The Honduran cities project has risen again, after initially being declared unconstitutional:
A plan to build “model cities” in Honduras, with their own laws and police force, is facing growing controversy with the resignation of its oversight committee, dozens of legal challenges, and the murder of a lawyer who was a leading opponent.
The New York Times has a piece on Paul Romer, a US economist who developed the idea of the “charter city,” separate from the rest of the country, which would be administered by foreign governments, comparable to Hong Kong. The Economist has compared the plan to “internal start-ups — quasi-independent city-states that begin with a clean slate and are then overseen by outside experts.”
The plan is moving forward in Honduras, following a 2011 constitutional amendment to allow for the new cities, but Romer and the rest of a transparency commission that was meant to oversee the process resigned en masse on September 7. They complained that the government had shut them out of the process, including negotiations with UK-based MGK Group that plans to invest. “The one absolute principle is a commitment to transparency,” Romer told the NYT.
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MGK Group is lead by CEO Michael Strong, who the NYT describes as an “activist” — “He promises that his investors include Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and Central American investors, but when pressed for details, named only one Guatemalan businessman.” The newspaper says that the lack of details has made even pro-government newspapers question the reality of the project. Honduras Culture and Politics says that the group’s “bare bones generic website grupomgk.com … was hastily erected in the last week.” El Heraldo reported on September 14 that the organization did not exist, and that no trace of it could be found online.
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One of those involved in the opposition was lawyer Antonio Trejo Cabrera, who was gunned down in Tegucigalpa on September 22. He was part of a group of lawyers who presented a challenge to the project on September 5, according to Human Rights Watch.
http://www.coha.org/honduras-model-city-plan-in-the-spotlight/This week:
The Honduran congress approved once again a "model cities" project that the country's Supreme Court had previously declared unconstitutional because it would create special development zones outside the jurisdiction of ordinary Honduran law.
Congressman Rodolfo Irias of the ruling National Party says the law "includes the necessary modifications" to answer concerns about unconstitutionality.
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The court's rejection of the plan led Congress to fire four of the court's five justices in December.
The plan would create "special development regions" with their own independent tax and justice systems, to spur economic growth in this Central American country struggling with corruption and crime.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/honduras-passes-model-cities-law-18298679And tax-free megaships, forever wandering the oceans, such as the
Freedom Ship:
Since 2003, a colossal barge called the Freedom Ship, of debatable tax status, should have been chugging with majestic aimlessness from port to port, a leviathan rover with more than 40,000 wealthy full-time residents living, working and playing on deck. That was the aim eight years ago when the project first made headlines, confidently claiming that construction would start in 2000.
A visit to the “news” section of freedomship.com reveals a more sluggish pace. The most recent messages date from more than two years ago, forlornly explaining how “scam operations” are slowing things down but that “(t)hings are happening, and they are moving fast.” Meanwhile, the ship is not yet finished. Indeed, it is not yet started. Despite this, Freedom Ship International Inc. has been startlingly successful in raising publicity for this “floating city.” Much credulous journalistic cooing over “the biggest vessel in history,” with its “hospitals, banks, sports centres, parks, theaters and nightclubs,” not to mention its airport, has ignored the vessel’s stubborn nonexistence.
Freedom Ship’s website claims that the vessel has not been conceived as a locus for tax avoidance, pointing out that as it will sail under a flag of convenience, residents may still be liable for taxes in their home countries. Nonetheless, whatever the ultimate tax status of those whom we will charitably presume might one day set sail, much of the interest in Freedom Ship has revolved precisely around its perceived status as a tax haven.
And despite the apparent corrective on the website, the project’s officials have not been shy in purveying that impression. They have pushed promotional literature that, in the words of one journalist, “paints the picture of a luminous tax haven,” and stressed that the ship will levy “(n)o income tax, no real estate tax, no sales tax, no business duties, no import duties.” Of course, as no cruise ship could ever levy income tax, to trumpet that fact is preposterous, except as a propaganda strategy.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3328/floating_utopias/
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