DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
10/24/2011
The man was never in any official position in the Libyan government, yet the West and its propaganda machine often describe him as a “dictator” and “tyrant.” Moammar Kadhafi, “Brotherly Leader of the Revolution (Al Fateh),” began as a young officer with the “Free Officers Corps” and built a movement around an ideology of “direct democracy” (as expressed in The Green Book and his “Third International Theory”) that became the building block of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.
In the 43 years of Kadhafi’s stewardship, the Libyan people achieved the highest per capita income of $12,000, along with the highest standard of living in all of Africa. Their government was able to build the $25-billion Great Manmade Water Project that tapped the Sahara aquifers to supply 6.6 million cubic meters of water daily to the Libyan people, and eventually allow the greening of the Sahara desert. Libya was also able to keep intact 144 tons of gold reserves and $50 billion in assets deposited in Western banks.
Kadhafi was the visionary who had prepared for years to introduce the gold dinar, using his country’s 144 tons of gold reserves to become the African currency — beginning with its use in the trading of oil in Africa, to eventually become the basis upon which an African Central Bank is to be organized. These would have pushed through if not for the Nato attacks on his regime.
Under Kadhafi, Libya had no debt; now, the Nato-led NTC (National Transition or Traitors’ Council) has borrowed heavily from Western countries against the very Libyan assets deposited with them during Kadhafi’s era, with payment to be made from future oil contracts. These countries, in turn, are readying contracts on behalf of their companies for the reconstruction of Libya; the cost of which will be drawn from the Libyan assets they seized (a situation that obviously the new puppet Libyan government can do nothing about). Also, these Western powers are now said to be looting Libya’s gold reserves — this, as French, Italian and US companies are carving up the Libyan oil industry for themselves.
Indeed, Kadhafi had shared Libya’s oil revenues with many in Africa in the pursuit of his pan-African vision, along with other revolutionary movements in the world. In fact, one of the first visits made by the iconic Nelson Mandela outside of his native South Africa, right after his release from 27 years in prison, was to Libya’s Colonel Kadhafi to thank him for his support of the African National Congress’ long and arduous struggle.
It must be remembered that the African Union (AU) continued to call for negotiations and elections to resolve the Libyan crisis while protesting the many gross violations by the US and Nato of the parameters of the UN “No fly zone.” I even recall South African President Jacob Zuma condemning the attacks before hinting that armed support was somehow discussed among African member-nations to come to the aid of a northern neighbor battered by an eight-month assault. The AU must now be hurting terribly from all that has happened.
Still, there is a constant debate as to what the US-Nato motive in the attack on Kadhafi really is. Divergent views say that it is either about oil, the gold dinar, or the African Central Bank; but I see it as all of the above and more. I subscribe to several seasoned observers whose views run along the lines of Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar’s. In his article, “The US power grab in Africa,” he writes, “The big picture remains the Pentagon’s Africom (US military command) spreading its militarized tentacles against the lure of Chinese soft power in Africa, which goes something like this: in exchange for oil and minerals, we build anything you want, and we don’t try to sell you ‘democracy for dummies.’”
Moreover, such views hew even closer to Centre for Research on Globalization contributor John Pilger’s “Obama, The Son of Africa, Claims a Continent’s Crown Jewels” treatise, which says, “Africa is China’s success story. Where the Americans bring drones and destabilization, the Chinese bring roads, bridges and dams… Libya under Moammar Kadhafi was one of China’s most important sources of fuel,” further revealing that, according to French newspaper Libération, “the west’s ‘humanitarian intervention’ was explained… in a proposal to the French government by the ‘rebel’ National Transitional Council… (whereby) France was offered 35 percent of Libya’s gross national oil production ‘in exchange’ (the term used) for ‘total and permanent’… American plans for Africa (which) are part of a global design in which 60,000 special forces, including death squads, already (operating) in 75 countries (are to be used)... As Dick Cheney pointed out in his 1990s ‘defense strategy’ plan, America simply wishes to rule the world. That this is now the gift of Barack Obama, the ‘Son of Africa’… what matters is not so much the color of your skin as the power you serve and the millions you betray.”
Kadhafi, who was the visionary for a new, independent, and progressive Africa, stood in the way of the Western powers’ re-conquest of the continent — and the world — through control of expanding territories and minerals, including oil, in a campaign of constriction against the only real, strategic threat to the reestablishment of their uni-polar world. China, with its population and economic/technological potential, is set to become the world’s No. 1 soon — a prospect that they must surely dread.
Finally, let us close with this message from Gerald A. Perreira of the International Revolutionaries Movement, part of an international battalion defending the Al Fateh revolution: “The Lion of Africa is dead… he has left millions of cubs in the bushes and in the desert. They can kill the man but they can never kill his profound ideas. His legacy is only made stronger by his martyrdom.”
And that legacy lives on.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Monday, October 24, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Talk News TV with Herman Tiu Laurel
TOPIC: Consumer Champions in Congress: Cong. Bernadette Herrera-Dy
Guests: Rep. Bernadette Herrera-Dy, Bagong Henerasyon party-list and Butch Junia, Columnist of OpinYon
Guests: Rep. Bernadette Herrera-Dy, Bagong Henerasyon party-list and Butch Junia, Columnist of OpinYon
A scam all the way
BACKBENCHER
Rod Kapunan
10/22-23/2011
Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court, with lightning speed, issued a temporary restraining order to stop the Bureau of Internal Revenue from implementing the 20 percent final withholding tax on the P35 billion Poverty Eradication and Alleviation Certificates bond. The petition questioned BIR Ruling No. 370-2011 issued by Commissioner Kim Henares reiterating the 2004 ruling reversing the three previous rulings exempting it from the payment of said tax amounting to P4.86 billion. Likewise, it ordered the Caucus of Development NGO Networks to pay the 30 percent capital gains tax from the P1.83 billion it earned to the tune of P549 million.
The 10-year bond was contracted on October 16, 2001, or barely a year after the corrupt Arroyo administration was installed to power with the help of those leading personalities of Code-NGO, many of whom were later appointed as officials with some still hanging on to their juicy positions under the present dispensation. Because of their influence, Code-NGO, in collaboration with Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation, cornered in whole the PEACe Bonds at a discounted rate but at a cost of P10.17 billion bearing an interest rate of 12.75 percent per annum such that the original amount has now ballooned to P35 billion. Despite that, RCBC failed to reciprocate by giving the government a discounted rate of interest, but instead exacted an onerous but illegal condition of being allowed not to pay taxes.
The eight commercial banks that filed the petition for certiorari and prohibition and/or mandamus – Bank of Commerce, China Banking Corp., Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co., Banco de Oro, Philippine Bank of Communications, Philippine National Bank, Philippine Veterans Bank, and Planters Development Bank—sought to stop the BIR from collecting the 20 percent final withholding tax, and the 30 percent capital gains tax from Code-NGO. Interestingly, the purported wholesale buyer Code-NGO, which turned over those bonds to RCBC known in the vernacular as “kaliwaan” after consummating the transaction with the Bureau of Treasury, uncannily did not join the petition. Adding suspicion is the failure of the eight banks to file a third party complaint against RCBC, Code-NGO, or to both of them if truly they were guided by “good faith.” As one lawyer-tax consultant quipped, it could have been a good defense for them to get their costly reimbursement.
As BIR Commissioner Henares pointed out, Code-NGO cannot question the retroactivity of the rulings revoking the tax exemptions because of “fatal legal infirmity of the 2001 rulings” issued by then BIR Commissioner Rene Banez. As the same lawyer-tax consultant pointed out, the ruling being null and void can never be used as basis to prevent the BIR from collecting the rightful taxes due the government. They should have known that BIR rulings can be revoked anytime, it not being a law but a mere opinion of the Commissioner. Considering the huge amount at stake, the best thing the banks, as secondary buyers, could have done was to secure a court judgment. Alas, they ignored the ominous warnings amplified by the 2004 and 2001 rulings revoking that exemption.
As the same lawyer-tax consultant explained, even if we take it that Code-NGO is tax-exempt, that specific transaction was at the outset illegal because Code-NGO, in the words of Commissioner Henares, was “ineligible to buy those debt instruments,” it not being a member or accredited as a government securities dealer (GSD). In that she could surmise there was a dilemma on how they could consummate their collusion to consummate the rip-off that is now developing into a more serious crime of tax evasion. As that shoddy ruling of Banez stated, there was only one lender: RCBC/Code-NGO. In that, one could deduce that Code-NGO fronted as the tax-shelter for the scam, while RCBC fronted to make the transaction legitimate. Now that they have profited much from it without a sweat, they want to add insult to injury by not paying their taxes. They are even playing possum by leaving it to the petitioning banks to argue for them.
As explained in the 2004 ruling made by then Commissioner Joel Tan-Torres, “the issuance and subsequent distribution (exchange and treading) of government debt instruments and securities in the secondary market to other market participants, specifically the investors, is in itself a public borrowing of the government. This makes it subject to the 20 percent final withholding tax. The number of lenders was immaterial.” Thus, should the eight banks fail in their defense of “good faith,” and having failed implead RCBC and Code-NGO, that then would deprive them the possibility of getting back their reimbursement. It is not even an excuse for Code-NGO to say that the P1.34 billion it profited was donated to another NGO identified as the Peace and Equity Foundation and given as endowments, and the remaining P400 million paid as fees and commissions to its financial advisers.
Finally, identifying those hustlers, one could say indeed there was in that instance a union of corrupt personalities from the public and private sectors, mostly made up of self-righteous and religious hypocrites. The alibi of DSWD Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman that she already left Code-NGO before the scam was consummated is flimsy. Her husband, Atty. Hector Soliman, assumed the post of first corporate secretary of PEF and took charge in managing the proceeds from the bonds after she left. It was also an all-family affair because their son, Sandino Soliman, is the current project assistant of Code-NGO.
There was also Maria Socorro Camacho-Reyes, the sister of Arroyo’s former finance secretary Isidro Camacho. She actively pursued the consummation of the deal, and presided in the issuance of all the bonds. Among those suspected to have obtained their “rightful share” of the fees and commission for their role as financial advisers included Red Mayo of Capital Advisors for Private Enterprise Expansion (Capex), Inc., Bobby Guevarra and Juan Victor Tanjuatco of SEED Capital Ventures, and Danilo Songco, the former executive director of Code-NGO, and later appointed DBP board member. Finally, although Bureau of Treasury head Sergio Edeza “questioned” Code-NGO’s eligibility to bid, and even “rejected” its initial proposal to purchase those bonds on a negotiated sale, he however ended up employed by RCBC to head its treasury department.
In that, one could see how Code-NGO used its influence and saliva to exact concessions from a notoriously corrupt government. Nothing could amplify that than the truth that those bonds were issued just to allow it to generate huge profit without batting an eyelash that what it did was contrary to its objective, for in the end, it pushed the Filipino people a notch deeper into debt.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Rod Kapunan
10/22-23/2011
Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court, with lightning speed, issued a temporary restraining order to stop the Bureau of Internal Revenue from implementing the 20 percent final withholding tax on the P35 billion Poverty Eradication and Alleviation Certificates bond. The petition questioned BIR Ruling No. 370-2011 issued by Commissioner Kim Henares reiterating the 2004 ruling reversing the three previous rulings exempting it from the payment of said tax amounting to P4.86 billion. Likewise, it ordered the Caucus of Development NGO Networks to pay the 30 percent capital gains tax from the P1.83 billion it earned to the tune of P549 million.
The 10-year bond was contracted on October 16, 2001, or barely a year after the corrupt Arroyo administration was installed to power with the help of those leading personalities of Code-NGO, many of whom were later appointed as officials with some still hanging on to their juicy positions under the present dispensation. Because of their influence, Code-NGO, in collaboration with Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation, cornered in whole the PEACe Bonds at a discounted rate but at a cost of P10.17 billion bearing an interest rate of 12.75 percent per annum such that the original amount has now ballooned to P35 billion. Despite that, RCBC failed to reciprocate by giving the government a discounted rate of interest, but instead exacted an onerous but illegal condition of being allowed not to pay taxes.
The eight commercial banks that filed the petition for certiorari and prohibition and/or mandamus – Bank of Commerce, China Banking Corp., Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co., Banco de Oro, Philippine Bank of Communications, Philippine National Bank, Philippine Veterans Bank, and Planters Development Bank—sought to stop the BIR from collecting the 20 percent final withholding tax, and the 30 percent capital gains tax from Code-NGO. Interestingly, the purported wholesale buyer Code-NGO, which turned over those bonds to RCBC known in the vernacular as “kaliwaan” after consummating the transaction with the Bureau of Treasury, uncannily did not join the petition. Adding suspicion is the failure of the eight banks to file a third party complaint against RCBC, Code-NGO, or to both of them if truly they were guided by “good faith.” As one lawyer-tax consultant quipped, it could have been a good defense for them to get their costly reimbursement.
As BIR Commissioner Henares pointed out, Code-NGO cannot question the retroactivity of the rulings revoking the tax exemptions because of “fatal legal infirmity of the 2001 rulings” issued by then BIR Commissioner Rene Banez. As the same lawyer-tax consultant pointed out, the ruling being null and void can never be used as basis to prevent the BIR from collecting the rightful taxes due the government. They should have known that BIR rulings can be revoked anytime, it not being a law but a mere opinion of the Commissioner. Considering the huge amount at stake, the best thing the banks, as secondary buyers, could have done was to secure a court judgment. Alas, they ignored the ominous warnings amplified by the 2004 and 2001 rulings revoking that exemption.
As the same lawyer-tax consultant explained, even if we take it that Code-NGO is tax-exempt, that specific transaction was at the outset illegal because Code-NGO, in the words of Commissioner Henares, was “ineligible to buy those debt instruments,” it not being a member or accredited as a government securities dealer (GSD). In that she could surmise there was a dilemma on how they could consummate their collusion to consummate the rip-off that is now developing into a more serious crime of tax evasion. As that shoddy ruling of Banez stated, there was only one lender: RCBC/Code-NGO. In that, one could deduce that Code-NGO fronted as the tax-shelter for the scam, while RCBC fronted to make the transaction legitimate. Now that they have profited much from it without a sweat, they want to add insult to injury by not paying their taxes. They are even playing possum by leaving it to the petitioning banks to argue for them.
As explained in the 2004 ruling made by then Commissioner Joel Tan-Torres, “the issuance and subsequent distribution (exchange and treading) of government debt instruments and securities in the secondary market to other market participants, specifically the investors, is in itself a public borrowing of the government. This makes it subject to the 20 percent final withholding tax. The number of lenders was immaterial.” Thus, should the eight banks fail in their defense of “good faith,” and having failed implead RCBC and Code-NGO, that then would deprive them the possibility of getting back their reimbursement. It is not even an excuse for Code-NGO to say that the P1.34 billion it profited was donated to another NGO identified as the Peace and Equity Foundation and given as endowments, and the remaining P400 million paid as fees and commissions to its financial advisers.
Finally, identifying those hustlers, one could say indeed there was in that instance a union of corrupt personalities from the public and private sectors, mostly made up of self-righteous and religious hypocrites. The alibi of DSWD Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman that she already left Code-NGO before the scam was consummated is flimsy. Her husband, Atty. Hector Soliman, assumed the post of first corporate secretary of PEF and took charge in managing the proceeds from the bonds after she left. It was also an all-family affair because their son, Sandino Soliman, is the current project assistant of Code-NGO.
There was also Maria Socorro Camacho-Reyes, the sister of Arroyo’s former finance secretary Isidro Camacho. She actively pursued the consummation of the deal, and presided in the issuance of all the bonds. Among those suspected to have obtained their “rightful share” of the fees and commission for their role as financial advisers included Red Mayo of Capital Advisors for Private Enterprise Expansion (Capex), Inc., Bobby Guevarra and Juan Victor Tanjuatco of SEED Capital Ventures, and Danilo Songco, the former executive director of Code-NGO, and later appointed DBP board member. Finally, although Bureau of Treasury head Sergio Edeza “questioned” Code-NGO’s eligibility to bid, and even “rejected” its initial proposal to purchase those bonds on a negotiated sale, he however ended up employed by RCBC to head its treasury department.
In that, one could see how Code-NGO used its influence and saliva to exact concessions from a notoriously corrupt government. Nothing could amplify that than the truth that those bonds were issued just to allow it to generate huge profit without batting an eyelash that what it did was contrary to its objective, for in the end, it pushed the Filipino people a notch deeper into debt.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
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