Monday

Study: Corporate Mergers Overrun By Insider Trading

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On Wall Street, winning trades often come down to who has the most information — who has the most “edge.” The question is, just how often does edge cross the line into insider trading?

A jaw-dropping new study of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) suggests the problem is not only pervasive, but also rarely enforced.

Watch To Catch a Trader, FRONTLINE’s examination of the government’s vast investigation into insider trading in the hedge fund industry.

 
According to the study, as much as 25 percent of all M&A deals from 1996 through 2012 may have involved some degree of insider trading. The typical “rogue trade,” the authors found, reaped an average profit of $1.6 million.
The authors — Patrick Augustin of McGill University and Menachem Brenner and Marti Subrahmanyam of New York University — focused on movements in the price of stock options in the 30 days before an M&A deal was announced. Options allow investors to acquire a stock at a future date at a set price.

M&A deals are supposed to be secret, so “we should not be able to distinguish options trading activity before an announcement … on any randomly chosen date,” the authors wrote.

That’s not what they found, however. The trades flagged in the study as suspicious were so well-timed, the authors say, that “the probability of the unusual volume in the sample arising out of chance” is approximately “three in a trillion.”

In addition to the sheer extent of insider trading, the authors found that regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission are often overmatched in their efforts to keep pace with such activity. Out of 1,859 deals examined in the study, fewer than 5 percent resulted in any form of litigation by the SEC.
In recent years, the government’s most successful actions against insider trading have originated at the Department of Justice. Since 2009, prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York have won 81 convictions or guilty pleas for insider trading in the hedge fund industry. The historic crackdown was the focus of the recent FRONTLINE investigation, To Catch a Trader.

One problem at the SEC, say the authors, is that regulators appear overly focused on insider trading with stocks, rather than on trading in options. From 1990 to 2013, they note, the SEC investigated 207 M&A transactions for insider trading in stocks only, but only 102 cases involving options.
“The modest number of civil lawsuits for insider trading in options made by the SEC appears small in comparison to the pervasive evidence we document,” they conclude.

Sunday

President Barack Obama Weekly Address June 21, 2014 (Video/Trascript )


President Barack Obama

Weekly Address 
The White House June 21, 2014
Hi, everybody.  As President, my top priority is rebuilding an economy where everybody who works hard has the chance to get ahead. 

That’s what I’ll spend some time talking about on Monday, at the White House Summit on Working Families. We’re bringing together business leaders and workers to talk about the challenges that working parents face every day, and how we can address them together. 

Take paid family leave. Many jobs don’t offer adequate leave to care for a new baby or an ailing parent, so workers can’t afford to be there when their family needs them the most. That’s wrong. And it puts us way behind the times. Only three countries in the world report that they don’t offer paid maternity leave. 

Three. And the United States is one of them. It’s time to change that. A few states have acted on their own to give workers paid family leave, but this should be available to everyone, because all Americans should be able to afford to care for a family member in need.

Childcare is another challenge. Most working families I know can’t afford thousands a year for childcare, but often that’s what it costs. That leaves parents scrambling just to make sure their kids are safe while they’re at work – forget about giving them the high-quality early childhood education that helps kids succeed in life.

Then there’s the issue of flexibility – the ability to take a few hours off for a parent-teacher conference or to work from home when your kid is sick. Most workers want it, but not enough of them have it. What’s more, it not only makes workers happier – studies show that flexibility can make workers more productive and reduce worker turnover and absenteeism. That’s good for business. 

At a time when women make up about half of America’s workforce, outdated workplace policies that make it harder for mothers to work hold our entire economy back. But these aren’t just problems for women.  Men also care about who’s watching their kids.  They’re rearranging their schedules to make it to soccer games and school plays.  Lots of sons help care for aging parents.  And plenty of fathers would love to be home for their new baby’s first weeks in the world. 

In fact, in a new study, nearly half of all parents – women and men – report that they’ve said no to a job, not because they didn’t want it, but because it would be too hard on their families.  When that many talented, hard-working people are forced to choose between work and family, something’s wrong.  Other countries are making it easier for people to have both.  We should too, if we want American businesses to compete and win in the global economy.                                                                                       
Family leave. Childcare. Flexibility. These aren’t frills – they’re basic needs. They shouldn’t be bonuses – they should be the bottom line. 

The good news is, some businesses are embracing family-friendly policies, because they know it’s key to attracting and retaining talented employees. And I’m going to keep highlighting the businesses that do. Because I take this personally. I take it personally as the son and grandson of some strong women who worked hard to support my sister and me. As the husband of a brilliant woman who struggled to balance work and raising our young ladies when my job often kept me away. And as the father of two beautiful girls, whom I want to be there for as much as I possibly can – and whom I hope will be able to have families and careers of their own one day. 

We know from our history that our economy grows best from the middle-out; that our country does better when everybody participates; when everyone’s talents are put to use; when we all have a fair shot. That’s the America I believe in. That’s the America I’ll keep fighting for every day. Thanks, and have a great weekend.

Monday

Sun and Shadows: How an Island Paradise Became a Haven for Dirty Money

Rise of the small havens

Thanks to its offshore industry, Seychelles, an island nation with a population smaller than Davenport, Iowa, maintains a Zelig-like presence in the annals of international corruption and money laundering. Where there’s an odor of financial scandal, there’s often a good chance Seychelles is involved.

In 2010, for instance, the government of Kazakhstan issued an arrest warrant for Mukhtar Ablyazov, a banking tycoon who has been accused of using Seychellois companies as part of a scheme that plundered billions of dollars from Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank.

In 2011, a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia admitted it had channeled millions of dollars in bribes intended for Nigerian officials through a Seychellois shell company linked to a convicted white-collar criminal. 

And in 2012, two entrepreneurs based in Israel pleaded guilty in a U.S. court to operating an illegal Internet pharmacy that laundered much of its profits through Seychelles.

The history of the rise of Seychelles’ offshore industry offers a case study in the rise of tiny, out-of-the-way tax havens. At a time when tax havens have become an flashpoint of debate around the world — even becoming an issue in 2012 U.S. presidential race, thanks to Republican Mitt Romney’s Cayman Islands holdings — understanding how small havens emerged and how they have prospered is important to understanding how the offshore financial system has flourished.

Like most small tax havens, Seychelles has an outsized impact that belies its modest market share. As Al Jazeera’s undercover muckrakers discovered, offshore patrons and the accountants, bankers and other operatives who help them usually don’t settle for a single offshore company or bank account. They create elaborate webs that use multiple jurisdictions, multiple front men and multiple layers of ownership. Smaller havens such as Seychelles are crucial links in these chains of secrecy and in the wider offshore system.

They support a system that, critics charge, caters to drug traffickers, fraudsters, money launderers and high-net-worth tax dodgers, fueling onshore corruption and poverty. By one estimate, as much as $32 trillion in private financial wealth is hidden is offshore havens — roughly equivalent to the annual output of the U.S., Chinese and Japanese economies combined.

Remote, sparsely populated financial refuges have survived despite two decades of promises by rich nations and international organizations to shut them down. Far from pulling back, Seychelles and other smaller hideaways are now becoming even bigger players in the offshore world as the U.S., the U.K. and other world powers have passed new laws and launched new multinational initiatives aimed at cracking down on cross-border tax dodging and money laundering. Over the past year, international groups such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, better known as the OECD, have stepped up their pressure on Switzerland, the British Virgin Islands and other European-flavored financial havens.

For Russian and Eastern European mafia and money launderers around the world, the OECD’s push has only increased the appeal of what Euan Grant, a former U.K. customs official who now works as a consultant on money laundering issues, calls the “new havens” — independent states operating outside the Western political orbit.

“We’re talking of Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and, increasingly, Mauritius and the Seychelles,” Grant says.

The OECD says Seychelles has mostly resisted the organization’s efforts to prod it to be more forthcoming about who uses its offshore center. In one of the latest reports by the OECD’s global forum on tax information exchange, Seychelles was one of four jurisdictions that received “non-compliant” ratings. There was no assurance, the forum said, that Seychellois corporate service providers were documenting the real owners behind offshore companies set up on the islands.

Seychellois officials objected to the negative rating, saying the country has cooperated with the OECD. In 2012, Steve Fanny, then the chief executive of the agency that oversees Seychelles’ offshore industry, told a business publication that his country had “always adhered to the international norms and principles of good practices. We do not want money launderers or criminals,” he said.

Fanny added, though, that Seychelles is happy to help offshore clients embrace the flexibility of the international tax system: “Paying less tax as long as it is within the parameter of the law is legal. It is not even your patriotic duty to pay a cent more.”
To the Seychellois government, the benefits of the offshore industry are evident in the wealth of the islands’ 89,000 inhabitants: Judged strictly on a per capita basis, Seychelles, where the average income tops $25,000, is the richest country in Africa.

“We are a nation of opportunities,”'Seychelles PresidentJames Alix Michel trumpeted last year in an interview with the United Nations magazine Africa Renewal.

Secret records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists indicate, though, that Michel may be seeking opportunities for himself in other lands. The records, published in ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks database, lists a James Alix Michel as the sole shareholder in Soleil Overseas Holding Ltd., an offshore entity set up in the British Virgin Islands in 2007. The address on the Soleil documents match the location of the presidential residence. A government spokesperson declined to say whether President Michel has had offshore holdings.

Soleil Overseas Holdings was controlled by a Mauritius entity called Pines Limited that, in turn, oversaw eight more offshore companies. Documents indicate that three of them are owned in whole or part by Marie Anne Claudine Lilette Savy — the wife of Glenny Savy, a member of President Michel’s inner circle and the chief of the Islands Development Company, which oversees tourism and construction efforts on Seychelles’ so-called Outer Islands.

President Michel and Glenny Savy did not respond to requests for an interview and a series of emailed questions.

Opposition media and politicians see the documentation of Michel’s offshore holdings as evidence of backroom intrigues that benefit the powers that be. They note that a 2008 U.S. State Department cable, published by Wikileaks, indicated that American officials believe “corruption is the critical reason why a country as wealthy as Seychelles … has suffered so many persistent economic problems,” necessitating a $2.1 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund in 2008.

Jean-Francois Ferrari, a journalist and former member of Seychelles’ National Assembly, fears that, in a nation where the president’s party controls 31 of 32 seats in the legislature, Michel’s silence on questions about his offshore assets will close the door on any discussion of the issue.

“A president and his cronies stashing their money in an offshore account, in order to keep it away from their own tax authorities — in any other part of the world, these people would be on their knees, begging for forgiveness,” says Ferrari. “Here, guess what? It’s just business as usual.”

‘Distinctly unusual’

Until the late 18th century, Seychelles remained largely uninhabited by humans. The first settlers were hardy French merchants, who established a small colony on the western flank of Mahé, the chain’s largest island. By the early 19th century, Seychelles had passed bloodlessly into the hands of the British empire. As of 1810, the population was 3,467: 3,015 slaves, 135 free blacks, and a ruling class of 317 whites, or Grand Blancs. Seychelles slumbered — a kaleidoscopically lush and iniquitous backwater written off by the admiralty as little more than a resupply point for eastbound slavers.

Then, in 1971, an airport opened on the northeastern coast of Mahé. Tourist infrastructure soon followed: hotels, souvenir shops, ferries, casinos, helicopter tours.

Five years later, in 1976, England gave the islands independence. But the micro-state got off to a rough start: Just a few months after James Mancham took office as the nation’s first president, he was overthrown in a coup organized by Seychelles’ socialist prime minister, France-Albert René.

In time, René’s foes obtained the services of a famed Irish-South African mercenary, “Mad Mike” Hoare, who served as a model for a Richard Burton’s character in the Hollywood soldier-of-fortune drama, The Wild Geese. In November 1981, Hoare and a band of aging guns-for-hire chartered a plane from South Africa to Seychelles, packing AK-47s in their luggage and posing as members of a rugby-and-drinking club.

The would-be counter-coup went bad when they landed at the airport near Victoria, the islands’ capital. After a brief fire fight that left one customs inspector dead, Hoare and most of his men escaped by hijacking an Air India jet. The South African government paid a $3 million ransom, news reports at the time claimed, to ensure the release of five mercenaries and a South African intelligence officer who’d been left behind.

René hung onto power with support from James Michel, who was his finance minister and then vice president. He also relied on an Italian named Giovanni Mario Ricci, another in a long chain of outsiders who come to Seychelles to make new lives.

Ricci became René’s friend, advisor, financial backer, and fixer.

René’s government teamed with Ricci in 1978 to create Seychelles’ offshore financial center.  Seychelles Trust Company was a joint venture between Ricci and the Seychellois government and held exclusive rights to incorporate offshore companies in the islands.
René and Ricci created what was, in essence, the world’s first socialist tax haven.

By 1981, the year of Mad Mike’s failed coup, Ricci had taken sole ownership of Seychelles Trust Company. From his base in Seychelles, Ricci established business interests in as many as two dozen countries around the globe, associating himself with what historian Stephen Ellis calls “some distinctly unusual companies.” One was a firm called International Monetary Funding, or IMF, which seemed be named in an effort to mimic the International Monetary Fund.

Ricci was also accredited to Seychelles as a diplomat representing the Sovereign Order of the Coptic Catholic Knights of Malta. It turned out that the order had nothing to the do with the Vatican’s venerable Knights of Malta order of chivalry. Instead it was a commercial company based in New York City. Via this maneuver, Ricci snared a diplomatic passport and use of a diplomatic pouch, which allowed him to move documents around the world undetected.

Years later it would emerge that Ricci, like many foreigners who come to Seychelles, wasn’t exactly what he passed himself off to be. 

The father of Seychelles’ offshore industry had, in fact, been a financial criminal before he found a home in the islands — and may have been connected to the Italian Mafia, one U.S. ambassador to Seychelles believed. Ricci had been convicted of fraud in Italy in 1958 and, later, of possessing counterfeit cash in Switzerland, and had come to Seychelles after being expelled from Somalia under mysterious circumstances.

René later claimed that he had asked Italian officials whether Ricci had a criminal record, but “they told us that they had nothing on him.

Offshore Capital

 In many ways, Victoria is a typical African capital — low-slung, dusty, and loud. From the clock tower at the center of town, one road spins off towards the sea and another towards the crest of Trois Frères, the granite cliffs that shield the city from the elements.

In the afternoons, those same cliffs turn Victoria into a convection oven — the heat roars in and, absorbed by the asphalt, does not roll out again until long after the sun has dropped over the horizon.

The offshore action in Seychelles centers on the main square, in a series of unlovely multi-story office complexes. Accountants and corporate operatives work in mostly interchangeable, white-walled offices, on desks cluttered with manila folders. They take their lunches at one of the Victoria members-only clubs, and spend the afternoons receiving a steady stream of foreign clients, or chatting on the phone with the European and American lawyers who help steer new business their way.

After the Al Jazeera undercover sting, there was a flurry of handwringing in opposition media about the offshore center.

Paul Chow, a former member of the Seychellois parliament and a long-time player in the local offshore business, was quoted as saying that “we should not be surprised by what we saw and heard on Al Jazeera,” adding that “all kinds of unethical conduct goes unpunished or simply brushed under the carpet — treated as business as usual. It is this swamp that everyone operates under.”

In a recent interview, Chow continued to express worries about corruption on the islands, but said that he and most other offshore operatives on the islands operate in an honest manner. He said the two offshore services firms targeted by the Al Jazeera story were outliers that had been allowed, in the absence of much governmental oversight, to do as they pleased. The government stripped both firms of their licenses after the story aired.
Chow is short, with graying hair, olive skin, thin lips, and old family roots in Seychelles. In the early 1920s, his father, a teacher from Guangdong, headed for Madagascar, found himself instead stranded in Victoria, without a boat ticket back to China. He married a Seychellois woman and had six children. Paul — now 62 — was the youngest.

A Mancham loyalist, Chow fled to England after René seized power in 1977. During his exile, Chow and several confederates worked to overthrow, from afar, René’s government. Ricci, the offshore industry chief and René advisor, was a player in this cat-and-mouse game, hiring private detectives to spy on the president’s enemies.

In 1985, Chow’s closest ally in London, Seychellois activist Gérard Hoareau, was gunned down outside his flat. The murder was never solved, but Chow and many other critics of the Seychellois government believe it was a political assassination. Chow moved back to Seychelles after international pressure helped force René to hold multi-party elections. He spent five years in parliament; later, he stepped down to open an offshore services firm — a popular choice for former politicians with connections and cash.

His business model, Chow said, is straight forward: A lawyer or accountant in the U.S., Europe, or Israel contacts him on behalf of a wealthy client; Chow establishes a company in Seychelles, with the client as shareholder. He takes a fee for each company he establishes and for producing the paperwork that clients need to open a bank account. He said his firm, FIFCO Offshore, made him $300,000 last year, a small fortune in Africa.
Chow walked out of the Premiere Building, and into the afternoon heat. School kids crowded the sidewalks, laughing, singing — girls in pink shirts and dresses, boys in white shirts and crisp blue slacks. Chow plowed past them, talking a mile a minute.

“The British Virgin Islands,” he said, “registers 30,000 companies a year. We are at about 11,000. We are catching up.” He said Seychelles has gained ground because, unlike Mauritius and many other offshore centers, it has stood up to pressure from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and other international powers.
“Mauritius made the mistake of following the rules,” he said. “Whatever the OECD said, they followed, so that actually killed their offshore corporations.” Chow believes Seychelles doesn’t have to do anything the OECD says, because the “OECD has no power — it’s just a think tank.”

He stopped at the Seychelles Yacht Club, a ramshackle affair established in 1964, when the island was still under British rule. Inside, middle-aged white men washed down plates of fried fish with bottles of SeyBrew, the local lager. Chow mentioned he might run for president in 2016, when James Michel will be up for re-election.

Chow doesn’t think the revolving door between Seychelles' politics and Seychelles' offshore industry is a problem. He deflected a question about this phenomenon by bringing up U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

“Where the vice president comes from, what’s it called?”

“Delaware.”

Delaware, like Seychelles, harbors anonymous shell companies that have helped the U.S. state gain a reputation as a haven for fraudsters and arms smugglers. Chow noted a recent study that concluded that the U.S. was one of the easiest places in the world to start an anonymous shell company. In the U.S., he argued, “they don’t ask you for anything.”

Efforts by the U.S. and other Western powers to rein in offshore sanctuaries such as Seychelles have been undermined by questions about big nations’ own role in enabling — and profiting from — the offshore system. Like other offshore operators in Seychelles, Chow thinks it’s unfair to pick on his country when rich and powerful nations are just as culpable in the flow of untraced money — in essence, he argues, the rest of the world does it, so why can’t we?

‘They’re going to kill you’

By the time of Hoareau’s murder in 1985, Seychelles’ notoriety as a place of dark intrigues was well established.

Ricci, the master of the country’s offshore industry, likely used the islands as base for helping South Africa get around apartheid-era economic sanctions, according to Ellis, a historian at Leiden University in the Netherlands and an expert on corruption in Africa. One of Ricci’s business partners was a South African intelligence officer who helped lead South Africa’s efforts to circumvent international embargoes.

"That was the kind of crazy place it was ... Most of it was just out of some second-rate spy novel."

David J. Fischer, the U.S. ambassador to Seychelles from 1982 to 1985, said he and other American officials picked up evidence of widespread illicit activities on the islands during this period, including money laundering by New York’s Gambino crime family, dirty cash being moved in and out of the country by French and American banks, even a case involving heroin shipped into the U.S. disguised as canned fish, with the proceeds laundered through Seychelles.

“That was the kind of crazy place it was,” Fischer, now a resident scholar at San Francisco State University, said in an oral history interview with the U.S.-based Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. “Most of it was just out of some second-rate spy novel.”
As American officials dug into these kinds of cases, many of the connections seemed to trace back to Ricci. Some, Fischer said, also traced to President René. In one instance, Fischer said, René’s personal telephone number was discovered in an address book taken off the body of a gangster murdered in a drug-related hit in New Jersey.

Fischer said he went to René to let him know about his connection to the U.S. murder case, telling him: “You’re over your head with this Mafia business. You’re in with Ricci. … You know that when they’re finished with you, they’re going to kill you.”

This conversation, Fischer said, was the only time he ever saw René — a “very cool negotiator” — flinch. René did not reply to phone messages and emails seeking comment for this story.

Questions about Ricci’s role in bugging opposition leaders may have helped prompt Ricci to decamp from Seychelles, leaving a vacuum in the islands’ offshore industry. (Ricci died a few years later.) In 1988, the country passed extensive offshore legislation, looking to expand its market share.

The local offshore industry got a boost in the 1990s with the fall of the Soviet Union. Seychelles, which is on roughly the same time zone as much of Eastern Europe, was a popular choice among those who wanted to quietly move money out of the region, according to Jason Sharman, a political scientist at Australia’s Griffith University. “There’s no doubt that a lot of this was shady business,” Sharman said.

In 1995, a man claiming to be the representative for a group of wealthy Russians based in London met with the deputy speaker of the Seychellois legislature and with a counselor to James Michel, who at the time was René’s finance minister. The man explained that his bosses wanted to invest $115 million through Seychelles. “Strict confidentiality will be maintained as to the source of funds,” the legislator promised. “We will not investigate this. It’s not our concern.”

In what seems to be a not-so-unusual scenario in the islands, the stranger turned out to be an undercover journalist. In a 1996 exposé  headlined “Crooks Paradise,” The Sunday Times of London reported that the island officials helped him set up a shell company and promised diplomatic status to his supposed Russian bosses, noting that diplomatic luggage would never searched by customs officers. After the initial meeting, the newspaper said, the legislator reported back that he had met with Michel and gotten approval for the arrangement: “He has been fully briefed about your deal and wants it to go ahead. Everything is very positive here.”

Haves and have-nots

In 2004, France-Albert René stepped down as president, and handed the reins of the country to his protégé and vice president, James Michel.

Now 69, Michel, who won elections in 2006 and 2011, is always careful to tout his commitment to democracy and his success in maintaining a social safety net for all Seychellois. Every citizen is guaranteed free schooling and health care, he is fond of pointing out, which is not the case in most of Africa.

Still, the gap between rich and poor in Seychelles is one of the largest in the world, according to the Gini index, a measure of income distribution.

To spend time in Seychelles is to see this disparity everywhere: the immaculate luxury villa side-by-side with the long-slung concrete shack; the unlovely sprawl of Victoria versus the cloistered paradise of Eden Island, a gated community protected by high walls and roving squads of uniformed security guards.

In the mornings, flatbed pick-up trucks roar back and forth between under-construction luxury resorts and the honeycomb of pre-fab villas and military-style barracks that houses a large population of South Asian workers. Funding for the projects often comes from Chinese and Arab investors, who hire other foreigners to carry out the actual building — leaving native Seychellois out of the loop in the process.

“The people at the top have enriched themselves immensely over the past few years by controlling everything,” said Ferrari, the former opposition politician. “These guys have been involved in any possible business you can think of: construction, transport, trading, instruments. You name it, they’re involved on a level.”

The islands’ political and financial power brokers include members of the Savy family, which, like a long-limbed octopus, touches seemingly everything in Seychelles, from a lucrative insurance company to an array of other business, investment, and real estate concerns.

The Savy name first appeared in Seychellois history in 1785, when a French naval officer named Francois-Blaise Savy landed in Seychelles along with his son and one slave. Over time the Savy clan gobbled up expanses of prime real estate. Frégate Island, for instance — the site of what The Times of London has dubbed the most beautiful beach in the universe — was for years owned by the Savy family; local lore has it that a Savy patriach named Harry lost it in a poker game. (Among other high-profile parcels, the Savys still own Bird Island, a popular destination for eco-tourists.)

The Savys are also politically connected. Glenny Savy and his brothers are children of ex-President René’s former wife. Glenny is also close to the current president, serving on Michel’s National Economic Council as well as leading the government’s Islands Development Company.

Glenny Savy also appears to be linked to Michel through three offshore companies owned wholly or partially by Savy's wife. These companies are part of a network of British Virgin Islands entities that include a company that lists Michel as shareholder, according to confidential records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

The director of these firms is a Mauritius company, Pines Ltd., and they were set up at the request of another Mauritius company, DTOS Ltd., which is owned by GML Group, a Mauritius-based conglomerate that owns a minority share of the Savy family insurance business and has been involved in resorts on the Seychellois Outer Islands overseen by Glenny Savy.

High-end developments are a touchy issue in Seychelles. In 2012, Scottish environmentalist Alex Foulkes, who worked on a conservation project in Seychelles, self-published a book, Fear and Loathing in Paradise, that accused Glenny Savy of treating the Outer Islands as a “personal fiefdom,” opening up economically fragile areas for resorts and other luxury projects.

Neither the Islands Development Company nor representatives for Glenny Savy responded to repeated requests for comment for this story.

‘Prisoner in paradise’

In 1995, the Republic of Seychelles enacted the Economic Development Act, a law that offered broad immunity from prosecution and extradition to any foreign national who invested at least $10 million in the local economy.

U.S. officials described it as the equivalent of a “Welcome, Criminals” banner. Britain’s Serious Fraud Office called it “the perfect present for drug barons, fraudsters and money launderers.” Under international pressure, the government backed down, at least on paper. The law was taken off the books.

Still, the spirit of the law lives on. In 2005, reputed Czech mob boss Radovan Krejčíř arrived in Seychelles seeking asylum, after jumping out a bathroom window back in Prague to escape police who were investigating him on murder and money laundering charges.

Krejčíř now claims he provided financial support to leading Seychellois politicians and, in return, “they offered me and my family a new identity.” He stayed on the islands for two years, but decided to leave as the Czechs pressed Seychelles to extradite him. “It was so boring there, like being a prisoner in paradise,” he said. He headed to South Africa on a Seychellois passport under the name “Egbert Jules Savy.”

Krejčíř is currently behind bars in South Africa as authorities decide whether to send him back to the Czech Republic to stand trial or to try him in South Africa on kidnapping and assault charges in connection with a botched $2 million crystal meth deal. “I am no angel,” he’s said in his defense. “But I'm not the devil.”

The stories of two other fugitives have gripped the country over the past 18 months. Marek Trajter, a Slovakian who gained Seychellois citizenship in early 2013 after cultivating friendship with one of President Michel’s closest advisors and making charitable donations to government organizations, was deported after Interpol revealed that he was wanted in the murder of a businessman associated with the Slovakian mafia. Also in the news has been Saker el-Materi, son-in-law of deposed Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who fled to Seychelles after a Tunisian court sentenced him to 16 years in jail on corruption charges.

Seychellois authorities have refused Tunisian pleas to deport him, saying they fear that el-Materi would not get a “free and fair” trial in his native land.

These cases and others like them have created the perception that Seychelles is up for sale to the highest bidder — that if you have enough cash and enough connections, you can stay on the islands for months or years.

Five years ago, in an effort to address concerns about corruption and about the money flowing through the islands’ offshore industry, the Seychellois government established the Financial Intelligence Unit.

The unit’s director, Declan Barber, a retired military intelligence man from Ireland, said the amount of illegal money coming through the country had been drastically reduced. But it has been by no means eliminated, he acknowledges. Somali pirates, long active in Seychellois waters, continue to throng to the area, as do local and international drug traffickers.

“If Seychelles is allowed to become a haven for criminal money,” Barber said, “what happened in Cyprus will happen here. The criminals will move in and they’ll start to establish networks here. They’ll corrupt the political process through money. They’ll corrupt it through violence and threats of violence. The social fabric will break down. That’s the threat scenario.”

International investigators who track money laundering say that Seychelles has already become a haven — or a least a way station — for dirty money.

Attorneys investigating Russia’s Magnitsky affair, for example, have alleged that mobsters and Russia government insiders stole $230 million out of that country’s treasury, using four Seychellois shell companies as part of the shadowy network that moved the money through Switzerland, Dubai and other locales. In November, the deputy speaker of Bulgaria’s parliament resigned as prosecutors announced they were investigating him and his stepson for tax crimes and money laundering after finding they had wired large sums through accounts in Europe and offshore companies in Seychelles.

‘People are afraid’

 If the offshore industry in Seychelles has an éminence grise, it is Philippe Boullé, who runs the profitable offshore services firm, Intershore Consult Group (motto: “Offshore in the palm of your hand”). Along with chairing the offshore industry’s trade association, Boullé sits on the board of the Seychelles International Business Authority, a government body that licenses and oversees offshore operators like himself. 

A lawyer by trade, Boullé believes the authority does a fine job watchdogging offshore activities. “Nobody should be against regulation, you see,” he said.

Offshore banking, Boullé argues, should no longer be viewed as suspect. He pointed out that Barclays, which maintains a branch in Seychelles — Boullé was once the local chairman — is involved in the offshore world, as are legions of other banks. The offshore world is no longer epitomized by “the old suitcase affair — you know, the Frenchman took a suitcase and went to Honduras, the Italians went to Monaco,” he said. “It’s funny. Somebody wants to do business now, they need a bank account.”

For critics of tax havens, the argument that banks are integral to the offshore world isn’t a defense; it’s evidence of how deep offshore abuses are rooted in the global financial system. Many of the world’s biggest banks — including HSBC and JPMorgan Chase & Co. — have been sanctioned for failing to follow anti-money laundering rules. Barclays itself paid $298 million to settle U.S. criminal charges that it shifted hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of banks and individuals in Cuba, Iran, Libya and other rogue nations.

Boullé’s firm keeps offices in several tax havens around the world, from the British Virgin Islands to Anguilla, Panama and Belize. He says would-be clients who approach him must pass a battery of tests and background checks before he will take them on.

This is a claim echoed by most offshore operators in Seychelles: These days, we play by the rules, and we have nothing to fear. They note that the Al Jazeera undercover correspondents approached 10 offshore providers before they emerged with the evidence featured in the network’s 2012 report.

Cleaning up the offshore center’s image is important for the Seychellois government, which counts the offshore sector as one of the pillars of the country’s economy, along with fishing and tourism. Offshore banking is “something that we cannot afford to trade for any price,” Peter Sinon, the minister of investment, natural resources and industry, has said.

Some critics of Michel’s government say the price of offshore profits may be too high — as least given the freewheeling style in which the islands’ offshore industry now operates. Jean-Paul Isaac, a firebrand opposition blogger who lives in poverty on Mahé island, advocates for a “strong healthy offshore services sector that attracts legit investment. As opposed to, you know, a jurisdiction that is prepared to sell out … and become an international pariah in the financial services world.”

Isaac, who is in his thirties, lives in a cement-walled shack in the working-class town of Mont Fleuri. In the front yard, chickens jostle for space with a pair of haggard dogs and a moribund Jeep Cherokee. Isaac does most of his blogging in his living room, on a battered desktop computer.

It’s hard to imagine a starker contrast to the nearby resorts, with their teak furniture and palm-frond-shaded courtyards. But as Isaac is quick to point out, how he lives is how most Seychellois live.

“People in Seychelles are afraid,” he said, knotting his fingers behind his head. “People are miserable here. They don’t have money. They don't have anything. They can’t do nothing.”
Around the world, offshore financial centers are often touted as economic engines that help small, resource-starved places improve themselves. But it is often a few well-connected locals — along with expatriate lawyers and accountants from the U.S., the U.K., Australia and other rich nations — who enjoy most of the profits.

Isaac’s diapered son walked into the living room, followed by Isaac’s girlfriend. As chickens clucked outside, Isaac leaned back into his chair and launched into an extended riff on the toll exacted on the country by offshore intrigues. The middlemen on Seychelles and other havens that service offshore clients, he believes, have made it possible for President Michel and his friends to stow their money half a world away — and for tainted cash to flow in and out of the islands that Isaac calls home.

“These guys, that’s their business, that’s their livelihood, that’s how they’ve made their money,” he sighed. “But essentially [they're] selling the jurisdiction’s reputation for personal profit.”

Matthew Shaer is a US-based magazine journalist.




President Barack Obama Weekly Address June 14, 2014 (Video/Trascript )

President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
June 14, 2014
Hi, everybody.  Sunday is Father’s Day.  If you haven’t got Dad a gift yet, there’s still time.  Just barely. But the truth is, what we give our fathers can never match what our fathers give us. 

I know how important it is to have a dad in your life, because I grew up without my father around.  I felt the weight of his absence.  So for Michelle and our girls, I try every day to be the husband and father my family didn’t have when I was young.  And every chance I get, I encourage fathers to get more involved in their children’s lives, because what makes you a man isn’t the ability to have a child – it’s the courage to raise one. 

Still, over the past couple years, I’ve met with a lot of young people who don’t have a father figure around.  And while there’s nothing that can replace a parent, any of us can do our part to be a mentor, a sounding board, a role model for a kid who needs one.  Earlier this year, I launched an initiative called My Brother’s Keeper – an all-hands-on-deck effort to help more of our young men reach their full potential.  And if you want to be a mentor to a young man in your community, you can find out how at 


Now, when I launched this initiative, I said that government can’t play the primary role in a young person’s life.  Taking responsibility for being a great parent or mentor is a choice that we, as individuals, have to make.  No government program can ever take the place of a parent’s love.  Still, as a country, there are ways we can help support dads and moms who make that choice. 

That’s why, earlier this week, we brought working dads from across America to the White House to talk about the challenges they face.  And in a few weeks, I’ll hold the first-ever White House Working Families Summit.  We’ve still got too many workplace policies that belong in the 1950s, and it’s time to bring them up to date for today’s families, where oftentimes, both parents are working.  Moms and dads deserve affordable child care, and time off to care for a sick parent or child without running into hardship.  Women deserve equal pay for equal work – and at a time when more women are breadwinners for a family, that benefits men, too.  And because no parent who works full-time should have to raise a family in poverty, it’s time for Congress to follow the lead of state after state, get on the bandwagon, and give America a raise.

Dads work hard.  So our country should do what we can to make sure their hard work pays off; to make sure life for them and their families is a little less stressful, and a little more secure, so they can be the dads their kids need them to be.  Because there’s nothing more precious in life than the time we spend with our children.  There’s no better feeling than knowing that we can be there for them, and provide for them, and help give them every shot at success. 

Let’s make sure every dad who works hard and takes responsibility has the chance to know that feeling, not just on one Sunday, but every day of the year. 
Thanks everybody, happy Father’s Day, and have a great weekend.

Tuesday

Egypt's Lost Power

Source:Al Jazeera

EGYPT IS FACING A GAS CRISIS DESPITE IT HAVING BEEN, UNTIL AS RECENTLY AS 2010, ONE OF THE LARGEST GAS PRODUCING COUNTRIES IN AFRICA. HOW DID IT REACH THIS POINT?

AL JAZEERA INVESTIGATES THE HIDDEN STORY OF EGYPTIAN ENERGY, HOW TYCOONS CASHED IN AS A NATION LOST OUT, AND HOW EGYPT MAY BECOME DEPENDENT UPON ISRAEL FOR ITS ENERGY

Egypt and Israel's energy deals
 
After Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula in 1967, it extracted oil from the territory throughout the 1970s. In 1979, the Camp David Accords returned the Sinai to Egypt, but it also ensured that Egypt would supply oil to Israel in the years to come.

“Those Accords guaranteed Israel the right to bid on oil supplies from the Sinai Peninsula,” Professor James Stocker of Trinity Washington University told Al Jazeera. Because Israel became increasingly dependent on oil from the peninsula during the 1970s, “they wanted to ensure that they continue to meet their energy needs using those oil fields,” he said. In addition to this energy supply, the Accords brought together the two countries’ military and intelligence services, in a relationship that has now lasted for decades.

In 1994, following the Oslo Accords, in which the Palestinians formally recognised Israel, Egypt and Israel were in an even easier position to further the normalisation process. That year alone, Israeli investments were made in a $1.2bn petroleum refinery in Alexandria, called the Middle East Oil Refinery or “MIDOR”. The deal brought together individuals from Egyptian and Israeli intelligence.

Hussein Salem, a former intelligence officer on the Egyptian side, conducted deals with Yossi Maiman, a former intelligence agent with Israel’s Mossad. Hussein also assigned his protégé, an engineer named Sameh Fahmy, to oversee MIDOR.

Following this initiative, Fahmy, with the help of Salem, became Egypt’s petroleum minister. “The presence of Sameh Fahmy as minister defines a new era for the energy sector in Egypt, where the resources were managed by the Intelligence of Egypt,” Hatem Azzam, who was a member of parliament in Egypt in 2012, told Al Jazeera.

With Fahmy as oil minister, Salem was able to establish a private company, the East Mediterranean Gas company (EMG) with his Israeli counterpart, Maiman. EMG would build a pipeline connecting the Egyptian coastal city of El Arish to Israel’s Ashkelon with one purpose: to supply Egyptian natural gas to Israel.

Through Salem’s strong connections to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Fahmy, he was able to secure a contract that would entitle EMG to Egyptian gas at a price well below market rate, to then sell to the Israelis cheaply, with the help of his business associate, Maiman.

“In the same year [2008], gas was being exported in other countries for...vastly more, up to eight times more than what the Egyptians were receiving,” Mika Minio-Paluello, an energy analyst, told Al Jazeera. By 2010, he continued, EMG owners Hussein Salem and Yossi Maiman “were receiving [the gas] from the Egyptians for $3 and then selling it on to the Israelis for $4.50 and basically pocketing the difference”.

The price of power

Using confidential documents obtained by Al Jazeera, energy analyst Mika Minio-Paluello calculated the amount of money the Egyptian people lost in these gas deals.

Energy

A wide coalition of demonstrators, eventually backed by Egypt’s military, forced President Hosni Mubarak out of office on February 11, but not before Hussein Salem was able to flee the country to avoid arrest.

The egyptian uprising

Egypt Faces

In the lead-up to the July 3, 2013 military coup that overthrew President Morsi, the country’s energy shortage was an issue that gave way to much resentment against Morsi’s government among Egyptians.

“Egypt’s desperate. There are queues outside petrol stations. Almost every night there’s a blackout. You never know when it’s going to be,” Mika Minio-Paluello, an energy analyst, told Al Jazeera. But the shortages during Morsi’s tenure appear to have been intentionally set up.

The egyptian uprising

Anger at the export of gas to Israel remained even after the daily protests culminated with Mubarak’s forced resignation. At least 15 bombings of pipelines in the Sinai eventually brought the flow of gas into Israel to a halt in 2011.

“The Egyptian military used the supply of gasoline in the gas station as a weapon to throw off Morsi,” Azzam said. “One day after the coup, all these queues have disappeared and everything goes back to normal.”

The Egyptian army’s supreme military council, which was overseeing the post-Mubarak transitional period, was forced to acquiesce to the calls by revolutionary forces to halt gas exports to Israel.

After Mohamed Morsi entered office in June 2012, following the first free and fair presidential election in Egypt’s history, he sought to confront the rampant corruption in the energy sector. Sameh Fahmy and Hussein Salem, who had already left to Spain where he has been living in exile, were sentenced to 15 years in prison for their roles in selling natural gas to Israel at below market rates.

Just as Morsi’s tenure in office was short-lived, so too was his attempt to confront the corruption in the energy sector. “President Morsi was facing a lot of pressure with all this network of corruption that exists in the intelligence, in the military,” Hatem Azzam, the Egyptian MP in 2012, told Al Jazeera. “This energy corruption network was one of the strongest reasons why the leaders, the army generals, decided to make the coup over Morsi.”

Egypt Faces

 An energy crisis
In the lead-up to the July 3, 2013 military coup that overthrew President Morsi, the country’s energy shortage was an issue that gave way to much resentment against Morsi’s government among Egyptians.

“Egypt’s desperate. There are queues outside petrol stations. Almost every night there’s a blackout. You never know when it’s going to be,” Mika Minio-Paluello, an energy analyst, told Al Jazeera. But the shortages during Morsi’s tenure appear to have been intentionally set up.

“The Egyptian military used the supply of gasoline in the gas station as a weapon to throw off Morsi,” Azzam said. “One day after the coup, all these queues have disappeared and everything goes back to normal.”

Although the widespread energy shortage was initially created to increase popular resentment against Morsi and support for his removal by the military, Egypt’s energy sector has continued to struggle in the past year. As the general who led the coup in July 2013, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, assumes office as Egypt’s new president, he is faced with a massive energy crisis across the country.

To make matters worse, after the Egyptian military in 2012 acquiesced to the demands of the revolutionary forces and cut off gas supplies to Israel, Yossi Maiman, through EMG, filed a lawsuit against the Egyptian government.

In it, EMG accuses the government of violating the contract signed years earlier under Mubarak’s presidency that entitles EMG to 15 years of uninterrupted gas exports to Israel. The lawsuit was raised in international courts rather than in Egyptian national courts, leading some analysts to question the role of Egypt’s sovereignty in the dispute.

EMG is seeking $8bn in alleged losses caused by the Egyptian government. This is in addition to a $6bn lawsuit by a Spanish firm, Union Fenosa, against the Egyptian government for their alleged failure to adequately supply gas to Spain.

The Egyptian government now faces lawsuits in international courts due to alleged violations of contracts detailing gas deals signed under Mubarak’s presidency, as well as debts claimed by foreign companies that total $20bn in international courts.

A new power dynamic

Following the recent discovery of natural gas in the Mediterranean, most of which has been claimed by Israel, Sisi is now attempting to secure gas imports from Israel, at a less amicable price than Israel enjoyed from the Egyptians only a few years ago.

In January 2014, Sisi took the first step toward this initiative, when his military-backed government lifted restrictions on private oil and gas companies operating in Egypt, allowing them to import gas from any foreign entity.

These gas imports would be done through another private firm currently leading Israel’s exploration in the Mediterranean, the US-based Noble Energy.

Just a few months after the Egyptian government lifted the trading restrictions, Noble Energy and the Spanish firm Union Fenosa issued a joint letter of intent stating that the former would supply natural gas from “offshore Israel to [the latter’s] gas liquefaction facilities” in Egypt. These facilities would be used to freeze the gas into a liquid, so that it could then be transported by tanker rather than pipeline, and sold in far greater volume elsewhere.

To make any future commercial deals with Israel, the Egyptians would be required to give more than just access to these plants. Israel is also seeking a commitment for ships to have access to the Suez Canal to transport gas to lucrative markets in Asia.

“Under the Morsi government, there was no confidence that Egypt would allow such shipments to go through the Suez Canal,” said Simon Henderson, director of the Gulf and Energy Policy program at the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs. “The change in government has meant that this potential can be re-examined.”

Facing public pressure due to widespread energy shortages that resulted from years of mismanagement during and after the Mubarak era, as well as lawsuits on the international stage, the Egyptian government, led by Sisi, seems to be heading in a direction that will allow private firms to begin importing gas from Israel. “That seems like more of a compromise that lets Hussein Salem and Maiman keep making lots of money,” Mika Minio-Paluello, an energy analyst, told Al Jazeera.

Former petroleum minister Sameh Fahmy has been released from custody after an Egyptian court ruled that there should be a retrial, while the charges against Hussein Salem are expected to be dropped, at which point he is likely to return to Egypt. Meanwhile, Egypt’s hidden energy industry is back on track.

Monday

Why Medicare Advantage costs taxpayers billions more than it should

Regulators have kept problems secret, and there's no fix in sight


By

Source:The Center for Public Integrity
 
First in a three-part series.
 
In South Florida, one of the nation’s top privately-run Medicare insurance plans faces a federal investigation into allegations that it overbilled the government by exaggerating how sick some of its patients were.

In the Las Vegas area, private health care plans for seniors ran up more than $100 million in added Medicare charges after asserting patients they signed up also were much sicker than normal — a claim many experts have challenged.

In Rochester, New York, a Medicare plan was paid $41 million to treat people with serious diseases — even though the plan couldn’t prove the patients in fact had those diseases.
These health plans and hundreds of others are part of Medicare Advantage, a program created by Congress in 2003 to help stabilize health care spending on the elderly. But the plans have sharply driven up costs in many parts of the United States — larding on tens of billions of dollars in overcharges and other suspect billings based in part on inflated assessments of how sick patients are, an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity has found.

Dominated by private insurers, Medicare Advantage now covers nearly 16 million Americans at a cost expected to top $150 billion this year. Many seniors choose the managed-care Medicare Advantage option instead of the traditional government-run Medicare program because it fills gaps in coverage, can cost less in out-of-pocket expenses and offers extra benefits, such as dental and eye care.

But billions of tax dollars are misspent every year through billing errors linked to a payment tool called a “risk score,” which is supposed to pay Medicare Advantage plans higher rates for sicker patients and less for those in good health.

Government officials have struggled for years to halt health plans from running up patient risk scores and, in many cases, wresting higher Medicare payments than they deserve, records show.

The Center’s findings are based on an analysis of Medicare Advantage enrollment data from 2007 through 2011, as well as thousands of pages of government audits, research papers and other documents.

Federal officials who run the Medicare program repeatedly refused to be interviewed or answer written questions.

Among the findings:
  • Risk score errors triggered nearly $70 billion in “improper” payments to Medicare Advantage plans from 2008 through 2013 — mostly overbillings, according to government estimates. Federal officials refused to identify health plans suspected of overcharging Medicare, citing agency policy that keeps many business records confidential. The Center is suing to make these records public.
  • Risk scores of Medicare Advantage patients rose sharply in plans in at least 1,000 counties nationwide between 2007 and 2011, boosting taxpayer costs by more than $36 billion over estimated costs for caring for patients in standard Medicare.
  • In more than 200 of these counties, the cost of some Medicare Advantage plans was at least 25 percent higher than the cost of providing standard Medicare coverage. The wide swing in costs was most evident in five states: South Dakota, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas and Arkansas.


How risk scores changed

By Chris Zubak-Skees


Since 2004, the government has paid Medicare Advantage plans using a complex tool called a risk score. The idea is to pay higher rates for sicker patients and less for those in good health. But over the past decade, officials have struggled to control sharp increases in risk scores that have cost taxpayers billions of dollars. The industry says higher scores result from sicker patients and more thorough documentation of their health. Critics dispute that and want the government to make public more billing records that would help determine if health plans are being paid too much. This graphic plots changes in risk scores at more than 5,700 health plans in 3,000 counties nationwide between 2007 and 2011.

Mining companies 'worst offenders' for misinvoicing, secrecy: reports

President Barack Obama Weekly Address June 7, 2014 (Video/Trascript )

President Barack Obama

Weekly AddressThe White House June 7, 2014
Hi, everybody.  This is commencement season, a time for graduates and their families to celebrate one of the greatest achievements of a young person’s life. But for many graduates, it also means feeling trapped by a whole lot of student loan debt.  And we’ve got to do more to lift that burden.
See, in a 21st century economy, the surest pathway into the middle class is some form of higher education.  The unemployment rate for workers with a bachelor’s degree is just 3.3 percent – about half what it is for high school graduates.  The typical graduate of a four-year college earns $15,000 more per year than someone with just a high school degree.  
But at a time when college has never been more important, it’s also never been more expensive.
That’s why, since I took office, I’ve worked to make college more affordable.  We reformed a student loan system that gave away billions of taxpayer dollars to big banks and invested that money where it makes a bigger bang – in helping more young people afford a higher education.
But over the past three decades, the average tuition at a public four-year college has more than tripled.  The average undergraduate student who borrows for college now graduates owing almost $30,000. And I’ve heard from too many young people who are frustrated that they’ve done everything they were supposed to do – and now they’re paying the price.
I’ve taken action on my own to offer millions of students the opportunity to cap their monthly student loan payments to 10% of their income.  But Congress needs to do its part. The good news is that Senate Democrats are working on a bill that would help more young people save money.  Just like you can refinance your mortgage at a lower interest rate, this bill would let you refinance your student loans.  And we’d pay for it by closing loopholes that allow some millionaires to pay a lower tax rate than the middle class.
That’s the choice that your representatives in Congress will make in the coming weeks – protect young people from crushing debt, or protect tax breaks for millionaires.  And while Congress decides what it’s going to do, I will keep doing whatever I can without Congress to help responsible young people pay off their loans – including new action I will take this week.
This country has always made a commitment to put a good education within the reach of all who are willing to work for it.  That’s what made us an economic superpower.  That’s what makes us special.  And as long as I hold this office, I’ll keep fighting to give more young people the chance to earn their own piece of the American Dream.  Thanks, and have a great weekend. 

Wednesday

25 years ago today, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests (Video Link)

 On June 5, 1989, one day after the Chinese army's deadly crushing of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, a single, unarmed young man stood his ground before a column of tanks on the Avenue of Eternal Peace. Captured on film and video by Western journalists, this extraordinary confrontation became an icon of the struggle for freedom around the world.

Watch the Full Program Onlie (FRONTLINE) 

Seventeen years later, veteran filmmaker Antony Thomas goes to China in search of "The Tank Man." Who was he? What was his fate? And what does he mean for a China that today has become a global economic powerhouse?

Drawing on interviews with Chinese and Western eyewitnesses, Thomas recounts the amazing events of the spring of 1989, when a student protest that began in Tiananmen Square, the symbolic central space of the nation, spread throughout much of the rest of China. Several weeks later, when the government sent in the army to end the demonstrations, the citizens of Beijing poured into the streets in support of the students. "You had a million people on the street, minimum. ... That was unprecedented, definitely in modern Chinese post-revolutionary history," says John Pomfret, who was in Beijing at the time, reporting for the Associated Press.

The demonstrations ended in a massacre on the night of June 3-4, when the government sent the troops into the city with orders to clear Tiananmen Square. Eyewitnesses recount what happened -- from the first shots fired in the city's outskirts, to the students' withdrawal from the square in the early hours of June 4, to the Tank Man's courageous stand the following day.

From there, Thomas looks at what the Tank Man's life might be like in today's China. China observers and scholars, including Orville Schell, talk about the turning point the nationwide unrest of 1989 represented. "After the massacre of 1989, [Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping] in effect said, 'We will not stop economic reform; [but] we will, in effect, halt political reform.'"

Almost two decades later, the educated elite who led the protests of 1989 have benefited handsomely from China's rapid economic growth, but many Chinese workers still face brutal working conditions and low wages. "A lot of factories do not even have one day off," says labor expert Dr. Anita Chan who has been researching working conditions inside China for 15 years. "That means seven days a week, 13 hours a day."

In fact, some experts see the emergence of two Chinas: one modern, wealthy and urban; the other rural, poor and disenfranchised. There is evidence that unrest among workers and peasants is growing; in 2005, there were more than 87,000 "civil disturbances" in the country.

"China is on a knife's edge," says Dr. Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch. "If we in the West are not aware of this, the leaders in Beijing are very much so, and this is their top concern. They know that the stability is very fragile."

The Chinese government has responded to this threat by cracking down on dissent, and on the media. The regime has managed to erase the Tank Man's image, famous throughout the world, from Chinese memory. Thomas shows the iconic picture to undergraduates at Beijing University, the nerve center of the 1989 protests; none of them recognize it. Central to the regime's struggle to control information is its filtering of the Internet, a complex undertaking that raises serious issues about the role of Western IT companies in China's censorship strategy.

In the face of official silence about 1989 and the Tank Man, the program concludes with Thomas' quest to find out what became of the Tank Man and who he was. In the end, his identity remains a mystery, but the symbolism of his act of defiance continues to have power. "That story ... is not getting weaker because of time. Because we don't know who he is, it's actually getting stronger," says Xiao Qiang of the China Internet Project at the University of California at Berkeley. "In the long frame of history ... human freedom, courage, dignity will stay and prevail, and that's what that picture will testify [to] forever."