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Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noah.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer, Paul Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know worldwide technically, because that's how podcasts work. Tonight's episode takes us around this vast globe of ours into a web of proven conspiracies, not conspiracy theories, proven conspiracies that have gone on for decades at the very least, and are going to continue because they're mainly invisible for
the vast majority of humans. I mean, we we were talking about this a little bit off air, and uh, Paul Rocket Launch Decad said, hang on freeport, like in Tenant by Christopher Nolan.
Yeah, precisely, precisely, and like in what was it last season of what's that show about all the rich people? Based on the Fox success success it's in billions. Uh, this these freeport things, they're popular.
It's a rich people think quick question that we'll understand your freeports help me understand the plot of Tenant better or or no, no, not really.
But the but you can read some excellent uh, some excellent film theory and analysis on Tenant. I think Tenant's a three watch. I think by the third time, you know it either makes sense or you just sort of give up at all. But like freeports are interesting, Matt's You're Not in Succession another work of fiction. They're described as my father has some Financial Impressions, which I thought
was a cool euphemism. This is a sordid tale of billionaires in crime and fine art and stolen antiques, dirty muddy trafficking, terrorist cartels, all gathered in a strange set of locations that are in a very real sense, in a very literal sense, they are above the laws of the common and the poor. And it's strange that, despite how expensive it is to get into these things, we still commonly call them free ports. I can't do the air quotes hard. Here are the facts.
I mean, you know, you mentioned the idea of these euphemisms. Would you say, like some economic impressions, isn't the term freeport essentially a euphemism in and of itself. It doesn't really mean what it seems like it should mean, right, because they're very expensive, you know, to to participate in.
Right, Yeah, for the private services offered at a lot of them. Right, But they are free from molestation by the government in like of the country you're porting in.
I love describing rule of law as molestation. Yeah, yeah, right, free from all these pesky rules that the common have to practice. There's sometimes called freeport now is like a street name for a genre of what we call special economic zone. They can sometimes be called free economic zones or free territories or just free zones because there's not always a water port attached to these locations and their goal overall is to encourage economic activity.
Well, for we mere mortals, the closest thing to a freeport that we can actually benefit from be like a duty free shop.
In the US, they have government designated zones.
Right right, which are totally different and above board because it's this US.
Yeah, But the idea that the nature of your or whatever where this place exists is it's sort of this liminal space economically speaking, That's kind of what duty free shops or zones are as well, where you can if you have an international ticket, you can buy stuff without paying duty taxes on them, like things like liquor and perfume and whatever else they have at those places.
Yeah, but theoretically these well correct me if I'm wrong here, guys. But my understanding is that these things are often set up so a big company can bring something like steel in and they don't have to pay the tariffs and all the taxes on that raw steel they bring in. Then they can turn that steel in or near the freeport into something new and then export it from that freeport, and then they pay the country, the freeport's country the taxes on exporting it.
Yeah, and we'll get into we'll get into that as well in tonight's episode. Yeah, Like that's a that's a perfect encapsulation of when it's supposed to work correctly. According to the revised Kyoto Convention of two thousand and three, a freeport is quote a part of a territory of a contracting party, which could be anyone, by the way, where any goods introduced are regarded as being outside of the territory of that country. So the import duties, the tariffs,
the taxes, they don't count. It's kind of like another microcosm since said do you freestore. Another microcosmic example of this would be if you are traveling internationally and you have a layover in a second country before you get to your destination country. You don't leave the airport, right, You just hang in the lounge, get you know, coffee or whatever, and you never have to clear customs. You can do that with things as well, especially if you're
quite wealthy. I will say, in most cases, if you are regular Joe Schmoe traveling around, so.
We're talking about like a night stay over a couple hours.
Right, if you don't leave the airport, if you have to leave the airport and come back or whatever, then I guess it resets.
I mean with the stuff going into a freeport, you just leave for a couple hours, right.
So yeah, the in most cases, if you are human traveling, there is an implied agreement that you will only be at that airport or that's liminal space, as we said, for a certain amount of time. This does not necessarily apply to the things. Originally, and we'll just summarize the history here so we can move on. Originally, a lot of like we see freeports of all of in step with the modern idea of the nation state, because you know, you look at things like the Automan Empire, for instance,
they were a theocracy. However, they also liked money and they needed economic passage between the infidels and the Ottomans, and so they would have these specific areas where you could go as a merchant and you didn't have to you know, convert Islam. A lot of empires did this. You also could ostensibly preserve your own identity within these limited spaces. That's the one of the origins of freeports. And they were big in colonialism as well. Singapore, Hong Kong,
Saint Thomas and the Caribbean. They all had these things, and they mainly evolved to They primarily evolved to help people pass customs get away with customs. How would we describe customs. I think it's familiar to most people have.
Traveled well, and I just wanted to point out to you I traveled it nationally recently, and I hadn't for many, many years, and have you know a few times in
the last handful of years. But customs isn't the same as passport control, right like when you pass through into a new country and you go through that thing where you have the line of like windows and you have to show your passport and you get you might get a stamp there as well, But that's not the same as customs because they're not it's not your your destination.
So your final destination is where you have to like declare what you may have brought that could be subject to these kinds of import export duties.
Right, yeah, they're best to think of it as a ven diagram. Today, Clearing customs is usually colloquially took to mean the passport control. Right you're landing, you know, hopefully you got your visa or whatever, and you have more than ten thousand dollars US. You have to declare it at customs, which doesn't mean they're going to take it
all the time most of the time in fact. But the way it works is you present your pass where your other paperwork, you answer hopefully a few questions, you might get a little fun stamp, and then you go on your merry way. But the experience widely varies depending on any number of variables. So these factors could include things like your destination country, your ultimate your point z your origin country. That's a huge one. What kind of
passport you have for any international travel nerds? Right now, the number one best passport is Singapore. That gets you into the most places. Huh interesting, that's cool. You got some freeports. They're down to clown And you know, there's stuff that obviously you shouldn't bring with you that will make trouble at customs, like Heroin. Don't you know a spoiler, don't bring Heroin with you abroad. You know, in general,
don't do Heroin. But then there are other things that might surprise foreigners, you know, like if you ever travel to a place and they have some pretty hard bands on different fruit or vegetables or animal products, like Australia. Hawaii's big for this. Hawaii enforces this on other residents of the United States just because of their unique ecosystem.
Certain types of maybe pork products that are processed in a certain way that is not permitted here in the United States, for example, like Iberico ham or that is actually illegal to bring back from Spain. I was told by that butcher.
Oh I didn't know that.
Yeah, it has to do with the way it's processed and cured or something like that. I don't know exactly the specifics, but you are not allowed to travel back with it, and when you do end up in customs back in the US, there's a lot of signs about parasites, the little cute infographics saying be careful, don't bring back whatever because it could be an invasive species and cause all kinds of chaos in the ecosystem of Atlanta, and like raw.
Milk with Canada and the US border exactly.
Yeah, I would just want to go back to something
you have in the outline here, Ben. It is really interesting and just mentioning Singapore as being having like one of the best passports makes sense that you found Singapore was one of the early freeports, and I think for my understanding of Hong Kong's relationship between China and the rest of the world, it also is really interesting that it once was or was a freeport early on, because it would make sense as almost a way to get into China or do dealings with China, or for trying
to do dealings with other countries. Back in the day, you could use Hong Kong as almost this, as you said, a liminal zone.
Up till nineteen ninety nine. I think that's really when the lease expired. So yeah, in Singapore course, being in an autocracy based at the Strait of Malacca, which they largely control. Look, so let's say you bring in more than ten grand or whatever it is. You've got a valuable artifact, it belongs to a museum type stuff. You declare that a customs because you don't want to get in trouble. You want to be by the book. These things might not be technically illegal, but they'll invite some
scrutiny that will almost certainly complicate your trip. So if we're a terrorist organization or a shadowy billionaire, how do we get around all this bureaucratic hub up. The answer is simple, put your stuff in places where laws don't apply. Find yourself a real life Schrodinger's box. Your objects are physically present, but they are not considered to exist in the country in which they're stored. They're just in transit on the way to somewhere else. Loophole.
Sorry, it just seems made up, doesn't It's weird.
It's like agreed upon indivisualized pirate bays or something, you know, where everybody can sail in.
Stuff it's like codified the opposite of object object impermanence, or it's like I don't see anything. Why I don't see that?
Are those blood diamonds? Yeah, but they're not here the diamonds you're looking for.
All these guys with machine guns.
Hey, they're in transit and punk brace. Yeah, I mean. The first modern freeports were meant to prevent what you're describing mat which is a really good point. Double taxation and in places with like VAT or value add attacks, this is a huge deal. So you could say, hey, we're a bunch of manufacturers in Australia. We got this machinery. It's going to go to the United Kingdom, but it has to make stops along the way, and if we use freeports then we won't get taxed or tariffed at
every single stop. Theoretically, this makes sense and you need it for global business. But the boffins, the eggheads, the legal beagles quickly realized there is no time limit on this concept of being in transit. They're parking lots with no no clock. You can deposit something. As a matter of fact, many people have, including stuff Nazis stole back in World War two, you could just deposit it in
a freeport and then it'll appreciate indefinitely. Eventually you can sell it, and depending on how you sell it, you never have to pay a dime of tax or a pence, I should say. Yeah.
So when you use the term like deposit, the implication there is that not all freeports involve water, right, not all freeports involve a port per se.
Right, Well, an airport is also a good.
Point a port of call. That's right.
It's not as common, but you know it's it's usually v a c or river or wherever you get through.
Geneva is landlocked, right, and they have the world's largest art collection because of their freeport. Yes, not a museum you can go to. This is big stuff.
Do you mind if we just really quickly to talk about the raw material angle, because I think it's just important for me to understand what I was thinking about this. Countries want to you have a ton offact manufacturing in their country if they're like expensive goods, especially if the country is going to make a lot of money when those goods are sold, If that company altogether is going to be generating income tax in some way or state tax, country tax whatever.
It is just economic activity.
They want these big companies they're manufacturing things, to apply their goods essentially and their sales to the GDP of that country. So what they'll do is encourage a big company to come in and manufacture their stuff, let's say in the United States, and use this freeport to bring in the raw materials so they don't have to pay all those tariffs and taxes on bringing in let's say, steal from China or something like that, and then they manufacture their goods and then they send them out and
then they pay their taxes bypassing trade wars all together. Yeah, but so it's weird, like you'd think a country like the US would want to have that company any pay taxes twice or three times or seven times, or have her many, you know times they can get away with it. But ultimately it's like it means that every country pretty much that wants these big money players to be in their country, to have these freeports and have that accessibility for companies to go under the radar like that.
Well, but guys, can I start a freeport? How does one start? How does one initiate the paperwork to begin establishing a freeport.
I would say, first you find a vulnerable post EU archipelago and then promise their politicians.
Really any country that's in turmoil, hop in and make some friends, and then have a bunch of capital.
Start an abusive financial relationship, which is you know, capitalism. But you're right, we'll get to this too. There are there are ways to do it, and a lot of it goes back to power. Accreting power right, Fire makes friends, wealth likes wealth, and that's a feedback loop that can be leveraged. Has been and like, look, there are legitimate uses. We're being very careful to say that there are legitimate uses for these global hideaways, and they're often sold to
the public under what we could call optimistic terms. The idea that the idea is, you know, you're in Liverpool or Kenshasha, insert any country or city or municipality here, and the promise that the politicians and the businesses make
is this is a source of job creation. Things have been kind of tough, will get you jobs in this neighborhood will also have economic prosperity because all these businesses are going to be coming in here and they'll be free from that pesky regulation and taxation and being free from taxes and regulations. Well, that's the foundation for prosperity. Right. This might be good for the rich, but it's all so good for everyone, trickle down type stuff, right, Ors and Sparrow.
Yeah, Well, for every freeport, you're looking at thousands, if not tens of thousands of jobs, like actual jobs, for as long as the freeport exists. And that's another weird thing about them. They tend to pop up and then go away after a couple of decades or even years depending.
Yeah, and how much of that is calculated like a pop up restaurant, and how much of that is the pendulum of public awareness swinging back?
There is a certain in the knowness about it, isn't there? Like how I like to even know where they are, what they are, and how to exploit them. You've got to be in a certain echelon of humanity to, you know, to tick all those boxes.
Right, that's absolutely correct. Sure it might be good for the rich, but it's also good for everyone. What if we told you there was more to the story. We're not going to This is the end of the episode, spoil kitty. Yeah, they will take a break for some mats. Here's where it gets crazy, all right. You let people sanan once. They're gonna shenan again. As the Internet loves to say.
Use is that an Internet thing? I've never encountered that. That's cute.
Like, there are quite a few very concerning opportunities for corruption, conspiracy, and crime in the world of freeports. First, the crime, there's a ton of it. There's so much of it, it's everywhere. Thing Like, ah, I hate to say it, I would pause it that you can at any single freeport in the world right now, you can find something sketchy going on, especially when we look at financial crimes because now they've replaced banks.
Yeah, people love the shenan again and again and again when it comes to financial crimes. Because as international banking started to find itself or the thumb of new regulations, because of governmental crackdowns worldwide on tax fraud, freeport's kind of slipped into that role of like offshore bank accounts, right.
One hundred percent. Yeah, tax avoidance, tax shelters, tax havens, all the hits, all the good ones. Tax avoidance is a legal thing. Tax avoidance is just the sort of the group term for the toolbox of stuff that theoretically anybody can do to minimize the amount they have to give to the tax man. We've all felt this sting. It feels great to It feels fantastic when you're done with a return and you think, ah, I'm not getting burned that bad.
Well, avoidance, though, is not inherently the same as fraud or necessarily illegal, right. You can you can employ certain loopholes, as we know, very very wealthy people tend to do and be completely on the right side of the law by avoiding certain tax taxes, you know, income text.
One hundred percent. Look into IKEA's nonprofit.
And really quickly, guys, I meane, I know this is an episode for another day, but it just got me thinking because you know me, I'm always complaining about not knowing where my tax money goes. But did you guys see Trump's kind of big move to maybe like get some people on his side talking about eliminating the income tax and and and replacing it with tariffs, which you know, based on the quick and dirty analysis I read, would
fundamentally shift the way kind of business is done. A lot of these types of situations would be included, but also just in general, it could really be a you know, finger in the eye of countries like China and stuff like that. But it obviously it seems real appealing to folks who are like God, income text sucks, you know.
Yeah, I would say this is an apolitical point that is objectively a very stupid idea. It just it's not supported by the lack of enforcement we see in teriff Regimesently.
Yeah, every company would leave, every nobody would do business in the United States anymore because it's that easy to just shift it and say, all right, cool.
But it sure is a night shiny political object to dangle out there for folks that maybe don't do their homework, right. I appreciate you guys, you know, offering that perspective, but it does seem like the kind of ditch effort, you know, policy point that maybe would get some people's eyes lightened up. You know, no more taxes, why that sounds awesome.
The best that could happen is you could reduce the percentages of income tax But there's almost no way. I don't whatever, I'm not a politician, but I don't see how you could ever do that considering the spending that the United States is like the ramp that it's currently on and has been on. How do you reduce that?
Also, the president has no power over that nature of legislation speeches. Yeah, but objectively, that's that sideline mascotrey, which I don't know is a word, but oh why don't know it's a word, but yeah, it's American English. Also, shout out to Ireland. They've been making headway as a tax haven, so this would be very helpful to Ireland. Maybe we should get our citizenship. But anyway, you're right, Uh,
there are a lot of up to statements. And again, just to be very clear, when we're saying something is objectively a stupid idea, we would say the same thing if any presidential candidate propose something that Wack could do.
Oh one hundred percent.
No.
I appreciate the very you know, uh, non partisan perspective, because that's all I was asking for, and I think that's just it's a fascinating thing to trot out there, especially given what you just said.
What if we turn the whole of the United States into non American free zones, but just one big freeport, you know what I mean, Roll the dice. Let's see how it goes. It's look, everybody tries not to overpay in taxes. The US tax system as a whole bag of badgers. But we know that tax avoidance techniques become more sophisticated the more money you have to begin with. So I would argue that for the upper echelon of the wealthy, these tax avoidance techniques are on the level
of sorcery. This is like financial wizardry. There are accountants who make more money than you will ever see in your life, and they work just a couple couple months a year.
Mm hmm. Well in art not art dealers, art liaisons. There maybe goods liaisons, people who sell goods via the freeport who pretend to be the owners of objects and property.
Sub tenants, yeah, brokers.
Yeah, well that's the whole thing when you get into But it's part of this, I mean, it's it's part of the financial crimes. It's you don't in most freeports. You don't have to have an end like who is the human being that actually owns this property?
Right? And who is the human being at the other side of the table.
Yeah, you got you got some people who are talking about selling some art for a ninety five million or one hundred and eleven million dollars, and then it does change hands and it all happens there, but nobody knows who sold what to who.
I'm not the CEO of Discordia LLC. I am the liaison between IGU and Discordia, and then I can forward the email if you would like customs. But that's going to take eight months minimum, at by which point I may have another job with a totally different shell company, but I will still be here. Ye.
And it's often for a broker like that to make two percent on a sale, two to five percent on a sale, which means, let's say it's one hundred million dollar sale, My god, you're a millionaire. You just made one sale exactly, and.
Then you take the rest of the year off this job. Bro These freeports play a huge role in this financial sorcery because they are a genuine way of rigging the market, and the it can become so surrealed and absurd. We talked about this in our previous episode, The Fine Art
of Money Laundering. You can have an artifact change hands multiple times, and the price can increase with each iteration, so it gets more and more expensive, more and more money in play there on the craps table, but that actual artifact may never physically leave the single storage room. It's almost like speculation when people are trading in oil futures and the oil was just left in the same ship off the coast.
Yeah, And it's so weird because often the contracts, the initial contracts for goods that go into a freeport are for several months and at maximum they're like six months or something like that. But then they get what it elongated and negotiated up to several years. And then sometimes depending on the freeport, it can be a permanent storage facility basically, or a storage facility within the freeport system that is another private service, right.
And they're still finding stuff stolen by the Nazis in European freeports. That's how long it can stay in that parking well.
Eighteen eighty eight is the Geneva freeport, right, right, so if you I mean, that's the biggest one around. And what was the there's something crazy some statistic that was in a twenty sixteen New York Times article, the louver. The louver is that how you.
Say it.
Had like has at the time twenty sixteen had around three hundred and fifty thousand pieces of art in it, right, But then this one freeport in Geneva had one point two million pieces of like serious art stored in it.
Is it just frozen in time?
Though?
How does appreciation and depreciation work in that case?
Well, I'm glad you asked in our earlier episode on the fine art of money laundry. It's it's dystopian level free market stuff. The piece of art or the artifact whatever, whatever it's like. The materials used to make it don't matter. It's how much a willing seller is ready to sell it for and how much a willing buyer is ready to pay for it. So if you have connections with a terrorist organization and you need to move say thirty million dollars, then just buy any old piece of fine art.
Don't even move it from the freeport. Now, congratulations, you own a Matista or a Goya or whatever that you never have to see.
It's so weird. There's a great example of this exact kind of thing. There was in Town and Country Boys, a little Town and Country article.
You guys, y, I've long had.
A subscribe Loki have some great reporting.
Oh absolutely there's some reporting from twenty fifteen about this guy named Eves Bouvier who was one of these art go between bovie of course, Eves, yes, And he was working for this Russian oligarch I don't even know how to say his name, Dmitri Rebolevbolov. And he was working for this guy as an art go between, and the oligarch found out that he was overpaying for all of
his art, just over a dinner conversation. So just to give you some numbers here, there's this one piece of art Madoligani, I don't know what that is, but some masterpiece was sold to this Russian oligarch for one hundred and eighteen million dollars and then he found out that it was actually only worth ninety three million dollars and that's what it was sold for. But this go between dude was charging like twenty five million dollars a pop for the transactions.
Has one thing rich people, Hey, it is overpaying for stuff, but we're paying for stuff.
Oh yeah, exactly. But that the whole point of that is that the masterpiece they were charged twenty five million dollars more for it. So when it was spoken about or when it was written about. It was sold for one hundred and eighteen million. It was actually, yeah, exactly. So it's kind of that thing, that speculation thing that Ben was talking about with oil prices, that it just kind of just goes up and up and up every time somebody pays a little more for it.
And is that a feature not a bug? Perhaps in this type of situation.
It very much is, because it's setting precedents. It's jurisprudence, there's another word to say it. And this leads us to the next big problem, which is money laundry. The world is full of people and organizations that have made a ton of cash doing a lot of dirt. We're talking human trafficking, evil drug stuff, slavery, terrorism. In some cases, rogue nations get slapped with what we call sanctions, which prevent them from engaging in international in the international political
and economic order. So how do we make the money move. We do a bigger version of a breaking bag car wash scheme. First, you set up a shell company, You make a series of shell companies, and preferably you span these out across international borders, because the rules for corporate governance change country to country, right, So you spread your breadcrumbs wide and this helps throw off the stench of your dirty money. Then you move illegal funds through the
international system to kind of slowly wash it. We call this trade based money laundry. And the weird thing is this sounds so small time for international spector level evil organizations.
But the weird thing is often they're selling cigarettes, add alcohol and like knockoff handbags in weight through these freeports and then they you do this legal parkore where you cook the invoices right or you over under deliver the stuff you agree you're going to deliver, and then no one on either side has a problem with it because the two the buyer and the seller, once you get through the proxy companies, they're the same group. So they're just moving their money.
Yeah, you can convert money into whatever you want, right Like, it doesn't have to be actual luxury goods. It could be just like POGs, you know, or whatever it might be. And it's just a way of like temporarily converting it to something and then you know, converting it back yep.
And back in the day, a lot of this stuff ended up funneling through Panama and Swiss banks, and we've done episodes on that stuff too, where Panama papers it all kind of functions together.
It's a big launch. Is the problem or the advantage, you know, depending on who you are and where you're at. We also we see that there's a lot of people or there are a lot of institutions that are trying to raise awareness about this. There is a steep divide, a precipitous chasm between the people who are against reports and the people who are a forum, and I want to shout out this group called Comply Advantage, who monitors this and provides different analytical and security services. They had
a great example of what we just outlined. They said, all right, if you're reading this and you're an authority trying to keep your freeports clean, which is good luck, right, it's sisyphia and it's sort of ocean versus a bucket of water, but you know, good hustle guys. Right.
So just in by way of an example here, the first beneficiary of a multimillion dollar credit line, I guess, or a letter of credit is to supply medical goods for another country's bureau of health. But the second and you know, final beneficiary of the credit issues invoices that don't match the first ones. This is I don't know.
It seems very much like a classic mafia type scam, almost like a no show job kind of thing on the Sopranos, right, or like you're billing extra for like goods and services that actually don't cost what you're billing it for, and you're disguising things that way, right, And these kind of mismatched invoices, So the first beneficiary is revealed to have substituted invoices that were marked up by three hundred percent exactly like like I was just describing,
and additionally revealed to a connection with the firm acting as its agent to the Bureau of Health, so the go between is in on the deal and facilitating it to benefit the first party.
There's some stuff in real estate that happens that's very similar to.
That continues today. And either any of these cases where outlining if you don't look closely enough, and freeports heavily incentivized not looking closely enough if you don't, this looks like everyday international business. Worse, it looks like the boring stuff, you know what I mean. Now, we're just selling loose cigarettes and discman or something but the issue is smart
criminals like boring stuff. You know, one of the best neighbors you might encounter in Atlanta, or at least personal experience here was the guy who owned the local drug operation, made sure Halloween was safe for the kids. Was basically an unofficial hoa intervened in crime and petty theft, repeatedly sent over what I will call drug enthusiasts to mow my lawn for free, just anything to keep scrutiny of law enforcement away.
That's right. That's why I like people can kind of seem get off the mark significantly when they act like you know, all drug dealers are, all illegal enterprises are just chaos in the streets, blasting way causing you know, the quality of life for those around it just decline. I mean, of course, there are examples of things like that with Cartel's, of course, but it's not the run of It's not the smart way to run an illegal operation.
It just isn't. You know, the best way to do it is to actually watch people's backs and you know, do like Pablo Escobar did, where he made sure that the people who were surrounding him where he lived loved him and and and protected him and treated him like, you know, like with the respect you would usually reserve for a.
Monarch or a political figure. Real G's move in silence like Lasagna. That's from Little Wayne. I would also say, I think Gus Fring legitimately cared about the chicken.
Is design of the silence because it has a silent g Yeah, real silence, just making sure, Uh I get it, geez ah, sorry, got it. Clever, that's very clever.
I think you probably came down between real g's moving silence like Balgoney or real G's moving silence like Lasagna, and he went with the more mop stir of the two.
Absolutely. It's also you know, I would argue, taste here. You're a big blogoney person but never been my thing.
Oh now we're going to get an email about bologney lasagna.
No, thank you. I'm well, but I don't know or you know, there is a fancy boloney is more or less like that Mortadell kind of the real fancy cold cut of that is essentially just fancy blogoney. So you know, I guess it's all it's all in in what you're looking for.
And then there's another thing, not necessarily even financial, crime, but what we foreshadowed earlier, it belongs in a museum. People are looting artifacts and putting them in freeports and kind of waiting and cooking till they get the best socio political environment to move these to private collectors like things you cannot put a price on, or perhaps to
get a good deal with a museum they're stealing. It occurs off in war, during like in times of turmoil, in ancient troubled areas of the world like the Middle East is huge for this.
So in December of twenty sixteen, authorities in Switzerland seized cultural relics that had been looted from several Middle Eastern countries, including the Yemen, Libya, and Syria, that had up until that point been stored in Geneva's freeport, which is home currently to billions of Swiss francs worth of fine art and other you know treasures, including the world's biggest, most valuable wine cellar.
That is true.
Yeah, can you store a wine cellar? That seems like I guess it's just all packed up. Maybe it's just climate controlled, baby. Yeah, that's all you need.
You got to be the cellar, you know what I mean? So the the European Union did this investigation in this
you absolute correct. It was a huge crackdown and they found that three of these pieces at least were from a UNESCO World Heritage site that the Islamic State had been destroying, because we may recall not too long ago, the Islamic State or various factions thereof were super centered on destroying you know, things that like if you're human listening now, they were destroying your stuff, like the marks of your ancestors, the story of human civilization, erasing all
of it. And looters, you know, despite their maybe fundamentalist leanings, they like to make a little bit of coin, you know, a couple of euros, so they hid this stuff shipped out via cutter to Switzerland and the Middle East is also big on freeports. This launched a new crackdown and the Swiss government when they reacted, they went pretty hard. They're trying to remove all the typical, advantageous or attractive
parts of a freeport. Like you were saying earlier, the idea is now, if you are what's called a tenant there like two hundred something tenants in Geneva for their freeport, you have to have an independent firm of specialist, a third party firm investigate the providence of your relics. And then you have to tell them who is really making
money and who is really buying it. And then the craziest part, the most like Christopher Nolan part of it, they have to submit to a quote biometric system that'll track your individual movements through the freeport. So you can't because what used to happen is people would say, hey, I work for Company A, and they might actually work for Company A, but when they get past you know, the bar wire and everything, they go to their other job, company B, and that's where they help the you know,
drug cartels make money. Yeah.
But it's so weird to me though, because that's one freeport in Geneva because they had issues and they kind of had to deal with it. There are thousands of other freeports out there that don't have this. You don't need an ultimate beneficial owner or UBO, and nobody ever gots to know about you, whoever you are. I mean, thank goodness that I mean, weirdly enough, thank goodness this terrible thing happened, because at least it's going to bring some transparency to one freeport.
Keep it on the low anyway. Yeah, So you're absolutely right. It's bigger than hip hop, right, it's deeper than wrap. This is a systemic issue. It's a conspiracy that is working for a lot of powerful people. And it doesn't stop just at the you know, the billionaire doesn't want to pay taxes. It doesn't stop at the evil character in an Indiana Jones film. Each of these freeports has a great deal of autonomy, and the rules in one place are not the same as the rules in the next.
And it touches on war, which we'll talk about. What is it good for freeports after word from our sponsors, and.
We've returned war. It never changes and it's not good for anything at all, absolutely nothing, right, huh. Now to your point bent before the break, it is very very good for freeports.
And weapons manufacturers and people who like to extract resources for profit.
Yeah. Switzerland. Again, it sounds like we may be picking on this country, but they were, you know, they're very big in the world of banking secrecy, or were for a long time. Neutrality also very big in the world of freeports.
So I thought you're going to say watches.
And watches, watches, chocolate, overpriced sandwiches, I said it going back. But so the war in Ukraine and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which was a slow boil, I think we can all agree and is currently continuing now. We don't have to get in the weeds on it, but we know that this part of the fallout of this as it resulted in Switzerland having to face scrutiny over handling Russian assets. As of twenty twenty two, the Swiss government
went back on its historical neutrality laws. They froze six points three three billion US dollars worth of Russian assets. They confiscated eleven properties, They took sanctions against Russian individuals and various shell companies and proxy entities to follow the European Union. And to be clear, Zerland is not part of the European Union. They're just sort of they're buddies the way that sometimes other people rap with the Wu Tang shannged area.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
So the issue is that even if you are the government of Switzerland, you know, you're like Swiss passport control your Swiss customs, you are still going to have problems getting into these freeports. That's nuts. That's like being the president of the United States and they say you can't go into this building.
Do you know who I am? I'm the President of the United States.
A pictoring security going a president if we let one of you, and yeah, there's going to be like forty more immediately, misdent.
This is for skullin bones members only, exactly.
And this this was a historically big move for Switzerland. One of the things that might on strange is the idea that they're taking action against specific Russian individuals. That may sound prejudiced until we realize the post communist Russia is a kleptocracy. The very well to do oligarchs of Russia and their oligarchs all over the world. The US has several The very well to do oligarchs are representatives
of Russian state power. Like they don't wake up every day and say I wonder what I would like to do with gasprop They take their orders. They are an unofficial government. So targeting those individuals is targeting the Russian state. And then we have probably this is a very weird thing to say, but the hottest debate or the hottest conspiracy juggling about freeports now, at least in the West, concerns the United Kingdom.
Oh yeah, because of Brexit fallout right, because it was sort of a debacle, didn't work out the way anyone thought or hoped or expect it, or maybe exactly as it was intended. So the idea of freeports, I guess that it makes them more important in order to claw back some of that capital that was lost in instituting
this catastrophic plan. I mean, I don't know. Again, it's up in the air as to whether you think there's anybody Ben or Matt I'd love to hear that benefited from Brexit, or if it was just in general to sort of like a dumb nationalistic move that shot everybody.
In the foot.
I don't have enough information to give you a clear answer there. I do know that there's some weird freeport stuff going on in the UK. There was a there's a brand new one. There was news about it, gosh from this month June, like a couple of days ago. What is it called the Fourth Green Freeport. It's officially open for business as of June twelfth.
They reduced their environmental footprint.
Yeah.
Oh, and they're going to do it more with this fourth Green Freeport, apparently, because it's going to be focused on all kinds of things like hydrogen, offshore wind, sustainable fuels, modular manufacturing.
Matt waved his hands when he said modular manufacturing.
But it's that thing we're talking about where you you are encouraging outsiders essentially to come into this freeport so that their private company can bring stuff in, manufacture it, work on things there, and then the UK will make money afterwards, Scotland will make money.
Doesn't It just go to show how little the actual consumer is regarded in all of these things, all of these goings on. When you see what we get the occasional tax free holiday, you know, or whatever, like the ability to write something off on our taxes, et cetera, when you have these just massive tax loopholes that are designed not to benefit us but to benefit the folks that you know, are charging us for all of the goods and services and things that we you know, rely on. Door enjoy.
I'm drinking out of a paper straw like a sucker. The characterized Yeah, right exactly, you know what I mean?
Though, It's like what we get the the the amount of quote unquote tax grace that we get as individual humans is just a joke compared to the things that are available and accessible to the the larger you know, profiteers in these in.
These situation last Monday murders is right, well exactly the magic part.
But yeah, because it has nothing to do with us overall. It has to do with the GDP of the country or the gross value added amount or whatever the other economic numbers are that they toally gross, that's.
For sure GNP shout out to Bhutan for gross domestic happiness. Yes, it's still still a weird one.
But just this example, this fourth Green Freeport in Scotland that just opened up. Right, everybody in Scotland who is of a certain economic level or things about you know, the country of the United Kingdom and specific areas of Scotland and tax dollars and all that stuff, they're there. They believe that's going to bring in around seven hundred million dollars in private and public investment every year for the next ten years. So like seven billion dollars that they're gonna make.
And also a great deal of the public in Scotland was not aware of it. If you read like the Scotsman dot com and other articles. You'll see that the public didn't know what was going on. Yeah for a great deal. And you know, is that a bug? Is that by a design Scotland is its own place. It's got a lot of other stuff going on. It's easy to miss the boring news. Well.
Yeah, and the and they'll the politicians will talk to the public about it. The economic specialists will talk to the public about it and say things like it could generate up to thirty eight thousand well paid, quote highly skilled green jobs, with nearly nineteen thousand of these being direct gross jobs linked to target sectors and tax sites.
But what they're not saying is if this is private investment, a lot of it's private investment, and it's a company coming in to do business through this freeport, are those jobs coming in from other countries where human beings are going to work, have work visas from other countries? Or are they hiring people directly there?
That goes to the question we'll get to at the end, which is do these actually work? Well?
Yeah, and I hate to keep harping on this, but like things like stimulus, you know, they have measurable results. And I mean it's an economic move that some would argue, Yeah, stimulus does increase you know, spending, and it's injection back into the economy, and it's ultimately good for the big picture. But the there's so few things that are like that
that actually benefit the consumer or directly. And if you and with the number, the sheer number of these types of tax havens and loopholes and freeport situations that are out there, I sure would hope that it would benefit the big picture in some way.
Right get asked to well, it's the old advertising thing. Are we selling a product or are we selling a story? And I would add I would argue that to the vast majority of the public, freeports, the public approval of them is based upon selling a story, which is not We'll get to the idea of whether they work, but for the background, freeports are not, by any means a new idea. In the United Kingdom, in the age of Thatcherite austerity, there were multiple freeports set up in the eighties,
including Liverpool and Southampton. They were phased out later in twenty twelve, but the UK government post brexit said we need to bring these back, and again that chasm of vibe we're talking about here. The people who are pro freeport tend to be private businesses, high net individuals, and the politicians who call those entities masters. The people against it tend to be a well informed public, and all the nerds who were paid to objectively look at it.
The Office of Budgetary Responsibility over there in the UK said, look, the tax breaks were given these folks, and these freeports are proposing they're going to cost US fifty million pounds sterling a year. They said that in twenty twenty one quick ballpark math, that's about sixty three point four million US dollars per year. They also said, we're not really making anything new. We're taking economic activity from other places.
We're taking jobs from other places. We're just like cloud seeding. We're not making rain, we're moving moisture. And it may be to the detriment of other people in this large interconnecttion did system and then also boom, just one last mic drop. They don't actually work. Freeports don't work the way that they are sold to the public as working well.
And then just to double back on something that I believe Matt or Ben you pointed out earlier, these do create jobs. Right, Well, if there's a silver lining at all, maybe that's one of them.
I would say they create jobs to run the freeport the way an airport creates jobs to run parts of the airport.
Right.
That's a thing. You got to have people to make it happen. But when it comes to creating jobs for specific companies that are coming in, like the private investment they're talking about, it's a maybe situation at best.
Yeah, and old jobs are all jobs are worthwhile endeavors. Right, It's tough to get one, it's tough to keep one. But there is a difference between high paying jobs and low wage jobs. And the argument here is that a lot of the free ports, due to the inherent nature of the way they're structured, they will move jobs at least, but they're often going to be low wage jobs aka
not what the public was promised. Also, they're moving stuff around. Again, they're not necessarily creating higher skilled jobs that would change the fortune of an economy. You know, you don't have to look far to see examples of quote unquote forward investment or private public partnerships that do not benefit the
communities in which they are created. Right, But then the question is if they might not work in terms of what the public's promise, but if you're the guy trying to clean the money or the person or the entity trying to clean the money, and freeports are great, they work perfectly. Why change it?
I don't make more of them? And so we can move our stuff to other freeports and just keep on moving it.
Always in transit, you know what I mean, keep on trucking.
So I mean, surely we're not the only one making these observations in terms of like what good are these to the average you know, citizen, Like what are the benefits that do they outweigh the Shenanigan agains that are happening. Are there is there any you know, are there any moves being made towards, you know, maybe clamping down on these things a little bit since they have been kind of compared to shady banking deals.
Yeah, in Europe, at least in just about four years ago, the European Union clamped down on around eighty two freeports and they said, look, all you have been doing, you've been you've been helping some economies, but you haven't been helping the economies of your country. You've been helping the economies of terrorists and money launderers and organized crime. And those are spoiler, not the people you said you were going to help with this whole with this whole experiment.
Yeah, or individual literally billionaires, yes, like that oligarch we mentioned earlier, who's just keeping hundreds, if not more, priceless objects and just waiting to offload them when it may, when the time is right.
Just seriously, Monty Burns style steepled fingers going, hm, these lab grown diamonds may become an issue.
Yeah, I'm telling you.
Yeah, And you know, shout out to the EU because they're making that move, because they concluded what we had talked about at the very beginning of this evening's episode. They said, these freeports are essentially becoming the sketchy banks that we had so much trouble with earlier. And the game of international financial regulation is the game of whackable. You kill one institution or you make it honest, then another one springs up in a place it's even worse.
It's it's like the old myth about the hydra. You cut off one avenue of dirty money and two more spring forth. So what will replace the freeports. I don't know something is being done. But the question, maybe the real final question here is will any legislation make a difference in the face of all this money? It is so much money. No one knows how much money it is.
Yeah, I don't. I don't see it happening because let's say you shut down all the European Union freeports. Guess what the people who are using these uh, they've they've got shipping on lock, they've got yachts, they've got to move some stuff around.
Guys. It just occurred to me. You know what else is another good freeport that's in in in pop culture and literature enter zone and william S Burrow's Naked Lunch is a freeport. And it also it's like kind of of scum and villainy type situation that evolves around there. And we haven't really talked much about what life is like in these freeports, but that is how it's depicted in Naked Lunch.
Very nice.
Oh, Ben, I think I have an answer to your question. If they shut down all the freeports, what do they replace it with? Moon ports?
Oh? I thought you were gonna say Dave and Busters. All right, Moon and Busters. Yeah, let's do it. Do check out also our episode on mysterious holes. I promise that that makes sense.
Right where they're going to keep stuff.
A loophole is a mysterious hole. I guess.
Technically we promise we only get childish maybe half a dozen times, probably less. It's a great episode. Actually, I would.
Argue, this is my wine cave, right, Please visit me at my port. Don't worry, it's free.
It's full of port. Fine port is what I keep in mind.
Freeport and this something like this will inevitably continue because most of the public is never going to personally encounter this outside of you know, scamp references in fiction and film. We would love to hear your experiences, help your fellow conspiracy realist out if you have boots on the ground with shady international dealings and heck, you know, if you work at a freeport or free economic zone, please tell us the stuff they don't want you to know. We try to be easy to find online.
Well, yeah, like what's it? Like, what's the setup? Like I'm picturing, you know, the way an airport operates or whatever, But I just want to know, like, if you do work at one of these describe a day in the life of a freeport employee. I think that's fascinating. You can find this yeah at the handle conspiracy Stuff, where we exist on Facebook, where we have our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy, which you can join and get in on the conversation. We are also conspiracy stuff
on xfka, Twitter and on YouTube. Or we have video content rolling out every single week. Bet youa we'll do something freeport related one of these days very soon on Instagram and TikTok or conspiracy Stuff show.
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Call us.
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