The campaign of French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron said late Friday that it has been subjected to a “massive and coordinated piracy action” of emails and other internal communications.
The announcement emerged as the last official day of campaigning in France’s most contentious presidential election in decades drew to a close. Macron, an independent centrist, is facing off against the far-right populist Marine Le Pen. Voters are set to decide Sunday which candidate becomes France’s next president.
At the end of a high-stakes race, the news immediately stoked fears of a targeted operation intended to destabilize the electoral process, especially after reports of alleged Russian hacking in the U.S. presidential election in November.
.. The Kremlin has clear links to the Le Pen campaign. For years, a complex web of financial ties has linked Le Pen to Russian lending sources, and for months she has received exceedingly positive coverage in Russian state media.
.. In late March, Le Pen met in person with Russian President Vladimir Putin on a visit to Moscow.
.. the campaign’s statement said that real documents — such as emails from personal and professional accounts, contracts and accounting statements — were mixed in with false ones.
.. Unlike in the United States, campaigning in France comes to a hard stop a day before voters go to the polls. Candidates may not actively campaign in any way after the close of the campaign.
The disclosure of the documents just before the end of Friday means the Macron campaign will not be able to address the matter extensively Saturday.
Steven Mnuchin, Treasury Nominee, Failed to Disclose $100 Million in Assets
Steven T. Mnuchin, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to be Treasury secretary, failed to disclose nearly $100 million of his assets on Senate Finance Committee disclosure documents and forgot to mention his role as a director of an investment fund located in a tax haven ..
.. In a hearing marked by sharp exchanges, Mr. Mnuchin struggled to answer questions about his use of tax havens as a hedge fund manager and whether he thought such loopholes should be closed.
Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, pointedly asked Mr. Mnuchin if he was using Cayman Islands corporations to avoid taxation. He responded that he was working on behalf of his clients, in accordance with the law.
Leak reveals Rex Tillerson is director of Bahamas-based US-Russian oil company
Documents from tax haven will raise more questions over suitability of Donald Trump’s pick for US secretary of state
Rex Tillerson, the businessman nominated by Donald Trump to be the next US secretary of state, is the long-time director of a US-Russian oil firm based in the tax haven of the Bahamas, leaked documents show.Tillerson – the chief executive of ExxonMobil – has been a director of the oil company’s Russian subsidiary, Exxon Neftegas, since 1998. His name – RW Tillerson – appears next to other officers who are based at Houston, Texas; Moscow; and Sakhalin, in Russia’s far east.
ExxonMobil’s use of offshore regimes – while legal – may also jar with Trump’s avowal to put “America first”.
.. It is widely assumed by investors that the new Trump administration will drop sanctions. This would allow the Kara joint venture to resume, boosting Exxon’s share price and yielding potential profits in the tens of billions of dollars. According to company records, Tillerson currently owns $218m of stock. His Exxon pension is worth about $70m.
.. Rubio praised him as a “respected businessman” but said that the next secretary of state “must be someone who views the world with moral clarity [and who] has a clear sense of America’s interests”.
.. The Bahamas is notorious for secrecy and has a corporate tax rate of zero.
.. The Bahamas is notorious for secrecy and has a corporate tax rate of zero.
.. The firm was one of the largest taxpayers in the world, with an effective global tax rate in 2015 of 34%, it said. Its effective tax rate over the past three years – 2013, 2014, 2015 – was 43%, it added. This compared favourably with other Fortune 100 companies, which “have substantially lower effective tax rates than ExxonMobil”.