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From Countdown Aug.7, 2009.

Olbermann: For the last three nights we have been quoting the sworn declaration of a former executive for Xe, X E, the company formerly called Blackwater, in which that executive describes the nearly global enterprise shot through with criminality, arms dealings, fraud, tax evasion, child prostitution, murder, all of which Xe denies, even in cases where its employees have already pleaded guilty.

One motive for all of this as the four year executive claims was greed. Tonight, in our third story, the other motive was god. Jeremy Scahill first wrote this story for The Nation magazine, he wrote the definitive book on Blackwater, in which he details some of the theocratic connections of founder Erik Prince. Now that former Blackwater executive known only as John Doe #2 who claims that Prince did more than subscribe to a fundamentalist Christian ideology, he used Xe to advance it.

"Mr. Prince is motivated to engage in misconduct by two factors: First, he views himself as a Christian crusader, tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe. To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy. Knowing and wanting these men to take every opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the crusades."

Keith goes on to list the Christian organizations Prince has used either his family's or Blackwater's profits to fund.

•Prison Fellowship Ministries

•Focus on the Family

•Family Research Council

•Christian Freedom International

•Council for National Policy

And it just gets uglier from there. I'll add the full transcript once MSNBC gets it up. Prince and his employees need to be sitting in a jail cell instead of getting any new contracts or continuing business as usual in Iraq or anywhere else. I'm happy to see it looks like the Justice Department is finally dealing with them in the manner they should be. Given this man's family and political ties, I'm not holding my breath for any convictions.

It is curious that this AP article left out one giant aspect of the UBS scandal -- the role former GOP Senator Phil Gramm may have played in their illegal activity.

MIAMI – Swiss bank UBS AG "systematically and deliberately" violated U.S. law by dispatching private bankers to recruit wealthy Americans interested in evading taxes and must be forced to reveal the identities of 52,000 of those clients, the Justice Department said in a court filing Tuesday.

The filing, which comes amid several published reports that the case may be near settlement, urges U.S. District Judge Alan S. Gold to hold UBS accountable for conducting years of illegal business on U.S. soil — business that earned the bank more than $100 million in fees but cost the U.S. hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes.

"It is time for UBS to face the consequences that it has brought upon itself," said Justice Department tax attorney Stuart Gibson in the 55-page filing. "The United States has proven its case for enforcement."

As Jon Perr wrote earlier this year, Gramm was instrumental in handcuffing the IRS while he was in the Senate, and may have paved the way for UBS to commit their crimes once he became their Vice Chairman in 2002.

And apparently phony, to boot! I don't know about you, but I'm feeling even better about writing AIG that blank check. Joe Cassano was the head of AIG's financial products division who insured all those bad CDOs - you know, the ones that helped trigger this global meltdown?

The Feds are closing in on a criminal fraud case against Joseph Cassano, reports ABC News, which tracked down the former AIG Financial Products czar wearing blue spandex and a sheepish expression outside his home in London. And before you wonder why a Brooklyn College educated swaps dealer with a name like Joe Cassano lives in London again, the answer is probably "taxes" -- and decimating taxes, it may not shock you to know, is fast emerging as the cornerstone of the AIG business model.

An ABC News investigation found that Cassano set up some dozens of separate companies, some off-shore, to handle the transactions, effectively keeping them off the books of AIG and out of sight of regulators in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

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Joe Conason writes this week about how companies keep their corporate interests offshore - to evade paying their fair share of taxes:

According to the Government Accountability Office, nearly all of America's top 100 corporations maintain subsidiaries in countries identified as tax havens. As the GAO notes, there could be reasons other than avoiding the IRS to set up branches in places such as Singapore, Luxembourg and Switzerland, where taxes are light or nonexistent and keeping clients' illicit secrets is considered a matter of national pride.

But what reason other than evasion could there be for Goldman Sachs Group to set up three subsidiaries in Bermuda, five in Mauritius, and 15 in the Cayman Islands? Why did Countrywide Financial need two subsidiaries in Guernsey? Why did Wachovia need 18 subsidiaries in Bermuda, three in the British Virgin Islands, and 16 in the Caymans? Why did Lehman Brothers need 31 subsidiaries in the Caymans? What do Bank of America's 59 subsidiaries in the Caymans actually do? Why does Citigroup need 427 separate subsidiaries in tax havens, including 12 in the Channel Islands, 21 in Jersey, 91 in Luxembourg, 19 in Bermuda and 90 in the Caymans? What exactly is going on at Morgan Stanley's 19 subs in Jersey, 29 subs in Luxembourg, 14 subs in the Marshall Islands, and its amazing 158 subs in the Caymans? And speaking of AIG, why does it have 18 subs in tax-haven countries? (Don't expect to find out from Fox News Channel or the New York Post, because News Corp. has its own constellation of strange subsidiaries, including 33 in the Caymans alone.)

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