FORGET PANAMA: This Building Houses Over 200,000 Businesses – Including Hillary Clinton’s

While the Panama Papers have turned the spotlight onto tax havens, they have not revealed much about the secret stash of the uber rich and their political playthings in the US. This of course doesn’t mean that there isn’t any dirt to be had on them, just that (for whatever reason) the leak happened to center around the elite of other nations.

To illustrate this point, have you heard of  “1209 North Orange Street” in Wilmington Delaware? Well, it’s an address that you should have heard of at some point; after all, more than 285,000 companies (President Obama once criticized a building in the Cayman islands that “only” played host to 12,000 US-based corporations) have registered it as their official address. This single story brick building is the “home” of big brand names that you probably buy from on a daily basis… perhaps you’ve heard of American Airlines, Apple, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway, Coca-Cola, Cargill, Ford, General Electric, Google, JPMorgan Chase, or Wal-Mart?

Why the US though? We had previously noted that the US is one of a few countries which has not signed up for the new global disclosure standards, marking it as one of the best places for rich people from all over the world to stash their cash – when the US pursues banks in Switzerland, and shuts down tax havens everywhere else, it only makes its own tax sanctuaries all the more attractive. When the mainstream media “forgets” about the Panama Papers, after using it as proof that it has become the new and improved alt media, despite never fully releasing the data dump, the rich will probably want a tax haven located in a country where whistle blowers get incarcerated for decades. Delaware is particularly attractive to these types, because it allows businesses to be created anonymously, allowing the rich and shady to hide their income from the authorities.

Interestingly, the Orange Street address is also the official address of a few of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s shell companies. Wasn’t this the same woman who said: “Some of you may have just heard about these disclosures about outrageous tax havens and loopholes and superrich people across the world are exploiting in Panama and elsewhere… We are going after all these scams and make sure everyone pays their fair share here in America”. Will she be going after herself?

Indeed, Hillary and Bill Clinton had set up two shell companies at the address in 2008 and 2013 – the names of which (but not the address) were only revealed in tax filings she had released last year.  They are WJC LLC, through which Bill funneled his consulting fees, and ZFS Holdings LLC, through which Hillary received 5.5 million dollars from her book publisher, reports the Washington Free Beacon.  The Clinton Foundation also set up three other shell companies in Delaware, one of them (Acceso Fund LLC ) at the ever popular Orange Street address.

The Orange Street address has come under scrutiny by anti-secrecy advocates.

“If you imagined a building with 1,000 corporations in it, you’d imagine a building like the Empire State building,” said Richard Phillips, a senior policy analyst with Citizens for Tax Justice to the Washington Free Beacon. “But apparently 285,000 companies claim [1209 North Orange Street] is their address.”

“What this shows is this is not really the address of companies that are doing real business. This is the address of a lot of companies that are just shell companies,” he added. “In this case, it doesn’t even look like they have mailboxes. They just claim that address as the places they’re doing business, even though they’re not doing business there.”

“General secrecy laws and the ability of these corporations to hide the identities of those who own it, that’s what makes [Delaware] an onshore tax haven, and that’s what makes it just as bad as the Cayman Islands,” said Phillips.

Sources: Washington Free Beacon, Washington Examiner, NY Times, Washington Post

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