EPO Coverage Remains Connected to Other Topics We Routinely Cover (EPO Staff and Former Staff Should Withdraw or Pull Pensions Out of the United Kingdom)
Pension schemes/scams will continue to be a topic of interest this year
THE hardware issues are hopefully a thing of the past now (still under scrutiny and very close observation), so later today we'll resume our daily writings about the EPO.
Last week we planned to say a lot more about the EPO's pension funds, then tell the Mediapart 'story behind the story' (we contributed to the reporting) and give a clue as to what was coming tomorrow (I planned to record some videos, but then hardware failed, backups degraded at the same time, so everything got delayed repeatedly).
Our cynicism or scepticism or general views/sentiment about pension money is years old, but it was intensified by Microsoft fraud and firsthand experience in my last employer. As "conspiratorial" or unbelievable or outlandish as it may sound, banks do not really keep savers' money but instead issue these funds as "loans" for people in precarious situations, unable or unlikely to be able to pay back the money. The "collaterals" are overvalued to create a disparity between "assets" and real worth. Companies which they tell us are "worth" trillions are maybe, at best, worth hundreds of billions of dollars and some multi-billion-dollar companies are actually in debt and never made actual money. That's the makeup of a dangerous bubble, with only some credible events that shatter confidence being required to trigger a chain reaction. We saw that more than 15 years ago and the global economy never truly recovered since then (national debts continue to spin out of control; in the US the debt now exceeds 34 trillion dollars - an increase of 2.5 trillion dollars in the past 6 months alone).
How does the EPO relate to all this? Well, we wrote about it 2 years ago. The EPO's money became a pillar in the bubble; it's part of the scam. As an EPO insider told me a few days ago: "The situation is a shame... if I could provide you with all the details I know. It is disgusting."
A lot of the people in these institutions claim to be "investing money" (giving it to companies like Microsoft to lose or "play with").
They play (as in, give your money to somebody else), lose the money, and then point to documents you signed once upon a time. They then say "really sorry"... when they lose your money. Sorry is meaningless, without value or merit. These people lack empathy or other emotions that encapsulate regret.
Always pay careful attention to whatever you sign, and remember that stock markets do not perpetually go up because entire economies can evaporate, taking stakeholders and shareholders down, having ridden their back in a pyramid-scheme-like bubble.
Remember that pensions are all about "faith"; if many people do a "run on the pension pots", due to a severe lack of confidence, terrible things can happen to whole economies. Taxing "early" (what they call here "unauthorised") withdrawals is part of the scare tactics. Due to the sensitivity of all this, such as people's "future money" being tied to a lot of the "stock market", states will do almost anything to protect the "pension cows", so people who rattle this system can be painted "enemies of the state", even if what they say is inherently true but "talking down the economy" (supposedly so, from the point of view of those who have long intentionally rigged the economy and protected the bubble's inertia).
Anyway, will EPO workers (past and present) pull their pension pots out of the UK? The Office warns them that "[f]or non-qualifying schemes, HMRC imposes at least 40% exit tax before the pension transfer, making it less attractive."
It's not like putting the money in the personal bank accounts of people makes that money invulnerable to collapses (of banks, currencies etc.), but it is very immoral that employees are often compelled to take some obligatory or "hard-to-miss" pension scheme/s.
In my last employer, it turned out to be pension fraud. Will Action Fraud (part of British police) be able to help? I presume that my call to them (first such call) will be about Sirius colleagues, not just myself, so coordination will be needed. If we can force the extradition and prosecution (maybe arrest) of the CEO, it will not be about making a point but about seeking justice. If recovery of the stolen money is not possible, at least someone might be locked up until his death, unable to rob more men and women.
The legal system here dragged this on and on for months, at the end even ignoring pressure from Members of Parliament. Is Action Fraud reluctant to expose pension fraud? Looking the other way would only exacerbate things, not brush things under the rug. If people in the UK can get away with pension fraud, then why would anyone trust this system to self-regulate or actually enforce the law?
My personal advice to EPO staff - and I preferred to do this in video - is to take their pension money out of the UK. Canary Wharf operates outside the rule of law and so do other "banksters' islands" across the country.
We're talking about billions of pounds in EPO pensions (past staff too, their money being locked in the UK). It seems wrong that past staff from all of Europe should have a pot in the UK even after Brexit and the EPO's staff - seeing what happened to me and my colleagues - was alarmed by this (it's documented here, with videos and calls to pension funds meticulously documented last year).
In the case of Standard Life, one of the UK's largest providers, we demonstrated how they had stonewalled customers for months if not years! Yes, years! They did this to numerous people. They are part of the problem.
Anyway, this month's material on EPO affairs is low on software patents-related content, but later this month or next month I intend to call the authorities to report pension fraud (committed against my colleagues and I), then show how British authorities respond to such a serious matter, in which several complicit parties exist and most still reside in the UK (arresting them could be trivial).
To be clear, I never phoned Action Fraud before. They are notorious for inaction. █