by Ronan Coburn | Sep 1, 2017 | Banking Inquiry 2014
If Data is the new Gold, then GDPR [the Regulation] is the Great Equaliser, for European citizens at least. Many government bodies, businesses of various sizes and large corporates are already bemoaning the bureaucracy & potential sanctions accompanying the introduction of GDPR as mandatory in May 2018. Data is knowledge and knowledge is power. That is why data protection is central to our democracy here in Europe, and is a Fundamental Right of all European Citizens under the European Charter of Fundamental Human Rights (Treaty of Lisbon, Article-8 December 2009). GDPR silver lining strand-1 – is that it not only seeks to affirm this fundamental right but goes much further in specifying a set of Regulations (or fully fledged European regulations – laws) to deliver-on this Fundamental Right to Data Protection. The personal data of any particular customer is intrinsically worth very little to anyone else, but the ‘mining’ or ‘harvesting’ of such data gives it a very significant value to the likes of FANG, (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google). From 25th May 2018 any European citizen has the right to know what data is held on them, and in some cases to demand its deletion. Citizens of Europe can invoke the Right to be Forgotten, by requiring Search Engine Corporates to remove facts about them, not from the web itself, but from results of Searches. GDPR silver lining strand-2 Another strand of the GDPR silver lining, which is less obvious but much more critical is a right of appeal to a human being against decisions which have been taken by an Algorithm (or mathematical model). Computers and Servers are...
by Ronan Coburn | Jun 29, 2017 | Banking Inquiry 2014
Profiling GDPR, Ireland It is now widely accepted that Data is the new Oil (2006, Clive Humby, UK mathematician & inventor of the Tesco Clubcard). Today, there is a new “gang of four,” as Google chairman Eric Schmidt puts it [Profiling GDPR Eric Schmidt Gang of Four ] . They are Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook [GAAF], and they are behind the consumer revolution on the Internet today. All four companies are “growing at incredible rates”. Schmidt notes that all four are together worth in excess of half a trillion dollars, they are all platforms in their own right, and they are all basically spreading their power where before there was only one company who had such influence: namely, Microsoft User Profiling The core businesses of the GAAF have now fundamentally converged into Profiling. Article 4 of the GDPR defines Profiling as “any form of automated processing of personal data consisting of using those data to evaluate certain personal aspects relating to a natural person, in particular to analyse or predict aspects concerning that natural person’s performance at work, economic situation, health, personal preferences, interests, reliability, behaviour, location or movements”. Article 22 goes on to state that a European Citizen has the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, [including profiling] which produces legal effects or similarly significantly affects, with certain exemptions to this, Profiling GDPR – Recital-71 – April 2017 Through Profiling of all of its users, the GAAF Corporates know who your best friends are, your preferred holiday destinations and your relationship status. Over-and-above this there is a colossol quantity of...
by Ronan Coburn | Apr 7, 2016 | Banking Inquiry 2014
These disclosures might allow Asset Tracing Investigators to paraphrase John Keats’ ‘Beauty is Truth, Truth beauty, that is all ye know, and all ye need to know’. The records were obtained from an anonymous source by a German newspaper. That newspaper then shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Are these implicated Individuals stating ‘we have done no wrong-doing’, probably because this sounds better that saying ‘we haven’t committed any crime’? The occurrence of this Leak may be some type of auspice on the existence of a great Equaliser or Avenging Angel with a mandate for Natural Justice. It dwarfs previous earth-shattering disclosures of Swiss Banking and HSBC Files in 2015. One-step Removed from mainland UK Mossack Fonseca [MF] is a Panama-based law firm, with strong UK connections that runs a worldwide operation in incorporating limited companies in offshore jurisdictions such as the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, Switzerland, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. Its global network employs 600 staff and extends to 42 countries. The Papers consist of 11.5m files from the database of the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm, MF. Within these disclosed documents are references to 200,000 companies for which MF acted as registered agents. The British Virgin Islands held in excess of 100,000 such companies.The BVI., population numbers approximately 28000 residents. The contents of the 11.5 million documents, date from 1977 to December 2015, containing nearly 40-years of data. Unsurprisingly there is great alarm in the UK., on the scale of the influence these offshore activities are having, on general economic matters. The information contained within the sensitive files revealed...
by Ronan Coburn | Oct 10, 2015 | Banking Inquiry 2014
FIFA., stands for Fédération Internationale de Football Association (translated from French to International Federation of Association Football; Zurich, Switzerland). It also stands for Fraud, Investigations, Fibs and Abuses. Apparently, the series of investigations were initially spurred by the core Forensic Accounting activity of Asset Tracing, in pursuing substantially overdue tax returns. This echoes the US Federal Authorities’ prosecution & jailing of Al Capone for tax evasion in 1931. Interestingly the Judge, at the time, refused to let Al Capone plead guilty for a lighter sentence. 79-year-old Sepp Blatter said that the US arrests and charges – which accused a total of 18 executives of 47 counts of money laundering, racketeering and tax evasion linked to kickbacks totalling more than $150m over two generations – were timed to damage his chances of re-election. Blatter isn’t all wrong and the Investigators from Switzerland and the US aren’t all correct. last week Mr. Blatter stated that “There are signs that cannot be ignored. The Americans were the candidates for the World Cup of 2022 and they lost. The English were the candidates for 2018 and they lost, so it was really the English media and the American movement.” His attack on the US authorities and the British media, which also extended to what he called a hate campaign by European football governing body Uefa, echoes Russian president Vladimir Putin’s claim that the arrests were an attempt to undermine Blatter and de-stabilise the 2018 World Cup. The US involvement in spurring the Swiss authorities to make the initial 7-arrests, raised the issue of the world economic & political power in the shape of...
by Ronan Coburn | Oct 10, 2015 | Banking Inquiry 2014, Topical in Irish Banking Sector, Tracker Mortgages' Scandal
The Troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank & International Monetary Fund whom history will judge unfavourably, are part of the festering problem that is Greece. Even the IMF now owns-up to the established fact that the Troika has mishandled the problem of Greece, in admitting that the policies rigidly imposed were principally wage cuts & uncompromising austerity, with negligible attention to reform of state structures or product markets. Syriza’s main challenge is the residue of the scorched earth austerity policies of the previous 6-years. Reducing its GDP by 26%, and youth unemployment up to 62%. This position is described in a recent book entitled, ‘The Rape of Greece’, by Nadia Valavani, Syriza’s deputy finance minister. The EU-Troika forced a bankrupt country to take on additional credit packages, allowing foreign banks to effectively ‘dump’ their bonds onto Greek taxpayers, and trap the Greek population in sovereign debt slavery. As in Ireland, this process was expediently called a ‘rescue’ or ‘bailout’. Leaked IMF minutes for May 2010 stated that Troika loans to Greece, “may be seen not as a rescue of Greece, which will have to undergo a wrenching adjustment, but as a bailout of Greece’s private debt holders’. Syriza’s Manifesto, the Thessaloniki Programme demands cancellation of “the greater part” of Greece’s public debt. Understandably and justifiably it seeks a “European Debt Conference”, at which it would have plenty to say for itself. Mr Varoufakis recently told Paul Mason (Channel-4): “ you can’t have a monetary union that pretends it can survive by simply lending more money to debtor countries on condition that they must shrink their income”. This...
by Ronan Coburn | Apr 27, 2015 | Banking Inquiry 2014
Germany’s Deutsche Bank has been fined a record $2.5bn (£1.7bn) for rigging Libor, ordered to fire seven employees and accused of being obstructive towards regulators in their investigations into the global manipulation of the benchmark rate. The penalties on Germany’s largest bank also involve a guilty plea to the Department of Justice (DoJ) in the US and a deferred prosecution agreement. The regulators released a cache of emails, electronic messages and phone calls showing the attempts to move the rate used to price £3.5tn of financial contracts (meaning Loan Agreements for individuals and corporates globally). Deutsche Bank is a multinational business whose Net Worth is larger than the shrinking Greek economy. However look at the ‘calling to account’ of the Greeks versus the $2.5BN fine on Deutsche & then business-as-usual afterwards. This substantial fine is financed from Deutsche’s illegally generated revenues. Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis FDR, 1936: “They are unanimous in their hate for me; and I welcome their hatred.” A quotation close to my heart (& reality) these days 10:49 AM – 26 Apr 2015 The Guardian reported Navinder Singh Sarao, the British financial trader accused of making $40m (£27m) by manipulating US stockmarkets and in the process contributing to the 2010 “flash crash”, invested £2m of his profits in a company linked to a former court of appeal judge, a City grandee, a pair of private equity tycoons and a media entrepreneur. The fresh details of how Navinder Singh Sarao’s trading profits appear to have filtered into more mainstream parts of the City have emerged after a week in which the previously obscure trader was propelled on to...
