According to Georgi Soros, since 1984, through the Open Society Foundations, he has distributed more than $32 billion worldwide to organizations and political movements committed to liberal and progressive democracy. Beneficiaries include human rights advocates, immigration advocates, militant activists of various gender identities, and advocates of transparency, while in the US, Democratic Party politicians and even presidential candidates.
The Bennfentes Portal’s fact-checking compilation, which detailed the large-scale activities of the Soros empire from the beginning to the present day, also indicated that the speculative foundations manage their finances in a way that is diametrically opposed to the transparency and equal opportunity they promote. The obvious purpose is to avoid paying taxes.
The collapse of the British pound
Before we delve into the specifics of Soros’ double standards and tax ethics, it’s worth looking back at how the speculator’s commercial enterprise and the network of charities are intertwined. He started accumulating Gyorgy Sorost’s fortune, estimated at about $25 billion today, through his hedge fund, Quantum Fund.
The businessman founded the fund in the late 1960s in the favorable tax environment of the Netherlands Antilles. He quickly raised a lot of dust by saying that if he smelled profit anywhere in the world, he advanced in full force – as the author of Bennfentes puts it.
It should be remembered that Soros became really notorious in 1992, when he speculated against the then overvalued British pound. The pound collapsed with a huge bang against the German mark, temporarily devalued to such an extent that even money changers would not buy it. It is estimated that Soros made a profit of $1 billion. British history In the years since Black Wednesday, similar guesswork has been used before against both Thai and Malaysian currency. Each time, this triggered a wave of cutbacks, impoverishing millions in local communities.
Charity is also a business
We already knew that ethical considerations never excite a speculator, but the reasoning he contemplates is still very interesting. In 1998, The New York Times asked Soros a sharp question: How could he juggle the role of a tough businessman, as he put it?to immoral markets Thanks to his role as a philanthropist working to improve the world. – The speculator replied that a distinction must be made between playing by the rules and creating the rules.
One tries to play optimally by the rules, regardless of the social consequences. Whereas when making rules one should care more about the social consequences than about one’s own interests
Explanation of double standards.
His argument is also wrong because, from a business standpoint, Soros does not separate the two worlds completely. US tax records reveal that the Quantum Fund is now closely intertwined with the Open Society Foundations. In fact, the hedge fund is now used as an investment vehicle on behalf of the two main institutions of this network, the Open Society Institute and the Open Society Foundation.
Billions of dollars in tax evasion
Events accelerated when the United States passed a new law in 2008 against tax evasion through offshore structures. According to this, he would have had to pay billions in federal and local taxes, in addition to the taxes levied because of Obamacare, according to Bloomberg estimates, that is, compulsory health insurance. Hedge fund managers were given a grace period until the end of 2017 to comply with this new tax obligation, but Soros moved part of his investment portfolio to tax-friendly Ireland in 2008, according to Bloomberg. Indeed, for some time it seemed that he would be able to avoid tax liability in this way.
Things became more complicated for the speculator when in 2011, in the wake of the banking crisis, the US government introduced new rules to make hedge funds more transparent. To avoid this, Soros closed the gates to outside investors and turned the Quantum Fund into a family fund. In 2013, he moved his Open Society Foundations portfolio to the Cayman Islands, known as a tax haven. Finally, when the 2017 deadline approached and Soros had to start paying off his US tax debt, he donated most of his shares to the Open Society Foundations. Since these donations are partially tax deductible, this has helped reduce the tax burden.
Complete darkness covers speculator investments
The Insider article also drew attention to the fact that since Soros has now reorganized the Open Society Foundations’ finances, it’s not entirely clear how the Quantum Fund invests the incoming money. After the speculator decided in 2011 to withdraw from the new US control rules, there is no information available about his investment portfolio. In addition, as mentioned earlier, the Cayman Islands are known for their tax environment and were on the European blacklist of tax havens until a few years ago.
One thing Soros Fund Management (SFM) has publicly committed to since 2020 is one of the goals of the Climate Strategy. In light of this, the fund manager will not make new investments in fossil fuel companies for its member funds after 2025. SFM, headquartered in New York, invests in a number of companies on behalf of the Soros family. Public statements from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) clearly show that the family continues to invest in oil, gas and even coal. But it is not possible to know whether this includes investments from the Cayman Islands that serve the purposes of the Open Society Foundations in this way. There is no trace of openness in the Soros empire, which promotes an open society and accuses, among other things, the Hungarian government of closed-mindedness, opaque state structure, and corruption. In 2012, OSF launched a campaign to tighten US transparency rules, while Soros got out of it in 2011 with their fund manager called the Quantum Fund. Even then, Republican Senator Richard Shelby accused Soros of hypocrisy, but he declined to comment.
In the Netherlands in 2013, Georgi Soros accused Shell of lobbying against disclosure rules that Europe wanted to introduce in the wake of the United States. In Neusur and Het Financially Dagblad, Soros called on the government not to listen to the oil company’s objections. But at the time, there was no mention of the mystery of Soros’ network.
They demand transparency from others
It is also remarkable that many of the Soros-funded organizations are highly critical of tax evasion and opaque structures. For example, two of the top three recipients deal with fighting inequality: Global Witness, which received €3.1m from the Open Society Foundations in 2021, and the One Campaign, which received €3.9m. The two NGOs have spoken out strongly against tax havens, particularly governments and companies’ lack of transparency. In 2017, Global Witness called on the UK government to end financial secrecy in its overseas territories, such as the Cayman Islands. In 2018, Global Witness and One Campaign signed a similar open letter to The Guardian.
As the Dutch Stichting Onderzoek Multinationale Ondernemingen wrote in 2016: “Subsidiaries in countries such as the Bahamas, Panama, Guernsey and the Cayman Islands […] At least they point to tax evasion.” Nevertheless, the foundation received about $1.9 million from Soros over the next five years.
