Summary:
In what may be a first in American history, President Trump just expanded the presidential pardon power to include corporations.
Corporations are artificial legal fictions designed to maximize shareholder wealth. Nonetheless, they can theoretically commit crimes and be indicted for them. According to a 1999 memorandum from the Justice Department, the “important public benefits” of prosecuting corporations include “deterrence on a massive scale,” particularly for “crimes that carry with them a substantial risk of public harm,” such as “financial frauds.”
Such public benefits now fall prey to the whims of the president with his pardon of a cryptocurrency company that smacks of political corruption.
On Friday, Trump issued full and unconditional pardons to four individuals and a related cryptocurrency exchange, BitMEX.
BitMEX solicits and takes orders for trades in derivatives tied to the value of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin. Last summer, BitMEX entered a guilty plea in a Manhattan federal court for violating the Bank Secrecy Act for having operated without a legitimate anti-money laundering program. Prior to August 2020, customers could register to trade with BitMEX anonymously, providing only verified email addresses. The latest in politics and policy. Direct to your inbox. Sign up for the Opinion newsletter
On Jan. 15, 2025, BitMEX was criminally fined $100 million in connection with its guilty plea, which was on top of $130 million in civil penalties previously imposed by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. At sentencing, the judge noted that BitMEX, which is incorporated in the Seychelles, had claimed not to operate in the U.S. for several years even though U.S. customers comprised a large share of its business.
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Complicated and expensive. Expensive being the more limiting of the two. I saw a thread just today where a Canadian told an aspiring American ex-pat to have about $10k on hand, in addition to selective qualifications. Most aspiring ex-pats lack $10k on hand. I don’t know much about comparable costs in other countries, but just physically moving across an ocean would be expensive.
And by complicated I was referring more to the many, potentially exclusionary, complications that arise than to the complexity of the task itself. Canada is more selective than you might think, Europe presents its own unique challenges. Much easier in some cases if you have recent European ancestry, but a lot of Americans are 5th generation, or more.
I’m one generation down from easy migration. Same with my wife.
Would be hella scary to emigrate. We don’t speak the language. I figure most dutch people speak English but it would be really isolating. We don’t have skills that would let us get jobs easily. We have significant health issues.
We won’t unless we must.