Date of publication: 09 Apr 2022 • 7 hours ago • 5 minutes reading • 314 comments Photo by Paul Thomas / Bloomberg
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The imposition of sanctions on Russia is seen as an excuse for another massive attack on the remaining privacy breaches of people across the politically organized world. Officially, we are all called upon to consent to public disclosures of any possible relationship we may have with assets of any kind that may be associated with Russian oligarchs, but this is a pretext to thicken the giant cloud of complacency. has turned the banking routine into the financial equivalent of forced frequent colonoscopies. In fact, the Russians have little to do with the insatiable ambition of all governments to invade our personal lives in ways that governments have no right to do. No reputable authority can argue that what a bank needs to know about our financial transactions is required for governments to perform their key tasks of ensuring a well-functioning civil society.
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To this end, we can safely dismiss the fact that sanctions against Russia are a hoax, a pseudo-virtuous stance as a substitute for giving Ukrainians everything they need to oust the Russian army and air force from Ukraine. and sanctions on set Friends of the Russian regime is, in terms of due process, an outrage. We have no job to seize the property of foreigners unless some burden has been placed on proving that they have committed offenses that will be subject to such sanctions in the country of seizure and that these standards are equivalent to ours. China, India, South Africa, Brazil and many other countries, including Israel, are not cooperating with anti-Russian sanctions, and Western Europe has not stopped buying Russian gas, which is being sifted through sanctions. The Russians are already making profits from their own credit cards, which immediately replaced Western sanctions cards, and the ruble has fully recovered from its dramatic premature erosion against the dollar.
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The immediate problem is that NATO recognizes that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is illegal and potentially threatening to it, and something it must oppose, having begun to assume that the Russians will win within five days. But NATO wants to oppose Russia without offending Russia, so it does not allow Ukraine to defend its own airspace, as it could, in the words of Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, be “escalating.” The result was anti-Russian rhetoric, hollow gestures of economic warfare and valuable assistance to the Ukrainian army, but nothing that would allow Ukraine to prevent the Russians from continuing to reduce Ukraine’s civilian areas to rubble. In its reluctance to tackle the issue with integrity, the Western leadership claims to be resisting those who want to plunge into land battles with Russia, even though there are no such people, and US President Joe Biden cries out in defense of “every inch of square footage.” of NATO territory “, although, as none of them are threatened, he may well shake his fist in the Kremlin like King Lear and announce that he will defend every square inch of Paraguay and Sri Lanka.
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A by-product of all the unrest for Ukraine has been embraced by the international fraternity of governments and regulators to shake the incense around the endlessly repeated desire for unlimited “transparency”. Transparency alone has no value. It is not lawful for anyone else to do what individuals or companies do privately unless they violate valid laws or regulations. What we need is a fiscal equivalent of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s famous statement that, “There is no place for the state in the nation’s bedrooms.” Nor is there a place for it in the nation’s wallets or bank accounts, other than what is needed to verify the justified collection of taxes. Governments, much less anyone in the world with Internet access, have no right to know exactly what any Canadian owns. As everyone who occasionally has a $ 50,000 or more bank transaction knows, our banks are required to find out the exact purpose of such transactions in accordance with the Know Your Client rules. It has nothing to do with customer knowledge and is rather the recruitment of banking staff to auxiliary tax auditors and without fault, spies and spies for governments that pretend to fight international crime but are actually just invading our privacy for fun.
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Transparency in its current role began as a reasonable request from the shareholders of public companies to learn more about the activities of these companies and especially about issues in which senior executives had a financial interest. As is often the case, a legitimate public ambition quickly became the monster of the Frankenstein regulator, which now requires everyone and all companies to open their kimonos financially to the world. As usual, most of our drowsy means have fallen into this rage. It is one of those many government initiatives that has taken on a seemingly irresistible momentum, but which, if considered, is illegal, irrational and offensive. My bank’s private wealth manager answers my occasional questions with patience and extreme courtesy that this information is required because I am a legislator, a member of the British House of Lords. There is no reason for legislators to be subject to closer scrutiny than anyone else and in my case, I have not been very active peer for many years (although that may change soon). There is nothing even slightly controversial about any of my financial activities, but the crazy official curiosity about it is annoying.
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This attempt to stifle financial secrecy must be resisted and our legislators must understand that it offends the public they serve. Canada must go even further and take the lead in overthrowing this invasive official mania that plagues us. Many other countries will soon imitate us. We should not seize the property in Canada of any foreigner unless the jurisdiction he or she applies can prove a probable cause that under Canadian law the seizure will be upheld. Criminals should be prosecuted at the crime scene, not subject to confiscation of foreign assets without due process. We should not be bothered by money laundering unless money launderers are convicted of crimes that generated alleged proceeds of money laundering on a par with Canadian standards for defending the rights of defendants. We should not have extradition agreements with countries that do not meet these standards, including the United States, which, with a conviction rate of more than 95 percent in federal prosecutions, does not operate a justice system, but a metaphor for the corrupt penitentiary system. The Ontario Securities and Exchange Commission is one of the most abusive and unauthorized public bodies in this country and it and other securities committees should limit themselves to approving public financial offers and, where appropriate, making recommendations to Crown prosecutors when it is a case of fraud or oppression of legal shareholders there are reasonable suspicious interests. The Roman emperor Vespasian invented the paid toilet, and when criticized for this supposed humility, he rightly replied that “money has no smell” (in France, it is still called “vespasiennes”). If we accompanied these measures with increased incentives in our tax system, Canada would become the most popular place in the world for investment and savings. The resulting prosperity would take the fashion of obsessive transparency out of its misery and ours. National Post
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