Buy Gold Anonymously

Introduction – We are in financially trying times. The question is how to preserve wealth. Of course the answer involves diversification. Diversification means putting your assets into a diversified mix of investments. This can include real estate, antiques, collectables, stocks, bonds, futures, holding currency from different countries in bank accounts, precious stones, and of course last but not least Gold. The question would be how to buy the gold anonymously and store the gold securely and anonymously.

Advantages of Gold – Governments cannot just make Gold like they can print money. There is currently no currency in the world that is backed by gold, silver or any other precious metal. We are stuck with governments telling us this is worth a Dollar, a Yen or a Pound because they say it is. This is less than ideal. A hundred years ago an ounce of gold would buy a wagonload of groceries. Today an ounce of gold will fill an SUV with groceries nicely. See it held it’s relative value. So for preservation of wealth gold should be a valuable component in ones portfolio.

Disadvantages of Gold – Gold is hard to transport. It can be heavy. It triggers metal detectors. If you sell gold ingots or bars it is common for the buyer to want to assay the gold before closing on the transaction. Assaying means checking the weight, size of the ingot and extracting a small sample of the metal to test for purity. Usually government minted gold coins are not tested as carefully as a bar or an ingot would be. Today there is a shortage of gold struck coins. They are selling at premiums of 50% of the spot price. In many countries any sales or purchases of gold in amounts of $10,000 or more using dealers needs to be reported.

Gold fluctuates in value. Five or six years ago gold was under $300 an ounce, these days $700 to $1000 an ounce is a realistic price range. Gold could go back to $300 an ounce again. Many expect that gold will go to $1200 an ounce in the next year or two. Others have been screaming that gold will hit $3,000 to $5,000 an ounce soon. They have been saying this for years. I think the $1200 figure is probably more accurate but this is always going to be speculative guesses. With the current financial crisis taking place in the world the demand and thus the price for gold is probably going to be higher than in the past. No one knows the future price of gold for sure. Today there is a shortage of gold struck coins and they are selling at premiums of 50% of the spot price. Gold is a hot item today.

Demand for Gold – The demand is currently on the rise. Iran is going to add 15 toms of gold reserves to its already existing stockpile by March 2009. That is a lot of gold. Venezuela has announced plans to nationalize a gold mining company called Crystallex International Corp that has 31,000,000 ounces of gold core with a current market value of some $35,000,000,000. Venezuela wants their gold reserves to increase. They are no longer comfortable relying on their monetary and oil reserves. China is announcing plans to move some of their monetary reserves into gold. The USA has 8,133 tons of gold. China now has 600 tons. China plans to increase their gold holdings to 3,000 or 4,000 tons. They see gold at the current price range (low $700 mark) as a good entry point. Maybe we should listen to them?

How to Purchase Gold – One way is to go down to your local gold dealer and buy government minted gold coins. If you buy more than $10,000 from the same dealer he is probably going to want ID and file a government report on you. Most but not all countries are this way. You could pay cash and go to numerous dealers to avoid the reportage.

Now you have the gold where do you keep it? Well you could use a bank vault. These vaults are not insured for contents. The bank has no idea what is in there. In the great depression of the 1930’s era in the USA the banks closed. The bank employees came into the closed banks at night, weekends etc and looked like they were doing paperwork and were also breaking into the vault boxes wholesale. People lost all in these boxes that could not be traced like diamonds, gold, cash, jewelry etc.

Imagine today going to the police and filing a report that your gold was stolen from a vault box in a closed bank. My gosh they would see you as a person of interest and start to build a case against you. Do you have receipts for the gold, how do we know the gold was really in there, how do we know you did not hide the gold elsewhere – can we search your home and vehicles, why did you buy the gold, did you pay taxes on this money, where did you get the money to buy the gold, when you sold the gold what were you going to do with them money, did you report the purchase of the gold to the government, etc.

So the bank vaults are generally safe BUT if the banks close by government order, martial law, bank holiday, bank failure etc your vault box property is inaccessible when you may need it most and is also at risk for theft. Vaults also do not do so great if there is a flood, tornado or major hurricane. Tornadoes pick up 40 car freight trains, how much does a vault weigh in comparison. Then you could always store the gold at home. You could open up the walls and place the gold inside the walls in a box or something like that. If there is a fire the gold will melt and probably not be recoverable.

You could buy a home safe and put the gold in the safe. Most of the safes are not that secure. They can be opened by crowbar, power saw, axes, drills etc. The majority of safes do have reasonable fire protection however. If you get a UL Laboratory rated safe with a 15 minute rating for theft and one hour fire on all six sides you should be reasonably well protected. A 30-minute rating is more secure and most banks and jewelers only use a 30-minute rated safe or higher. They go up to 60 minutes rated with an additional explosive protection rating. Expect to pay $3500 and up for one of these safes plus installation and delivery. Larger ones can be $10,000 and up. Do bolt the safe into the walls and floor. Consider building a room around the safe. Consider use concrete saw proof cement with rebar to build a wall around the safe exposing only the door of the safe, which is normally the strongest surface of the safe. Do have an alarm system with fire sensors. Manual dials with rare exceptions are not secure. Use a good digital combination lock/dial. Gun safes are no good. They will stop a junkie burglar going through drug withdrawal, is about it. They are UL rated for 5 minutes of attack, only.

Fire safes are even worse; they can opened with a good fire axe. The key is UL rated safes with a rating of 15 minutes for burglar resistance. Fire resistance is usually one to two hours, which should be enough. For the fire resistance to work the safe must be tight fitting. Please bear in mind if you suffer a home invasion and they find the safe they will force you to open it at gunpoint, so the safe is best well hidden like build a dummy back to closet (false wall) and put it in there. At a minimum put it inside a closet with a deadbolt lock. You can cover it up with clothes and blankets so workmen do not see it when coming to the house. You can always have two or more safes. Use one for an easy to find decoy. Keep a few hundred dollars in there and some not valuable junk. Put a lot of important looking papers in there too that you can afford to lose. Have the safe delivered wrapped in a blanket in a neutral truck, not a truck that says Joe’s Safes and Vaults.

In summation bank vaults have limitations regarding access and there is a big risk factor if the bank gets closed which is a common occurrence these days in a lot of countries in North America and Europe. Never let the bank people know what is in the vault box. If you are storing large amounts of gold the box is going to be very heavy so get a waist high vault box, maybe three or four instead of one great big one.

Taking the gold to and from the bank is a security risk so be very careful. Taking a suitcase with wheels to the safe deposit box may be a little bit too conspicuous. Remove the gold in small amounts each time. Home storage of gold while convenient is risky. Good safes are costly, large and often cannot be wheeled into the house since they would break the floor. Condos and apartments are generally problematic when it comes to installing a good safe. The elevators do not hold them, and the floors may break from wheeling them on a hydraulic dolly.

Safes can be defeated in a home invasion by forcing you to open them. Safes and bank vaults do not protect in case of a severe flood, tornado, or hurricane. If you have to leave a country or region suddenly, you really want your gold already stored in another safe location.

Making Private Ownership of Gold Illegal - Private ownership of gold in the past has been illegal in certain countries, most notable the USA. In the future some of the more oppressive high-tax regimes may resort to this again. It would enable them to buy up a lot of gold at bargain prices as people rush to sell it in desperation before the deadline date of lawful ownership. Making private ownership illegal is very problematic especially if you are stuck holding contraband gold. There is no market to sell it in. It cannot be taken through metal detectors at airports and on cruise ships. If you are caught with the gold you will have it confiscated, pay fines and face prison time. This is another consideration. One needs to take into account when planning their gold acquisition. Governments want you trusting in their printed-paper, not hard metals the supply of which they cannot control. The last thing they want to see is a return to money consisting only of gold and silver coins.

Anonymous Ownership of Gold – Well we all know you can go down to the local coin dealer and buy gold coins in small quantities using cash. You do not need us for this. When it comes to large quantities of gold then the anonymous acquisition problem becomes acute. The local dealer is going to take cash for purchases of under $10,000 after that he needs to report the transaction and get ID on you. The $10,000 amount is per year in some countries not just per transaction so you usually cannot go back every few days and buy another $10,000. We do have more sophisticated ways to buy gold anonymously and store gold safely.

Purchase Methods – Note: This is NOT done in Panama. Panama Legal, S.A. Law Firm does not do this. Our affiliate and associate law firms in other countries perform these functions.

What is done is an anonymous corporation or foundation is formed for you and is used to buy the gold. The legal representative of the corporation, the lawyer, is the signatory on the transaction on behalf of the corporation or foundation. You own and/or control the corporation and foundation. Your name never gets involved in the transaction and does not appear in any of the documents. If you want your name to appear in the transaction this could be arranged as an option if you feel more secure with the transaction in your name.

The transaction is done in countries in South and Central America where the lawyer can be the legal representative operating under a limited or general power of attorney. The lawyer is never listed as the beneficial owner. The beneficial owner is the corporation or foundation, not you or your personal name. You can control the share certificates of the corporation and have a general power of attorney. If a foundation is used you can be the beneficiary of the foundation. No one could trace anything to you personally.

Money Trail – The funds can be wired to the Guatemala Attorney Client Trust Account in Guatemala. Then the law firm can wire the funds on to the country where the gold is being purchased by the corporation or foundation. Basically an escrow is set up in the bank in the country the gold is coming from. The escrow will close typically in 12 to 24 hours. When the gold is delivered the money is paid from the escrow. Now you have the gold. It will probably be in the form of a deposit receipt from a prominent bank.

The payment was made to a law firm in another country from where the transaction is taking place. The law firm does not send the funds over from the same bank account you wired the money into. No one knows why the money was sent to the law firm. It is attorney client privileged information, well protected by law in almost every country in the world. Can attorneys handle investments for clients – of course, that is a large part of what attorneys do. Gold is just an investment in precious metals. All the major governments of the world hold gold, so why can’t you? So there is no real money trail that could be followed.

Trying to pierce attorney client trust bank accounts in Guatemala is something far from simple. Actual hard evidence of the funds being the fruit of criminal activity would be required. A court date would be set in Guatemala. The other side’s prosecuting attorneys would need to come to Guatemala and hire local counsel. They would be required to present hard evidence that the money was the fruit of a crime that would also be a crime in Guatemala. The prosecuting attorneys appearing from the other country in Guatemala would not be able to enter testimony unless they waived diplomatic immunity to subject them to perjury and contempt of court consequences for supplying false information.

They do not like this at all. They prefer to be able to make it up as they go along with any consequences. Just tax only cases would not work. Fraudulent conveyance would not work. Vague allegations of fraud, conspiracy, facilitating etc would not work. They would not be able to say things like “You honor we just know this violation has been committed and if we can get into the confidential attorney client bank records we can find the evidence”. We are also not interested in making a haven for criminals.

You are further protected by an International Trust Agreement clearly stating what the law firm is supposed to do once it receives your money - in other words go and buy your gold as clearly and as specifically stated in the International Trust Agreement. The country will be buying the Gold in does not require revelation of the owners of the corporation or foundation that is buying the gold. This is a key ingredient.

If you are not a client please do not call us with reasons why we should tell you the name of this country before you become a paid client. If we were dumb enough to give the farm away we wouldn’t be good lawyers, would we. A certain amount of people would call us and try to get the name of the countries and then start trying to find gold dealers in those countries. We are not interested in being a gold dealer referral agency. The gold dealers are not offshore lawyers and will not be able to set up the structure for you to hold the gold or make the payment in such a way as to lose the money trail.

Imagine you are in a lawsuit. The other side subpoenas your bank records in the home country. What is better for them to see – a wire to a gold dealer in South/Central America or a wire to a law firm? To go further the gold dealer will not know who you are and will probably not want to talk to you especially when the subject of anonymity and security comes up. If you were this type of person you would at some point start asking the gold dealer how he can convince you that you can trust him. If you got this far that would be the end for sure.

There are actually three countries that can be used to conduct these transactions with the desired degree of anonymity. They are in Central and South America. The way to check us out is to come for a visit to Guatemala and meet with us. We know and respect the fact that you are a successful businessperson. This is a complex area of international law involving the laws of several countries. How familiar are you with the Roman Law System that has no case law for instance? Let us do the work, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and you want this done right the first time. Counsel rests their case.

Store Gold Anonymously – Now the question of storage comes up. Of course you can take the gold on a chartered jet and carry it off with you anywhere you like. As long as any declarations that may or may not be required, are made you are fine. A more practical option would be to store the gold in a bank vault in one of the countries involved. The gold would have a deposit receipt from the bank, of course based on weight not monetary value. The gold would have its own segregated holding box or area (depends on quantities) inside the bank vault. The gold can be collected at any time with the receipt of deposit and other documents. The lawyer would have to be present under this scenario but other scenarios could be structured.

The gold can also be transported by jet to another country in Central/South America and placed in bank vaults there as well. This would further remove and obscure any residual money trail to the point of being non-existent. Once the gold gets on the jet that is it. The pilot can be told to change his flight plan after departure to make sure the country of departure does not even know what country the gold went to. Of course the gold would be transferred to the name of another corporation or foundation at this point. We can arrange more complex strategies for additional security as well.

Gold Acquisition Price – We arrange gold purchases at London Spot prices and can even arrange discounts to 2% below London Spot prices. Our anonymous gold purchasing and holding solutions are not intended for investments of under $500,000. At an investment of one kilogram of gold the price would be 2% under London Daily Spot Price. The legal fees will vary depending on the complexity of the structure, amount of countries involved and which countries are used. Legal fees will be in excess of $10,000 as a bare minimum.

Financial Use of the Gold – The gold can be used to collateralize various financial instruments such as stand-by letters of credit, and to guarantee various loans such as construction loans. If you have gold deposit certificates that we did not arrange the transaction for, we do not get involved with the issuance of letters of credit, loans etc. using these certificates.

Summary of Solutions – We as your law firm can work out a number of different solutions using corporations, trusts and foundations from different countries to accomplish the anonymous purchase and secure storage of gold. Do contact us to discuss your needs.

Due Diligence – We do require a notarized copy of a passport and driver license to take on a client.

What to do Next – Feel free to contact us. We have a number of secure communication options available. We can conduct the transaction long distance and you always have the option of visiting our law firm in Guatemala for a personal consultation with our lawyers.