[HN Gopher] Dubai real estate data leak - Exposes criminals, off...
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Dubai real estate data leak - Exposes criminals, officials, and
politicians
Author : punnerud
Score : 180 points
Date : 2022-05-03 16:46 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (e24.no)
(TXT) w3m dump (e24.no)
| CommanderData wrote:
| I'm not surprised with the UAE. I'm more surprised this happens
| to a larger scale in London, illegal but sanctioned by our
| Conservative government.
|
| Politicians even providing the service to rich multi nationals.
| irrational wrote:
| My prediction is this will have just as much impact as the Panama
| Papers. Basically none.
| room505 wrote:
| From what I recall after listening to a podcast (I don't
| remember which one) on foreign policy, it's said that Putin was
| extremely angry that it was leaked because it exposed his
| wealth. It's also said that the Panama Papers helped create
| sanctions against him.
| Melatonic wrote:
| What did it expose specifically about him?
| paxys wrote:
| Panama Papers had a huge impact in most of the world outside
| the USA, including many toppled governments.
| Aliabid94 wrote:
| The prime minister of Pakistan was forced to step down bc of
| the Panama Papers. If there's will in the courts, the leaks
| will have consequences.
| PpEY4fu85hkQpn wrote:
| Basically none?
|
| https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/what-happe...
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Of course not. Whoever could cause an "impact" either:
|
| 1) Benefits from this;
|
| 2) Is very close to someone who benefits from this;
|
| 3) Has a glass-made roof and doesn't feel precisely confident
| in throwing rocks at other people's roofs.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > Basically none
|
| ?? secretive, highly competitive and rivalrous insider rings
| and you saying flatly "no impact" makes it so?
|
| the only thing that did NOT happen was "no impact".. its not
| public information.. how could cascading side effects be seen
| or measured?
|
| absolutely need more sleuthing IMO and data dumps -- not by tax
| bureacrats -- here and elsewhere
| [deleted]
| jeffh wrote:
| "tax bureaucrats" are what took down Al Capone. These days Al
| would have much better lawyers and layers of shell
| corporations in various tax havens. He would be untouchable
| merely because the effort to sleuth out the truth has become
| much harder. Laws and regulations subdue any advantages
| transparency tech could bring.
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| Are we doomed then? Modern day All Capone's are now richer
| than ever, above the laws, buying whole social networks, or
| becoming potus. Is there anything that can be done?
| vmception wrote:
| > These individuals' presence in Dubai's real estate market
| registries highlights the danger that the emirate's loose
| residency requirements and <<few questions asked>> approach to
| regulation enables questionable figures to use it as a home away
| from home, a place to launder their illicit gains through real
| estate, or simply to store their wealth.
|
| I don't consider that controversial.
|
| > or simply to store their wealth.
|
| Especially this. "oOoOOoOooo soo scaary"
|
| I think the choice of words here will be seen as laughable and
| antiquated in the future. UAE/Dubai is on the front of this trend
| and it will pay off very well for them as they accelerate their
| diversification away from a fossil fuel economy.
|
| Other countries will simply have to find another way to get the
| behaviors they desire. Fingers crossed about the nukes staying
| siloed. But territories will shift, and that's not UAE or Dubai's
| problem, and when it becomes their problem, it won't be somewhere
| else's problem.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I think the choice of words here will be seen as laughable
| and antiquated in the future.
|
| Or we will see countries like Dubai, Malta, Cyprus and other
| tax havens as collaborators and sanction them into oblivion.
|
| Places that allow the rich to prevent themselves from being
| taxed by their home countries do not deserve existence. The
| amount of money laundered and stored away in tax havens is the
| money that used to fund social services, healthcare or living
| wages before the world allowed free and unimpeded movement of
| money. We need to get this money back under our control - if
| only to prevent social unrest from the 2/3rd of the US which
| have less than 1000$ in liquid savings.
| celtain wrote:
| I don't understand why we need to specifically sanction tax
| havens. Unless rich people are making money in the tax havens
| themselves (in which case they're not just tax havens), we
| can just levy all the taxes we want before the money leaves
| our own borders.
| munk-a wrote:
| Yup - in particular VAT tax evasion (i.e. a company putting
| a $2000 sticker on laptops when they pass through Bermuda)
| is something that the US could easily solve with a minimal
| cumulative VAT tax - it just chooses not to.
|
| The same corruption that leaves tax loopholes all over the
| place will prevent sanctions against tax havens - them
| existing is a desirable state by the corrupt that can
| purchase influence to perpetuate their existence.
| rosndo wrote:
| > Places that allow the rich to prevent themselves from being
| taxed by their home countries do not deserve existence.
|
| Sounds like you are describing almost every single country on
| earth!
|
| I think what you really object to is countries offering
| attractive tax regimes.
| vmception wrote:
| Here is what I read:
|
| "Its absurd we are not being hosed equally"
|
| instead of
|
| "Why are we being hosed at all"
|
| Countries finance themselves from the international debt
| markets, and pay the interest with their taxes and with
| future debt issuances. They pay prior investors with future
| investor money, and convince future investors by periodically
| paying the interest and they idea that the country _could_
| pay more interest any time it wants (by raising taxes, or
| straight expropriation of property). All this means that the
| things that were going to get funded and built and supported
| were already chosen to do so and greater tax collection would
| have no bearing on that. (Some smaller taxes directly fund
| certain institutions, but its not like a road or school or
| social service in a poor area would ever _actually_ get
| prioritized.)
| verall wrote:
| > "Why are we being hosed at all"
|
| I really think I don't fully understand you here. If "It's
| absurd we are not being hosed equally" comes from "It's
| absurd some people are rich enough to ", then, "Why are we
| being hosed at all" means, "Why do we pay taxes at all?"
| Are you implying the government could just keep minting
| debt without any tax base?
| vmception wrote:
| > Are you implying the government could just keep minting
| debt without any tax base?
|
| No. You're getting closer to asking the right questions.
| The universe of possibilities is just much broader than
| the public discourse has been led to.
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| > Places that allow the rich to prevent themselves from being
| taxed by their home countries do not deserve existence.
|
| You are falsely assuming that every country's tax policy is
| reasonable or fair. Look at the United States policy on
| foreign assets which effectively amounts to double taxation
| for no other reason than "we don't like rich people" / "we
| don't like our citizens not living here".
|
| > We need to get this money back under our control - if only
| to prevent social unrest from the 2/3rd of the US which have
| less than 1000$ in liquid savings.
|
| It's not your money to begin with, it belongs to the people
| who rightfully earned it, not the government, nor the poor.
| Peoples' assets don't exist to serve as piggy banks for
| social programs and redistribution.
| seydor wrote:
| > that allow the rich to prevent themselves from being taxed
| by their home countries
|
| That is a big list of entire countries if you include legal
| persons in the definition
| work_ta_220503 wrote:
| I used to be a libertarian, but reading about international
| organized crime made me realize we do need the state because
| these people won't be stoped by NAP principle-touting
| ideologues. financial havens definitely and provably assist in
| building organizations that can subvert governments, and not in
| favor of your freedoms I assure you.
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| You can still be a libertarian, you just have to give up on
| property rights.
| cardosof wrote:
| I don't know if I laugh or cry at the naivety of libertarians
| talking about common people funding defense contractors to
| protect them from organized crime and foreign state-owned
| armies.
| [deleted]
| vmception wrote:
| Whitelisting transactions is a fools errand and not a policy
| solution.
|
| If that leaves everyone with a void and absence of _any_
| policy solution, that 's where we are.
| hkt wrote:
| It is a great pity that so many of those havens are shielded
| by western countries too. The UK has the crown dependencies
| (Jersey, Guernsey, various Caribbean holdings), the US has
| various vassal states (as I understand it), France is the
| same, then there are the microstates like Monaco. None of it
| could exist without the tacit consent of large countries that
| have legal or diplomatic sway over these jurisdictions.
| bogota wrote:
| I don't understand what they expect Dubai to be doing around
| transactions. Their is only so much you can check when someone
| is buying a property and the money is being sent from abroad.
|
| I bought property recently in another (less expensive) place
| and they ask about where you work and so on but say I just have
| money saved up they really have nothing to check. Say im
| retired can i not buy something now? No that would be pretty
| stupid. Journalists these days are beyond stupid.
| vmception wrote:
| That highlights another point really well, the low-level
| financial worker's perception of "source of fund laws"
| (AML/KYC) is laughable, the reasoning they tell the
| investor/customer is laughably incorrect, just an ambiguous
| quip about "security purposes" or "making sure you aren't a
| drug dealer/terrorist/laundering money"
|
| when thats all incorrect. from the investor/customer and low-
| level banker's perspective, it is impossible to distinguish
| between the actual law, _their private company 's
| interpretation of that law_, strictly separate company
| policy, their _implementation_ of that combination of things,
| the flaws or merits of that implementation, the flaws and
| merits of the law.
|
| In this case, the person asking you actually doesn't care at
| all. Your role is to simple not say the bad word. A word you
| don't know. So you can always say pretty much anything, as
| long as its not "I'm on the OFAC list and I'm circumventing
| sanctions moving money from my heroin business".
|
| A US citizen, for example, would never have any restriction
| banking in the US due to prior conduct (unless you pissed off
| that sector due to a history of overdrafts, bounced checks,
| see chexsystems). Al Capone would always be able to open a
| bank account or brokerage account or buy property. The
| Patriot Act would have never flagged the Saudi terrorist wire
| transfers despite being passed under the guise of flagging
| that kind of thing. AML/KYC is just a data mining operation
| masqueraded as preventing ... _something_. Something thats
| not terribly expensive, especially when compared to the
| amount of money that isn 't flagged. Turns out people just
| don't want to blow up planes and buildings. The only people
| convicted of violating capital controls are the poorest of
| the proletariat that has some ambiguous and wrong
| understanding about "moving $10,000", and gets thrown in
| prison for attempting to circumvent it simply because the law
| against circumventing the threshold is on the books, whether
| the threshold would have applied to how the money was moved
| or not!
|
| The entire thing is a ridiculous waste of taxpayer and public
| sector resources, and private sector compliance costs are
| probably overhanging a full digit % of the GDP growth.
|
| Its successfully stigmatized the concept of having money,
| from the very population that needs and strives to have it
| the most! While everyone that can afford education or legal
| help or a dynasty of passed on knowledge is operating with
| complete freedom.
| [deleted]
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > The entire thing is a ridiculous waste of taxpayer and
| public sector resources, and private sector compliance
| costs are probably overhanging a full digit % of the GDP
| growth.
|
| It's estimated that, worldwide, KYC/AML bring in only an
| insignifant 1/150th of the enormous compliance cost it puts
| on the private sector. More than two freaking orders of
| magnitude.
|
| It's, indeed, a complete total and utter waste.
|
| Not to mention that some things that used be "sacred" do
| not exist anymore: for example in Belgium (and in other
| countries I'm sure), lawyers now are forced, in many cases,
| to denounce potential clients that come to asks for their
| help.
|
| This is beyond insanity. I do believe that even bad guys
| should have a right to see a lawyer without fearing that
| the lawyer is actually a little snitch.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| They're not stupid.
|
| (Speculation alert)
|
| It seems to me they serve a higher level purpose of squeezing
| the middle class and the "small rich" (sorry, lack a better
| expression) out of their wealth.
|
| All this BS anti-ML, KYC, etc do is make this audience's
| lives harder and more expensive to invest and diversify their
| risks.
|
| Meanwhile, the "big rich" (again, sorry) can navigate these
| ridiculous bureaucracies easily, as the fixed costs are
| comparatively small to them.
|
| Criminals also can navigate this easy as a piece of cake.
|
| Or do they imagine that a person who committed dark crimes
| will stop and think: "Oh nooo, I have to send my real
| passport photo? Damn, busted!"
| vkou wrote:
| As a middle-class/small-rich person, how does anti-ML, KYC
| legislature make my life harder and poorer in any
| meaningful way?
|
| I take my paycheck, and I invest it into the SP500. My
| investment costs are minimal, and my investment gains are
| correlated with the overall health of capitalism.
|
| In what way does KYC or AML affect me? I'm not looking for
| theoretical tangents, I'm looking for tangible negative
| impact.
|
| I understand that there are criminals cheating the system,
| by doing something illegal, and then working around those
| restrictions. But how do these restrictions place an
| onerous burden on _me_? Showing ID to open a bank account
| is not an onerous burden that keeps me poor.
| vmception wrote:
| It just wastes your time when you signed up at your bank,
| at your brokerage firm. You may have forgot that at one
| point you did a tedious process. But maybe all your
| banking was created recently and you have a nice
| streamlined online signup process that worked perfectly
| for you, more on that later.
|
| It will waste your time when you want to do anything like
| borrow especially for a mortgage, or anything slightly
| more complex when you get some bright idea like trying to
| transfer the stock shares directly instead of selling
| them first. It will waste your time when want to invest
| in other things like a private equity fund or directly
| into someone else's company. It will waste your time if
| you try to create more advanced retirement accounts and
| then invest with those.
|
| It will definitely waste your time when the fintech
| middleware company that made signing up to a bank easier
| with some super streamlined online identity verification
| software doesn't recognize you. "I swear I really didn't
| live on any of those street addresses, wtf this was
| supposed to take 5 seconds".
| vkou wrote:
| So, it's wasted double-digit minutes of my life, _at
| most_. It added _one_ single step to the many tedious
| steps of onboarding.
|
| > It will waste your time when you want to do anything
| like borrow especially for a mortgage,
|
| The Augean amount of random bullshit you have to shovel
| when buying a home absolutely dwarfs the KYC compliance
| component of it. It's not a meaningful impediment to
| owning property.
|
| > trying to transfer the stock shares directly instead of
| selling them first.
|
| Transfer from where to where? One brokerage to another?
| What gain is there for me in doing that? Could you
| quantify roughly how much money I'm leaving on the table
| from not doing this? Where would this money come from?
|
| > It will waste your time when want to invest in other
| things like a private equity fund or directly into
| someone else's company.
|
| If I wanted to do that (Can't say that I do), and even if
| AML/KYC weren't a concern, accredited investor
| requirements (which I meet, FYI) would require me to jump
| through the exact same hoops to do that.
|
| You're not making a convincing case for how AML/KYC is
| materially harming me. It's just one of a million
| procedural checkboxes that my counterparties ask me to
| meet, in order to lend me money, or take my money.
|
| _I 've wasted an order of magnitude more of my life on
| hold with Comcast, than I have on this._ If there's a
| vast conspiracy to keep me poor, AML/KYC is doing a piss-
| poor job of it.
| vmception wrote:
| > You're not making a convincing case for how AML/KYC is
| materially harming me.
|
| I'm not the person you originally replied to. Their
| speculation is conflating a couple things.
| [deleted]
| quadcore wrote:
| In France, you have to fill a full A4 form if you want to
| move more than 3000EUR. At least I do, but some others
| surely dont.
| pavlov wrote:
| baybal2 wrote:
| asadlionpk wrote:
| I am hoping something like this leaks for UK. It's No. 1
| destination for corrupt politicians to park their ill-earned
| money (atleast for Pakistani politicians).
| hnhg wrote:
| And according to people who have first hand experience of it,
| Chinese and Russian corruption.
| haidrali wrote:
| The corruption Lord Nawaz Sharif is there in London, UK
| kjhdfskjdsh wrote:
| This is a little off topic so I apologize, but might shine some
| perspective:
|
| I lived in Dubai and Sharjah (neighboring emirate) for almost 15
| years during my childhood. This was in a time when UAE was not as
| glamorous as it is today. I am of Asian decent and basically had
| zero rights. I still remember the time when we were at the beach,
| a family friend was arrested for staring at the local emirati
| ladies (who were fully clothed in a burkha). During the time that
| I left (around 2000) Dubai had started to change, and was in a
| construction boom and had just launched the Dubai Shopping
| Festival (DSF). It was a month when all the retailers and shops
| would participate in a city wide discount program and slash
| 10-50% on prices. The whole city would also be covered in lights
| and fireworks every day. This is when Dubai started attracting a
| lot of investment. I admire the way the Sheikh of Dubai
| envisioned this, and basically built a metropolitan and business
| friendly city to overcome the reliance on oil earnings. But,
| under the surface the old regime still exists where minorities
| are mistreated and a blind eye is turned towards where the money
| is coming from. I see what's happening in Dubai as a natural
| progression when there is a lack of morality and humanity in
| society. You have to understand the roots of how these Sheikhs
| who were no better than local tribe leaders wandering the deserts
| who came upon riches (oil!) and quickly catapulted as head of
| states. It's going to be hard for them to regulate this behavior
| and knowingly or unknowingly participate in this.
| mzs wrote:
| >Rich Russians consider London-Dubai property swap to avoid
| financial scrutiny
|
| >Prospective UAE buyers also being offered deep discounts on UK
| luxury homes
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/72549746-f46f-4b91-a588-576dd928e...
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| I pitty everyone who is trying to hide their wealth by buying
| real estate in Dubai.
|
| The biggest penalty we could impose on them is make them live
| there.
| Annatar wrote:
| This is the first intelligent comment I've read here.
| [deleted]
| baybal2 wrote:
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Honest question. What do you not like about Dubai? Have you
| ever been there?
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| Been there for work a couple of days.
|
| I haven't ever been in a place that felt so fake and
| liveless. The only thing you can do is go to the mall.
|
| It's dystopian in every aspect.
| rosndo wrote:
| > I haven't ever been in a place that felt so fake and
| liveless. The only thing you can do is go to the mall.
|
| That's not true at all. Mall is probably the last place
| anyone should go to in Dubai.
|
| Instead of going to the Mall, you could drive a little and
| go view the wonderful collection at Louvre Abu Dhabi.
|
| You could also go eat excellent sushi at the little (and
| cheap) 3 Fils at the local Fishing harbor in Jumeirah.
| There's also a decent seafood restaurant next door run by
| local fishermen.
|
| On Palm there's the excellent Ibn AlBahr run by a group of
| Lebanese(?) fishermen.
|
| Deira too is full of nice authentic places.
|
| But sure, if you're a mall enthusiast then a shitty mall is
| all you will find. If you seek out nice authentic places,
| they're easy to find.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Dubai sounds decidedly better than the towns that
| surround it, sure, but it's pretty clear based on this
| description (and every other) that it is not even close
| to a world class city.
| doldols wrote:
| I mean I'm deliberately neglecting to mention all the
| European restaurants like L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon,
| LPM, Gaia, COYA, Zuma, Cipriani and so many others.
|
| Most of these aren't my favourites, but they're
| definitely well loved in world class cities like London.
|
| Do I think Dubai is a world class city? Nah. But it's not
| very far.
|
| Personally I'm really not a fan of the place, I'd only
| ever visit to meet with lawyers. Too warm, too much sand,
| most of the restaurants can also be found in much better
| cities (Monaco has most of the aforementioned within a
| short distance, and vastly better beaches)
| ethanbond wrote:
| I think what makes a world class city is not that it
| _has_ those sorts of restaurants /shops/etc, but that it
| _incubates_ those things. Quite a long way from that.
| baby wrote:
| It's hot, so people aren't really out. There's no sidewalks,
| so you just take a cab to go everywhere or go from buildings
| to buildings using bridges. It's all about living a luxurious
| life. If you've been to Vegas, it's like living in these
| hotels 24/7, or at least that's how I imagined living there
| after my trip there.
|
| Oh and of course the culture and the politics there... you
| really have to look the other way.
| rosndo wrote:
| It's nice for a week or two, but gets boring pretty fast. You
| can only eat at L'Atelier so many times.
|
| But it's surely better than almost every other city in the
| world.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _But it's surely better than almost every other city in
| the world_
|
| On which basis?
| umeshunni wrote:
| Good infrastructure, clean streets, adequate public
| transit, no crime. Well connected globally.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > Good infrastructure
|
| They don't even have a working sewage system.
| umeshunni wrote:
| Hmmm. this article from 2011 says they do: https://web.ar
| chive.org/web/20130504074926/http://gulftoday....
| barry-cotter wrote:
| This company is still advertising its tanker services in
| 2020.
|
| https://dotless.ae/how-does-dubai-manage-its-sewage-
| water/
|
| From 2016 so Dubai may have had a working sewage system
| for a year, so I could be wrong.
|
| > Dubai: The emirate of Dubai will get a new deep tunnel
| sewerage system costing Dh12.5 billion in the next five
| years to replace more than 121 sewage pumping stations.
|
| Pumping station meaning tankers transport the waste away.
|
| https://gulfnews.com/uae/government/dubai-to-get-a-new-
| sewag...
| doldols wrote:
| From the end user perspective that still seems like a
| working sewage system, no?
|
| It's not like they're making residents pay high taxes to
| pay for the tankers either.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| We disagree on what a working sewage system means. Tanker
| trucks aren't it. Dubai may have had a working sewage
| system for a year now. Not great but better than I
| thought was the case.
| doldols wrote:
| Your definition involves strange mental gymnastics to
| turn a perfectly functional albeit expensive sewage
| system into a non-working sewage system.
|
| The end user experience of the sewage system in Dubai is
| no different than in regular Western cities. That's
| really all that matters when trying to figure out if it's
| "working" or not.
| rosndo wrote:
| Restaurants, flight connections, quality of services,
| friendly tax regime. Restaurants obviously being the most
| important metric.
|
| Sure, it'll lose out to London, Paris, Barcelona, New
| York, Los Angeles, ...
|
| But it won't lose out to cities like Manchester or
| Liverpool.
| tclancy wrote:
| >Restaurants obviously being the most important metric
|
| This reminds me a bit of Eddie Izzard's impression of the
| Queen: "A plumber? What on Eaaarrrthh is that?" Not
| everyone can eat at a restaurant nightly. Not everyone
| can eat. And some of the reason for that is designed into
| the current system.
| doldols wrote:
| Sure, but HN audience is primarily rich tech workers,
| entrepreneurs and temporarily embarrassed versions of
| those.
|
| In this context it makes sense to look at things from
| that perspective. On reddit it would of course be
| different.
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| I'd hope rich tech workers and entrepreneurs aren't all
| ok with the amount of slavery and oppression going on in
| Dubai.
| doldols wrote:
| There is no slavery in Dubai, oppression yes, but not
| actual slavery.
|
| You'll find more slaves per capita in the US where
| prisoners are widely used as actual slave labor.
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| To add to the other replies, this video highlights the bad
| aspects of the city:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tJuqe6sre2I
| seydor wrote:
| Heat
| mns wrote:
| I went here 4 years ago. Hypocritical society, everything
| seemed fake and useless, made just to impress. Someone was
| writing below about infrastructure and all that. It's what I
| would imagine the US, everything being made for cars, a huge
| n-lane highway through the city, impossible to walk anywhere,
| except maybe the fake marina and the fake neighborhoods. The
| only genuine place there was the old town, but I might
| suspect that was also fake.
|
| Public transport is for naive Europeans and the slaves, oh,
| sorry, the Asian people exploited to serve and run their
| society. The whole city is full of people impressed by the so
| called wealth and futurism, tasteless shops, malls and
| skyscrapers.
|
| When I left I said to myself I will never come back to such a
| hypocritical and shallow place made for wannabe Instagram
| millionaires and low level mobsters.
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| Corrupt amoral regime, filled with corrupt amoral people.
| Bliss for many here, hell for people who value humanity
| hkt wrote:
| At this point, is anybody surprised that high end real estate is
| a crook's game? Whether it is London, Dubai, or anywhere else,
| the chronically dishonest gravitate towards effortless capital
| gains driven by financialisation and rent seeking. It is a pity
| so much cash is tied up in this stuff instead of being put to use
| in the real economy, or simply redistributed to those who need
| it.
|
| What a rotten world.
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| Too much people and too powerful people are benefiting from
| such a rotten world. Even if you somehow removed them, new
| people would replace them and apply the same rotten systems.
| The average human is not a good person. I like to think I 'd
| never oppress anyone, but I happen to behave like true a*hole
| from time to time.
|
| That said I dream of a better world but looking at current
| trends, it's quite depressing. Looks like we're going backwards
| faster than ever... And I feel powerless.
| DamnYuppie wrote:
| I am not really sure how this is news to anyone. The UAE is not
| aligned with the West and generally doesn't follow their
| sanctions. From that perspective why wouldn't they take the
| money?
| miohtama wrote:
| The UAE is a military ally of the US, and now Israel, which is
| why they have get out of a jail for free card.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Not sure what sanctions have to do with it. Maybe for the last
| month it's been challenging for Russians, but more world
| oligarchs launder money through US real estate than through UAE
| real estate.
| slater wrote:
| Consequences.
| vmception wrote:
| Positive consequences.
|
| The entire concept of using public resources and burdonsome
| private sector regulations to whitelist transactions has
| always been shaky logic. The theatre has simply bought time
| on - or against - considering attempting other forms of
| compliance (war). But its always been bullshit and its always
| been an option to not play along with that, and do your own
| thing. UAE is doing their own thing.
|
| Its business as usual, lots of financial conferences, crypto
| parties, meeting and trade spot for people of all
| nationalities. Thats kind of one of my favorite things about
| travel, going somewhere where its not taboo to run into
| someone from a third country.
|
| I know a lot of people that have hung out in dubai over the
| last 2 months promoting whatever product or service, as if
| nothing else was going on in the world. Russian, America, EU
| citizen, Swiss, Ukrainian, Ukranian-American, Russian-
| America, people from other countries less involved in this
| conflict. Just business as usual. The weather is also pretty
| nice.
|
| Sometimes its useful to just shift your mental nexus. There
| is a version of the world where Dubai is (or remains) its own
| bubble while the rest of the world is shambling along with
| their unrelated conflicts. Like a future bubble city like in
| an Aldous Huxley novel or the Jetsons.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| > The weather is also pretty nice.
|
| As someone who lived there for quite a while: absolutely
| not.
| rosndo wrote:
| It's not a place where you live all year round.
| recuter wrote:
| > Sometimes its useful to just shift your mental nexus.
| There is a version of the world where Dubai is (or remains)
| its own bubble while the rest of the world is shambling
| along with their unrelated conflicts. Like a future bubble
| city like in an Aldous Huxley novel or the Jetsons.
|
| Until the oil runs out or you get khashoggid.
| csydas wrote:
| I don't think it's being portrayed as news first, as it's just
| the first hard proof that a lot of these actors have
| investments and how they maintain their wealth and life styles
| despite the heavy scrutiny and weight of sanctions.
|
| Second, I think it actually __is news__ for a lot of people
| just how such person's store their wealth. The schemes
| available once you have a huge amount of money are nothing that
| most people can even consider as an option for a store of
| wealth, so it probably is a surprise for a lot of people that
| yes, once you have 6 figures to throw around, you can throw
| that money around pretty freely, and worse, regardless of what
| laws are created just to restrict you.
|
| For me I hope the take away is that sanctions aren't as much of
| a pressure they are made out to be and tend to harm the general
| populous of countries more than it does the actual actors
| targeted by the sanctions. Financially it does hit the actors
| of course, but you still have people with millions or more
| hidden away in places the sanctions cannot touch. It's a
| momentary hiccup at best in many cases and the actors continue
| to love lavish life styles with a nest egg to pull from that
| lasts decades without much of a change in life style.
|
| All while common people suffer with money and food shortages
| and wondering how they're going to make a living in the years
| to come.
|
| The argument might be to "rise up then!" But this is really not
| feasible as those in power take exceptional steps to make sure
| this cannot happen without an excessive bloodbath, and even
| with that it's not clear it will actually even help.
|
| As I see it, as long as such places like Dubai exist and Seve
| clients of all types, including those who aren't the target of
| sanctions, the situation cannot improve by sanctions alone. If
| hitting these actors where it counts also means that Senator
| Bob Everyperson gets too much attention to their financial
| investments, then these financial store methods are going to
| continue to aid such actors and will not be touched.
|
| I don't have an answer for how ti fix this since the world
| shouldn't bow to any single entity's rule; but hitting millions
| of innnocents who have no means to fight back or effectively
| change the systems they had the misfortune to be born into
| seems counterproductive and only strengthens the grip and
| popularity of these actors. Cutting off the people's access to
| free information only makes it worse, and limiting their
| ability to get fresh information makes it almost impossible to
| change public opinion of these actors. The end result is bad
| actors that don't suffer at all, look even better and more
| popular with their constituents, and millions suffer to get
| basic necessities or to secure a path to a better life.
|
| So yes, articles like this are important I think, as it shows
| that it's not so black and white as just apply sanction and
| make bad person suffer; they don't at all. A better method
| needs to be found.
| aussiegreenie wrote:
| It is still easier to launder money through london.
| arberx wrote:
| Serious question: what's the point of all these KYC/AML measures
| if they actually dont stop this stuff?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| To provide a paper trail that the state can use to nail your
| local off the books tire shop/daycare/alternative pharmacy/etc
| when they feel like it.
|
| Nets are for small fish.
| adra wrote:
| You can maintain the stability of your own markets and economy
| while allowing rogue/grey markets to exist outside your sphere.
| If you do nothing at all, it's your home's that get horded by
| dirty people. It also encourages your own people to be bent. If
| we can cheat and live on with no consequences, then only fools
| and true believers will follow the rules.
|
| UAE, like a lot of places a willing blind eye to corruption and
| bad people because they're insulated from the traumas that were
| born from that dirty money.
|
| From a personal morality standpoint, I'm all about closing off
| the doors to profit from corruption and misery as much as
| possible. What's your moral stand on the matter?
| seydor wrote:
| Relatively small potatoes
| baby wrote:
| BTW I know people who have moved there to evade taxes. It looks
| like people in the mall will try to get you to buy a house in
| cryptocurrencies, advertising that they're not asking any
| questions. If I was a BTC millionaire it doesn't sound like a bad
| deal, no taxes, no questions, and you get a house. Well, you
| still have to live in Dubai.
| paxys wrote:
| > Well, you still have to live in Dubai
|
| Not really, you just hold a property there and vacation a
| couple times a year.
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