How Google Used a ‘Double Irish’ and ‘Dutch Sandwich’ to Shave $2.2 Billion from Its Tax Bill

The story of how Ireland became a global hub for tax avoidance, with companies including Google, Apple, Intel and others all taking advantage. Feargal O’Rourke is credited with helping create an environment where companies can come to Ireland to avoid taxes they’d face in their home countries:

“Under no circumstances is Ireland a tax haven,” O’Rourke said recently at his corner office on the River Liffey in Dublin, a ritual stop for many tech companies in their Irish quest. “I’m a player in this game and we play by the rules.”

Source: Bloomberg
Published: Oct 28, 2013
Length: 12 minutes (3,021 words)

Libor Lies Revealed in Rigging of $300 Trillion Benchmark

On the biggest financial fraud in history:

“For years, traders at Deutsche Bank AG, UBS AG, Barclays, RBS and other banks colluded with colleagues responsible for setting the benchmark and their counterparts at other firms to rig the price of money, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg and interviews with two dozen current and former traders, lawyers and regulators. UBS traders went as far as offering bribes to brokers to persuade others to make favorable submissions on their behalf, regulatory filings show.

“Members of the close-knit group of traders knew each other from working at the same firms or going on trips organized by interdealer brokers, which line up buyers and sellers of securities, to French ski resort Chamonix and the Monaco Grand Prix. The manipulation flourished for years, even after bank supervisors were made aware of the system’s flaws.”

Source: Bloomberg
Published: Jan 28, 2013
Length: 18 minutes (4,502 words)

Secret Fed Loans Helped Banks Net $13 Billion

The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he “wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It dwarfed the Treasury Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.

Source: Bloomberg
Published: Nov 27, 2011
Length: 16 minutes (4,085 words)

Koch Brothers Flout Law with Secret Iran Sales

A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries — in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East — has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism. Internal company documents show that the company made those sales through foreign subsidiaries, thwarting a U.S. trade ban. Koch Industries units have also rigged prices with competitors, lied to regulators and repeatedly run afoul of environmental regulations, resulting in five criminal convictions since 1999 in the U.S. and Canada.

Source: Bloomberg
Published: Oct 2, 2011
Length: 28 minutes (7,127 words)

Out of Lehman’s Ashes Wall Street Gets Most of What It Wants

“We continue to listen to the same people whose errors in judgment were central to the problem,” said John Reed, 71, a former co-chief executive officer of Citigroup Inc., who estimated only 25 percent of needed changes have been enacted. “I’m astounded because we basically dropped the world’s biggest economy because of an error in bank management.”

Source: Bloomberg
Published: Dec 28, 2010
Length: 12 minutes (3,189 words)

Fallen Soldiers’ Families Denied Cash as Insurers Profit

Source: Bloomberg
Published: Jul 28, 2010
Length: 15 minutes (3,902 words)