dubai (one of seven Emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates) has a population of 3.5 million people. Only a million people, they account for up to 3 percent of the global overseas real estate market.
The research, which obtained the data with the help of confidential sources in the Emirates, which was the basis for its idea, reveals that “Dubai’s real estate market is a major haven for corrupt rulers around the world, transnational organized crime, and a wide range of other illegal actors – from drug dealers to oligarchs.” The Russians.”
The research notes that these networks, entities and individuals “come to the UAE in search of the advantages that Dubai offers, such as high levels of secrecy, loopholes in law enforcement and the use of luxury real estate as a means of storing and concealing wrongdoing.” was. profits.”
“Different tax havens offer different services,” says Annette Alstadsatter, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, who heads a team of academic researchers who independently analyzed the data. “While some tax havens are used to own PO Box companies to hide ownership of assets located elsewhere, only You are in Dubai, you can use your money directly, you can hide it in real estate there and use it there.”
A number of Russian oligarchs have already docked their yachts in Dubai ports to avoid Western sanctions. The Financial Times reported last week that the oligarchs sought to swap their London flats for properties in Dubai to avoid the scrutiny of Western regulators seeking to punish the Kremlin and its supporters for the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
According to the academic researchers’ 46-page paper, Who Owns Global Offshore Real Estate? evidence from B, foreigners control more than a quarter of Dubai’s property market or nearly $146 billion in real estate, roughly twice the value of real estate that be owned. foreigners in London.
Although the UAE does not allow foreigners to own real estate. However, non-Emiratis may purchase real estate under de facto 99-year leases.
Around 35,000 Indian nationals make up the largest group of foreign owners, with 23,000 Britons second and EU nationals the third largest group.
More than 100 Russian political and media figures and oligarchs close to the Kremlin were found to own real estate there, according to more than 20 newspaper correspondents from Western and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, the Baltic states and the Balkans, who searched the names of property owners. . There are also dozens of Europeans accused of money laundering, embezzlement and corruption, as well as many fugitives from the law.
The research concludes that Dubai shows little willingness to open its books and stop allowing rich scammers to stash their money on its beaches. However, experts point out that Western sanctions on financial transactions coming to and from Dubai may be the only way to persuade it to take tough measures.
America pays others to fight the battle on their behalf.
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And to the Guardian newspaper and an opinion piece written by Adam Tooze entitled “Is the escalation in Ukraine part of the US strategy?”
The author points out that in the spring of the Russian war against Ukraine, Washington seems to be haunted by the ghosts of history. The US Congress passed the Lend-Lease for Ukrainian Democracy Act of 2022 to expedite aid to Ukraine – just as Franklin D. Roosevelt, under the Lend-Lease Act, did to the British Empire, China and Greece in March 1941.
The sums of money being considered in Washington, Toz adds, are enormous — a total of $47 billion, roughly a third of Ukraine’s prewar GDP. If approved by Congress, along with other Western aid, it would mean we are financing nothing short of an all-out war.
What made it so extraordinary, he explains, was that the United States was not at war when the Lend-Lease Act program was launched in 1941. The introduction of the law was the defining moment in which the United States, although not a combatant, abandoned neutrality. In broader terms, it marked the rise of the United States as the hegemonic power that remains to this day, through thick and thin.
And if the US Congress now introduces the new Lend-Lease program, the question of whether escalation is part of the plan will have to be considered.
Then, as now, the author says, it was our adversaries (America’s adversaries and allies) who were left with the option of escalating from economic confrontation to military confrontation (it was not clear that Roosevelt could find the majority to go to war declared against Germany, so he suspended Lend-Lease arms shipments as an immediate response to the Japanese attack, which horrified London and Moscow, prompting Hitler to declare war on the United States). Then as now, the motives of these opponents are murky.
According to the author, Roosevelt knew that the American public was not ready for war. He hoped that the Lend-Lease Act would allow him to avoid a lawsuit after war. This was the sentiment Churchill played on when he implored the United States in February 1941 not to enter the war but to give Britain and her empire the tools “and we will finish the job”. But the generosity and extent of lend-lease, and the commitment it implied, clearly demonstrated the fact that the United States was paying others to do the fighting on its behalf.
This is exactly their position today. The United States and its allies choose for very good reasons to support one side in a fight in which they will not be directly involved. We do it like Roosevelt, with one eye for the heroic resistance of those resisting attack and another eye for geopolitical balance. If Russia chooses to bash itself against Ukraine’s rock, if Ukraine is willing to fight, so be it.
Trumpism and those affected by it
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We close with a report in the Financial Times, written by James Politi, titled “Joe Biden describes Trumpism as the ‘most extreme’ in modern American history.”
US President Joe Biden criticized the former president’s control of the Republican Party in the wake of the announcement of the possible move by the conservative-led Supreme Court. To take away abortion rights.
Biden’s comments Wednesday morning came as Democrats expressed outrage over a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion this week that heralded a move by the justices to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that secured abortion rights in the United States.
Publication of the document could improve the political dynamic ahead of the November midterm elections, giving Democrats an opportunity to shore up their base and portray Republicans as drifting dangerously to the right and increasingly influenced by Donald Trump.
Biden and his top officials said the importance of the potential move by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Overturning Wade would extend beyond the issue of abortion rights to other areas where individual privacy can be undermined.
“Meanwhile, millionaires, billionaires and corporations are leading the way. Just imagine. I think it’s really outrageous,” he added.
Biden’s comments came a day after Trump’s continued control of the Republican Party was confirmed by the results of the Ohio Senate primary, where JD Vance, the candidate backed by the former president, a general election matchup with the Democrat Tim Ryan won.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said Biden was shocked by Trump’s control of the Republican Party. “They’re against allowing women to make their own health care decisions in exchange for lowering the cost of prescription drugs. And if that’s their logic, then the president’s view is that they’re out of control with the mainstream of the country.”