Payment technocrats have crippled EU’s ability to impose biting sanctions on Russia

Original IREF article of 16 March 2022 accessed on 21 March 2022

The EU recently announced partial financial sanctions on Russia, designed to keep payments for energy moving. The EU accepted the contention – disproved below – that a bank either gets cut off from SWIFT, the global financial telecommunications network, completely or not at all. […]

Rishi Sunak’s minimum 15% global corporation tax rate may have failed, but the Kremlin has stuck the boot in (inadvertently)

Original Brexit-Watch.org article

Our Brexit-Watch.org article last week showed how tax-leveraged leasing through Ireland was a major contributor to the BigTech and Biotech companies minimizing their corporation tax payments:https://www.brexit-watch.org/irelands-fear-of-depending-on-foreign-companies-tax-receipts-is-unfounded-for-the-wrong-reasonsWhilst Rishi Sunak’s much-trumpeted minimum 15% global corporation tax rate won’t have any effect at all, the Kremlin has intervened by passing a law that re-registers 500+ aircraft […]

UK adopts European approach to SWIFT sanctions over Russia

Brexit-Watch article where this piece was originally published

The UK’s financial sanctions over the Ukraine invasion fall well short of cutting Russia off SWIFT, maxing out on the usual self-congratulatory hyperbole whilst opening up significant risk. When we should be distinguishing our PR approach from that of the Kremlin, we instead get big-sounding phrases masking deficiencies […]

Scholz needs a SWIFT decision – cut Russia off or lose American bank support for the Eurosystem

What is SWIFT? Screenshot of its homepage

As already published on Facts4EU and Brexit-Watch

It has been reported that Chancellor Scholz has rejected the proposal that Russia be cut off from the SWIFT system as a punishment for its invasion of Ukraine. The Guardian has disseminated misinformation that it would anyway do little damage. Scholz may imagine […]