Dear CCI Friends,
CCI Board member Krishen Mehta offers his analysis of the emerging capability of the Global South to counter the impacts of the Western Corporate Tax Structure. This Tax Structure is, in and of itself, a form of sanction and as such, many countries in the world understand how significant it is that Russia has been able to withstand those sanctions, albeit in a different form, levied on it.
Krishen is a former partner at PwC, and now a Senior Global Justice Fellow at Yale University. He is also a co-editor of a book, Global Tax Fairness, published by Oxford University Press.
Please let us know your thoughts.
Respectfully,
The Directors
Center for Citizen Initiatives
The Blunt Instrument of Western Sanctions
ACURA EXCLUSIVE July 9, 2024
By Krishen Mehta
As of this writing, the US has placed sanctions on over 30 countries, close to one-third of the world’s population. When the pandemic started, the US vetoed the $ 5 Billion emergency loan that Iran had requested from the IMF to buy equipment and vaccines from the foreign market. The Caesar sanctions against Syria, put in place in 2020, have caused a tremendous humanitarian crisis, with 80% of the population having fallen below the poverty line. Studies show that the sanctions on Iraq in the 1990’s caused the death of almost half a million children. The US has repeatedly sanctioned Venezuela’s food distribution program, CLAP, in an effort to bring about the overthrow of the Government of Nicolas Maduro.
Assets being frozen is another extension of Western sanctions. In 2021, about $ 9 Billion of reserves held by Afghanistan in banks across the US and Europe were frozen when the Afghan government fell to the Taliban that year. Since the Revolution in 1979, Iranian assets blocked by the West and which remain in Western financial institutions are estimated at about $ 100 Billion. Venezuela’s gold remains frozen in the Bank of England in spite of repeated appeals by the Government of Nicolas Maduro to have the gold returned. And more recently, Russia’s sovereign wealth of about $ 300 Billion has been frozen by the collective West.
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