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Sunday, August 26, 2012

Gawker Dumps Confidential Bain Files

Today, we are publishing more than 950 pages of internal audits, financial statements, and private investor letters for 21 cryptically named entities in which Romney had invested—at minimum—more than $10 million as of 2011 (that number is based on the low end of ranges he has disclosed—the true number is almost certainly significantly higher). Almost all of them are affiliated with Bain Capital, the secretive private equity firm Romney co-founded in 1984 and ran until his departure in 1999 (or 2002, depending on whom you ask). Many of them are offshore funds based in the Cayman Islands. Together, they reveal the mind-numbing, maze-like, and deeply opaque complexity with which Romney has handled his wealth, the exotic tax-avoidance schemes available only to the preposterously wealthy that benefit him, the unlikely (for a right-wing religious Mormon) places that his money has ended up, and the deeply hypocritical distance between his own criticisms of Obama's fiscal approach and his money managers' embrace of those same policies. They also show that some of the investments that Romney has always described as part of his retirement package at Bain weren't made until years after he left the company.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for running both sides of the story. Just shows again you are a fair and credible man.

Anonymous said...

Has the IRS gone after Romney? No. So that's that.

Anonymous said...

FTA:
"Also worth noting that Gawker Media LLC is based in the Cayman Islands."
From cassiesmith.hubpages.com:
"According to John Cassidy's article in the The New Yorker, Gawker is organized like an international money-laundering operation. Nick Denton, the founder of Gawker, and whose mother is an immigrant from Hungary, directed the company's revenues through Hungary where it employs some Hungarians as techies. Then the company restructured its various divisions, such as Gawker Media LLC, Gawker Entertainment LLC, Gawker Technology LLC, and Gawker Sales LLC under one entity, Gawker Media Group. Guess where Gawker Media Group is based? THE CAYMAN ISLANDS!!!

So in effect, Denton set up a shell company in the Caymans in order to not pay a lot of taxes by basing their corporate headquarters offshore. But here's the kicker, it's all legitimate. For Gawker to breathless accuse Romney and Bain of tax dodging when it is doing the same thing is incredible in its hypocrisy. And oh yes, Nick Denton has a net worth of approximately $290 million, according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2007."

Anonymous said...

A tax is an amount of money levied on an entity/person. It is unilaterally applied without the consent of the payee (other than his consent to be governed) and the amount is determined by the taxing power. There is no stygma or any duty to pay more than is required by law....

Anonymous said...

I don't care how Romney spends his money I care about how Obama spends mine.