Among his responses was a Bloomberg article on how big, big money was using the State of South Dakota, legal and perfectly aboveboard:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-01-09/south-dakota-dynasty-trusts-tax-haven-for-rich-families
Well, four years later the law firm at the center of the Panama Papers, Mossack Fonseca, is again in the news—Hollywood has made a movie about their role in money laundering called The Laundromat—and lo-and-behold so is South Dakota, and not just because the New York-based He-Man Women Haters Club decided to go after the state's governor, Kristi Noem on SD's coronavirus response (fatality rate 38 per million population vs. New York's highest-in-the-world rate of 1,388 dead per million pop. [even higher if you just use NYC numbers]).
No, the other reason South Dakota is in the news is this little tidbit that dropped out of one of the feedreaders a few days ago.
From Pierre South Dakota's Capital Journal, May 8:
South Dakota’s unusual stature as a leader nationwide in chartering trusts has been in the national headlines in recent weeks because of a new turn in a Texas billionaire’s messy divorce.CNBC said this week: “South Dakota is fast becoming a mini-Switzerland for the world’s rich.”
“Analysts and local politicians estimate that $250 billion to $900 billion is now stashed in South Dakota trusts by the likes of Chinese billionaires looking to keep their fortunes out of reach of the government, Europeans looking to avoid taxes and Americans looking to shield wealth from spouses,” the network added.“A High-Stakes Divorce Illustrates How the Rich Play Real-Estate Tug of War,” said The Wall Street Journal on April 9.
Marie Bosarge filed a lawsuit recently against her husband of 30 years, billionaire Ed Bosarge. She’s 66 and he’s 80. They owned 12 homes, a 180-foot yacht with a grand piano, and a $5 million, 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy.
However, she said he is now living with a mistress. He’s pushing for the divorce and has hidden many of their assets in South Dakota, she said.Mrs. Bosarge said she learned that up to $2 billion in their assets — money and real estate and mummies — was bought through or transferred into “a series of ever-changing trusts overseas and in South Dakota,” The Wall Street Journal reported on April 9.
Her attorneys said Mr. Bosarge used the trusts, in South Dakota and elsewhere, to hide and keep income and property from her that ordinarily would belong to her as part of the couple’s community estate. She might end up with little or nothing in the divorce, she says.Jeff Diament, a Houston divorce trial attorney not involved in the Bosarge case, told the Journal that South Dakota “has the strongest laws protecting trusts,” in the nation. The complicated and confidential trusts can become a form of money-laundering, especially in divorce cases, Diament said.
The Journal reported that several divorce attorneys and others familiar with trust law say they know of “no precedent in which an aggrieved spouse has successfully accessed the assets in a South Dakota trust in a court-ordered divorce settlement.”........MUCH MORE
