Paul O'Neill on Foreign Policy
Supports maintaining offshore tax havens for Enron & others
What is the Enron saga about? Enron’s bankruptcy, the largest in history, exposes the decay of corporate accountability in the new Gilded Age. No-account accountants, see-no-evil stock analysts, subservient “independent” board members, gelded regulators,
purchased politicians--every supposed check on executive plunder and piracy has been shredded. Enron transformed itself from a gas pipeline company to an unregulated financial investment house willing and able to buy and sell anything-energy futures,
weather changes, bandwidth, state legislatures, regulators, senators, even Presidents.Enron set up a staggering 2,832 subsidiaries, with almost a third located in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens. On taking office, the Bush Administration
announced that it was abandoning Clinton efforts for a multilateral crackdown on these havens, saying, in Treasury Secretary O’Neill’s words, that the Administration will not “interfere with the internal tax policy decisions of sovereign nations.”
Source: The Nation, Editorial, “Enron Conservatives,” p. 4-5
Feb 4, 2002