Asset Protection Using Offshore Banks in Multiple Jurisdictions

Introduction – What we are going to discuss here is the possibility of having two different corporations with a bank account for each corporation in a different country. This is to protect assets by running the money trail across international borders. This approach will greatly increase the expense and time frame required for a financial enemy to chase your assets.

Pursuit by Financial Enemies – Your financial enemies will be able to easily pick up the money trail in your home country. This is done by using the courts in your home country to subpoena your banking records or by paying a private detective to illegally obtain your banking records. Once they have your banking records they then see wire transfers going to the foreign bank account in another country. If one uses a cashier’s check from the bank the bank account entry shows money debited for purchasing a cashiers check. It is usually a simple matter to take it another level to see a copy of the cashiers check. The check will show the name of the corporation only without the country it is in. If it is a subpoena your enemies are using they will be able to get a copy of the back of the cashiers check showing the bank and country the check was deposited into. If it is a private detective he probably will not be able to get the back of the check so they will just have the name of the corporation the check was made out to. Without knowing the country this is fairly inconclusive.

Another way to create confusion in the banking records is to use a system called a “Quick Pay” or “Fast Collect”. The way this works is you deposit a cashier’s check into the offshore bank account made out to the corporation name. The offshore bank then sends by courier the cashier check to the bank that issued it with an endorsement asking them to cash the check at the bank that issued it and wire the proceeds to the offshore bank account. One not really experienced with such procedures may not be able to figure out what happened when going through the records since this is a fairly obscure procedure and costly too usually about $350. It may help or it may serve to delay while they try to get the bank to explain what happened.

Second Level of Defense – So once your financial enemies have isolated the first corporation and bank lets assume they decide to launch an offshore attack. They need to have some sort of judgment or ruling in the home country court system against you to establish that there is some sort of a debt. Now they have to hire a local lawyer in the jurisdiction since the home country lawyer cannot practice law in the offshore jurisdiction. Think $$$$. Now they start their attack and need to prove that the corporation is owned by you to get at the funds in addition to establishing a valid debt and establishing authority and venue that is appropriate for the courts in the offshore jurisdiction. This is anything but easy to do.

The offshore courts are protecting their banks, corporations, foundations etc. and are fighting the aggressor every step of the way. It is very hard to prove that you own the corporation in order to transfer the debt from you to the corporation because we are dealing with anonymous bearer share corporations where the Panama Government does not even know who owns the corporation. However in spite of all this you could be stuck having to retain a lawyer to defend against this action. You also run a risk (quite small) that the other side could show enough evidence to the judge to establish a fraudulent conveyance case and post a bond to freeze your money.

Is this likely to happen? No, but if you do not respond to court filings it could happen. It is very likely to occur because they will probably have no evidence to convince a judge that the corporation belongs to you and even if they could it is still money that belongs to the corporation or foundation. This has never happened to any of our many clients but it could happen. Panama Foundations do offer better protection against this than corporations assuming the case is in Panama.

The Solution – What is done to free yourself of the trouble and expense of defending a lawsuit and at the same time keep your assets safe and secure is you open a second anonymous Panama Bearer Share Corporation and a bank account in a second country that has bank secrecy and privacy. Now you transfer the funds from the first country to the second country bank account leaving a nominal sum like $1500 in the first bank account. So if trouble hits they will attack the first bank account and then you can let them have the $1500 and save on the legal fees. You will be receiving all sorts of official notices. By the time they get the records and decide to go after the second bank account in another country you could have moved the funds to another jurisdiction if this was your desire and that decision would be entirely up to you. The enemy will most likely assume this to be the case and not spend a large amount on legal fees to chase you to another country as in they learned their lesson and their lawyers got rich off of them. If they did continue the chase they would find just another $1500 there to act as an alarm bell letting you know they were attacking and sparing you the expense of hiring a law firm to defend while at the same time they keep spending big time to recover next to nothing.

Essential Ingredient – The important point to remember is that if you do not put up a legal fight they can get at the bank records and see where you wired the money. They will have to go country hoping to chase these funds and this is expensive but they may do this. You always have to stay two hops ahead of them, one is not enough. This always leaves you an alarm position with a nominal $1500 to serve as an alarm bell before they can get to the next country and attack again.

Trust Account Solution – There is another way to accomplish this but more costly that involves a trust agreement. A bank account is opened in Guatemala using the Guatemala law firm as the signatory protecting you with a trust agreement. The law firm receives the funds in the attorney client trust account. They then according to your wishes forward the funds on to another country and into the corporate bank account. If anyone tries to chase the trail they hit the law firm trust account and attorney client privilege, which in Guatemala is almost impossible to break.

If it looked like they were going to pierce the attorney client privilege the law firm would give you an indication of a strong loss possibility, again very rare unless the funds involved were derived from criminal activities. If the law firm defends the action to pierce the attorney client privilege there will be some legal expenses but they will be much lower and the chances of winning much higher, assuming there is nothing criminal involved. Of course you still have an alarm bell warning here as well.