FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'

Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan
Showing posts with label tourism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tourism. Show all posts

Friday, February 19, 2021

Unfortunately for Common Sense, City of Hollywood's new #VacationRental rules are a HUGE fail, and a step backwards. City has NOT actively engaged the honest stakeholders in this effort, yet also allowed genuine troublemakers to continue angering neighbors, who rightfully feel aggrieved and taken advantage of.


Unfortunately for Common Sense, the City of Hollywood's new #VacationRental rules are a HUGE fail, and a step backwards. Simply put, the City and its officials have NOT actively and honestly engaged the honest stakeholders in this effort, yet at the same time, also allowed genuine troublemakers to continue angering our neighbors, who quite rightfully feel aggrieved and taken advantage of, and are looking for some party to blame and hold responsible.

Rather than admit their many missteps in the past, the City is doubling down and yet is hard-pressed to explain with a straight face why its compliance rate percentage is now LOWER than even I had predicted it'd be at the 2017 City Comm. mtg. that approved those particular changes.
Which only makes the City's newest PR effort and March 1st deadline a sad joke, not a reasonable response to the reality we see all around us. 

But despite the self-evident reality looking at them, the City chooses to pretend the facts are something else, and is trying to persuade us otherwise via two Webex meetings tomorrow, Tuesday. I'll be watching and so should you!  

So tomorrow's scheduled meetings caused me to take to Twitter late last week to share some thoughts and try to get the attention of other fair-minded people in our area of Broward County, as well as in the South Florida press corps, who are largely anything-but-responsive to input regardless of what they claim on websites and their various Social Media platforms.
A fact you see reflected in both the newspapers and in local TV newscasts: not nearly enough context and nuance to get a full picture of what's going on

I've written out my Tweets below the screen grabs just in case you can't make them out completely. 
Yes, frustratingly, the Google Blogger software I use is still refusing to readily accept the code and allow it to be easily seen, as was always the case before the end of the year.
Consequently, I've had to resort to screen grabs yet again, with info and text below.  😬


'



HallandaleBeach/Hollywood Blog  @hbbtruth

1/ In my opinion, the City of Hollywood's new #VacationRental rules are a HUGE fail, step backwards. City has NOT engaged the honest stakeholders, yet also allowed genuine troublemakers to continue angering neighbors. Compliance % now = LOWER than even I predicted in 2017. March 1st deadline = a sad joke.

2/ .@cohgov does NOT want media/ppl asking hard Q's re why city residents doing something legal must jump thru NEW hoops, yet #YellowGreenMarket, in self-evident violation of DOZENS of HWD/#Broward/#FL health/zoning regs for YEARS, gets TLC -stays OPEN.

On this Tweet, I linked to my very popular 2017 post, below, that was seen by many tens of thousands of people within a very short time.

I'd be willing to bet that the majority of the people coming to the blog to read that 2017 post got the same general sense of dread and over-kill that I did about the city's then-new changes, which in my opinion failed to honestly address the White Elephant in the room -why so many people who are homeowners/stakeholders involved with Vacation Rentals do NOT trust the city or its officials. Especially people in the city's Code Compliance Dept.

Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog, FRIDAY, JUNE 2, 2017 Updated: A veritable train wreck of a public meeting. Wednesday's embarrassing Vacation Rental Ordinance Amendment presentation at Hollywood City Hall was not a pretty sight by any stretch of the imagination 

https://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2017/06/a-veritable-trainwreck-of-public.html


3/ Tuesday Feb. 23rd's 2 Webex calls = great opportunity for ppl in #HollywoodFL to ask city to name 4 examples where they've shown they've learned fm THEIR past #VacationRental mistakes, will now adapt to the reality they've ignored for yrs. 

The Vacation Rental License webpage is at

It makes for very interesting reading.
And by interesting, I mean lots of things that seem far afield from what most people would think is reasonable.

Information below from City of Hollywood website, which was in my Tweet, regarding the changes made at Hollywood City Hall on January 20th. 
You know, Inaugural Day? Great timing!


Vacation Rental Changes: Virtual Meeting Q&A


The City has made a number of changes to the Vacation Rental License Program Ordinance. To assist property owners with meeting compliance deadlines, the City will be hosting two virtual question and answer sessions. The sessions will be held via the Cisco WebEx Virtual Meeting application tomorrow, Tuesday, February 23, 2021 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and again from 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. There will be no formal presentation, but staff will be on-hand to answer questions related to the Vacation Rental License Program, licensure, inspections requirements and more.

Those who currently have a Vacation Rental License, as well as those property owners who are currently using their property as a vacation rental are encouraged to participate. Join a session using the information below and have your questions personally answered.


MORNING SESSION
February 23 at 11:00 a.m.
CLICK HERE TO JOIN VIA COMPUTER
JOIN VIA TELEPHONE: 408.418.9388
Meeting ID: 132 797 4704
Password: VACATION

EVENING SESSION
February 23 at 5:00 p.m.
CLICK HERE TO JOIN VIA COMPUTER
JOIN VIA TELEPHONE: 408.418.9388
Meeting ID: 132 538 1006
Password: VACATION



Today's tweet was perhaps the easiest to write in quite some time because personal experience has shown that when push comes to shove, unfortunately, many Hollywood officials believe that they can push and push on public policy against local citizens or even longtime civic activists, and will likely not encounter any if much public pushback.

Especially in these pandemic conditions of February 2021 that largely prevent the public from being able to directly face, question and hold accountable the very elected officials and administrators creating and enforcing policy in this city.

But what has happened positively on this subject since the city instituted those changes of theirs in 2017?
Are there thousands or even hundreds more people who are homeowners engaged in vacation rentals who are now complying with those rules? No.
According to many in a position to know, the city's compliance rate with its current rules is still far below 30%. Below thirty per cent.

Name another public policy which, if it had a compliance rate at that level, would be considered semi-successful, and one to build upon, instead of being chucked-out and started over from scratch, including re-examining old assumptions? You can't.
There isn't one.

In fact, the compliance rate is so low that the city tries to go out of its way to never put that number into play publicly, so as to not invite the sort of ridicule that... I am now engaging in, no?
Why do you suppose that is?

Because it shows that the city's past accountability efforts were a failure on every level, in large part because they never tried to learn from their previous mistakes, including openly antagonizing reasonable people in the community who were not opposed to reasonable safety/accountability accords being adopted, since that has the practical effect of leveling the playing field, and not dis-advantaging them for following suit.

But despite offers of cooperation from many individual Vacation Rental owners, industry groups and stakeholders -efforts I know something about personally, which the local South Florida media completely failed to report upon in 2017- the City of Hollywood was adamant about NOT listening to the legitimate concerns of these Hollywood homeowners, Airbnb and others that were willing to cooperate with them up to the point that they could legally under their various legal agreements and contracts. 

But the city kept asking for more and more private and proprietary information they had no legal right to, and which the groups could NOT legally disclose to the city without being in violation.
But yet the City still acted entitled to the information.
Go figure, huh? 






San Francisco Chronicle
New Lake Tahoe crackdown on rentals could make it much harder to snag an Airbnb, Vrbo
By Gregory Thomas 
February 19th, 2021  

The San Francisco Chronicle article above is that rare example of what happens when social and economic conditions coincide - Bay Area professionals used to toiling during the day in large urban skyscrapers being told to Work At Home, and quite rightfully scared of the disintegrating social conditions in San Francisco, are evacuating en masse- to make it much much harder for a local community to continue its status quo way of life.
In this case, Lake Tahoe, California, which is NOT a suburb of the Bay Area, per se.
In fact, they move there specifically to escape the troubles and people responsible for their heightened sense of concern for themselves and their families.
 
In these kind of events, enacting legislation seems not only appropriate, but necessary, to prevent longtime local people from being priced out of their own town.
But that is NOT the situation that currently exists in Hollywood, Florida in 2021.
Far from it.

Experienced southeast Broward realtors will tell you that home sales in the upscale Hollywood Lakes area and in the Golden Isles neighborhood of Hallandale Beach are doing very well, indeed.
You can see as much for yourself when you see their advertisements and websites bragging about how successful they've been in selling homes located there.
Often, to people fleeing Blue states and their oppressive lockdown rules, as well as the cold weather.

It is, of course, very concerning for the city long-term that so many longtime Hollywood residents who are successful in life and who've often shared something of themselves with the community and its various social groups, are consciously choosing to vote with their feet by moving not just out of Hollywood Lakes, but out of Hollywood completely.
But that is the subject for another future blog post in some detail, not one to be examined today.

But it's also a great question for the city's elected officials and administrators to be asked, isn't it? Yes it is.
So tell me, why aren't we hearing those particular questions asked by the local news media, or at Hollywood City Commission and CRA meetings?
Yes, there are many answers to that question, again, to be addressed very soon in this space. 

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Tuesday, December 22, 2020

So where are the positive results and ROI of all the tens of thousands of dollars that Hallandale Beach CRA gave to FIU's Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management and to the South Beach Wine & Food Festival? South Florida news media collectively yawns.

 


So, I've got a bit of a secret to share with you loyal readers of the Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog today, just days before Christmas 2020. The COVID19 Christmas none of us wanted to go through.

Well, actually, it's NOT much of a secret. I mean, to be honest, it's been hiding in plain sight.
And certainly I've been talking about it to many people in emails, texts, and phone calls and in-person conversations at some of the handful of haunts in the area that were open and convenient for others to meet me over the past few months. Which includes a handful of the community-minded people reading this blog post today.

So here's the story in slightly more than a nutshell.
Hard-working and concerned residents and a few civic activists of Hallandale Beach -and to be fair, a few well-informed and concerned Broward County insiders who live elsewhere, like me in Hollywood- have been wondering for most of this year about a shoe that never seemed to fall from the sky.
Wondering, mostly, why nobody in the South Florida press corps was the least bit interested in investigating and reporting on YET ANOTHER Hallandale Beach CRA scandal that's been sitting there on a silver platter for nearly all of 2020, just waiting for someone to simply look at the self-evident facts and the public data, and metaphorically kick the tires and connect-the-dots.

Someone who would logically explain why, once again, the elected officials of Hallandale Beach were consciously choosing to spend many tens of thousands of dollars that the State of Florida mandates be used on matters centering chiefly on the removal of (self-evident) blight and slums in this city located in the SE corner of Broward County, right on the Atlantic Ocean. 

A city that should be, as I have argued for the soon-to-be 13 years of this blog, MUCH BETTER in all sorts of ways that matter to the people who live and work there and call it home, regardless of race, gender, political sensibility or economic status.
The people I know best and trust the most in Hallandale Beach are long past being tired of continual half-assed PR efforts to make unsatisfactory look passable, and deliberate stupidity look like a policy choice.

Specifically, they've been waiting for someone to investigate why tens of thousands of CRA dollars was given to the FIU Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management and to the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, for what, in the end, seems to have been... nothing but positive PR buzz.
Like self-publishing a vanity book using someone else's money.

No, there would be no unsightly, curb-unfriendly slums in Hallandale Beach to be razed, no HB neighborhoods that would be improved by this transaction.
But it would allow a handful of not-so-sharp elected officials in Broward to once again pat themselves on the back for imagining that they'd pulled the wool over the nearly 40,000 residents of the city and the perpetually sleepwalking news media of South Florida.
The same news media that somehow imagines that whatever happens in the Wynwood neighborhood of Miami, or over on Miami Beach, always seems to trump all other local news, no matter how banal or cringe-worthy those stories in those two places might be.


Since the local South Florida press corps didn't seem the least bit interested in investigating or reporting on this story involving bad to corrupt public policy and use of public funds, with a lot of curiosity and resolve, and fueled by some hazelnut coffee and a delicious steak + egg sandwich -with bacon!- I connected-the-dots on the latest #HallandaleBeach CRA scandal re $$$ given to #FIU + #SOBEWFF- in one afternoon at the Hollywood Panera Bread on Sheridan Street near where I live, all while listening to a college football game on the radio.
 
I'll be posting the results in 2021 right here on the blog.
I may even use this issue as a reason to once again start uploading some more original content to my YouTube Channel, after not doing that for many years.
I'd been itching to do that for month, as well as start posting more original content at Instagram, until #COVID19 struck and a lot of election year ideas and plans went by the wayside.



Dave

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/HallandaleBeachBlog     
https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/status/1341464316533477388?s=20

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Saturday, December 8, 2018

Lots of glitz but little-to-no-heart in latest N.Y. Times T Style Magazine travel story re #SoFL, pre #ArtBaselMiami; Remembering what Congress said about Miami Beach's Art Basel's role in the UBS scandal

Lots of glitz but little-to-no-heart in latest N.Y. Times T Style Magazine travel story re #SoFL, pre #ArtBasel Miami Beach; Remembering what Congress said about Miami Beach's Art Basel's role in the UBS scandal

So, speaking of Art Basel...


Above, a December 2016 photo of my very creative and versatile artist friend Daniel Jayd from Montreal, down here for Art Basel 2016, at one of the most popular outdoor #ArtBasel Miami Beach exhibits at Collins Park on Washington and 19th Street, of Miami Mountain by Ugo Rondinone, which people were positively buzzing about.
Daniel is crazy talented with paint, brushes, pencils and a camera, and is a very smart, friendly and savvy guy, and has represented canada at many prestigious festivals and even at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. It isn't bragging if it's true.
http://www.studiojayd.com/biography

https://www.facebook.com/daniel.jayd

 @ArtistJAYD https://twitter.com/ArtistJAYD






Not that you asked but I'm somewhat incredulous by much of this recent N.Y. Times T Style Magazine travel story re things to see and do in the Miami area, pre #ArtBaselMiami invasion, since so much of it reads more like what you'd expect to find inside some free sponsored-magazine in an upscale hotel lobby on Miami Beach. More glitz than illumination
That this is in the NY Times style magazine is, well, in my opinion, quite telling, when you think about what sort of interesting story could really be told, and the really unique places and things to do down here.








 Reading it, you would not know it was written by someone like Evan Benn who has actually lived in South Florida for a while, worked at The Miami Herald, and should know a thing or two about what's new and fun in this area that visitors would find worthwhile.

 N.Y. Times T Style Magazine
Where to Stay, and What to Eat, in Miami

Beyond the umbrella-lined beaches and Art Deco architecture of South Beach, Miami is cementing its reputation as Florida’s cultural and culinary capital.
By Evan Benn

Nov. 9, 2018
For those who haven’t visited in a minute, some of the recent changes Miami has undergone may come as a surprise. The Design District, which for years was a maze of traffic cones and construction dust, is now brimming with fashion boutiques and places to stop and grab a cup of coffee, a taco or a scoop of local soft-serve ice cream. A $500-million investment to get ahead of rising sea levels has left the roadways of Miami Beach repaved and less prone to flooding — an especially welcome change in South Beach’s buzzy Sunset Harbour neighborhood, where the tables of locally beloved restaurants like Pubbelly Sushi and Stiltsville Fish Bar spill out onto the sidewalks.
Meanwhile, cultural capital has poured into the region, bringing with it new museums like Frost Science downtown and the Institute of Contemporary Art in the Design District, complementing the annual Art Basel Miami Beach fair that arrives each December. Then there is Brightline, a new high-speed rail service, which zips passengers from Miami to Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach in less time — and with less aggravation — than it takes to drive those routes on Interstate 95. The project’s next phase will extend the line all the way to Orlando.
Read the rest of the article at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/09/t-magazine/miami-travel-guide.html

 Now I'm no art expert, though I do read Art in America once in a while, and my Mother was one of the volunteeers who helped Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude with Surrounded Islands Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida, 1980–83,




but I much-preferred #ArtBasel themed NYT pieces in past Novembers that actually gave an informed POV re new artists and their art and why we ought to see it -or shun it- since as we all know, avant-garde rarely comes this far south.


Some more reasonable takes than Evan Benn's effort:










Those NY Times articles in the past actually tried to educate and inform you about something rather than reading like talking points from micromanaging corporate publicists.
Here are a few of them...



























I know from personal experience how many Airbnb hosts in Hollywood and South Florida are able
to turn a profit for the year in large part because of the reliability of the #ArtBasel crowd coming into
the area from out-of-town or even overseas. That's how I met my friend Daniel.

Talented successful creative people who will not be buying large meals every night -or even sleeping much- per se, because they are SO busy networking and yes, actually trying to SELL their creative efforts and arrange future exhibitions, not be impressed by fancy window displays of throw pillows and wicker sofas near Lincoln Road.

 Those folks have been on adrenaline all day after swinging by the Starbucks at Lincoln Road before
9 am, and are racing to the parking garage across from Miami Beach City Hall at the end of the night
as soon as they can, but in slow-motion, so they can get in their car and come back up to Hollywood
and head over to a nice place on the beach or on Hollywood Blvd. downtown and chill a bit.
Decompress!

 I know those Airbnb guests in town for ArtBasel stay locally and spend locally, because I've been with them when they did it, even if local restaurant owners or managers didn't know why they were here or why they looked so tired and exhausted - It's not easy being part of the creative class.

 Just a thought...

 For those of you who want more substance than sizzle, take a look back at one of my posts from over ten years ago...
JULY 18, 2008  Miami's Art Basel's Role in the UBS Scandal

FRIDAY, JULY 18, 2008
Miami's Art Basel's Role in the UBS Scandal
Of course Florida and South Florida in particular is a character in the emerging tax scandal involving Swiss banking giant UBS, and billions of undeclared greenback$.
Why should this 2008 story be any different from so many dozens of crazy stories before it over the past thirty years?

(See: Sen. Levin: Shut Down Giant Swiss Bank UBS, Investigation Reveals Secrecy Tricks Allegedly Used by Swiss Bankers
By BRIAN ROSS, AVNI PATEL, and RHONDA SCHWARTZ, July 17, 2008 http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5394214&page=1 )

It's really great that the Art Basel Art Fair could help facilitate the meet-and-greet card exchanges that led directly to illicit behavior and financial transactions among the monied class.
Friendly, competent help like that down here is VERY hard to find, as we all know from experience.
No wonder UBS kept coming back year-after-year!

As of this morning, the UBS logo still appears in the bottom left of the Art Basel web page
http://www.artbasel.com/
FYI: Art 40 Basel takes place June 10-14, 2009.

In a few years, when they eventually make a feature film out of Tom Wolfe's upcoming novel on the Miami area, I hope they at least do some on-site shooting down here so that some good can come from all the (temporary?) ill-gotten gains.(Who knows, maybe MIA's construction will even be finished by then!)

Regardless of how old the cool as a cucumber Swiss banker Bradley Birkenfeld really is, I hereby nominate Jeremy Irons to play him. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000460/

I can already see him in the role, stepping out of a long dark Town Car at night, impeccably dressed with a tan and saying bon mots to folks who love nothing in the world so much as cultured and erudite people tossing bon mots their way.
A little bit of Reversal of Evidence http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100486/ and a little bit of Damage http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104237/ and pretty soon you're talking Swiss banker with dollar signs in his eyes as he hands out UBS business cards with the familiar three keys on it.

Ironically, I'm doing this post while simultaneously watching Clark Gable and Lana Turner on Turner Classic Movies in 1941's Honky Tonk, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033726/ in which Gable plays -yes- a lovable but tough con man in the Old West.

Naturally, now that I say all these things about characters and actors, I see thru this
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22474914/ and this New York magazine article from early this year, http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/01/inside_tom_wolfes.html that Wolfe's novel Back to the Blood already has identifiable characters, and, none of 'em are Swiss bankers with the savoir-faire to help those with the dough avoid the tax man.
Maybe I'll have to be the one write that screenplay after all!

Herewith, the Swiss variation of a con, except here, rich folks are the easy marks, eager to escape paying Uncle Sam their fair share of the tax load while indulging their haute culture in South Florida.
And remember, as the Herald keeps insisting we must, they're not all snobs, they're just connoisseurs and possible condo-owners to be.

Meanwhile, back in The Miami Art District...
__________________________________

(Numbers in blue are footnote numbers)
from page 3/114 of U.S. SENATE PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS,
STAFF REPORT ON TAX HAVEN BANKS AND U.S. TAX COMPLIANCE,
July 17, 200

On June 30, 2008, the United States took another step. It filed a petition in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida requesting leave to file an IRS administrative summons with UBS asking the bank to disclose the names of all of its U.S. clients who have opened accounts in Switzerland, but for which the bank has not filed forms with the IRS disclosing the Swiss accounts.10 The court approved service of the summons on UBS on July 1, 2008.11 The summons has apparently been served, but according to Swiss authorities the Swiss and American governments are negotiating over its execution.12 This John Doe summons represents the first time that the United States has attempted to pierce Swiss bank secrecy by compelling a Swiss bank to name its U.S. clients.

 from page 6-7/114:

In May 2008, a second international tax scandal broke when the United States arrested a private banker formerly employed by UBS AG, one of the largest banks in the world, on charges of having conspired with a U.S. citizen and a business associate to defraud the IRS of $7.2 million in taxes owed on $200 million of assets hidden in offshore accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The United States had earlier detained as a material witness in that prosecution a senior UBS private banking official from Switzerland traveling on business in Florida, allegedly seizing his computer and other evidence. In June 2008, the former UBS private banker, Bradley Birkenfeld, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the IRS.8 His alleged co-conspirator, Mario Staggl, part owner of a trust company, remains at large in Liechtenstein. The current UBS senior private banking official, Martin Liechti, remains under travel restrictions. This enforcement action appears to represent the first time that the United States has criminally prosecuted a Swiss banker for helping a U.S. taxpayer evade payment of U.S. taxes.9

On June 30, 2008, the United States took another step. It filed a petition in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida requesting leave to file an IRS administrativesummons with UBS asking the bank to disclose the names of all of its U.S. clients who have opened accounts in Switzerland, but for which the bank has not filed forms with the IRS disclosing the Swiss accounts.10 The court approved service of the summons on UBS on July 1, 2008.11 The summons has apparently been served, but according to Swiss authorities the Swiss and American governments are negotiating over its execution.12 This John Doe summons represents the first time that the United States has attempted to pierce Swiss bank secrecy by compelling a Swiss bank to name its U.S. clients.

from page 9/114:

Marsh Accounts: Hiding $49 Million Over Twenty Years. James Albright Marsh, a U.S. citizen from Florida in the construction business, formed four Liechtenstein foundations, two in 1985, one in 1998, and one in 2004, and transferred substantial sums to them. LGT assisted him in establishing the two 1985 foundations, using documents that gave Mr. Marsh and his sons substantial control over the foundations and strong secrecy protections. By 2007, the assets in his four foundations had a combined value of more than $49 million. Although LGT became a participant in the QI Program in 2001, which requires foreign banks to report information on accounts with U.S. securities, LGT did not report the Marsh accounts. Instead it advised Mr. Marsh to divest his LGT foundations of U.S. securities, and treated the accounts as owned by non-U.S. persons, the Liechtenstein foundations that LGT had formed. After Mr. Marsh’s death in 2006, the IRS apparently discovered the Liechtenstein foundations through the documents released by the former LGT employee. Mr. Marsh’s family is now in negotiation with the IRS over back taxes, interest and penalties owed on the $49 million in undeclared assets.

 from page 16/114:
Mr. Birkenfeld testified that UBS also provided its Swiss bankers with tickets and funds to go to events attended by wealthy U.S. individuals, so that they could solicit new business for the bank in Switzerland. He said that UBS sponsored U.S. events likely to attract wealthy clients, such as the Art Basel Air Fair in Miami; performances in major U.S. cities by the UBS Vervier Orchestra featuring talented young musicians; and U.S. yachting events attended by the elite Swiss yachting team, Alinghi, which was also sponsored by UBS. A UBS document laying out marketing strategies to attract U.S. clients confirms that the bank “organized VIP events” and engaged in the “Sponsorship of Major Events” such as “Golf, Tennis Tournaments, Art, Special Events.” This document even identified the 25 most affluent housing areas in the United States to provide “targeted locations where to organize events.”

 page 19/114:

Olenicoff Accounts.
These concerns are further illustrated by the recent criminal prosecution involving UBS accounts opened in Switzerland by Mr. Birkenfeld for Igor Olenicoff. Mr. Olenicoff is a billionaire real estate developer, U.S. citizen, and resident of Florida and California. From 2001 until 2005, Mr. Birkenfeld and Mario Staggl, a trust officer from Liechtenstein helped Mr. Olenicoff open multiple bank accounts in the names of offshore companies he controlled at UBS in Switzerland and Neue Bank in Liechtenstein. For a time, Mr. Olenicoff was Mr. Birkenfeld’s largest private banking client. To service these accounts, Mr. Birkenfeld met with Mr. Olenicoff in the United States and elsewhere, communicated with him by telephone, fax, and email in the United States, and advised him on how to avoid disclosure of his accounts and assets to the IRS. In 2007, Mr. Olenicoff pled guilty to one criminal count of filing a false income tax return by failing to disclose the foreign bank accounts he controlled. He was sentenced to two years probation and 120 hours of community service, and paid six years of back taxes, interest, and penalties totaling $52 million. In 2008, Mr. Birkenfeld pled guilty to conspiring with Mr. Olenicoff to defraud the IRS and avoid payment of taxes owed on $200 million in assets hidden in accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Their alleged coconspirator, Mr. Staggl, remains at large in Liechtenstein.

 page 42/114: one of the most fascinating parts of the story!

(1) Marsh Accounts: Hiding $49 Million Over Twenty YearsJames Albright Marsh, Jr. (“Mr. Marsh”) is a construction contractor who lived in Florida with his wife and six children, until he died in 2006.117 He, his wife, and his children have always been U.S. citizens. In 1985, Mr. Marsh traveled to Liechtenstein, and LGT helped him establish two Liechtenstein foundations, the Chateau Foundation and Lincol Foundation, which then opened accounts at LGT Bank. Also during the 1980s, Mr. Marsh formed two more Liechtenstein foundations, called Topanga Foundation118 and Largella Foundation,119 apparently using two other financial institutions in Liechtenstein.120 Over the years, these four Liechtenstein foundations opened accounts at five Liechtenstein banks.121 By 2007, the Liechtenstein accounts had assets with a combined value in excess of $49 million.122
This section on Mr. Marsh continues for about five pages with all sorts of secretive legal corporate tactics they employed to keep below the radar. 

 from page 79-81/114:

Using Transfer Corporations to “Cover Up the Tracks” of Client Funds. As indicated in some of the case histories described earlier, LGT documents obtained by the Subcommittee show that it was not uncommon for LGT to set up intermediary, pass-through corporations that were used by the bank, in the words of an LGT employee, “to cover up the tracks” of funds moving into LGT client accounts. When asked about these corporations, the head of compliance Officer for LGT Group confirmed their existence, explaining that these “auxiliary services corporations” served several functions, including the transmission of funds “confidentially.”338

The documents show that LGT used BTS Management Ltd., formed in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), to establish a number of the transfer corporations. The documents indicate that LGT typically asked BTS Management to form a BVI corporation which then opened an account at LGT or another bank, such as Bank du Gothard in Luxembourg. The transfer corporation then received funds or securities from an LGT client and immediately transferred those funds or securities to LGT, if its account was at an outside bank. In some instances the transfer corporation was then dissolved; in other instances, it continued in existence. Once the funds or securities were delivered to LGT bank, they were moved internally within the bank, using a mechanism called “journaling” to transfer them from one LGT account to another, here from the transfer corporation’s LGT account to the client’s LGT account. This internal transfer mechanism makes it much more difficult to trace the movement of funds and securities, since it leaves no record outside of the bank showing that the assets were transferred to the ultimate recipient, the LGT client.

The Subcommittee investigation uncovered several examples of LGT engaging in this practice. For example, Sera Financial Corporation is a BVI corporation that appears to have functioned as an LGT transfer corporation. An internal LGT document describes Sera Financial as a “[s]pecial purpose company (indirect subsidiary of LTV) for portfolio transfers for assets which are to be brought into an LTV structure.”339 The document shows, by account number, that Sera Financial held one account at Banque du Gothard and eleven separate accounts at LGT Bank in Liechtenstein.340 The document explains this unusual account structure as follows:

For each customer, a sub-account or deposit facility is opened under a reference at BdG[Banque du Gothard] and at LGT …. Funds transfers as well as securities deliveries to BdG are in favor of SERA …. BdG is instructed to forward cash values and securities without delay to LGT BIL [Bank in Liechtenstein] in favor of Sera Financial Corp. with specification of the reference. ... As soon as the assets are credited at BIL, they are transferred to the destination account ….341
One example of how Sera Financial was used involves a new trust set up for a U.S. client in 2000. A LGT memorandum to the file discussing the transfer of assets to the new trust states:
“The trust shall open an account in the LGT Bank in Liechtenstein. The transfer of assets should take place using this account. To cover up the tracks from UBS Zurich to the trust in Liechtenstein, I recommend an intermediary Single Purpose Company.”342 LGT decided to use Sera Financial as the transfer corporation. A wire transfer instruction from Gotthard Bank shows how the transfer operation worked.343 It shows that on October 31, 2000, after $1.2 million had been credited to the Sera Financial account at Banque du Gothard: “BTS Management Limited, Tortola, as Managing Director of the company Sera Financial Corporation, Tortola, B.V.I. [h]ereby declares: … that the following beneficiary(ies) is/are entitled to the above-referenced transaction,” naming the U.S. citizen from Florida, known to the Subcommittee as a U.S. client of LGT at that time. The $1.2 million was then transferred to his account.

 pages 96-97/114:


Mr. Birkenfeld testified that UBS not only authorized and paid for the business trips to the United States, but also provided the Swiss bankers with tickets and funds to go to events
attended by wealthy U.S. individuals, so that they could solicit new business for the bank in Switzerland. He said that UBS sponsored U.S. events likely to attract wealthy clients, such as the Art Basel Air Fair in Miami; performances in major U.S. cities by the UBS Vervier Orchestra featuring talented young musicians; and U.S. yachting events attended by the elite Swiss yachting team, Alinghi, which was also sponsored by UBS. An internal UBS document laying out marketing strategies to attract U.S. and Canadian clients confirms that the bank “organized VIP events” and engaged in the “Sponsorship of Major Events” such as “Golf, Tennis Tournaments, Art, Special Events.”405 This document even identified the 25 most affluent housing areas in the United States to provide “targeted locations where to organize events.”406

Mr. Birkenfeld described to the Subcommittee how Swiss private bankers used these events and other means to find new U.S. clients during their trips to the United States: You might go to sporting events. You might go to car shows, wine tastings. You might deal with real estate agents. You might deal with attorneys. … It’s really where do the rich people hang out, go and talk to them. … [I]t wasn’t difficult to walk into a party with a … business card, and then someone ask[s] you, ‘What do you do?’ and you say, ‘Well, I work for a bank in Switzerland, and we manage money there and open accounts.’ And people immediately would recognize, oh, this is someone who could open new business by opening accounts.


page 98/114:


For example, the Subcommittee found that at least five UBS client advisors travelled to the United States for trips coinciding with the Art Basel Art Fair, an annual UBS-sponsored event held in early December in Miami Beach since 2002. The data shows that, over the years, several UBS Swiss client advisors were in Miami during the art show, including three in 2007.On the customs forms completed over the years by UBS travelers prior to landing at Miami International airport, only one client advisor stated that the purpose of the trip was for business, while five described the visit as for pleasure. These client advisors’ trips, however, coincided closely with the dates of the Art Basel event, including an invitation-only private showing. Moreover, the Subcommittee’s analysis of the customs and travel records obtained from the Department of Homeland Security show that a Swiss-based UBS client advisor traveled to New England from June 20-25, 2004, a trip coinciding with the UBS Regatta Cup, held in Newport, RI from June 19-26, 2004.

 pages 105-106/114:

(5) Violating Restrictions on U.S. Activities

The UBS practices just described, related to Swiss banker activities undertaken in the United States to recruit and service U.S. clients, may have violated U.S. law as well as UBS policy. As explained earlier, U.S. securities and banking laws prohibit non-U.S. persons from advertising securities services or products, executing securities transactions, or performing banking services within the United States, without an appropriate license. Moreover, U.S. tax laws may require a foreign financial institution to report to the IRS on 1099 Forms sales of non-U.S. securities effected in the United States, such as by executing a transaction by a broker physically in the United States or ordering the completion of a transaction through telephone calls or emails originating from the United States.

It was to avoid violating U.S. law, exceeding its licensed activities, or triggering 1099 reporting requirements, that caused UBS to issue policy statements restricting the activities that its non-U.S. bankers could undertake while in the United States. Its 2002 and 2004 policy statements, for example, prohibited UBS Swiss bankers, while in the United States, from advertising securities products to their clients, informing clients of how their security portfolios were performing, providing copies of account statements, or using U.S. mails, faxes, telephone calls or email to discuss a client’s securities portfolio.443 UBS also prohibited its Swiss bankers from prospecting for new clients while in the United States, soliciting new accounts, or obtaining signatures on account opening documentation.

Despite these prohibitions, it appears that UBS Swiss bankers in the United States servicing U.S. clients routinely undertook actions that contravened the UBS restrictions.Mr. Birkenfeld described, for example, an art festival sponsored by UBS in Miami each year, which he attended with other Swiss bankers for the express purpose of soliciting new accounts. “We went to these events. We went to dinners, we went to art exhibitions, we went to private homes as private bankers, knowingly by management that they were paying for our hotel, paying for our airfare, paying us our salary, and getting us tickets to the UBS VIP tent to drink champagne with clients.”444 He testified that he witnessed Swiss bankers soliciting new accounts and completing account opening documentation while in the United States. He testified that in some cases, “instead of saying, ‘I signed it in New York,’ they brought the forms back to Geneva and they put in ‘Geneva.’”445 When asked whether he had promoted securities products during his trips to the United States, he responded, “We were promoting anything.”446
Mr. Birkenfeld also told the Subcommittee that UBS Swiss bankers routinely communicated with their U.S. clients about the status of their accounts, including their securities portfolios. He said that some Swiss private bankers communicated with their U.S. clients by telephone or fax, or by sending occasional documents to them in the United States by overnight mail.447 He said the bankers sometimes used code names during the telephone calls, so that the U.S. client would not have to identify themselves by name, in case anyone was listening.448 He said that U.S. clients generally did not like sending or receiving emails via computer, “because they didn’t want that link, for obvious reasons.”449 Nevertheless, some clients did use email, as shown in the case involving Mr. Birkenfeld and Mr. Olenicoff, examined further below. Mr. Birkenfeld also described how Swiss bankers brought into the United States information about clients’ accounts and securities portfolios. He told the Subcommittee that his day-to-day interactions with clients were in direct contradiction to the restrictions set out in UBS’ policy statements. He indicated those policies simply were not enforced while he was at the bank.450

from page 108/114:


Contrary to this representation by UBS, however, a Subcommittee review of the relevant travel data for the Swiss bankers determined that, from January to April 2008, UBS client advisors made twelve trips to the United States, travelling from Switzerland to New York, Miami, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. The Customs I-94 Forms indicate that, on half of these trips, the Swiss bankers indicated they were travelling for business purposes, while on the other half, the Swiss bankers indicated they were travelling to the United States for non-business purposes. With respect to Mr. Liechti, head of the UBS Wealth Management Americas division, the I-94 Form shows that he arrived in the United States on April 20, 2008, on business. There is no record of his departure to date.

The clear contrast between the UBS policy restrictions dating back to at least 2002, and the activities undertaken by UBS Swiss bankers while traveling in the United States, as described by Mr. Birkenfeld in his deposition, in connection with his recent indictment, and in internal UBS documents, suggests that until recently, the UBS restrictions were not being enforced. This lack of enforcement, in turn, raises concerns that UBS Swiss bankers with U.S. clients may have been routinely violating not only the bank’s internal policies, but also U.S. law. UBS is currently under investigation by the SEC, IRS, and Department of Justice regarding the activities of its Swiss bankers in the United States.

And in the end...

D. Analysis

Unlike LGT, UBS did not generally refrain from conducting banking operations within theUnited States. UBS Swiss bankers targeted U.S. clients, traveled across the country in search of wealthy individuals, and aggressively marketed their services to U.S. taxpayers who might otherwise never have opened Swiss accounts. UBS practices resulted in its U.S. clients maintaining undeclared Swiss accounts that collectively held billions of dollars in assets that were not disclosed to the IRS. UBS serviced these accounts, in part, by offering banking and securities products and services within the United States that UBS Swiss bankers were not licensed to provide. Swiss bank secrecy laws hid not only the misconduct of U.S. taxpayers hiding assets at UBS in Switzerland, but also the actions taken by UBS bankers to assist those U.S. clients.UBS has now stopped all travel by its Swiss bankers to the United States, issued morerestrictive policies, and is conducting an internal review to gauge the nature and extent of the problem. UBS also cooperated with this Subcommittee in its efforts to gain a full understanding of the facts and issues.from the:
U.S. SENATE PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS,
STAFF REPORT ON TAX HAVEN BANKS AND U.S. TAX COMPLIANCE,
July 17, 2008 at: http://abcnews.go.com/images/Blotter/REPORT-Tax%20Haven%20Banks%20(July%2017%2008).pdf



Dave
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