Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am here today to highlight law enforcement legislation that would help crack down on human trafficking, terrorism financing, money laundering, Medicare fraud, the narcotics trade, tax evasion, public corruption, and a litany of other crimes in the United States and around the world. These crimes all involve money, and the United States has become a favorite destination for criminals looking to hide it. Earlier this month, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published the first of the so-called Panama papers, a leak of 11.5 million confidential documents from a Panama-based law firm that sets up shell corporations and tax shelters for wealthy clients. The documents we have seen so far show that, along with the Caribbean islands you might expect, several American States are popular places to form shell corporations. Our friend Senator Kent Conrad, who used to be chairman of the Budget Committee, was fond of using this floor chart showing what is called the Ugland House building in the Cayman Islands. This little building claims to be the place from which an astonishing 18,000 companies do business. As unimaginable as it may be to have 18,000 companies claiming to be doing business out of that one little building, I am sorry to say that there is a building just a 2-hour drive from the U.S. Capitol Building that serves as the official address for a quarter of a million companies, many of them shell corporations.…”