Trump Has Threatened The President Of Panama Over The Trump Organziation's Money Laundering Empire

Remember, just over a year ago, when Señor Trumpanzee told the media that he "could actually run my business and run government at the same time" [but that he doesn't] "like the way that looks...?What I'm going to be doing is-- my 2 sons... are going to be running the company. They are going to be running it in a very professional manner. They're not going to discuss it with me." Did anyone believe a word of that? Even for a minute? About a month ago Trumpanzee Jr. was in India as a businessman and as his crooked father's emissary. And Kushner-in-law does it all the time-- even to the point of helping the predatory Saudis and UAE's go after Qatar after Qatar refused to loan his family money. (I was just in Doha and noticed their planes can't fly over the UAE or Saudi Arabia and have to fly out of its way and go over Iran instead.) Yesterday, Ana Cerrud and Dave Fahrenthold reported for the Washington Post that Trump threatened the president of Panama with "repercussions" over a Trump Tower in Panama City! "Lawyers representing President Trump’s company last month wrote directly to the president of Panama," they reported, "asking him to intervene in a legal fight over the Trump International Hotel in the nation’s capital-- and warning that the case could have 'repercussions' for Panama’s reputation."

The law firm, Panama-based Britton and Iglesias, wrote in Spanish to President Juan Carlos Varela on March 22 to “urgently request your influence in relation to a commercial dispute regarding the Trump hotel.”

At the time, the majority owner of the Trump hotel-- Cypriot-born investor Orestes Fintiklis-- had kicked out the Trump Organization as the hotel’s manager, after a ruling from a low-level Panamanian judge. The president’s company was seeking to retake control.

The request was extraordinary: The U.S. president’s company was asking the leader of a U.S. ally to intercede on its behalf, disregarding Panama’s separation of powers.

It is the first known instance of the Trump Organization asking directly for a foreign leader’s help with a business dispute since Trump was elected.

In their letter, the Trump Organization’s lawyers did not say explicitly how they wanted the Panamanian president to help. Varela, through a spokesman, has said he has not yet taken any action.

...On Monday, Panama’s foreign secretary, Isabel de Saint Malo, told the Associated Press that her office had also received a copy.

“It is a letter that urges Panama’s executive branch to interfere in an issue clearly of the judicial branch,” de Saint Malo said. “I don’t believe the executive branch has a position to take while the issue is in the judicial process.”

...It opened in 2011. In the last year, it began to struggle, according to investors who owned its hotel rooms. Its troubles included an increasingly crowded hotel market in Panama. But owners also blamed the Trump Organization, saying the president’s polarizing brand was driving away customers from Latin America.

“A financial bloodbath,” one owner called it: Rooms that he had purchased as an investment were rented out less than 10 nights a month.

Then came Fintiklis, who bought a huge block of rooms last year and became the hotel’s majority owner. Within weeks, he was seeking to fire the Trump Organization as manager, saying it was “attached to our property like a leech.”

The Trump Organization had argued that its contract to run the hotel did not expire until 2031 and that Fintiklis had no legal cause to break it.

The dispute went to international arbitration. Then, though, Fintiklis simply showed up at the hotel in February, seeking to fire the Trump Organization in person.

After a multiday standoff, Cheng-- the Panamanian judge-- effectively handed control over to Fintiklis. Fintiklis renamed the hotel the Bahia Grand and added cheeky jabs at its past operator: At the hotel bar, there are drinks called the “Stormy Jack Daniels” and the “Fire and Fury.”

In the letter to Panama’s president, the Trump Organization’s attorneys said Trump’s company had been treated poorly by the Panamanian courts-- so poorly, in fact, that its mistreatment violated a 1983 treaty between the United States and Panama governing investments.

In particular, the letter cites “irregularities” in decisions by Panamanian Judge Miriam Cheng. The lawyers say that Cheng had moved too quickly and had ignored an existing international arbitration case over the hotel.

“This situation is currently before the courts, but it has repercussions for the Panamanian state, which is your responsibility,” said the letter, signed by attorney Eric Britton.

Since the letter was sent, the Trump Organization’s prospects of retaking the Panama hotel have only declined.

In late March, an international arbitrator rejected a request by Trump executives that they be reinstated as the operators of the hotel. The arbitrator ruled that Trump’s team should not have been evicted-- but, now that it had been, he would not undo its ejection.

“The facts on the ground now militate against forcibly undoing the steps that have been taken,” arbitrator Joel Richler wrote, according to the AP.

The arbitration case itself is continuing, as Trump’s company and Fintiklis’s company are still seeking damages from the other. Fintiklis declined to comment on Monday.

“What kind of position does that put the Panamanian government in?” said Don Fox, who was a top official at the U.S. Office of Government Ethics from 2008 to 2013. He said the letter would raise questions about whether the Trump Organization’s requests were, in effect, requests by the U.S. government.

“You don’t know how that may affect Panama’s relationship with us going forward. What might they not ask for? You can’t unring this bell.”

Trump's property in Panama City is a notorious place for the Russian Mafia to park and launder its ill-gotten cash, although the Russian Mafia is an integral party of Putin's kleptocracy.

Putin Looted Russia To Become The Richest Man On Earth-- Trump Is Competing With Him: Dateline Panana City

At 6:59 (PT) on Thursday night, Rachel Maddow left her MSNBC audience with a classic tease that she promised would be explosive by Friday. It started exploding immediately after the tease, when various news sources started reporting that the Trump family is involved in money laundering, the Russian Mafia and Colombian drug cartels through two of their most infamous properties, Mar-A-Lago in Florida and the Trump Ocean Club in Panama. The charges aren't new-- but the proof is. Aggelos Petropoulos and NBC ace reporter Richard Engel have the details of the Trump family's ties to organized crime. Will Ivanka do time? Dateline: Panama City, one of the world's sleaziest capital's of money laundering and every kind of illegal trafficking:

When Ivanka Trump flew here in 2006 to push her family’s latest business project-- an oceanfront steel and glass tower called the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower, shaped like a sail and designed to be one of the tallest buildings in Latin America-- a Brazilian real estate salesman named Alexandre Ventura Nogueira says he was ready with a sales pitch.

Ventura, who said he only had a small real estate company at the time, said he told Ivanka Trump that he could sell condos in the proposed skyscraper for three times the price of similar units in Panama City. The reason: the Trump name, which would go on the building in a licensing deal even though the Trump Organization was not the building’s real developer.

...Ventura did sell the initial units, and later hundreds more. He is now a fugitive. In May 2009, Ventura was arrested in Panama for real estate fraud, unrelated to the Trump project. Mauricio Ceballos, a former financial crimes prosecutor in Panama who investigated Ventura, said that dozens of complaints against Ventura crossed his desk accusing him of double- and triple-selling apartments, both at the Trump Ocean Club and other developments.

Ventura eventually fled Panama while out on bail. He denied having defrauded his clients but admitted to NBC News that he has participated in money laundering on behalf of corrupt Panamanian politicians, unrelated to the building project.

Ventura isn’t the only person associated with the building who has had run-ins with the law. An NBC News investigation into the Trump Ocean Club, in conjunction with Reuters, shows that the project was riddled with brokers, customers and investors who have been linked to drug trafficking and international crime. Ceballos, who investigated the project, went as far as to call the skyscraper “a vehicle for money laundering.”

The investigation revealed no indication that the Trump Organization or members of the Trump family engaged in any illegal activity, or knew of the criminal backgrounds of some of the project’s associates. But Ventura said that the Trumps never asked any questions about the buyers or where the money was coming from.



Legal experts contacted by Reuters said the Trumps should have asked those questions. Because Panama is “perceived to be highly corrupt,” said Arthur Middlemiss, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan and a former head of JPMorgan’s global anti-corruption program, those who do business there should perform due diligence on others involved in their ventures. If they fail to do so, he told Reuters, they risk being liable under U.S. law of turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.

In the interview, Ventura admitted that some of his brokers and clients who bought and sold units in the Trump Ocean Club were connected to the Russian mafia and other organized-crime groups, including a convicted money launderer who moved cash for drug cartels.

“I had some customers with questionable backgrounds,” he said. “Nobody ever asked me. Banks never asked. Developer didn’t ask and (the) Trump Organization didn’t ask. Nobody ask, ‘Who are the customers, where did the money come from?’ No, nobody ask.”

...Ventura says that the Trump family, and Ivanka Trump in particular, was involved in the details of the Trump Ocean Club, and that she interacted with him extensively.

Ivanka Trump is featured in a promotional video for the Trump Ocean Club, made in 2011, in which she praises “the beautiful pool decks” and “our 10,000-square-foot spa.”

“Buenos días,” she says in the video. “Hello, I'm Ivanka Trump. Welcome to Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower, Panama, rising 70 stories above the glistening Panama Bay. We've taken inspiration from the beauty that surrounds us to create a new landmark for Panama.” She goes on to discuss such details as the “tropical color palette” and the carvings on the guestroom headboards.

“The Trump Organization has to approve everything because of his name on the project,” Ventura said, describing the project as Ivanka Trump’s “baby.”

According to the Trump Ocean Club’s bondholder prospectus, Donald Trump was projected to make $74.2 million from the project by the end of 2010. The disclosure forms Trump filed with the Office of Government Ethics show that he continues to earn management fees and royalties from the Trump Ocean Club. In the last three years, the documents show, he was paid as much as $13.9 million.

Global Witness, a nonprofit anti-corruption watchdog that is often critical of businesses and their connections to government officials, said Panama offered Donald Trump a new way to make money at a time when his businesses were struggling. (The Trump casino empire filed for bankruptcy in 2004.) The group is publishing the findings of its investigation into the Trump Ocean Club on Friday.

“In the mid-2000s Panama was known as a money laundering hotspot,” said Patrick Alley, co-founder of Global Witness. “At that time the Trump companies were in dire trouble. He changed his business model to license his name and his brand to other people’s developments, and very often they would be inexperienced developers, low-profile people who needed a name to sell their developments. So Trump would go into a licensing deal, which meant he invested nothing, but could make a profit from it.”

Ventura estimates his company, Homes Real Estate Investment & Services, sold 350 to 400 units, about $100 million worth of property. Ventura says he was such an effective salesman that he was invited to a 2008 celebration at Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. Ventura provided photographs of himself with Donald Trump at the event, and other photographs of him with Ivanka, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.

Ventura said the Trumps never asked about his clients, the people who were buying the condo units, and he never told them. To cite one example, he said that he sold seven to 10 units in the Trump Ocean Club to a man named David Murcia Guzmán, founder of a large Colombian marketing company.

Guzmán is now in U.S. custody, awaiting extradition to Colombia after being convicted by a U.S. federal court of laundering money for drug cartels, including through real estate. According to a Colombian news report, citing the police, Guzmán also had financial ties to the FARC, a paramilitary organization listed by the State Department as a terrorist group.

Guzmán isn’t the only link connecting drug trafficking to the Trump Ocean Club. One of the early investors in the project was a man named Louis Pargiolas. In 2009, he pleaded guilty in a federal court in Miami to conspiracy to import cocaine.

Ventura says about half of the units he sold at the Trump Ocean Club were to Russians. To help handle them, Ventura went into business with several Russian-speaking real estate brokers, who he admits have had checkered pasts, including one named Stanislav Kavalenka. According to Ontario court documents, Kavalenka was charged in Canada with a number of offenses, including “compelling” and “procuring” women to engage in prostitution. The case was withdrawn when the two women failed to appear in court to give evidence against him.

Another investor in Ventura’s firm was Arkady Vodovozov. According to court files cited by Reuters, he was convicted of kidnapping in Israel. A third representative of the brokerage firm, described by Ventura as an occasional buyer at the Trump Ocean Club, was Igor Anapolskiy, according to Ukrainian court documents. He was convicted in September 2014 by a court in Ukraine of forging travel documents, according to Global Witness.

The identities of all of the buyers and sellers of the building’s units is difficult to discover, however, because many of the units were bought and sold through anonymous shell companies, according to documents from the Panamanian office of public records. Ventura says he set up hundreds of those corporations, charging roughly $1,000 each.

Ceballos, who says he investigated transactions related to the Trump Ocean Club during his stint as an anti-corruption prosecutor in Panama, describes the building as a magnet for international organized crime, particularly from Russia.

“The majority of sales of this building were not to local residents, but rather to foreigners,” he said. “They bought initially as an investment, knowing that once the building was constructed you could legalize your money.”

He added: “We were able to find out that people with some kind of criminal history acquired apartments there.”

Ceballos said lax law enforcement in Panama made money laundering easy. To launder money, he said, buyers using anonymous corporations would bring dirty money to Panama, often in cash, use it to buy real estate with no questions asked, sell it, and deposit the proceeds into local banks, which would accept the funds, also without asking questions. The real estate purchases, Ceballos says, were solely a way to get the money into banks and into the global financial system; few buyers intended to live in the condos.

During a recent visit by NBC News, the Trump Ocean Club appeared to be largely empty, with virtually no one in the restaurants at night. The hallways were consistently empty. The lights were off in many of the units after dark. Ventura said most of his clients never intended to live in the Trump Ocean Club.

Miguel Antonio Bernal, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Panama and a campaigner against corruption, said many buildings in Panama City were built specifically to be vehicles for money laundering; the Trump Ocean Club fits the mold.

“There are more than 500 buildings like this,” he said. “But this-- the difference of this-- is that this has the name of the actual president of the United States. And he keeps the name here.”

Ventura now lives under a new name, as do two other brokers who used to sell the building’s condos. He said he admires President Trump and doesn’t consider himself to be a detractor or accuser. Ventura said his job was simply to sell and not ask questions. As for Trump, he said: “It could be that he didn’t want to know… I believe that he didn’t know.”

Sarah Chayes, a corruption expert working with a group of lawyers trying to bring an unrelated case against the president for violating the Emoluments clause of the Constitution, said it was troubling that the Trump Organization seemed to pay no attention to the shady backgrounds of its partners and clients.

“Anyone who thinks that members of FARC, that drug dealers, Russian oligarchs who have been looting their own country, represent normal business partners,” she said, “doesn’t quite understand the free enterprise system that I think is central to a healthy America.”

The Global Witness report is pretty mind-boggling, especially when you admit to yourself this stinking pile of garbage at the center of this is the illegitimate president of the United States. It starts with a Trump quote: "Every other country goes into these places and they do what they have to do… It’s a horrible law and [the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act] should be changed." The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act also hampered Trump business ventures with organized crime in Azerbaijan, India and throughout the Middle East. Here's the executive summary of their Panama City report:

In the early 2000s, a series of bankruptcies meant Donald J. Trump was shunned by most lenders. Struggling for credit, he started selling his name to high-end real estate projects. This report examines in detail the criminal connections that propelled one such project-- the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama-- and how this case bears some of the same disturbing hallmarks as other Trump developments.

Since he became President of the United States, numerous investigations and articles have probed Trump’s business dealings and his alleged links to criminals and other shadowy characters. It is understood that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation under the Department of Justice will also examine his real estate business. This is important because it seems likely that, following his various bankruptcies, at least a part of Trump’s business empire has been built on untraceable funds, some apparently linked to Russian criminal networks.

Trump may not have deliberately set out to facilitate criminal activity in his business dealings. But, as this Global Witness investigation shows, licensing his brand to the luxurious Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama aligned Trump’s financial interests with those of crooks looking to launder ill-gotten gains. Trump seems to have done little to nothing to prevent this. What is clear is that proceeds from Colombian cartels’ narcotics trafficking were laundered through the Trump Ocean Club and that Donald Trump was one of the beneficiaries.

One key player in the laundering of drug money at the Trump Ocean Club was notorious fraudster David Eduardo Helmut Murcia Guzmán, whom a U.S. court subsequently sentenced to nine years for laundering millions of dollars' worth of illicit funds, including narcotics proceeds, through companies and real estate.

Another was Murcia Guzmán’s business associate, Alexandre Henrique Ventura Nogueira, who brokered nearly a third of the 666 pre-construction unit sales at the Trump Ocean Club and claims to have sold 250-400 units overall. Ventura Nogueira’s sales brokerage was critical to ensuring the project’s lift-off and Trump’s ability to earn tens of millions of dollars.

The warning signs were there from the outset. The Trump Ocean Club, one of Trump’s most lucrative licensing deals to date, was announced in 2006 and launched in 2011, a period when Panama was known as one of the best places in the world to launder money. Whole neighborhoods in Panama City were taken over by organized crime groups, and luxury developments were built with the purpose of serving as money laundering vehicles.

Moreover, investing in luxury properties is a tried and trusted way for criminals to move tainted cash into the legitimate financial system, where they can spend it freely. Once scrubbed clean in this way, vast profits from criminal activities like trafficking people and drugs, organized crime, and terrorism can find their way into the U.S. and elsewhere. In most countries, regulation is notoriously lax in the real estate sector. Cash payments are subject to hardly any scrutiny, giving opportunistic and unprincipled developers free rein to accept dirty money.

In the case of the Trump Ocean Club, accepting easy-- and possibly dirty-- money early on would have been in Trump’s interest; a certain volume of pre-construction sales was necessary to secure financing for the project, which stood to net him $75.4 million by the end of 2010. Trump received a percentage of the financing he helped secure, and a cut on the sale of every unit at the development.

He and his family have made millions of dollars more from management fees and likely continue to profit from the Trump Ocean Club. Eager for the project’s success, Trump and his children have participated directly in marketing, management, and even project design. According to broker Ventura Nogueira, Trump’s daughter Ivanka attended at least 10 meetings with him and project developer Roger Khafif.

A large number of those involved with the Trump Ocean Club in its early phase were Russian and Eastern European citizens or diaspora members. In an interview with NBC and Reuters, Ventura Nogueira said that 50 percent of his buyers were Russian, and that some had “questionable backgrounds.” He added that he found out later that some were part of the Russian Mafia.

Since the Russian government’s alleged interference in the 2016 election, a lot has been made of Trump’s heavy reliance on funds from Russia for his licensing deals. Trump relying on funds from Russia is not in itself a problem – some of these funds are no doubt from legitimate sources. What is deeply problematic, however, is the fact that some of this money appears to have come from criminal networks.

Donald Trump has incessantly promoted himself as a successful and viable businessman, and this was critical to his success in the 2016 presidential election. But this report presents evidence that this façade was built, at least in part, on ventures used to launder cash generated by criminal activities. Trump’s unscrupulous business dealings and blindness to potential illegality raise serious questions about his suitability to govern the most powerful country in the world.

The dubious dealings of Trump the businessman also raise questions about the commitment of Trump the President to tackling crime and corruption. Trump got elected by repeatedly pledging to “drain the swamp”, but in the nine months since his inauguration he has actually taken steps that could worsen corruption in the U.S. and internationally. Indeed, one of his administration’s few legislative successes to date has been to overturn the implementing regulation of a ground-breaking anti-corruption law.

...The solutions to the problems set out in this report are clear:

1. Appropriate law enforcement authorities, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller, should investigate these allegations and, if appropriate, hold President Trump accountable for his actions. The congressional committees looking into this issue should likewise investigate these allegations and, if appropriate, hold President Trump accountable for his actions.

2. Every country should require all companies and trusts to disclose who ultimately owns and controls them and make this information public.

3. Every country should require the real estate sector to know who their clients are and the source of their funds as a precaution to ensure that dirty money is not being laundered into the property market.

4. Every country should require lawyers who carry out transactions for their clients, including the buying and selling of real estate and the creation of companies, to know who their clients are and the source of their funds.

Trump, of course, is calling for the dismantling of the American regulatory system, not for more regulations. Now you know why. If not... watch this short video:

Will Hillary's Campaign Survive The Mossack Fonseca Panama Papers Scandal?

The very first time I heard about the Mossack Fonseca scandal in Panama, my immediate reaction was, that there with this many elite criminals there are bound to be plenty of Clinton connections. A few days later, we did a post about the contrast between her support for the Panama "free" trade deal which led to the scandal and Bernie's prescient and well documented opposition based on the money laundering Panama is so infamous for. Then came the revelations about the involvement of the crooked lobbying firm closest to the Clintons, the Podesta Group, the head of which, John Podesta, is her campaign chairman. I didn't find them persuasive enough to post.

And then, yesterday, the McClatchy papers ran with an article that speaks of multiple Clinton connections to the scandal. Let's hope this all comes out now and she's either exonerated from any wrong-doing or from another excruciatingly bad example of her much vaunted "judgement" or that it's bad enough to drive her out of politics before the Republicans use it to beat her in a general election and ruin the Democratic Party. So far, I'm not seeing the smoking gun that will get her to withdraw from the race, not that that will stop the Republicans. Just wait 'til Morning Joe starts in on this tomorrow! And, eventually, someone in bound to tell Trump. Hill and Bill, McClatchy asserts "have multiple connections with people who have used the besieged law firm Mossack Fonseca to establish offshore entities."

Among them are Gabrielle Fialkoff, finance director for Hillary Clinton’s first campaign for the U.S. Senate; Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining magnate who has traveled the globe with Bill Clinton; the Chagoury family, which pledged $1 billion in projects to the Clinton Global Initiative; and Chinese billionaire Ng Lap Seng, who was at the center of a Democratic fund-raising scandal when Bill Clinton was president. Also using the Panamanian law firm was the company founded by the late billionaire investor Marc Rich, an international fugitive when Bill Clinton pardoned him in the final hours of his presidency.


...The Clintons themselves do not appear to be in Mossack Fonseca’s database, nor does it appear that their daughter, Chelsea, or her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, who co-founded a hedge fund, are listed. But Bill and Hillary Clinton’s connections to people who have used offshores is fuel for her Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders.

Clinton has struggled throughout her campaign to show that she can relate to working Americans, while Sanders has cast her as a wealthy out-of-touch Washington insider who has accepted hefty paychecks for speeches and received millions of dollars in campaign contributions from those tied to big businesses. Her connection to the Panama Papers, even if indirect, could magnify that perception.


...Sanders said Clinton’s support of a free-trade agreement between the U.S. and Panama-- one that he claims has allowed the wealthy to avoid paying taxes-- should disqualify her from being the Democratic nominee for president.

“I don’t think you are qualified if you supported the Panama free trade agreement, something I very strongly opposed, which has made it easier for wealthy people and corporations all over the world to avoid paying taxes owed to their countries,” Sanders said recently... “I wish I had been proven wrong about this, but it has now come to light that the extent of Panama’s tax avoidance scams is even worse than I had feared,” he said in a statement earlier this month.

The 5 most corrupt in Congress-- ever

Yes, she's even worse than horrifying sleaze-bags Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan when it comes to the clearest source of corruption anywhere in government, the lobbyists, who just happen to be the mainstay of her campaign and her career. Oh, and speaking of Paul Ryan...

Ever Watch A British Parliamentary Debate? The Beast Of Bolsover vs Dodgy Dave

When I was spending a lot of time in London on business for a few years, a friend of a friend was a Member of Parliament-- a gay Tory-- and he offered to take me to lunch in the Members dining room one day with the option of sitting in the visitors' gallery and hearing a debate. I gladly accepted .The day we picked just happened to turn out to be the day Margaret Thatcher decided to go join George H.W. Bush and go to war against Iraq. It wasn't a very lively debate and there was a sense of unrealness about what was-- in retrospect at least, being launched. One of the Members opposing Thatcher was Dennis Skinner., not a favorite of my host it turns out. Lunch, afterwards, though was very nice. Skinner, I was told, never eats in the Members dining room.

This week's debate over the Panama Papers was somewhat more exciting. That's when the same Dennis Skinner, a former coal miner and a Labour MP since 1970 (from Bolster in Derbyshire)-- affectionately known to his colleagues and constituents as "The Beast of Bolsover"-- caused quite a stir and got himself ejected from the House for the day.

Although most Americans who know of Skinner at all, know him as one of the PMs who was behind Jeremy Corbyn when he was overthrowing the New Labour dominance of the party, Brits still remember that Skinner, an outspoken anti-monarchist, had used the floor of Parliament to expose Thatcher for bribing judges in 1984 and, in 2005, referring to the Conservatives' economic record under Thatcher as a time when "the only thing that was growing then were the lines of coke in front of Boy George and the rest of the Tories." He was ejected from Parliament for those statements-- and quite a few others.

When Paul Ryan was dividing up Americans as "makers" & "takers," David Cameron was using the same kind of right-wing divisiveness to categorize Brits as "strivers" & "scroungers." Monday, Skinner, during a debate on the Panama Papers and the role of the Cameron family in the corruption, called the Prime Minister, "Dodgy Dave," which didn't go over well among the Conservatives, where the epithet struck a raw nerve. Under unparliamentary language rules, no MP is allowed to accuse another member of being dishonorable and "dodgy" would imply Cameron is a crook who was avoiding paying taxes by stashing wealth overseas. Cameron's defenders are also using name-calling to cloud the debate. Yesterday, Sir Alan Duncan, the Conservative MP for Rutland and Melton called working people who criticize Cameron for being a crook jealous "low achievers." He sounds very much like a Republican:

Paul and Dodgy Dave

"Shouldn't the Prime Minister's critics really just snap out of the synthetic indignation and admit that their real point is that they hate anyone who has got a hint of wealth in them? May I support the Prime Minister in fending off those who are attacking him, particularly in thinking of this place, because if he doesn't, we risk seeing a House of Commons which is stuffed full of low-achievers who hate enterprise, hate people who look after their own family and know absolutely nothing about the outside world."

He wasn't ejected from the Chamber but the debate over the Panama Papers is heating up worldwide-- and just as the U.S. confronts the latest slap on the wrist towards the bankster criminals at Goldman Sachs. No one gets blamed and no one is accused on anything. It's as though the entity "Goldman Sachs" did something complicated-- but without motivation-- illegal and will be asked to pay a fine, though not even close to the $5.06 billion being deceptively ballyhooed by the government in the media. The firm-- not individuals, apparently-- created and sold packages of shoddy mortgages to investors, one of the primary causes leading up to the near collapse of the world economy and siphoning billions of dollars from Americans' savings. The Washington Post reported that "advocacy groups quickly pounced on the deal as too lenient, noting that the $5 billion settlement is dwarfed by Goldman Sach’s recent profits. Also, they note, Goldman Sachs will be be able to deduct some of the cost of the settlement from its taxes. 'That is not justice,' said Dennis Kelleher, president and chief executive of Better Markets. 'Every single individual at Goldman who received a bonus from this illegal conduct not only keeps the entire bonus, but suffers no penalty at all.'" I'm sure that will make Obama, Schumer, and Clinton smile with disdain.

Speaking at a rally in Albany, Bernie told supporters that what was being discussed was "fraud" by Goldman Sachs and the inequity-- economic and judicial-- created by a rigged economy. "This is the system we are living in and this is the system we have to change. Goldman Sachs is one of the major financial institutions in our country... What they have just acknowledged to the whole world is that their system... is based on fraud." Perhaps this would be a good time for Clinton to release the transcripts of the speeches she gave to Goldman Sachs executives, speeches that gave the company legalistic cover to massively bribe her and her equally corrupt husband. Anyway, back to Dodgy Dave and his own embarrassing corruption exposure.

David Cameron has finally admitted he benefited from a Panama-based offshore trust set up by his late father.

After three days of stalling and four partial statements issued by Downing Street he confessed that he owned shares in the tax haven fund, which he sold for £31,500 just before becoming prime minister in 2010.

In a specially arranged interview with ITV News’ Robert Peston he confirmed a direct link to his father’s UK-tax avoiding fund, details of which were exposed in the Panama Papers revelations in the Guardian this week.

Admitting it had been “a difficult few days”, the prime minister said he held the shares together with his wife, Samantha, from 1997 and during his time as leader of the opposition. They were sold in January 2010 for a profit of £19,000.

He paid income tax on the dividends but there was no capital gains tax payable and he said he sold up before entering Downing Street “because I didn’t want anyone to say you have other agendas or vested interests.”

But the interview appeared unlikely to end scrutiny of Cameron’s tax affairs.

The Labour MP John Mann, a member of the Treasury select committee, said the prime minister should resign, claiming that Cameron had “covered up and misled.”

Cameron also admitted he did not know whether the £300,000 he inherited from his father had benefited from tax haven status due to part of his estate being based in a unit trust in Jersey.

“I obviously can’t point to the source of every bit of money and dad’s not around for me to ask the questions now,” Cameron said.

It was the fifth explanation in four days from Cameron and his aides about the benefits he and his family had enjoyed from the offshore fund.

Downing Street initially insisted it was a private matter, but Cameron then said he had “no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds”. His spokesman later clarified: “The prime minister, his wife and their children do not benefit from any offshore funds.”

Downing Street then said there were no offshore funds or trusts the family would benefit from in future, leaving questions about the past.

In his first interview on the topic after days of stonewalling, Cameron was questioned on whether there was a conflict of interest between his father setting up the Panama-based Blairmore Investment Trust, which did not have to pay UK tax on its profits, and his professed policy to crack down on aggressive tax avoidance.

...Richard Burgon, the shadow Treasury minister, said Cameron’s admission showed a “crisis of morals” at the heart of the Conservative government.

He said: “After four days of refusing to answer this question David Cameron has now finally been forced to admit he directly benefited from Blairmore, a company which paid no tax in 30 years. He must now further clarify whether or not he or his family were benefiting directly or indirectly in 2013 when he was lobbying to prevent EU measures to better regulate trusts as a way to clamp down on tax avoidance.

Don't say no one ever warned you. This is what happens whether you elect conservatives, whether Dodgy Dave in Britain, Paul Ryan in Wisconsin or Hillary Clinton in New York. It's in their political DNA. Wise up; we finally have real choice-- which doesn't happen all that often. After an onslaught from the establishment media, you may not think Bernie's perfect but, there's no getting around it: Hillary and everyone around her just reek of corruption. Support Bernie and the anti-corruption reformers like him who are running for Congress.

What Does Mossack Fonseca Tell You About The Competence Of Bernie And Hillary-- Or Of Tim Canova And Wasserman Schultz?

Hillary was a big booster of the catastrophic Bush-Cheney decision to invade Iraq and disrupt the stability of the Middle East. Bernie was adamantly opposed. It turned out it be the worst American foreign policy decision in at least a century. And it is far from the only example of Hillary's instinctually bad, Republican-oriented decision-making in terms of foreign policy. Take a look at the video up top that shows her shilling for the terrible Panama Free Trade Agreement, juxtaposed with Bernie carefully laying out why that agreement was a terrible idea. It was her agreement and he, wisely voted against it. The agreement, as we pointed out yesterday, led directly to the still-unfolding Mossack Fonseca scandal.

In the House, the vast majority of Democrats saw this treaty the same way Bernie did-- and voted against it. 123 Democrats voted no, but the Hillary-wing of the party voted YES-- Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jim Himes, Terri Sewell, Kurt Schrader, Gregory Meeks, Steny Hoyer, Chris Van Hollen, Joe Crowley, Albio Sires... It passed the Senate 66-33, most of the Democrats voting against Hillary's corruption treaty with Panama. Of course, her pal Joe Lieberman was for it, as was Dianne Feinstein, Mary Landrieu, Mark Pryor and virtually all the Republicans, from Marco Rubio, Jim DeMint, Roy Blunt, Rob Portman, Miss McConnell, Mark Kirk, Chuck Grassley, John McCain, Richard Burr, Kelly Ayotte... the whole crew of conservatives who always let the lobbyists sway their votes on trade policy.

Once again, Bernie was right; and, once again, Hillary was wrong. They like painting herself as "prepared." Prepared for what? Being the best Republican president money can buy who's pretending to be a Democrat? As always, Bernie was guided by wisdom, values and principles and, as always, she was guided by corruption and expediency. Yesterday Bernie mentioned that Hillary had "opposed this trade agreement when she was running against Barack Obama for president in 2008. But when it really mattered she quickly reversed course and helped push the Panama Free Trade Agreement through Congress as Secretary of State. The results have been a disaster."

As Ryan Grim mentioned in an e-mail today, "The Bernie pile-on after his interview with the New York Daily News is something to behold. His post about it at Huff Po is worth reading. He shows that it was "the Daily News editors who are bungling the facts in an interview designed to show that Sanders doesn’t understand the fine points of policy. In questions about breaking up big banks, the powers of the Treasury Department and drone strikes, the editors were simply wrong on details... This wasn’t an interview about policy details. It was about who the media has decided is presidential and who isn’t, who is serious and who isn’t. The Daily News and much of the rest of the media don’t think Sanders is qualified to be president, and that’s the motivation for an interview meant to expose what the media have already decided is true... Candidates the media deem to be serious do not get these policy pop quizzes, because it is believed (accurately) that they can hire experienced advisers who can work out the details. But if they were pressed, there’s no doubt a studied reporter could make them look silly."

Meanwhile, Hillary's actual record is what makes her look silly and, worse, unqualified to be president-- and on on a Paul Ryan level. Progressive congressional candidates opposed to the neoliberal treaties she's been pushing for decades can use debate them with their opponents. Oh, but Panama Trade Deal backers like Kurt Schrader, Albio Sires and Debbie Wasserman Schultz refuse to debate their opponents. They're afraid that Democratic primary voters will recognize exactly what they are.

Wassermann Schultz's opponent, Tim Canova, a well-respected critic of the aspects of "free" trade that encourage job loss and degradation of American social and economic justice norms, has been holding Wasserman Schultz accountable for her corrupt perspective on deals like the one with Panama. This morning he reiterated that she "voted for the Panama Free Trade Agreement, as well as other trade deals that undermine our government capabilities to monitor international financial transactions and prevent tax evasion and violations of sanctions against Iran and other rogue states. While she was supporting this Panama agreement, I have spent my entire career as an educator, lawyer, and activist criticizing offshore tax havens and these kinds of trade and investment liberalization agreements."

Will the Hillary campaign's Podesta brothers drag her down as their connections to Panama scandal criminals come to light? Have you contributed to Bernie's campaign yet? Maybe you should give it some serious consideration-- to him and to the congressional candidates who also oppose these corrupt and dysfunctional trade agreements and are running on his platform of progressive issues. You can do so by tapping the thermometer:

Panama's Mossack Fonseca Has Certainly Become Very Famous Over The Weekend... Here's Why

I bet everyone inside Fortress Hillary in Brooklyn breathed a sign of relief when the Panama Papers of money launderers and assorted financial criminals started leaking and didn't show any Clintons, Mezvinskys or any of the other shady characters they've surrounded themselves with. I'm told, though, there's plenty more to come. The first political casualty seems to be Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, the right-wing prime minister of Iceland who had set up a secret company in the British Virgin Islands to shelter investments with his rich partner, Anna Sigurlaug Pálsdóttir, who he later married. He didn't disclose his investment when he ran for Parliament, even though it included shares in 3 of Iceland's failed banks. Though there is mounting pressure on him to do so, as of this writing, he hasn't resigned yet. People are running around Reykjavik chanting the old slogan from the 2008 financial collapse, "Vanhæf ríkisstjórn," roughly "unfit/unqualified Government." Do you watch The Vikings on the History Channel? You don't want to piss these people off. [UPDATE: Gunnlaugsson resigned today.]

This is what Bernie had to say during the debate on the Panama Free Trade Treaty supported by Republicans and the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Hillary supported the treaty, of course. But read Bernie's statement carefully:

Lastly, let me say a brief word about Panama and the Panama free-trade agreement. Panama's entire economic output is only $26.7 billion a year or about two-tenths of 1 percent of the U.S. economy. Nobody can legitimately claim that approving this free-trade agreement will significantly increase American jobs.

Then why would we be considering a stand-alone free trade agreement with Panama ? It turns out that Panama is a world leader when it comes to allowing wealthy Americans and large corporations to evade U.S. taxes by stashing their cash in offshore tax havens. The Panama Free Trade Agreement will make this bad situation much worse.

Each and every year, the wealthiest people in our country and the largest corporations evade about $100 billion in U.S. taxes through abusive and illegal offshore tax havens in Panama and other countries.

According to Citizens for Tax Justice:

A tax haven... has one of three characteristics: it has no income tax or a very low rate income tax; it has bank secrecy laws; and it has a history of non-cooperation with other countries on exchanging information about tax matters. Panama has all three of those... They're probably the worst.

 This is the (very) short version of what this whole Mossack Fonseca scandal is all about. The secret files:

• Include 11.5 million records, dating back nearly 40 years-- making it the largest leak in offshore history. Contains details on more than 214,000 offshore entities connected to people in more than 200 countries and territories. Company owners in billionaires, sports stars, drug smugglers and fraudsters.

• Reveal the offshore holdings 140 politicians and public officials around the world-- including 12 current and former world leaders. Among them: the prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, the president of Ukraine, and the king of Saudi Arabia.

• Document some $2 billion in transactions secretly shuffled through banks and shadow companies by associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

• Include the names of at least 33 people and companies blacklisted by the U.S. government because of evidence that they’d been involved in wrongdoing, such as doing business with Mexican drug lords, terrorist organizations like Hezbollah or rogue nations like North Korea and Iran.

• Show how major banks have driven the creation of hard-to-trace companies in offshore havens. More than 500 banks their subsidiaries and their branches-- including HSBC, UBS and Société Générale-- created more than 15,000 offshore companies for their customers through Mossack Fonseca.

The story is humongous around the world but has been tamped down here in the U.S. So far 140 politicians and thousands and thousands of millionaires and billionaires-- from around the world-- have been exposed as tax evaders. The Russian government dismissed it as just some standard Putinphobia. He can use that same tactic Hillary uses-- how his enemies just always have it out for him, which is true, but doesn't mean he doesn't sometimes commit some crimes, like squirreling away $2 billion. Others named include relatives of Chinese leaders including President Xi Jinping, David Cameron's crooked father, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, well-known criminal Petro Poroshenko, the President of Ukraine, and some nuclear bomb-building North Koreans. I think this story will have legs.

Kevin Brady (R-TX), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee announced he plans to draft American international tax reform legislation immediately. (The horse went thataway!) The main purpose will, of course, be to lower taxes on the rich and on corporations. Matthew Yglesias did a solid explanation of what's going on with this whole mess yesterday.

Mossack Fonseca is not a household name, but the Panamanian law firm has long been well known to the global financial and political elite, and thanks to a massive 2.6 terabyte leak of its confidential papers to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists it's about to become much better known. A huge team of hundreds of journalists is pouring over the documents they are calling the Panama Papers.

The firm's operations are diverse and international in scope, but they originate in a single specialty-- helping foreigners set up Panamanian shell companies to hold financial assets while obscuring the identities of their real owners. Since its founding in 1977, it's expanded its interests outside of Panama to include over 40 offices worldwide, helping a global client base to work with shell companies not just in Panama but also the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, and other notorious tax havens around the world.

The documents provide details on some shocking acts of corruption in Russia, hint at scandalous goings-on in a range of developing nations, and may prompt a political crisis in Iceland.

But they also offer the most granular look ever at a banal reality that's long been hiding in plain sight. Even as the world's wealthiest and most powerful nations have engaged in increasingly complex and intensive efforts at international cooperation to smooth the wheels of global commerce, they have willfully chosen to allow the wealthiest members of Western society to shield their financial assets from taxation (and in many cases divorce or bankruptcy settlement) by taking advantage of shell companies and tax havens.

If Panama or the Cayman Islands were acting to undermine the integrity of the global pharmaceutical patent system, the United States would stop them. But political elite of powerful western nations has not acted to stop relatively puny Caribbean nations from undermining the integrity of the global tax system-- largely because western economic elites don't want them to.

UPDATE: And, Yes, We Have An Americano

One of the first Americans identified in the rapidly unfolding Panama scandal is high-profile notorious Wall Street sleaze-bag Benjamin Wey, president of New York Global Group. You may recall that he was indicted last year on 8 counts of securities fraud, stock manipulation, money laundering, and wire fraud for his role in a fraudulent scheme to profit from undisclosed, controlling ownership interests in several companies. His wife, sister and two of his attorney's were also indicted for "the aiding and abetting of violations of the antifraud provisions and the disclosure and reporting provisions of the federal securities laws." Among the American politicians he had bribed with campaign contributions are sleazy pro-Wall Street Democrats from the corporate wing of the party: New Dems Joe Crowley and Sean Patrick Maloney and Blue Dog Steve Israel (with a $20,000 "contribution" to the DCCC on September 30, 2013). Wey has also given money to the most corrupt of the Vegas politicians, Harry Reid. The revelations will only get more interesting. This morning's Chicago Tribune:

Benjamin Wey is a U.S. citizen and president of New York Global Group. He was indicted last year, along with his Swiss banker, Seref Dogan Erbek, on securities fraud charges. Wey's alleged scheme to conceal a true ownership interest in publicly traded companies was at the heart of the charges. Wey is accused of using offshores set up with Mossack Fonseca to disguise complicated transactions between Chinese operating companies and publicly traded U.S. shell companies.

The two "are believed to have profited in the tens of millions, while victim shareholders were left holding the bill," Diego Rodriguez, an FBI official involved in the case, said in a statement at the time of indictment.

Crowley and Maloney, widely considered two of the most corrupt of the Wall Street-owned New Dems, have refused to divest themselves of the bribes from Wey. Needless to say, the DCCC won't give up the $20,000 Steve Israel brought in from him either.

Are we ready for the expanded Panama Canal? Believe it or not, the job is "90 percent done"

by Ken

In the New York Harbor area we've had an ongoing awareness of the Panama Canal expansion that's been in progress, because the "New York" port -- which nowadays means almost exclusively New Jersey's adjacent Newark Bay ports, Port Elizabeth and Port Newark -- has known that it isn't equipped to accommodate the taller and deeper ships scheduled to be able to pass through the expanded canal. The most conspicuous manifestation of that unpreparedness has been the 1928-31 Bayonne Bridge, connecting the NYC borough of Staten Island to the NJ mainland.

The bridge has barely been able to accommodate what have been known as "Panamax" ships. There's no way the even more massive new generation of vessels could slide through. As Wikipedia explains:

The Bayonne Bridge at sunset, before the big roadbed-raising

The Port Authority has launched a $743.3 million rebuilding project to raise the roadbed within the existing arch to allow larger container ships to pass underneath.[13][14] The expansion of the Panama Canal, which will allow the passage of larger ships coming from Asia to reach the East Coast, was the impetus for the Port Authority's decision to raise the height of the bridge. At the moment, the span presents a difficult obstacle to large container ships passing under it on the way to and from Newark Bay. Its clearance of between 151 to 156 feet (46–48 m) above the Kill Van Kull depending on the tide means that some of today's ships, which can reach 175 feet (53 m) above the waterline, must fold down antenna masts, take on ballast or wait for low tide to pass through. The problem will become more serious after the Panama Canal expansion project allows post-Panamax ships to become commonplace.[15][16][17]

On April 24, 2013, the Port Authority's Board of Commissioners awarded a $743.3 million contract to a joint venture of Skanska Koch and Kiewit Infrastructure Company. The work, begun in July 2013, will raise the road deck by 64 feet (19 m), create 12-foot wide lanes, including a bicycle and pedestrian lane, and install a median divider and shoulders.[18] This would raise the bridge's clearance to 215 feet (66 m) by building a new roadway above the existing roadway within the current arch structure. A gantry crane rolling on top of the arch will construct one rope-supported section of the new roadway at a time, using a temporary beam to support the existing roadway while each rope is replaced.[13] The existing roadway will then be removed. The Port Authority believes it is possible to build the new roadway without interrupting traffic flow between Staten Island and Bayonne. In July 2012 the Port Authority announced construction would begin in Summer 2013, to be completed by late 2016. In this timeline, removal of the existing roadway would be completed by late 2015, in time for the opening of the widened Panama Canal.[19] The pedestrian and bicycle lane were closed on August 5, 2013 for the duration of the project.[20]

(I know I should have done some digging for a current estimate of the status of the project. But I'm not a fanatic about it. Meanwhile, the little-talked-about cause for apprehension with the massive bridge-raising project is that nobody really believe the raised bridge will allow Newark Bay access for farther-in-the-future generations of ships built for the Panama Canal's expanded capability.)

We've been hearing about the Panama Canal expansion for so long, it's hard to believe that it's actually more or less happened! Our pal Mai Armstrong at the Working Harbor Committee blog directs our attention to this Transport Topics post, "Panama Canal Expansion Is 90% Complete":

The Panama Canal expansion project is 90% complete with the start of filling new locks on the Atlantic Ocean side of the waterway.

The step was announced by the Panama Canal Authority in a statement outlining the filling of the lower chamber of Atlantic locks. The move “signals the start of a deliberate and methodical phase of operational tests and quality control," the statement said.

The expanded waterway, with an additional lane and facilities that will double capacity, is expected to open in the spring. The $5.25 billion project was begun more than seven years ago and delayed at times by payment disputes with contractors.

“This event highlights the magnitude of what we have been working on for the past seven years,” canal Administrator Jorge Quijano said. “Filling the locks with water is the culmination of arduous years of labor and the realization that we are within arm’s reach of the completion of one of the most impressive infrastructure projects of our time.”

The canal expansion has encouraged investment in East Coast ports, such as Miami, New York/New Jersey and Baltimore, to deepen channels with the expectation of larger vessels calling there with more cargo.

Water levels eventually are being raised to a height of nearly 90 feet, initially by pumping in 50,000 cubic meters of water from Gatun Lake to test the locks. Four months of testing are planned.

“With the addition of these water-savings basins,” Quijano said, “we will recycle nearly 60% of the water used in every lockage, using the world’s most advanced systems and enhancing the canal’s reliability. With this new phase, expansion nears closer and closer to completion.”

[Click to enlarge.]

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Is Mendacity A Republican Party Core Value?

Every political conservative I ever met was a both a hypocrite and a liar-- by nature. This week we saw the quintessential Republican, Tennessee Congressman Scott DesJarlais (who represents Murfreesboro, Lynchburg, Shelbysville and the suburbs west of Chattanooga), vote against the right of a woman to exercise Choice in her own reproductive health. Only 4 Republicans voted against their heinous bill introduced by closet queen and anti-woman psychopath Trent Franks (R-AZ) but DesJarlais's vote was special. DesJarlais had encouraged his ex-wife to have two abortions and pressured one of his mistresses-- one of several very young patients of his medical practice who he drugged up and raped-- to abort his love child.

But it's on foreign policy that this GOP penchant for shameless, bold-faced lying with such alacrity is most troublesome for the country-- and the world. And they get away with it because their target audience is, by nature, ignorant, self-selected morons who wouldn't know the difference between Paraguay and Laos.

When Reagan ran a brutal primary campaign against President Jerry Ford, he claimed Panamanian military dictator Omar Torrijos, a progressive but anti-Communist authoritarian who worked very closely with the U.S., was a "Marxist" who was grabbing the Panama Canal from the hapless Ford and Kissinger. During the Florida primary Reagan said in Winter Park:

State Department actions for several years now have suggested that they are intimidated by the propaganda of Panama's military dictator, Fidel Castro's good friend General Omar Torrijos. Our State Department apparently believes the hints regularly dispensed by the leftist Torrijos regime that the canal will be sabotaged if we don't hand it over. Our government has maintained a mouse-like silence as criticisms of the giveaway have increased... I don't understand how the State Department can suggest we pay blackmail to this dictator, for blackmail is what it is. When it comes to the Canal, we bought it, we paid for it, it's ours, and we should tell Torrijos and company that we are going to keep it.

But Reagan lost the Republican primary to Ford, and it was Jimmy Carter who sent Ford packing in November. And it was Carter who finished the negotiations Ford had started to hand the Canal and Canal Zone back to Panama. Four years later, Reagan ran against Carter and blasted him for "giving away" the Canal. (Reagan, by the way, had the CIA assassinate Torrijos shortly after he was inaugurated president, not because of Castro or the Canal per se but because the Reaganites believed he was too sympathetic to the Nicaraguan Sandinistas who had recently toppled the fascist Somoza regime the CIA and far right Reaganite elements in the U.S. backed.)

Why bring up Panama-- which the U.S. helped create by using military force against Colombia-- and Reagan now? We're headed into GOP primary election season and this post should serve as a warning in regard to the ceaseless barrage of GOP bullshit headed in our direction about places that most of their base are frightened of and/or know nothing about-- from Libya, Yemen, Iran, Syria, and Iraq to Venezuela, Russia and any other miserable country the candidates can use to frighten paranoid right-wing imbeciles. 

Good example: the line of unadulterated bullshit Rubio and Cruz are feeding hapless GOP audiences about the negotiations with Iran.

Three rebellious foreign policy hawks pushed for a tougher Iran bill. In the end, two of them-- both with 2016 hopes-- gave in to the overwhelming consensus in the chamber.

The Senate easily passed legislation Thursday that hands Congress a formal review of any U.S.-Iran agreement to limit the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for relief from sanctions.

GOP Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, and maverick freshman upstart Tom Cotton, had pushed to make the bill stronger. But even though they were denied the chance for votes on their amendments, Rubio and Cruz ultimately agreed with the Senate consensus as the bill passed 98-1, with only Cotton voting against it.

...[I]n the end, Republicans agreed with the bill that provides oversight, more information for lawmakers, and at least an avenue--however unlikely to muster a veto-proof majority-- to try and block the potential agreement that many GOP lawmakers contend will be a bad deal.

All four of the Senate GOP 2016 candidates-- Rubio, Cruz, Rand Paul, and Lindsey Graham-- were cosponsors of the initial version of the bill introduced in late February by Corker and Democrat Robert Menendez, then the Foreign Relations panel's top Democrat.

It seems safe to guess that we're in for endless heaps of Iran campaign bullshit ahead.