Panama Foundation Scams

Panama Foundation Scams – A number of entities are out there on the Internet selling Panama Foundations and the way they promote them is a scam.

Panama Foundations and Tax Compliance - Non lawyer, non accountant entities in some offshore island sitting there amongst the banana trees and monkeys write a web site claiming that they have the miracle solution to tax matters relating to Panama Foundations in countries other than Panama. They claim to have compliant Panama Foundation documents that meet the requirements of the taxing authorities in other countries. They even say it is lawyer drafted. Of course it is all Panama Foundations by definition are lawyer drafted. Folks this is an exercise in internet marketing that is less than ethical and basically designed to get sales. Are these folks going to represent you if there is an audit? Of course not! Can they legally represent you in the event of an audit? Absolutely not! Do you have any recourse against them if you get into trouble with your government based on doing what they say? You can tell your government they told you so. Next your government says: Are they lawyers in this country? You say no. Then your government says: Are they accountants in this country? You say no. Your government says what are they? You say what – A website! Then your government may go after these people criminally or civilly but that isn’t going to help you out too much is it? These people are offering you highly specific tax counsel pertaining to Panama Foundations and your country and then asking you to sign a letter stating that you did not get any tax advice from them! Come on. Folks you do not get complex tax and legal advice from people that are not lawyers, not accountants and running a website on a Caribbean Island. You should know better.

Panama Foundations and the Money Trail - Some of these non lawyer corporate agents offering Panama Foundations are going around stating that they have a solution for one to avoid wiring the funds from your home country bank account to the Panama Foundation bank account. Their solution is to wire the money to their bank account and then they will wire it to your bank account losing the trail. If you believe this I have a bridge that connects New York to London that we can sell you cheap! Folks I hope you do not fall for this. Let us assume this is not an outright scam and they do not just say we never got the wire we don’t care what your bank says we don’t have it, what they are doing has a lot of pitfalls. First of all this is classical money laundering to any bank or government. Such a bank account would be closed fairly quickly if used like this in any jurisdiction and the bank may decide to close their account while your money is still in it and then what are you going to do? Next you have to consider that these non-attorney non-accountant folks who claim to have mastered international taxation matters pertaining to Panama Foundations single handedly are going to take just about anyone as a client that wants to lose a money trail. This means they are going to have a criminal in their system sooner or later (probably sooner) and this again means bank account closure and seizure of all the funds which include your funds at the time. Additionally they may not only seize the funds in the account they might get the bank account records and start investigations of everyone in their database as a client and may even go after the bank accounts they wired funds into from their bank account. In any event you may very well wind being a person of interest to a number of governments after such a raid, think body cavity searches at airports. Remember these people are not lawyers and have all your vital information; there is no attorney client privilege with them. If a civil lawyer in your country got into your bank records and saw the wire records to the bank account these guys claim can be used to money launder or lose the money trail as they put it, it would be easy for the lawyer chasing you to pursue the funds. He hires a lawyer in the jurisdiction the bank being used to lose the trail is located in and gets the bank records by court order for any one of a number of reasons. Rest assured they are not going to hire a lawyer to fight a request for records, they don’t care about you. Now the lawyer knows where they are and gets another lawyer where they are and files papers to get them to produce records on you. Are they going to go and spend $5,000 on a lawyer to protect you and your records? Forget it. They are going to lay down and say it was a lawful court order and turn over your records fast to get this out of the way. See the potential problems you get into when dealing with a non-lawyer. With a law firm there is attorney client privilege. If some attorney comes and tries to break the attorney client privilege frivolously to get into Panama Foundation records we would fight it and file a counter motion to collect legal fees and costs from the lawyer filing the motion. We are experienced lawyers and do not have to go out and hire a lawyer and the opposing counsel knows this and isn’t even going to try a frivolous action.

Panama Foundations as a Beneficiary Owner of a Bank Account – There is an organization called FATF (Financial Action Task Force). It is a civilian watch dog group that self polices the banks. If a bank does not follow FATF guidelines the other banks will refuse to send and receive wires from them, refuse to clear checks and this bank will not be able to maintain any correspondent bank relationships. This is called being blacklisted. There is no way a judicial person (a Panama Foundation is a judicial person like a corporation) can be a beneficial owner of a bank account in a real bank that can send and receive wires. The beneficial owner has to be a natural person, and that is that. If a bank starts opening accounts with judicial persons as the beneficial owner it is either not a real bank or is soon going to be blacklisted. So if you see a website offering a Panama Foundation with the ability to get you a bank account where the foundation is the beneficial owner grab your money and run away as fast as you can.

Panama Foundation Resellers – A Panama Foundation must be formed by a Panama Attorney. The attorney is the resident agent of the Panama Foundation. So any of these corporate agents have to use a Panama Attorney to do the work and this attorney you never even speak to. Does this make you warm and mushy inside?

Panama Foundation Agents – We are a licensed Panama Law Firm with our law license numbers on the website, our listing in Martindale Hubbell Legal Directory and our address and local phone on our web site. We have a real physical office one can come visit. We have a staff. We are real and can be found. Can you find your corporate reseller? Do you really know what country he or she is in? Do they have any licenses of any sort? Do you know their true identities? Be careful.

Panama Foundation Bank Accounts – We being a Panama Law Firm do our due diligence on the client and then take the file to the bank for the account opening. We use multi- billion dollar Panama Banks not garbage offshore only licensed banks in some has been island jurisdiction in numerous tax treaties. Panama has no tax treaties of any sort with any country. The banks have large skyscraper buildings with their name on them. Many of our clients visit us in person and we go to the bank together although one can readily obtain a Panama Bank Account without visiting Panama. Some of these resellers say all they do is provide a list of banks and send in the forms you filled out. The bank can not rely on them to have also done their due diligence like a Panama Bank relies on a Panama Law Firm. In fact you would do better to send in the forms yourself so these non-lawyer guys don’t even have your bank name in their files. They will say things like once we send in the bank application we are done, you follow up; the bank will not talk to us anymore. Well since we are your attorney that is not the case with us. We stay on it until your Panama bank account is opened. We deal with requests for more information, illegible signature cards, requests to clarify, errors in the way the bank forms were filled out etc. Our success rate is 99%+.

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