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Italy Goes "Cyprus" On Sicilian Mafia, Seizes Record $1.7 Billion In Cash And Assets
Think only Cyprus is where the government goes after "evil", tax-evading oligarchs? Think again. Overnight news broke that the Italian police have seized a record $1.7 billion in cash and property from a single person, a Sicilian "alternative energy" entrepreneur alleged to have close ties to the Mafia. As Bloomberg reports, Italy's anti-Mafia investigators said in a statement today that Vito Nicastri, a 57-year-old native of Alcamo, near Trapani, was placed under surveillance and must remain in Alcamo for three years. He is accused of declaring for tax purposes a fraction of the value of his businesses. Italian media have dubbed Nicastri the "king of alternative energy" for his vast holdings in wind farms and photovoltaic cell companies. Police said the seizures include 43 companies; 98 pieces of real estate including buildings, homes, stores and land; 66 bank accounts, credit cards and investment funds.
And so, in two brief weeks, cash-strapped European nations have declared war on both Russian billionaire oligarchs and the Sicilian mafia. One wonders how long until Swiss authorities follow suit and "impair" Triad and Yakuza savings in Zurich and Geneva, and sets off a global "us versus them" scorched earth war?
Perhaps it is time to petition Coppoloa to go easy on the winemaking and instead prepare to shoot the latest installment of what will soon be the Godfather quadrilogy based on real events?
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bullish
SHTF everywhere now. Gettin' real........
You know it's bad in they're bailing-in the mafia.
Long cement shoes.
Now governments need to go after offshore bank accounts and tax evaders. Once the politicians have this money, they will almost certainly use it to pay down the debt, and the revenue problem will be solved.
"Now governments need to go after offshore bank accounts and tax evaders. Once the politicians have this money, they will almost certainly..."
So far so good.
Luca Brotzi sleeps with the fishes!
One can only hope that this shit will lead to a hot war between .gov criminal gangs and private criminal gangs.
They seized a credit card from a billionaire?! Wow! I thought it was only the proletariat that used them. What is the world coming to!!!
So much for honor amongst thieves!
Hey, my first thought also. New acronym for the times: NHAT (No Honor Among Thieves)
Re-hypothecation::All your shit is belong to us.
SERF::Severe Extenuated Re-hypothecation Frenzy
We must destroy the system in order to save it ... er ... well, us, actually.
Imagine the chaos that would ensue without the class of leeches chiseling their cut off the top. Why not a cow would be milked or a sheaf of wheat harvested were they to be pissed on and thrown into the fire like ordinary leeches. Can't get along without them ... can we?
Bankers and government gonna lose this war...watch.
Does this mean HSBC will turn on the drug cartel?
Hehehehe.
...or did this guy just not kiss enough asses, and we're being TOLD he's mafia/criminal to justify the theft?
We'll never be able to trust the "news" media, again.
"Money is the poor man’s credit card." M. McLuhan
"One can only hope that this shit will lead to a hot war between .gov criminal gangs and private criminal gangs."
Let them eat eachother...
It's Luca Brasi, not Brotzi
I don't think they'll kill a horse. Too valuable. You can make a lotta meat-a-balls out of one.
but youz gotsa kill it first
piss it away on the FSA
...spend it on coke, hookers, houses in the Hamptons/London, yachts, G650s and starting their own secret offshore accounts?
Stealing from the Mafia is likely to get ya severely suicided. Instead of just 3 bullets to the back of the head they use at least 5 or 6.
Most Sicilians are nice people until you steal from them without getting authorization from the top.
More likely officials will experience the Mozambique drill...
It goes like this....clack, clack...clack. thump ;-)
You broke my heart, Fredo.
You mean like GE?
"Australia will force corporate giants such as Google and Apple to disclose their tax arrangements in an effort to curb alleged tax avoidance by multinational corporations.
The increasingly border-less global economy means big firms often have no tax liability in a country, even with a major local presence, Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury said on Wednesday.
In Australia, multinationals including the local arm of Google have been accused of shifting income to countries such as Holland or Ireland where tax rates are lower. Neither Google nor Apple could immediately comment when contacted by Reuters"
American corporations know what the deal is. They keep their non-domestic profits by either banking in non-dollar terms or by immediately turning non-domestic revenue into non-domestic real assets.
German corporations did the same thing in the early 20's. When the tax man came a-knockin', they said, "what profits? Tax me for what? Now STFU and if you need government revenues, I suggest you get to work PRINTING."
How'd that end?
go long wheelbarrows?
Wheelbarrows, boltcutters, propane, these have real value.
A good industrialist knows that if you add value reliably, and can transmit that value across borders reliably, you hedge your positions on both sides of the border. You can simultaneously retain your profits off-border, tell the federal tax man to go screw (because his power ends at the airport gate), and unleash your capex fuelled by extended credit terms which, by not repatriating your profits, will depreciate at a rate accelerated by the fact that your nominal debt will be inflated away on real terms because the government you just told to "go fish" now needs to print to cover its own deficit caused by ... wait for it ... diminished tax revenue from businesses that export.
Banking is subordinate to trade. You can fix a price with printers, but you can not fix quality with printers but at the point of a gun, and normally that is "at best" a one-time fix.
before or after entering the rendering facility
"How'd that end?" - world war, the outcome will be no different this time around.
Oh yeah war...I forgot about that one. Dammit Laws I thought we were being positive today?
Germany's massive multi-generational disruptions were made possible by isolation.
What remains to be seen is if history rhymes, and the USA will be likewise hampered from mutually beneficial trade terms with other nations. The problem is that the USA is an awfully big engine that requires awfully big partners to keep running. If the number of those partners dwindles, then the USA does become isolated and has very few alternatives to feed its hunger.
All those hoping that Europe plunges, or China plunges, or Russia dives, and thinking that someone else falling would make the USA better off than x, or happier than x, or be more wealthy than x, I would ask them, who is going to soak up the loss of volume of trade?
Blow off top is what will happen. Then lights out.
Precisely! And that's why income in the 'first' world is falling, through various mechanisms. In order to have the necessary trade partners to keep the ball rolling, the corporate kleptocrats have to put the money in the hands of those that will spend it. There's only so much 'money' to go around globally, real 'money' backed by something of value, that is, so enriching Joe Chinaman to give him some purchasing power means every other bugger has to become worse off by the same amount. People notice that, so to keep up the pretence of a standard of living that has really buggered off for good, the other bunch of kleptocrats in government(s) are forced to print.
one of the main issues behind the collapse of the ottoman empire was that a large amount of the wealth had been moved beyond taxation. history. it like totally rhymes, man.
It does rhyme, but how you can you be sure in what direction:
I always wondered why they didn't work a 'shit' in the following title somewhere - maybe right before 'sandwich.'
Double Irish With A Dutch Sandwich
My first up arrow for MDB. lmao.
we should celebrate this theoretical success by increasing the welfare state?
and why wait? why not do it now? what could *possibly* go wrong?
Yup. In celebration of our future success at shaking down the "rich", let's party tonight!
Bail-ins are good. Bail-ins are good!! Yippee!!
Hey! That's my schtic!
I keep saying, since the US wants to have wars all the time, why not get something out of it?
Invade the Cayman Islands. Total in offshore accounts = 16T. US deficit = 16T!
Just don't telegraph it or the banksters will move theirs like they did in Cyprus.
Now that was funny!
MDB - Bozo the clown couldnt have said it better! Your a freakin genuis and I am so thankful that I can glean these nuggets your kind enough to toss my way.
I wait with antcipation your next post. Brilliant abolutley brilliant.
peAce
Looks like someone's going to find a horse's head in bed with them.
Honestly folks.....I typed this before I saw the pic that Tyler put in here. Great minds.....
Get Guido and Giuseppi on the phone...NOW!
Nah.
Pair trade...time to short cement shoes and go long bombs.
The Americans use "cement shoes".
The Sicilians make sure a loud and clear message is sent, and there is nothing left to examine... they use bombs.
I predict an unprecedented "epidemic" of hot-tub deaths among legislators.
Ask JFK and RFK how well going after mafia money works out.
The mafia could kill 'em... hell, anyone can be killed.
Next question: Who has the power to cover it up?
And: Who is the mafia?
This is simply mafia consolidation, the uS is trying to "walmart" all the world crime syndicates under one roof, think of the parking lots they can build.
Remember the EU is just a Goldmanite mafia franchise. Wonder what the cost of a franchise would be to open up in say Ulaanbaatar
You know it's bad in they're bailing-in the mafia.
This is one group I think the POLS are making a bad mistake.You do not mess w/ the white shoe boys cash.You will see dead POLS and families of same coming soon.They will be sleeping with the fishes.
This is not the first time. I had to laugh because just a few weeks ago the Italians also seized $600 million from those cuddly Irish republicans the IRA:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2288630/Police-seize-resorts-Ita...
Not a bad haul for a four weeks
If they can go after the Sicilian Mafia's money - they can go after anyones money!
Let them go after US senator's money: let's see how far they get.
Though I endorse the confiscation of mafia money, the troubling thing here is there choice of a very small sliver of the mafia sources out there. The bigger mafiosi like Blankfein are still out on the street, so clearly they are just eliminating competition and vertically integrating their supply chain. This is just M&A noise from what I can see.
The rest of the horse is now food.
... on French and English grocery shelves
Looks like crime pays after all.
whose? that of governments, central banks or the mafia?
crime pays. that's all
Why else would the mob get in on the .gov subsidy racket?
Given the ineptitude of Italian anti-corruption authorities, it's not surprising that inspector Clouseau's Italian cousin took so long to ask the rather basic question, "If we gave him EUR 2B in government cheese from the taxpayer extortion racket, then why does say his stash is worth less than one billion?"
Hey rich people...get out there and spend that money! Your economy needs you!
There is still a misunderstanding here.
This is mafia expropriating Mafia. It's all fair game, survival of the fittest.
U sure? This looks to me like governments are getting a little pissed. Those that benefit from their evilness and connections and fraud are not holding up their end of the bargain. They are supposed to spend that money and pay their taxes. Seems to me like it's time to pay the piper.
Italian Mafia owns the Milan Bourse same as Yakuza with Nikkei.
They are getting screwed there.
I think Yakuza has been out of Nikkei as of 2-3 years ago. No longer profitable. Not sure about Cosa Nostra in Sicilia or Ndrangheta in Napoli or Sacra Corona Unita in Bari.
Quite possible the gov is raiding them because they could have abandoned the Milan stock exchange and the gov mafia wants them to be suckered back into milan bourse.
Ndrangheta operates out of Calabria. Camorra has Napoli.
Thx for the correction.
MS13 has LA
Mozilo had Virginia.
at first they came for the "mafia"; i didn't speak up as i'm not part of the mafia.
then they came for... (to be continued)
the liberals?
Please, everyone is part of the mafia in Italy. Now you are just bullshitting.
At least in Italy they call it Mafia.
In USA they call it LOBBYING.
everything i know about italy i learned from hollywood.
it's a commonly known fact that italians always eat.
The trouble with Italian food is that you get hungry again 2 or 3...days later! :>D
You are exactly right, they're getting the people used to the idea of stealing money out of the accounts. At first they'll make it seem justified, then one day they'll say they had no choice but to take everybody's money.
Take your money out of their corrupt system and put it in silver, guns, ammo, medicine, food, shelter, and land.
Yes, I'm sure.
This is one gang of crooks stealing from another.
It has nothing to do with fairness, but rather it's a sign of desperation.
It's every rat for himself.
can't tell you how much i hate the word "fair".
fair? according to whom? welfare recipients who have no drive to do something with their life? idealisti socialist politicians who attempt to garner voter? struggling middle class earners, deeply in debt as a result of a central bank credit bubble? professional politicians, who spend their life giving blowjobs to the highest bidder?
life is not "fair". fucking deal with it.
Spot on.
You still think that governments represent the "people"? LMFAO!!! The governments are fully owned moron. Looks like the members of the elite clubs are getting smaller as these puppets get desperate. Roll the motherfucking guillotines and clean out everybody at the top who has profitted from "leading" the world here. Unitl people are held accountable, nothing changes. Live by the sword die by the sword, profit from corruption, die by corruption, fuck em all.
who said the government represents the people?
Sorry, your implication was that the government represents someone other than the mafia/corruption in Italy. This is like saying that the government in America represents someone other than the financial sector. Simply not true. The comment above about one part of the mafia getting pissed at another part of the mafia is probably closer to the truth. I use to have family in Rome, everyone is now in Queens or St. Petersburg Florida. Italian "politics" is very much akin to gang warefare. Be positive fonz, at least this will clear out some very corrupt players.
Absolutely Laws. Completely agree this will actually clear out some corrupt players.
Trying to stay positive, that recent late chill in the southeast will impact yields this summer (go long apples and peaches). Should have planted more radishes and beets. Oh well. The only thing less dependable than a banker is the weather.
Always appreciate the heads up.
Amongst them, survival of the fittest is fair game, same as with hedge funds or bankers.
Conceptually, there is absolutely no difference.
".....Roll the motherfucking guillotines and clean out everybody at the top who has profitted from "leading" the world here. Unitl people are held accountable, nothing changes. Live by the sword die by the sword, profit from corruption, die by corruption, fuck em all...."
Exactly what needs to happen for a proper clean reset. Lets not forget the propaganda arm either
"Unitl people are held accountable, nothing changes."
Yeah what Law said... it's true, I think I ate all my popcorn waiting for the show to start. Can we just get on with it, my belly hurts. Anyone got an ETA on the sheep marching with pitchforks? like a week, a month?
I remember a few years ago speculating that one day the sharks would start eating sharks as the pressure reaches unbearable levels. Looks like we are here. If not, really close.
This is bound to pick up pace. Cyprus was a game changer for sure.
PRECISELY, and I can't emphasize this enough.
Can someone game theory this? I mean it's entertaining and all but does it play out in the market? Because when Cyprus happened it sure as hell didn't.
It's not a game theory, it's natural.
What does a pack of wolf do? They eat sheep.
However, if they have eaten all sheep and other animals around and winter sets in, they simply eat each other. It's just natural.
Retail has already been raided and the money in deposits is simply not enough. Elite infighting at full force.
That's cool and all, natural, game theory...whatever. If the wolves are eating wolves I will grab a beer and watch it. The Yankees are all injured anyway. As I said, with Cyprus the markets just shrugged and moved up. I am really interested in if/when the market sits up and takes notice.
There's no market. It's just few wolfes (primary dealers) bouncing the same stocks to each other, trying to lure other wolves.
It's quite of an winter on wall street and the city of london. The games began in 2007.
you are off there ekm. I am i the business. I deal with retail. There is plenty of retail money in this market. Every two weeks the 401(k)'s get replenished and they add to their crappy retail mutual funds. It may not be on the level it once was. But to say there is no retail is not entirely true.
Not nearly enough, seeing the derivative canyons.
My father in law is a trader. His reaction was the same as you have put it... the market shrugged it off. He is just immune to it. Conditioned not to knee jerk.
This is the same reason for needing insurance for your insurance.
What I'm talking about here is that if you stockpile precious metals (physical delivery as insurance against monetary collapse), you will also need to allocate part of your portfolio to an investment in "lead."
When the wolves start eating the wolves you will need insurance to protect your insurance.
(this is also the point when the politician-wolves try to align with the military as their insurnace policies)
Since man first walked the Earth...same as it ever was.
I like to read Martin Armstrong on this sort of stuff. I don't always agree with him though.
For instance, he is really in the camp that all of this driven by pure stupidity without any planning for the next move. All reaction and no thinking. Pure desperation and greed. I sort of lean this direction, but think there are facets playing out some deadly, long-term geopolitical games. Cold war crap maybe. Hence, Cyprus could have been on purpose for a whole host of reasons. Akin to the pin being purposely pulled on a grenade.
Regarding Cyprus, I think it just takes time for things to sink in. And the financial sector and media are surely going to delay and warp the numbers, buying more time.
In the end, I tend to agree with Martin Armstrong that the EU tanks first and the capital runs scared into the USD, stock market, etc. - potentially into hard assets here.
Central planning is like that.
You always plan, but you don't know what you're planning for.
Typical.
centerline
potentially into hard assets here.
IF there are any left, after the East buys all of it on the cheap.(as is this last weeks takedown on the metals), the East is sucking it all up.
I'm thinking that even real estate might get a boost. Everyone here will be touting it like the recovery we have been waiting for... until the capital flow reverses and the giant sucking sound starts (along with the tears). A blow off top for us.
Just speculation of course. There is alot of fiat in the world that is going to get clobbered (and more being printed every day - lol). Seems to me it is going to run around like a chicken with it's head cut off before it is cornered and skinned.
short horse heads!
I aint no band leader
oh, this is getting real good now.
UBS, CS and Julius Baer are already kicking all their long time (now not tax complying ) clients out of the bank. They don't give you (yet) a written statement about their intentions. Also a form of confiscation.
i wouldn't say so. if they are aware of upcoming issues, and they tell people to get their money out right away, they're actually doing them a service.
The normalizing of theft continues.
They're coming for everyones money, one stepping stone at a time.
Yes, but they stole from crooks, so this stealing stuff is AOK.
Yup. They will change the rules on the fly so that they capture the money from both ends and from everyone. The interim result will be capital running amok trying to find a place to hide.
Even if this guy was criminal or tied to criminals, the take away is that some entity labled him as a criminal.
Seems to me that governments can pretty much define anything any way they want. Such as changing the definition of what constitutes a terrorist... and of course taking money from terrorists is a good thing, right?
That's where I kind of shrug and lose interest. This is like the SEC busting a ponzi and fining the firm 100 million dollars. The fine goes to the SEC and the ponzi victims get squat.
They are coming for the money one way or another. Desperate governments are going to do despicable things to stay afloat and prolong the inevitable. I fully expect the "blame" game to morph on a regular basis. All the cash gets funneled right back into the engine as you said, until something big breaks. Then the game changes again.
I see dead people....
How very Odd
I am encouraged. At last they have picked on somebody who might just hit the lot of them.
Way too many banksters and not enough mafia in this world. When one species proliferates to plague proportions usually there is mass death, naturally culling the population. Maybe the mafia will turn out to be the natural enemy of the bankster....unless of course they are one and the same.
Why is it always just the "banksters" with some people?
The "Government Caste" is even more guilty and much more dangerous.
Why the blind eye?
there's no blind eye. the banksters own the government
He must have forgotten to donate to charity
berlusconi didnt get his cut
If by "charity" you mean the correct political org.
Goes "Cyprus." I like that.
the goverment needs that silver from the solar farms
I know it was you Fredo.
That's what a rare steak looks like at Tesco's.
The higher up the food chain this goes the more dangerous it will be. It will be interesting to watch.
Will BIS spearhead a freezing and then seizure of money stashed away in all the other tax havens or was Cyprus just an exercise in destroying a small nation to show strength?
And how about all the criminals on Wall Street? Corzine, Mozillo etc? Or was the quota filled just with the jailing of Madoff?
People like Corzine and Mozillo, justice is most likely going to be served at the end of a barrel of a gun. They will all be begging to go to jail once the vigilantes have had enough. Guys like Dorner are just glimpses of the fun to come. Benny and his magical societal destablizing printer will make sure of that.
I hear what you are saying but I remain fascinated as to how all the Corzines of this world are still free and unharmed. Are they putting something in the water supply?
Society hasn't been destablized enough. The average joe still believes in the false premise that the rule of law still applies in the US. It doesn't on the federal level anymore and the states won't extert their checking balance to counteract it right now. Give it time, Obamacare is going to be that push it needs here in the USA. Just watch how Obama sows the seeds of discontent and how it destablizes society in the Middle East. Watch Europe disintigrate into bankruptcy. We are next as long as we keep walking the same path.
Benny Boy and his magic printer is the enabler of all this dysfunctionality.
You want to see some real fun, wait until some of the more enterprising hacker types manage to shut down the atms or ebt terminals for a long period of time. You'll see extreme stress if not outright riots in urban areas in about a weeks time.
Agreed. It just takes time to reach critical mass. But, once it does we will see some serious shock and awe. Likely in isolated events here and there, then increasing in frequency and severity.
Personally, I don't see a way off the path we are on. There is no way to avoid a catastrophe. Because, at the bottom level of this mess are billions and billions of people who have been lied to and rely on the very systems that are going belly up. Exponential growth meets reality in an ugly way.
Out of the Corzine, Mozillo, Bernanke, Geithner, Paulson, Blankfein, etc... group of scumbags everytime I see Mozillo I throw up in my own mouth more so than when I see the rest of them.
dont hold your breath
why do you think the state just bought about 2 billion hollow point bullets? and continues to acquire more?
The reality is there are more bullets spread out among the hands of the general populace than all the bullets the DHS has and is committed to purchasing. There is ALOT of ammo "out in the wild" that is home made that is not accounted for in official figures.
Yes, Peter Pan...because the BIS is the printer's club.
These are the guys in Bernanke's kleptocratic club.
The real "Mafia" have their people in place and loot in a bolt hole.
Just as the EU no longer bothers with a democratic mandate, the EU also no longer bothers with a tax code. Why when all those deposits are just sitting out there.
The gubbermint is doing what gubbermints do best; looking for witches, doing a "shame shame" ritual, taking their money, burning them at the stake.
Long bonfires.
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
This is true but even Christ acknowledged the two sides of the coin and the need to render unto Caesar AND God. In any case Christ did throw the bankers out of the temple. To their credit they got the message and since then have built their own temples (bank buildings).
yes, they did get the msg
but also corrupted the church. for confirmation, open encyclopedia judaica, look up the list of titles the rothschilds', one of the hofjuden families, hold and wonder why the fuck rothschild would bear the title “Guardians of the Vatican Treasury”. h ow fucked up is that? after these money changers were kicked out of the premises for usury, the vatican entrusts their treasure to them. like, really, from catholic's point of view, who the fuck, in their right mind, would trust these characters with their gold and wealth when it is in plain site what type of fraud against humanity these banking families wont shy away from. it only starts making sense if we accept the fact that those two work together http://tinyurl.com/cmfvdm4 .
If he's involved in alternative energy, shouldn't he have been reporting losses on his taxes...like the US Government?
Maybe with any luck, they'll kill each other off.
This is about to get interesting - in the red corner we have WEstern Governments and their blood lust desires and eagerness to resort to violence (war) and in the blue corner we have Russian, Italian and Cypriut mafia - oligarths and the wealthy elite.
All doing battle over our heads - while we just suffer the fallout.
However - in the 'new world' of Economics it's a great way to get people spending - I mean NOBODY wants to be the one who had money in the bank when it collapsed.
Unfortunately this scheme does not work well with FRB!
There's a Hindi saying that goes something like "When bulls fight, only the grass under their feet suffers damage."
Any excuse to steal money. Just accuse someone of a crime and confiscate. You are crazy if you have money in the bank and are not loading up on gold. Ther are plenty of examples of this in history. It is going to get a whole lot worse. They are going to take everything you have, one way or another.
I agree....but there is one example from history where they confiscated gold too. They don't plan on losing this thing....I'm loading up on silver.....ammo & food is a good bet too.
The difference between Cyprus and this was the Germans using the ECB tried to steal stolen cash that wasn't stolen from them. They had no intentions of giving that stolen cash back to the Russians. Here the Italians are going after stolen cash that technically belongs to them. If the Russian government went after the oligarchs cash I don't think anyone would have cared.
What stolen cash did the ECB or Italy go after? You mean like all the cash those German Jews stole before Hitler had them arrested? There were no court cases or charges filed. This has nothing to do with crime. They want the money and they are taking it.
I use stolen loosely here my point is oligarch money is taxable by the Russian goverment not the ECB or Germans if earned in Russia then washed in Cyprus. Italian Mafia money is taxable by Italy and is being seized by Italy.
It has to do with money and tax jurisdictions first and foremost. Don't turn this into a joos are evil justification for stealing. Theft is theft regardless who you steal from.