This was all legal, and occurred under Jack, Jeff and John. The financial engineering to not pay US taxes needs to end. Are you a US company ? Then pay some taxes like the rest of the US companies and tax payers.
Culp is going to take the complexity out of GE, but it won't be easy or overnight. To give you an idea of how complex GE is, here's a quote from the 2017 10-K:
"Annually, we file over 5,000 income tax returns in over 290 global taxing jurisdictions. We are under examination or engaged in tax litigation in many of these jurisdictions."
How many accountants (or accounting departments for that matter) does it take to file 5,000 tax returns? And an entire staff of lawyers to contest all the tax litigation too. Mind boggling.