President Barack Obama amended Reagan-era Executive Order 12425 on December 17, which granted agents of the global police database Interpol full immunity from U.S. tax and customs laws, as if they were full ambassadors from other countries.
The original 1983 executive order designated Interpol as an international organization protected by some immunity laws, but Obama’s amendment granted all Interpol employees full exemption from U.S. taxes and customs inspections. Under provisions of Obama’s executive order, Interpol and its employees in the United States won’t have to any pay income taxes, property taxes, or Social Security taxes, in addition to customs duties.
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The executive order also notes that Interpol employees and their property “shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable.”
The latter provision has caused some alarm on the Internet, where many have feared Interpol — which is a law-enforcement agency — would be given more authority to operate in the United States. However, this executive order does nothing to change the authority of Interpol to operate in the United States, except to exempt them from taxes and searches.
It is suspicious that the archives of Interpol is said to be “inviolable” from U.S. government search, as the entire purpose of Interpol is to share information on international criminals between nations. Such an executive order makes it possible — however unlikely — that such an exemption from customs duties and searches could lead to the export of sensitive materials without U.S. government authorization. It is also possible that U.S. persons could be exported (perhaps for trial at an international criminal court) without a search. The International Criminal Court has actively courted cooperation with Interpol, the Lyon, France-based International Criminal Police Organization formed in 1923 (and later taken over by Nazi Germany, though revived after World War II).
Though such abductions are possible under Obama’s amended executive order, the amendment doesn’t authorize anything of the sort. And it doesn’t appear abduction of Americans for the International Criminal Court (to which the United States is not a party) is the intent of Obama’s December 17 edict. Abductions are against the basic principles of Interpol. Rather, it looks as if Obama is just giving some of his globalist fatcat friends a full-blown tax exemption.
We should all be so lucky to be exempt from income and Social Security taxes. But Americans have seen their taxes increased under Obama, from the tobacco tax increase already passed to the “cap-and-trade” and healthcare tax increases eagerly being sought by the Obama administration.
Photo: AP Images
