Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noah.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer, Paul Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3: You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 3: want you to know worldwide technically, because that's how podcasts work.
Speaker 3: Tonight's episode takes us around this vast globe of ours
Speaker 3: into a web of proven conspiracies, not conspiracy theories, proven
Speaker 3: conspiracies that have gone on for decades at the very least,
Speaker 3: and are going to continue because they're mainly invisible for
Speaker 3: the vast majority of humans. I mean, we we were
Speaker 3: talking about this a little bit off air, and uh,
Speaker 3: Paul Rocket Launch Decad said, hang on freeport, like in
Speaker 3: Tenant by Christopher Nolan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, precisely, precisely, and like in what was it last
Speaker 2: season of what's that show about all the rich people?
Speaker 2: Based on the Fox success success it's in billions. Uh,
Speaker 2: this these freeport things, they're popular.
Speaker 4: It's a rich people think quick question that we'll understand
Speaker 4: your freeports help me understand the plot of Tenant better
Speaker 4: or or no, no, not really.
Speaker 3: But the but you can read some excellent uh, some
Speaker 3: excellent film theory and analysis on Tenant. I think Tenant's
Speaker 3: a three watch. I think by the third time, you
Speaker 3: know it either makes sense or you just sort of
Speaker 3: give up at all. But like freeports are interesting, Matt's
Speaker 3: You're Not in Succession another work of fiction. They're described
Speaker 3: as my father has some Financial Impressions, which I thought
Speaker 3: was a cool euphemism. This is a sordid tale of
Speaker 3: billionaires in crime and fine art and stolen antiques, dirty
Speaker 3: muddy trafficking, terrorist cartels, all gathered in a strange set
Speaker 3: of locations that are in a very real sense, in
Speaker 3: a very literal sense, they are above the laws of
Speaker 3: the common and the poor. And it's strange that, despite
Speaker 3: how expensive it is to get into these things, we
Speaker 3: still commonly call them free ports. I can't do the
Speaker 3: air quotes hard. Here are the facts.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, you mentioned the idea of these euphemisms.
Speaker 4: Would you say, like some economic impressions, isn't the term
Speaker 4: freeport essentially a euphemism in and of itself. It doesn't
Speaker 4: really mean what it seems like it should mean, right,
Speaker 4: because they're very expensive, you know, to to participate in.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, for the private services offered at a lot
Speaker 2: of them. Right, But they are free from molestation by
Speaker 2: the government in like of the country you're porting in.
Speaker 3: I love describing rule of law as molestation. Yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 3: free from all these pesky rules that the common have
Speaker 3: to practice. There's sometimes called freeport now is like a
Speaker 3: street name for a genre of what we call special
Speaker 3: economic zone. They can sometimes be called free economic zones
Speaker 3: or free territories or just free zones because there's not
Speaker 3: always a water port attached to these locations and their
Speaker 3: goal overall is to encourage economic activity.
Speaker 4: Well, for we mere mortals, the closest thing to a
Speaker 4: freeport that we can actually benefit from be like a
Speaker 4: duty free shop.
Speaker 2: In the US, they have government designated zones.
Speaker 3: Right right, which are totally different and above board because
Speaker 3: it's this US.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But the idea that the nature of your or
Speaker 4: whatever where this place exists is it's sort of this
Speaker 4: liminal space economically speaking, That's kind of what duty free
Speaker 4: shops or zones are as well, where you can if
Speaker 4: you have an international ticket, you can buy stuff without
Speaker 4: paying duty taxes on them, like things like liquor and
Speaker 4: perfume and whatever else they have at those places.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but theoretically these well correct me if I'm wrong here, guys.
Speaker 2: But my understanding is that these things are often set
Speaker 2: up so a big company can bring something like steel
Speaker 2: in and they don't have to pay the tariffs and
Speaker 2: all the taxes on that raw steel they bring in.
Speaker 2: Then they can turn that steel in or near the
Speaker 2: freeport into something new and then export it from that freeport,
Speaker 2: and then they pay the country, the freeport's country the
Speaker 2: taxes on exporting it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we'll get into we'll get into that as
Speaker 3: well in tonight's episode. Yeah, Like that's a that's a
Speaker 3: perfect encapsulation of when it's supposed to work correctly. According
Speaker 3: to the revised Kyoto Convention of two thousand and three,
Speaker 3: a freeport is quote a part of a territory of
Speaker 3: a contracting party, which could be anyone, by the way,
Speaker 3: where any goods introduced are regarded as being outside of
Speaker 3: the territory of that country. So the import duties, the tariffs,
Speaker 3: the taxes, they don't count. It's kind of like another
Speaker 3: microcosm since said do you freestore. Another microcosmic example of
Speaker 3: this would be if you are traveling internationally and you
Speaker 3: have a layover in a second country before you get
Speaker 3: to your destination country. You don't leave the airport, right,
Speaker 3: You just hang in the lounge, get you know, coffee
Speaker 3: or whatever, and you never have to clear customs. You
Speaker 3: can do that with things as well, especially if you're
Speaker 3: quite wealthy. I will say, in most cases, if you
Speaker 3: are regular Joe Schmoe traveling around, so.
Speaker 2: We're talking about like a night stay over a couple hours.
Speaker 4: Right, if you don't leave the airport, if you have
Speaker 4: to leave the airport and come back or whatever, then
Speaker 4: I guess it resets.
Speaker 2: I mean with the stuff going into a freeport, you
Speaker 2: just leave for a couple hours, right.
Speaker 3: So yeah, the in most cases, if you are human traveling,
Speaker 3: there is an implied agreement that you will only be
Speaker 3: at that airport or that's liminal space, as we said,
Speaker 3: for a certain amount of time. This does not necessarily
Speaker 3: apply to the things. Originally, and we'll just summarize the
Speaker 3: history here so we can move on. Originally, a lot
Speaker 3: of like we see freeports of all of in step
Speaker 3: with the modern idea of the nation state, because you know,
Speaker 3: you look at things like the Automan Empire, for instance,
Speaker 3: they were a theocracy. However, they also liked money and
Speaker 3: they needed economic passage between the infidels and the Ottomans,
Speaker 3: and so they would have these specific areas where you
Speaker 3: could go as a merchant and you didn't have to
Speaker 3: you know, convert Islam. A lot of empires did this.
Speaker 3: You also could ostensibly preserve your own identity within these
Speaker 3: limited spaces. That's the one of the origins of freeports.
Speaker 3: And they were big in colonialism as well. Singapore, Hong Kong,
Speaker 3: Saint Thomas and the Caribbean. They all had these things,
Speaker 3: and they mainly evolved to They primarily evolved to help
Speaker 3: people pass customs get away with customs. How would we
Speaker 3: describe customs. I think it's familiar to most people have.
Speaker 4: Traveled well, and I just wanted to point out to
Speaker 4: you I traveled it nationally recently, and I hadn't for many,
Speaker 4: many years, and have you know a few times in
Speaker 4: the last handful of years. But customs isn't the same
Speaker 4: as passport control, right like when you pass through into
Speaker 4: a new country and you go through that thing where
Speaker 4: you have the line of like windows and you have
Speaker 4: to show your passport and you get you might get
Speaker 4: a stamp there as well, But that's not the same
Speaker 4: as customs because they're not it's not your your destination.
Speaker 4: So your final destination is where you have to like
Speaker 4: declare what you may have brought that could be subject
Speaker 4: to these kinds of import export duties.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, they're best to think of it as a
Speaker 3: ven diagram. Today, Clearing customs is usually colloquially took to
Speaker 3: mean the passport control. Right you're landing, you know, hopefully
Speaker 3: you got your visa or whatever, and you have more
Speaker 3: than ten thousand dollars US. You have to declare it
Speaker 3: at customs, which doesn't mean they're going to take it
Speaker 3: all the time most of the time in fact. But
Speaker 3: the way it works is you present your pass where
Speaker 3: your other paperwork, you answer hopefully a few questions, you
Speaker 3: might get a little fun stamp, and then you go
Speaker 3: on your merry way. But the experience widely varies depending
Speaker 3: on any number of variables. So these factors could include
Speaker 3: things like your destination country, your ultimate your point z
Speaker 3: your origin country. That's a huge one. What kind of
Speaker 3: passport you have for any international travel nerds? Right now,
Speaker 3: the number one best passport is Singapore. That gets you
Speaker 3: into the most places. Huh interesting, that's cool. You got
Speaker 3: some freeports. They're down to clown And you know, there's
Speaker 3: stuff that obviously you shouldn't bring with you that will
Speaker 3: make trouble at customs, like Heroin. Don't you know a spoiler,
Speaker 3: don't bring Heroin with you abroad. You know, in general,
Speaker 3: don't do Heroin. But then there are other things that
Speaker 3: might surprise foreigners, you know, like if you ever travel
Speaker 3: to a place and they have some pretty hard bands
Speaker 3: on different fruit or vegetables or animal products, like Australia.
Speaker 3: Hawaii's big for this. Hawaii enforces this on other residents
Speaker 3: of the United States just because of their unique ecosystem.
Speaker 4: Certain types of maybe pork products that are processed in
Speaker 4: a certain way that is not permitted here in the
Speaker 4: United States, for example, like Iberico ham or that is
Speaker 4: actually illegal to bring back from Spain. I was told
Speaker 4: by that butcher.
Speaker 3: Oh I didn't know that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it has to do with the way it's processed
Speaker 4: and cured or something like that. I don't know exactly
Speaker 4: the specifics, but you are not allowed to travel back
Speaker 4: with it, and when you do end up in customs
Speaker 4: back in the US, there's a lot of signs about parasites,
Speaker 4: the little cute infographics saying be careful, don't bring back
Speaker 4: whatever because it could be an invasive species and cause
Speaker 4: all kinds of chaos in the ecosystem of Atlanta, and
Speaker 4: like raw.
Speaker 3: Milk with Canada and the US border exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would just want to go back to something
Speaker 2: you have in the outline here, Ben. It is really
Speaker 2: interesting and just mentioning Singapore as being having like one
Speaker 2: of the best passports makes sense that you found Singapore
Speaker 2: was one of the early freeports, and I think for
Speaker 2: my understanding of Hong Kong's relationship between China and the
Speaker 2: rest of the world, it also is really interesting that
Speaker 2: it once was or was a freeport early on, because
Speaker 2: it would make sense as almost a way to get
Speaker 2: into China or do dealings with China, or for trying
Speaker 2: to do dealings with other countries. Back in the day,
Speaker 2: you could use Hong Kong as almost this, as you said,
Speaker 2: a liminal zone.
Speaker 3: Up till nineteen ninety nine. I think that's really when
Speaker 3: the lease expired. So yeah, in Singapore course, being in
Speaker 3: an autocracy based at the Strait of Malacca, which they
Speaker 3: largely control. Look, so let's say you bring in more
Speaker 3: than ten grand or whatever it is. You've got a
Speaker 3: valuable artifact, it belongs to a museum type stuff. You
Speaker 3: declare that a customs because you don't want to get
Speaker 3: in trouble. You want to be by the book. These
Speaker 3: things might not be technically illegal, but they'll invite some
Speaker 3: scrutiny that will almost certainly complicate your trip. So if
Speaker 3: we're a terrorist organization or a shadowy billionaire, how do
Speaker 3: we get around all this bureaucratic hub up. The answer
Speaker 3: is simple, put your stuff in places where laws don't apply.
Speaker 3: Find yourself a real life Schrodinger's box. Your objects are
Speaker 3: physically present, but they are not considered to exist in
Speaker 3: the country in which they're stored. They're just in transit
Speaker 3: on the way to somewhere else. Loophole.
Speaker 4: Sorry, it just seems made up, doesn't It's weird.
Speaker 2: It's like agreed upon indivisualized pirate bays or something, you know,
Speaker 2: where everybody can sail in.
Speaker 4: Stuff it's like codified the opposite of object object impermanence,
Speaker 4: or it's like I don't see anything. Why I don't
Speaker 4: see that?
Speaker 3: Are those blood diamonds? Yeah, but they're not here the
Speaker 3: diamonds you're looking for.
Speaker 2: All these guys with machine guns.
Speaker 3: Hey, they're in transit and punk brace. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3: The first modern freeports were meant to prevent what you're
Speaker 3: describing mat which is a really good point. Double taxation
Speaker 3: and in places with like VAT or value add attacks,
Speaker 3: this is a huge deal. So you could say, hey,
Speaker 3: we're a bunch of manufacturers in Australia. We got this machinery.
Speaker 3: It's going to go to the United Kingdom, but it
Speaker 3: has to make stops along the way, and if we
Speaker 3: use freeports then we won't get taxed or tariffed at
Speaker 3: every single stop. Theoretically, this makes sense and you need
Speaker 3: it for global business. But the boffins, the eggheads, the
Speaker 3: legal beagles quickly realized there is no time limit on
Speaker 3: this concept of being in transit. They're parking lots with
Speaker 3: no no clock. You can deposit something. As a matter
Speaker 3: of fact, many people have, including stuff Nazis stole back
Speaker 3: in World War two, you could just deposit it in
Speaker 3: a freeport and then it'll appreciate indefinitely. Eventually you can
Speaker 3: sell it, and depending on how you sell it, you
Speaker 3: never have to pay a dime of tax or a pence,
Speaker 3: I should say. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So when you use the term like deposit, the implication
Speaker 4: there is that not all freeports involve water, right, not
Speaker 4: all freeports involve a port per se.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, an airport is also a good.
Speaker 4: Point a port of call. That's right.
Speaker 2: It's not as common, but you know it's it's usually
Speaker 2: v a c or river or wherever you get through.
Speaker 3: Geneva is landlocked, right, and they have the world's largest
Speaker 3: art collection because of their freeport. Yes, not a museum
Speaker 3: you can go to. This is big stuff.
Speaker 2: Do you mind if we just really quickly to talk
Speaker 2: about the raw material angle, because I think it's just
Speaker 2: important for me to understand what I was thinking about this.
Speaker 2: Countries want to you have a ton offact manufacturing in
Speaker 2: their country if they're like expensive goods, especially if the
Speaker 2: country is going to make a lot of money when
Speaker 2: those goods are sold, If that company altogether is going
Speaker 2: to be generating income tax in some way or state tax,
Speaker 2: country tax whatever.
Speaker 3: It is just economic activity.
Speaker 2: They want these big companies they're manufacturing things, to apply
Speaker 2: their goods essentially and their sales to the GDP of
Speaker 2: that country. So what they'll do is encourage a big
Speaker 2: company to come in and manufacture their stuff, let's say
Speaker 2: in the United States, and use this freeport to bring
Speaker 2: in the raw materials so they don't have to pay
Speaker 2: all those tariffs and taxes on bringing in let's say,
Speaker 2: steal from China or something like that, and then they
Speaker 2: manufacture their goods and then they send them out and
Speaker 2: then they pay their taxes bypassing trade wars all together. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but so it's weird, like you'd think a country like
Speaker 2: the US would want to have that company any pay
Speaker 2: taxes twice or three times or seven times, or have
Speaker 2: her many, you know times they can get away with it.
Speaker 2: But ultimately it's like it means that every country pretty
Speaker 2: much that wants these big money players to be in
Speaker 2: their country, to have these freeports and have that accessibility
Speaker 2: for companies to go under the radar like that.
Speaker 4: Well, but guys, can I start a freeport? How does
Speaker 4: one start? How does one initiate the paperwork to begin
Speaker 4: establishing a freeport.
Speaker 3: I would say, first you find a vulnerable post EU
Speaker 3: archipelago and then promise their politicians.
Speaker 2: Really any country that's in turmoil, hop in and make
Speaker 2: some friends, and then have a bunch of capital.
Speaker 3: Start an abusive financial relationship, which is you know, capitalism.
Speaker 3: But you're right, we'll get to this too. There are
Speaker 3: there are ways to do it, and a lot of
Speaker 3: it goes back to power. Accreting power right, Fire makes friends,
Speaker 3: wealth likes wealth, and that's a feedback loop that can
Speaker 3: be leveraged. Has been and like, look, there are legitimate uses.
Speaker 3: We're being very careful to say that there are legitimate
Speaker 3: uses for these global hideaways, and they're often sold to
Speaker 3: the public under what we could call optimistic terms. The
Speaker 3: idea that the idea is, you know, you're in Liverpool
Speaker 3: or Kenshasha, insert any country or city or municipality here,
Speaker 3: and the promise that the politicians and the businesses make
Speaker 3: is this is a source of job creation. Things have
Speaker 3: been kind of tough, will get you jobs in this
Speaker 3: neighborhood will also have economic prosperity because all these businesses
Speaker 3: are going to be coming in here and they'll be
Speaker 3: free from that pesky regulation and taxation and being free
Speaker 3: from taxes and regulations. Well, that's the foundation for prosperity. Right.
Speaker 3: This might be good for the rich, but it's all
Speaker 3: so good for everyone, trickle down type stuff, right, Ors
Speaker 3: and Sparrow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, for every freeport, you're looking at thousands, if
Speaker 2: not tens of thousands of jobs, like actual jobs, for
Speaker 2: as long as the freeport exists. And that's another weird
Speaker 2: thing about them. They tend to pop up and then
Speaker 2: go away after a couple of decades or even years depending.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and how much of that is calculated like a
Speaker 3: pop up restaurant, and how much of that is the
Speaker 3: pendulum of public awareness swinging back?
Speaker 4: There is a certain in the knowness about it, isn't there?
Speaker 4: Like how I like to even know where they are,
Speaker 4: what they are, and how to exploit them. You've got
Speaker 4: to be in a certain echelon of humanity to, you know,
Speaker 4: to tick all those boxes.
Speaker 3: Right, that's absolutely correct. Sure it might be good for
Speaker 3: the rich, but it's also good for everyone. What if
Speaker 3: we told you there was more to the story. We're
Speaker 3: not going to This is the end of the episode,
Speaker 3: spoil kitty. Yeah, they will take a break for some mats.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy, all right. You let people
Speaker 3: sanan once. They're gonna shenan again. As the Internet loves
Speaker 3: to say.
Speaker 4: Use is that an Internet thing? I've never encountered that.
Speaker 4: That's cute.
Speaker 3: Like, there are quite a few very concerning opportunities for corruption, conspiracy,
Speaker 3: and crime in the world of freeports. First, the crime,
Speaker 3: there's a ton of it. There's so much of it,
Speaker 3: it's everywhere. Thing Like, ah, I hate to say it,
Speaker 3: I would pause it that you can at any single
Speaker 3: freeport in the world right now, you can find something
Speaker 3: sketchy going on, especially when we look at financial crimes
Speaker 3: because now they've replaced banks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, people love the shenan again and again and again
Speaker 4: when it comes to financial crimes. Because as international banking
Speaker 4: started to find itself or the thumb of new regulations,
Speaker 4: because of governmental crackdowns worldwide on tax fraud, freeport's kind
Speaker 4: of slipped into that role of like offshore bank accounts, right.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. Yeah, tax avoidance, tax shelters, tax havens,
Speaker 3: all the hits, all the good ones. Tax avoidance is
Speaker 3: a legal thing. Tax avoidance is just the sort of
Speaker 3: the group term for the toolbox of stuff that theoretically
Speaker 3: anybody can do to minimize the amount they have to
Speaker 3: give to the tax man. We've all felt this sting.
Speaker 3: It feels great to It feels fantastic when you're done
Speaker 3: with a return and you think, ah, I'm not getting
Speaker 3: burned that bad.
Speaker 4: Well, avoidance, though, is not inherently the same as fraud
Speaker 4: or necessarily illegal, right. You can you can employ certain loopholes,
Speaker 4: as we know, very very wealthy people tend to do
Speaker 4: and be completely on the right side of the law
Speaker 4: by avoiding certain tax taxes, you know, income text.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. Look into IKEA's nonprofit.
Speaker 4: And really quickly, guys, I meane, I know this is
Speaker 4: an episode for another day, but it just got me
Speaker 4: thinking because you know me, I'm always complaining about not
Speaker 4: knowing where my tax money goes. But did you guys
Speaker 4: see Trump's kind of big move to maybe like get
Speaker 4: some people on his side talking about eliminating the income
Speaker 4: tax and and and replacing it with tariffs, which you know,
Speaker 4: based on the quick and dirty analysis I read, would
Speaker 4: fundamentally shift the way kind of business is done. A
Speaker 4: lot of these types of situations would be included, but
Speaker 4: also just in general, it could really be a you know,
Speaker 4: finger in the eye of countries like China and stuff
Speaker 4: like that. But it obviously it seems real appealing to
Speaker 4: folks who are like God, income text sucks, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say this is an apolitical point that
Speaker 3: is objectively a very stupid idea. It just it's not
Speaker 3: supported by the lack of enforcement we see in teriff Regimesently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, every company would leave, every nobody would do business
Speaker 2: in the United States anymore because it's that easy to
Speaker 2: just shift it and say, all right, cool.
Speaker 4: But it sure is a night shiny political object to
Speaker 4: dangle out there for folks that maybe don't do their homework, right.
Speaker 4: I appreciate you guys, you know, offering that perspective, but
Speaker 4: it does seem like the kind of ditch effort, you know,
Speaker 4: policy point that maybe would get some people's eyes lightened up.
Speaker 4: You know, no more taxes, why that sounds awesome.
Speaker 2: The best that could happen is you could reduce the
Speaker 2: percentages of income tax But there's almost no way. I
Speaker 2: don't whatever, I'm not a politician, but I don't see
Speaker 2: how you could ever do that considering the spending that
Speaker 2: the United States is like the ramp that it's currently
Speaker 2: on and has been on. How do you reduce that?
Speaker 3: Also, the president has no power over that nature of
Speaker 3: legislation speeches. Yeah, but objectively, that's that sideline mascotrey, which
Speaker 3: I don't know is a word, but oh why don't
Speaker 3: know it's a word, but yeah, it's American English. Also,
Speaker 3: shout out to Ireland. They've been making headway as a
Speaker 3: tax haven, so this would be very helpful to Ireland.
Speaker 3: Maybe we should get our citizenship. But anyway, you're right, Uh,
Speaker 3: there are a lot of up to statements. And again,
Speaker 3: just to be very clear, when we're saying something is
Speaker 3: objectively a stupid idea, we would say the same thing
Speaker 3: if any presidential candidate propose something that Wack could do.
Speaker 4: Oh one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 4: I appreciate the very you know, uh, non partisan perspective,
Speaker 4: because that's all I was asking for, and I think
Speaker 4: that's just it's a fascinating thing to trot out there,
Speaker 4: especially given what you just said.
Speaker 3: What if we turn the whole of the United States
Speaker 3: into non American free zones, but just one big freeport,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Roll the dice. Let's see
Speaker 3: how it goes. It's look, everybody tries not to overpay
Speaker 3: in taxes. The US tax system as a whole bag
Speaker 3: of badgers. But we know that tax avoidance techniques become
Speaker 3: more sophisticated the more money you have to begin with.
Speaker 3: So I would argue that for the upper echelon of
Speaker 3: the wealthy, these tax avoidance techniques are on the level
Speaker 3: of sorcery. This is like financial wizardry. There are accountants
Speaker 3: who make more money than you will ever see in
Speaker 3: your life, and they work just a couple couple months
Speaker 3: a year.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Well in art not art dealers, art liaisons.
Speaker 2: There maybe goods liaisons, people who sell goods via the
Speaker 2: freeport who pretend to be the owners of objects and property.
Speaker 3: Sub tenants, yeah, brokers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's the whole thing when you get into
Speaker 2: But it's part of this, I mean, it's it's part
Speaker 2: of the financial crimes. It's you don't in most freeports.
Speaker 2: You don't have to have an end like who is
Speaker 2: the human being that actually owns this property?
Speaker 3: Right? And who is the human being at the other
Speaker 3: side of the table.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got you got some people who are talking
Speaker 2: about selling some art for a ninety five million or
Speaker 2: one hundred and eleven million dollars, and then it does
Speaker 2: change hands and it all happens there, but nobody knows
Speaker 2: who sold what to who.
Speaker 3: I'm not the CEO of Discordia LLC. I am the
Speaker 3: liaison between IGU and Discordia, and then I can forward
Speaker 3: the email if you would like customs. But that's going
Speaker 3: to take eight months minimum, at by which point I
Speaker 3: may have another job with a totally different shell company,
Speaker 3: but I will still be here. Ye.
Speaker 2: And it's often for a broker like that to make
Speaker 2: two percent on a sale, two to five percent on
Speaker 2: a sale, which means, let's say it's one hundred million
Speaker 2: dollar sale, My god, you're a millionaire. You just made
Speaker 2: one sale exactly, and.
Speaker 3: Then you take the rest of the year off this job.
Speaker 3: Bro These freeports play a huge role in this financial
Speaker 3: sorcery because they are a genuine way of rigging the market,
Speaker 3: and the it can become so surrealed and absurd. We
Speaker 3: talked about this in our previous episode, The Fine Art
Speaker 3: of Money Laundering. You can have an artifact change hands
Speaker 3: multiple times, and the price can increase with each iteration,
Speaker 3: so it gets more and more expensive, more and more
Speaker 3: money in play there on the craps table, but that
Speaker 3: actual artifact may never physically leave the single storage room.
Speaker 3: It's almost like speculation when people are trading in oil
Speaker 3: futures and the oil was just left in the same
Speaker 3: ship off the coast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's so weird because often the contracts, the
Speaker 2: initial contracts for goods that go into a freeport are
Speaker 2: for several months and at maximum they're like six months
Speaker 2: or something like that. But then they get what it
Speaker 2: elongated and negotiated up to several years. And then sometimes
Speaker 2: depending on the freeport, it can be a permanent storage
Speaker 2: facility basically, or a storage facility within the freeport system
Speaker 2: that is another private service, right.
Speaker 3: And they're still finding stuff stolen by the Nazis in
Speaker 3: European freeports. That's how long it can stay in that
Speaker 3: parking well.
Speaker 2: Eighteen eighty eight is the Geneva freeport, right, right, so
Speaker 2: if you I mean, that's the biggest one around. And
Speaker 2: what was the there's something crazy some statistic that was
Speaker 2: in a twenty sixteen New York Times article, the louver.
Speaker 2: The louver is that how you.
Speaker 3: Say it.
Speaker 2: Had like has at the time twenty sixteen had around
Speaker 2: three hundred and fifty thousand pieces of art in it, right,
Speaker 2: But then this one freeport in Geneva had one point
Speaker 2: two million pieces of like serious art stored in it.
Speaker 4: Is it just frozen in time?
Speaker 1: Though?
Speaker 4: How does appreciation and depreciation work in that case?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm glad you asked in our earlier episode on
Speaker 3: the fine art of money laundry. It's it's dystopian level
Speaker 3: free market stuff. The piece of art or the artifact whatever,
Speaker 3: whatever it's like. The materials used to make it don't matter.
Speaker 3: It's how much a willing seller is ready to sell
Speaker 3: it for and how much a willing buyer is ready
Speaker 3: to pay for it. So if you have connections with
Speaker 3: a terrorist organization and you need to move say thirty
Speaker 3: million dollars, then just buy any old piece of fine art.
Speaker 3: Don't even move it from the freeport. Now, congratulations, you
Speaker 3: own a Matista or a Goya or whatever that you
Speaker 3: never have to see.
Speaker 2: It's so weird. There's a great example of this exact
Speaker 2: kind of thing. There was in Town and Country Boys,
Speaker 2: a little Town and Country article.
Speaker 4: You guys, y, I've long had.
Speaker 3: A subscribe Loki have some great reporting.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely there's some reporting from twenty fifteen about this
Speaker 2: guy named Eves Bouvier who was one of these art
Speaker 2: go between bovie of course, Eves, yes, And he was
Speaker 2: working for this Russian oligarch I don't even know how
Speaker 2: to say his name, Dmitri Rebolevbolov. And he was working
Speaker 2: for this guy as an art go between, and the
Speaker 2: oligarch found out that he was overpaying for all of
Speaker 2: his art, just over a dinner conversation. So just to
Speaker 2: give you some numbers here, there's this one piece of
Speaker 2: art Madoligani, I don't know what that is, but some
Speaker 2: masterpiece was sold to this Russian oligarch for one hundred
Speaker 2: and eighteen million dollars and then he found out that
Speaker 2: it was actually only worth ninety three million dollars and
Speaker 2: that's what it was sold for. But this go between
Speaker 2: dude was charging like twenty five million dollars a pop
Speaker 2: for the transactions.
Speaker 4: Has one thing rich people, Hey, it is overpaying for stuff,
Speaker 4: but we're paying for stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, exactly. But that the whole point of that
Speaker 2: is that the masterpiece they were charged twenty five million
Speaker 2: dollars more for it. So when it was spoken about
Speaker 2: or when it was written about. It was sold for
Speaker 2: one hundred and eighteen million. It was actually, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of that thing, that speculation thing that
Speaker 2: Ben was talking about with oil prices, that it just
Speaker 2: kind of just goes up and up and up every
Speaker 2: time somebody pays a little more for it.
Speaker 4: And is that a feature not a bug? Perhaps in
Speaker 4: this type of situation.
Speaker 3: It very much is, because it's setting precedents. It's jurisprudence,
Speaker 3: there's another word to say it. And this leads us
Speaker 3: to the next big problem, which is money laundry. The
Speaker 3: world is full of people and organizations that have made
Speaker 3: a ton of cash doing a lot of dirt. We're
Speaker 3: talking human trafficking, evil drug stuff, slavery, terrorism. In some cases,
Speaker 3: rogue nations get slapped with what we call sanctions, which
Speaker 3: prevent them from engaging in international in the international political
Speaker 3: and economic order. So how do we make the money move.
Speaker 3: We do a bigger version of a breaking bag car
Speaker 3: wash scheme. First, you set up a shell company, You
Speaker 3: make a series of shell companies, and preferably you span
Speaker 3: these out across international borders, because the rules for corporate
Speaker 3: governance change country to country, right, So you spread your
Speaker 3: breadcrumbs wide and this helps throw off the stench of
Speaker 3: your dirty money. Then you move illegal funds through the
Speaker 3: international system to kind of slowly wash it. We call
Speaker 3: this trade based money laundry. And the weird thing is
Speaker 3: this sounds so small time for international spector level evil organizations.
Speaker 3: But the weird thing is often they're selling cigarettes, add
Speaker 3: alcohol and like knockoff handbags in weight through these freeports
Speaker 3: and then they you do this legal parkore where you
Speaker 3: cook the invoices right or you over under deliver the
Speaker 3: stuff you agree you're going to deliver, and then no
Speaker 3: one on either side has a problem with it because
Speaker 3: the two the buyer and the seller, once you get
Speaker 3: through the proxy companies, they're the same group. So they're
Speaker 3: just moving their money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can convert money into whatever you want, right Like,
Speaker 4: it doesn't have to be actual luxury goods. It could
Speaker 4: be just like POGs, you know, or whatever it might be.
Speaker 4: And it's just a way of like temporarily converting it
Speaker 4: to something and then you know, converting it back yep.
Speaker 2: And back in the day, a lot of this stuff
Speaker 2: ended up funneling through Panama and Swiss banks, and we've
Speaker 2: done episodes on that stuff too, where Panama papers it
Speaker 2: all kind of functions together.
Speaker 3: It's a big launch. Is the problem or the advantage,
Speaker 3: you know, depending on who you are and where you're at.
Speaker 3: We also we see that there's a lot of people
Speaker 3: or there are a lot of institutions that are trying
Speaker 3: to raise awareness about this. There is a steep divide,
Speaker 3: a precipitous chasm between the people who are against reports
Speaker 3: and the people who are a forum, and I want
Speaker 3: to shout out this group called Comply Advantage, who monitors
Speaker 3: this and provides different analytical and security services. They had
Speaker 3: a great example of what we just outlined. They said,
Speaker 3: all right, if you're reading this and you're an authority
Speaker 3: trying to keep your freeports clean, which is good luck, right,
Speaker 3: it's sisyphia and it's sort of ocean versus a bucket
Speaker 3: of water, but you know, good hustle guys. Right.
Speaker 4: So just in by way of an example here, the
Speaker 4: first beneficiary of a multimillion dollar credit line, I guess,
Speaker 4: or a letter of credit is to supply medical goods
Speaker 4: for another country's bureau of health. But the second and
Speaker 4: you know, final beneficiary of the credit issues invoices that
Speaker 4: don't match the first ones. This is I don't know.
Speaker 4: It seems very much like a classic mafia type scam,
Speaker 4: almost like a no show job kind of thing on
Speaker 4: the Sopranos, right, or like you're billing extra for like
Speaker 4: goods and services that actually don't cost what you're billing
Speaker 4: it for, and you're disguising things that way, right, And
Speaker 4: these kind of mismatched invoices, So the first beneficiary is
Speaker 4: revealed to have substituted invoices that were marked up by
Speaker 4: three hundred percent exactly like like I was just describing,
Speaker 4: and additionally revealed to a connection with the firm acting
Speaker 4: as its agent to the Bureau of Health, so the
Speaker 4: go between is in on the deal and facilitating it
Speaker 4: to benefit the first party.
Speaker 2: There's some stuff in real estate that happens that's very
Speaker 2: similar to.
Speaker 3: That continues today. And either any of these cases where
Speaker 3: outlining if you don't look closely enough, and freeports heavily
Speaker 3: incentivized not looking closely enough if you don't, this looks
Speaker 3: like everyday international business. Worse, it looks like the boring stuff,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. Now, we're just selling loose
Speaker 3: cigarettes and discman or something but the issue is smart
Speaker 3: criminals like boring stuff. You know, one of the best
Speaker 3: neighbors you might encounter in Atlanta, or at least personal
Speaker 3: experience here was the guy who owned the local drug operation,
Speaker 3: made sure Halloween was safe for the kids. Was basically
Speaker 3: an unofficial hoa intervened in crime and petty theft, repeatedly
Speaker 3: sent over what I will call drug enthusiasts to mow
Speaker 3: my lawn for free, just anything to keep scrutiny of
Speaker 3: law enforcement away.
Speaker 4: That's right. That's why I like people can kind of
Speaker 4: seem get off the mark significantly when they act like
Speaker 4: you know, all drug dealers are, all illegal enterprises are
Speaker 4: just chaos in the streets, blasting way causing you know,
Speaker 4: the quality of life for those around it just decline.
Speaker 4: I mean, of course, there are examples of things like
Speaker 4: that with Cartel's, of course, but it's not the run
Speaker 4: of It's not the smart way to run an illegal operation.
Speaker 4: It just isn't. You know, the best way to do
Speaker 4: it is to actually watch people's backs and you know,
Speaker 4: do like Pablo Escobar did, where he made sure that
Speaker 4: the people who were surrounding him where he lived loved
Speaker 4: him and and and protected him and treated him like,
Speaker 4: you know, like with the respect you would usually reserve
Speaker 4: for a.
Speaker 3: Monarch or a political figure. Real G's move in silence
Speaker 3: like Lasagna. That's from Little Wayne. I would also say,
Speaker 3: I think Gus Fring legitimately cared about the chicken.
Speaker 4: Is design of the silence because it has a silent
Speaker 4: g Yeah, real silence, just making sure, Uh I get it,
Speaker 4: geez ah, sorry, got it. Clever, that's very clever.
Speaker 3: I think you probably came down between real g's moving
Speaker 3: silence like Balgoney or real G's moving silence like Lasagna,
Speaker 3: and he went with the more mop stir of the two.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. It's also you know, I would argue, taste here.
Speaker 4: You're a big blogoney person but never been my thing.
Speaker 3: Oh now we're going to get an email about bologney lasagna.
Speaker 4: No, thank you. I'm well, but I don't know or
Speaker 4: you know, there is a fancy boloney is more or
Speaker 4: less like that Mortadell kind of the real fancy cold
Speaker 4: cut of that is essentially just fancy blogoney. So you know,
Speaker 4: I guess it's all it's all in in what you're
Speaker 4: looking for.
Speaker 3: And then there's another thing, not necessarily even financial, crime,
Speaker 3: but what we foreshadowed earlier, it belongs in a museum.
Speaker 3: People are looting artifacts and putting them in freeports and
Speaker 3: kind of waiting and cooking till they get the best
Speaker 3: socio political environment to move these to private collectors like
Speaker 3: things you cannot put a price on, or perhaps to
Speaker 3: get a good deal with a museum they're stealing. It
Speaker 3: occurs off in war, during like in times of turmoil,
Speaker 3: in ancient troubled areas of the world like the Middle
Speaker 3: East is huge for this.
Speaker 4: So in December of twenty sixteen, authorities in Switzerland seized
Speaker 4: cultural relics that had been looted from several Middle Eastern countries,
Speaker 4: including the Yemen, Libya, and Syria, that had up until
Speaker 4: that point been stored in Geneva's freeport, which is home
Speaker 4: currently to billions of Swiss francs worth of fine art
Speaker 4: and other you know treasures, including the world's biggest, most
Speaker 4: valuable wine cellar.
Speaker 3: That is true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, can you store a wine cellar? That seems like
Speaker 4: I guess it's just all packed up. Maybe it's just
Speaker 4: climate controlled, baby. Yeah, that's all you need.
Speaker 3: You got to be the cellar, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: So the the European Union did this investigation in this
Speaker 3: you absolute correct. It was a huge crackdown and they
Speaker 3: found that three of these pieces at least were from
Speaker 3: a UNESCO World Heritage site that the Islamic State had
Speaker 3: been destroying, because we may recall not too long ago,
Speaker 3: the Islamic State or various factions thereof were super centered
Speaker 3: on destroying you know, things that like if you're human
Speaker 3: listening now, they were destroying your stuff, like the marks
Speaker 3: of your ancestors, the story of human civilization, erasing all
Speaker 3: of it. And looters, you know, despite their maybe fundamentalist leanings,
Speaker 3: they like to make a little bit of coin, you know,
Speaker 3: a couple of euros, so they hid this stuff shipped
Speaker 3: out via cutter to Switzerland and the Middle East is
Speaker 3: also big on freeports. This launched a new crackdown and
Speaker 3: the Swiss government when they reacted, they went pretty hard.
Speaker 3: They're trying to remove all the typical, advantageous or attractive
Speaker 3: parts of a freeport. Like you were saying earlier, the
Speaker 3: idea is now, if you are what's called a tenant
Speaker 3: there like two hundred something tenants in Geneva for their freeport,
Speaker 3: you have to have an independent firm of specialist, a
Speaker 3: third party firm investigate the providence of your relics. And
Speaker 3: then you have to tell them who is really making
Speaker 3: money and who is really buying it. And then the
Speaker 3: craziest part, the most like Christopher Nolan part of it,
Speaker 3: they have to submit to a quote biometric system that'll
Speaker 3: track your individual movements through the freeport. So you can't
Speaker 3: because what used to happen is people would say, hey,
Speaker 3: I work for Company A, and they might actually work
Speaker 3: for Company A, but when they get past you know,
Speaker 3: the bar wire and everything, they go to their other job,
Speaker 3: company B, and that's where they help the you know,
Speaker 3: drug cartels make money. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But it's so weird to me though, because that's one
Speaker 2: freeport in Geneva because they had issues and they kind
Speaker 2: of had to deal with it. There are thousands of
Speaker 2: other freeports out there that don't have this. You don't
Speaker 2: need an ultimate beneficial owner or UBO, and nobody ever
Speaker 2: gots to know about you, whoever you are. I mean,
Speaker 2: thank goodness that I mean, weirdly enough, thank goodness this
Speaker 2: terrible thing happened, because at least it's going to bring
Speaker 2: some transparency to one freeport.
Speaker 3: Keep it on the low anyway. Yeah, So you're absolutely right.
Speaker 3: It's bigger than hip hop, right, it's deeper than wrap.
Speaker 3: This is a systemic issue. It's a conspiracy that is
Speaker 3: working for a lot of powerful people. And it doesn't
Speaker 3: stop just at the you know, the billionaire doesn't want
Speaker 3: to pay taxes. It doesn't stop at the evil character
Speaker 3: in an Indiana Jones film. Each of these freeports has
Speaker 3: a great deal of autonomy, and the rules in one
Speaker 3: place are not the same as the rules in the next.
Speaker 3: And it touches on war, which we'll talk about. What
Speaker 3: is it good for freeports after word from our sponsors, and.
Speaker 4: We've returned war. It never changes and it's not good
Speaker 4: for anything at all, absolutely nothing, right, huh. Now to
Speaker 4: your point bent before the break, it is very very
Speaker 4: good for freeports.
Speaker 2: And weapons manufacturers and people who like to extract resources
Speaker 2: for profit.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Switzerland. Again, it sounds like we may be picking
Speaker 3: on this country, but they were, you know, they're very
Speaker 3: big in the world of banking secrecy, or were for
Speaker 3: a long time. Neutrality also very big in the world
Speaker 3: of freeports.
Speaker 2: So I thought you're going to say watches.
Speaker 3: And watches, watches, chocolate, overpriced sandwiches, I said it going back.
Speaker 3: But so the war in Ukraine and the Russian invasion
Speaker 3: of Ukraine, which was a slow boil, I think we
Speaker 3: can all agree and is currently continuing now. We don't
Speaker 3: have to get in the weeds on it, but we
Speaker 3: know that this part of the fallout of this as
Speaker 3: it resulted in Switzerland having to face scrutiny over handling
Speaker 3: Russian assets. As of twenty twenty two, the Swiss government
Speaker 3: went back on its historical neutrality laws. They froze six
Speaker 3: points three three billion US dollars worth of Russian assets.
Speaker 3: They confiscated eleven properties, They took sanctions against Russian individuals
Speaker 3: and various shell companies and proxy entities to follow the
Speaker 3: European Union. And to be clear, Zerland is not part
Speaker 3: of the European Union. They're just sort of they're buddies
Speaker 3: the way that sometimes other people rap with the Wu
Speaker 3: Tang shannged area.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: So the issue is that even if you are the
Speaker 3: government of Switzerland, you know, you're like Swiss passport control
Speaker 3: your Swiss customs, you are still going to have problems
Speaker 3: getting into these freeports. That's nuts. That's like being the
Speaker 3: president of the United States and they say you can't
Speaker 3: go into this building.
Speaker 4: Do you know who I am? I'm the President of
Speaker 4: the United States.
Speaker 3: A pictoring security going a president if we let one
Speaker 3: of you, and yeah, there's going to be like forty
Speaker 3: more immediately, misdent.
Speaker 2: This is for skullin bones members only, exactly.
Speaker 3: And this this was a historically big move for Switzerland.
Speaker 3: One of the things that might on strange is the
Speaker 3: idea that they're taking action against specific Russian individuals. That
Speaker 3: may sound prejudiced until we realize the post communist Russia
Speaker 3: is a kleptocracy. The very well to do oligarchs of
Speaker 3: Russia and their oligarchs all over the world. The US
Speaker 3: has several The very well to do oligarchs are representatives
Speaker 3: of Russian state power. Like they don't wake up every
Speaker 3: day and say I wonder what I would like to
Speaker 3: do with gasprop They take their orders. They are an
Speaker 3: unofficial government. So targeting those individuals is targeting the Russian state.
Speaker 3: And then we have probably this is a very weird
Speaker 3: thing to say, but the hottest debate or the hottest
Speaker 3: conspiracy juggling about freeports now, at least in the West,
Speaker 3: concerns the United Kingdom.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, because of Brexit fallout right, because it was
Speaker 4: sort of a debacle, didn't work out the way anyone
Speaker 4: thought or hoped or expect it, or maybe exactly as
Speaker 4: it was intended. So the idea of freeports, I guess
Speaker 4: that it makes them more important in order to claw
Speaker 4: back some of that capital that was lost in instituting
Speaker 4: this catastrophic plan. I mean, I don't know. Again, it's
Speaker 4: up in the air as to whether you think there's
Speaker 4: anybody Ben or Matt I'd love to hear that benefited
Speaker 4: from Brexit, or if it was just in general to
Speaker 4: sort of like a dumb nationalistic move that shot everybody.
Speaker 3: In the foot.
Speaker 2: I don't have enough information to give you a clear
Speaker 2: answer there. I do know that there's some weird freeport
Speaker 2: stuff going on in the UK. There was a there's
Speaker 2: a brand new one. There was news about it, gosh
Speaker 2: from this month June, like a couple of days ago.
Speaker 2: What is it called the Fourth Green Freeport. It's officially
Speaker 2: open for business as of June twelfth.
Speaker 3: They reduced their environmental footprint.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, and they're going to do it more with this
Speaker 2: fourth Green Freeport, apparently, because it's going to be focused
Speaker 2: on all kinds of things like hydrogen, offshore wind, sustainable fuels,
Speaker 2: modular manufacturing.
Speaker 3: Matt waved his hands when he said modular manufacturing.
Speaker 2: But it's that thing we're talking about where you you
Speaker 2: are encouraging outsiders essentially to come into this freeport so
Speaker 2: that their private company can bring stuff in, manufacture it,
Speaker 2: work on things there, and then the UK will make
Speaker 2: money afterwards, Scotland will make money.
Speaker 4: Doesn't It just go to show how little the actual
Speaker 4: consumer is regarded in all of these things, all of
Speaker 4: these goings on. When you see what we get the
Speaker 4: occasional tax free holiday, you know, or whatever, like the
Speaker 4: ability to write something off on our taxes, et cetera,
Speaker 4: when you have these just massive tax loopholes that are
Speaker 4: designed not to benefit us but to benefit the folks
Speaker 4: that you know, are charging us for all of the
Speaker 4: goods and services and things that we you know, rely on.
Speaker 4: Door enjoy.
Speaker 3: I'm drinking out of a paper straw like a sucker.
Speaker 3: The characterized Yeah, right exactly, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Though, It's like what we get the the the amount
Speaker 4: of quote unquote tax grace that we get as individual
Speaker 4: humans is just a joke compared to the things that
Speaker 4: are available and accessible to the the larger you know,
Speaker 4: profiteers in these in.
Speaker 3: These situation last Monday murders is right, well exactly the
Speaker 3: magic part.
Speaker 2: But yeah, because it has nothing to do with us overall.
Speaker 2: It has to do with the GDP of the country
Speaker 2: or the gross value added amount or whatever the other
Speaker 2: economic numbers are that they toally gross, that's.
Speaker 3: For sure GNP shout out to Bhutan for gross domestic happiness. Yes,
Speaker 3: it's still still a weird one.
Speaker 2: But just this example, this fourth Green Freeport in Scotland
Speaker 2: that just opened up. Right, everybody in Scotland who is
Speaker 2: of a certain economic level or things about you know,
Speaker 2: the country of the United Kingdom and specific areas of
Speaker 2: Scotland and tax dollars and all that stuff, they're there.
Speaker 2: They believe that's going to bring in around seven hundred
Speaker 2: million dollars in private and public investment every year for
Speaker 2: the next ten years. So like seven billion dollars that
Speaker 2: they're gonna make.
Speaker 3: And also a great deal of the public in Scotland
Speaker 3: was not aware of it. If you read like the
Speaker 3: Scotsman dot com and other articles. You'll see that the
Speaker 3: public didn't know what was going on. Yeah for a
Speaker 3: great deal. And you know, is that a bug? Is
Speaker 3: that by a design Scotland is its own place. It's
Speaker 3: got a lot of other stuff going on. It's easy
Speaker 3: to miss the boring news. Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the and they'll the politicians will talk to
Speaker 2: the public about it. The economic specialists will talk to
Speaker 2: the public about it and say things like it could
Speaker 2: generate up to thirty eight thousand well paid, quote highly
Speaker 2: skilled green jobs, with nearly nineteen thousand of these being
Speaker 2: direct gross jobs linked to target sectors and tax sites.
Speaker 2: But what they're not saying is if this is private investment,
Speaker 2: a lot of it's private investment, and it's a company
Speaker 2: coming in to do business through this freeport, are those
Speaker 2: jobs coming in from other countries where human beings are
Speaker 2: going to work, have work visas from other countries? Or
Speaker 2: are they hiring people directly there?
Speaker 3: That goes to the question we'll get to at the end,
Speaker 3: which is do these actually work? Well?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I hate to keep harping on this, but
Speaker 4: like things like stimulus, you know, they have measurable results.
Speaker 4: And I mean it's an economic move that some would argue, Yeah,
Speaker 4: stimulus does increase you know, spending, and it's injection back
Speaker 4: into the economy, and it's ultimately good for the big picture.
Speaker 4: But the there's so few things that are like that
Speaker 4: that actually benefit the consumer or directly. And if you
Speaker 4: and with the number, the sheer number of these types
Speaker 4: of tax havens and loopholes and freeport situations that are
Speaker 4: out there, I sure would hope that it would benefit
Speaker 4: the big picture in some way.
Speaker 3: Right get asked to well, it's the old advertising thing.
Speaker 3: Are we selling a product or are we selling a story?
Speaker 3: And I would add I would argue that to the
Speaker 3: vast majority of the public, freeports, the public approval of
Speaker 3: them is based upon selling a story, which is not
Speaker 3: We'll get to the idea of whether they work, but
Speaker 3: for the background, freeports are not, by any means a
Speaker 3: new idea. In the United Kingdom, in the age of
Speaker 3: Thatcherite austerity, there were multiple freeports set up in the eighties,
Speaker 3: including Liverpool and Southampton. They were phased out later in
Speaker 3: twenty twelve, but the UK government post brexit said we
Speaker 3: need to bring these back, and again that chasm of
Speaker 3: vibe we're talking about here. The people who are pro
Speaker 3: freeport tend to be private businesses, high net individuals, and
Speaker 3: the politicians who call those entities masters. The people against
Speaker 3: it tend to be a well informed public, and all
Speaker 3: the nerds who were paid to objectively look at it.
Speaker 3: The Office of Budgetary Responsibility over there in the UK said, look,
Speaker 3: the tax breaks were given these folks, and these freeports
Speaker 3: are proposing they're going to cost US fifty million pounds
Speaker 3: sterling a year. They said that in twenty twenty one
Speaker 3: quick ballpark math, that's about sixty three point four million
Speaker 3: US dollars per year. They also said, we're not really
Speaker 3: making anything new. We're taking economic activity from other places.
Speaker 3: We're taking jobs from other places. We're just like cloud seeding.
Speaker 3: We're not making rain, we're moving moisture. And it may
Speaker 3: be to the detriment of other people in this large
Speaker 3: interconnecttion did system and then also boom, just one last
Speaker 3: mic drop. They don't actually work. Freeports don't work the
Speaker 3: way that they are sold to the public as working well.
Speaker 4: And then just to double back on something that I
Speaker 4: believe Matt or Ben you pointed out earlier, these do
Speaker 4: create jobs. Right, Well, if there's a silver lining at all,
Speaker 4: maybe that's one of them.
Speaker 2: I would say they create jobs to run the freeport
Speaker 2: the way an airport creates jobs to run parts of
Speaker 2: the airport.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: That's a thing. You got to have people to make
Speaker 2: it happen. But when it comes to creating jobs for
Speaker 2: specific companies that are coming in, like the private investment
Speaker 2: they're talking about, it's a maybe situation at best.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and old jobs are all jobs are worthwhile endeavors. Right,
Speaker 3: It's tough to get one, it's tough to keep one.
Speaker 3: But there is a difference between high paying jobs and
Speaker 3: low wage jobs. And the argument here is that a
Speaker 3: lot of the free ports, due to the inherent nature
Speaker 3: of the way they're structured, they will move jobs at least,
Speaker 3: but they're often going to be low wage jobs aka
Speaker 3: not what the public was promised. Also, they're moving stuff around. Again,
Speaker 3: they're not necessarily creating higher skilled jobs that would change
Speaker 3: the fortune of an economy. You know, you don't have
Speaker 3: to look far to see examples of quote unquote forward
Speaker 3: investment or private public partnerships that do not benefit the
Speaker 3: communities in which they are created. Right, But then the
Speaker 3: question is if they might not work in terms of
Speaker 3: what the public's promise, but if you're the guy trying
Speaker 3: to clean the money or the person or the entity
Speaker 3: trying to clean the money, and freeports are great, they
Speaker 3: work perfectly. Why change it?
Speaker 2: I don't make more of them? And so we can
Speaker 2: move our stuff to other freeports and just keep on
Speaker 2: moving it.
Speaker 3: Always in transit, you know what I mean, keep on trucking.
Speaker 4: So I mean, surely we're not the only one making
Speaker 4: these observations in terms of like what good are these
Speaker 4: to the average you know, citizen, Like what are the
Speaker 4: benefits that do they outweigh the Shenanigan agains that are happening.
Speaker 4: Are there is there any you know, are there any
Speaker 4: moves being made towards, you know, maybe clamping down on
Speaker 4: these things a little bit since they have been kind
Speaker 4: of compared to shady banking deals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in Europe, at least in just about four years ago,
Speaker 3: the European Union clamped down on around eighty two freeports
Speaker 3: and they said, look, all you have been doing, you've
Speaker 3: been you've been helping some economies, but you haven't been
Speaker 3: helping the economies of your country. You've been helping the
Speaker 3: economies of terrorists and money launderers and organized crime. And
Speaker 3: those are spoiler, not the people you said you were
Speaker 3: going to help with this whole with this whole experiment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or individual literally billionaires, yes, like that oligarch we
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier, who's just keeping hundreds, if not more, priceless
Speaker 2: objects and just waiting to offload them when it may,
Speaker 2: when the time is right.
Speaker 3: Just seriously, Monty Burns style steepled fingers going, hm, these
Speaker 3: lab grown diamonds may become an issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm telling you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know, shout out to the EU because
Speaker 3: they're making that move, because they concluded what we had
Speaker 3: talked about at the very beginning of this evening's episode.
Speaker 3: They said, these freeports are essentially becoming the sketchy banks
Speaker 3: that we had so much trouble with earlier. And the
Speaker 3: game of international financial regulation is the game of whackable.
Speaker 3: You kill one institution or you make it honest, then
Speaker 3: another one springs up in a place it's even worse.
Speaker 3: It's it's like the old myth about the hydra. You
Speaker 3: cut off one avenue of dirty money and two more
Speaker 3: spring forth. So what will replace the freeports. I don't
Speaker 3: know something is being done. But the question, maybe the
Speaker 3: real final question here is will any legislation make a
Speaker 3: difference in the face of all this money? It is
Speaker 3: so much money. No one knows how much money it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. I don't see it happening because let's
Speaker 2: say you shut down all the European Union freeports. Guess
Speaker 2: what the people who are using these uh, they've they've
Speaker 2: got shipping on lock, they've got yachts, they've got to
Speaker 2: move some stuff around.
Speaker 4: Guys. It just occurred to me. You know what else
Speaker 4: is another good freeport that's in in in pop culture
Speaker 4: and literature enter zone and william S Burrow's Naked Lunch
Speaker 4: is a freeport. And it also it's like kind of
Speaker 4: of scum and villainy type situation that evolves around there.
Speaker 4: And we haven't really talked much about what life is
Speaker 4: like in these freeports, but that is how it's depicted
Speaker 4: in Naked Lunch.
Speaker 3: Very nice.
Speaker 2: Oh, Ben, I think I have an answer to your question.
Speaker 2: If they shut down all the freeports, what do they
Speaker 2: replace it with? Moon ports?
Speaker 3: Oh? I thought you were gonna say Dave and Busters.
Speaker 3: All right, Moon and Busters. Yeah, let's do it. Do
Speaker 3: check out also our episode on mysterious holes. I promise
Speaker 3: that that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Right where they're going to keep stuff.
Speaker 3: A loophole is a mysterious hole. I guess.
Speaker 4: Technically we promise we only get childish maybe half a
Speaker 4: dozen times, probably less. It's a great episode. Actually, I would.
Speaker 3: Argue, this is my wine cave, right, Please visit me
Speaker 3: at my port. Don't worry, it's free.
Speaker 4: It's full of port. Fine port is what I keep
Speaker 4: in mind.
Speaker 3: Freeport and this something like this will inevitably continue because
Speaker 3: most of the public is never going to personally encounter
Speaker 3: this outside of you know, scamp references in fiction and film.
Speaker 3: We would love to hear your experiences, help your fellow
Speaker 3: conspiracy realist out if you have boots on the ground
Speaker 3: with shady international dealings and heck, you know, if you
Speaker 3: work at a freeport or free economic zone, please tell
Speaker 3: us the stuff they don't want you to know. We
Speaker 3: try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, like what's it? Like, what's the setup? Like
Speaker 4: I'm picturing, you know, the way an airport operates or whatever,
Speaker 4: But I just want to know, like, if you do
Speaker 4: work at one of these describe a day in the
Speaker 4: life of a freeport employee. I think that's fascinating. You
Speaker 4: can find this yeah at the handle conspiracy Stuff, where
Speaker 4: we exist on Facebook, where we have our Facebook group
Speaker 4: Here's where it gets crazy, which you can join and
Speaker 4: get in on the conversation. We are also conspiracy stuff
Speaker 4: on xfka, Twitter and on YouTube. Or we have video
Speaker 4: content rolling out every single week. Bet youa we'll do
Speaker 4: something freeport related one of these days very soon on
Speaker 4: Instagram and TikTok or conspiracy Stuff show.
Speaker 2: Hey, do you like to call people?
Speaker 4: Call us.
Speaker 2: Our number is one eight three three std WYTK. Tell
Speaker 2: us what happens when an airplane runs into your freeport.
Speaker 2: Also tell us what you want us to call you,
Speaker 2: what your nickname is, and then you've got three minutes
Speaker 2: say whatever you'd like.
Speaker 3: Just do.
Speaker 2: Let us know if we can use your name and
Speaker 2: message on the air. If you got more to say
Speaker 2: than could fit in that message, why not instead send
Speaker 2: us an email.
Speaker 3: We are the entities who read every single email we receive.
Speaker 3: And yes, by the way, when you look in the
Speaker 3: mirror in the dark, we can hear you. Conspiracy at
Speaker 3: iHeartRadio dot.
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