Protect Your Bank Accounts

Executive Summary – The only way to protect your bank account is to have the accounts in a privacy oriented tax haven jurisdiction, the kind Obama hates. We will explain how to do this correctly.

Jurisdiction – You need to find a jurisdiction where there is privacy. The first thing to look for is tax treaties. Panama has no tax treaties with any country. This stops being caught up in any fishing expedition by a country trying to get all the records from a bank of people from a certain country.

Anonymity – The way this is done is to have an anonymous bearer share corporation or an anonymous foundation open the bank account. You are the signatory and beneficiary owner. Banks require the beneficiary owner to be a real person, so forget using a trust, corporation or foundation for this. The bank will know whom the owner and signatory is. The name of the bank account will just be the corporation or foundation name, not your name, you are only the signatory, which is covered by bank secrecy and hidden inside the bank records.

The ownership of the corporation or foundation is not known to the government in Panama and of course is not to be found in any public registry or database. So the key ingredients are a country with bank secrecy, no tax treaties and corporations and foundations where the ownership is not made public or even known to the government of the country.

Trust Account Banking – Here we put another large layer of security around the structure. We use an anonymous bearer share corporation. The client gets a general power of attorney for the corporation made out in blank or to whomever they want it made out to. The client enters into an International Trust Agreement with the law firm, generally in Guatemala. This is to protect the client and their assets. Then a bank account is opened in the name of the corporation. The law firm representative is the signatory and beneficiary owner on the bank account. The bank does not know who the client is. This is the very strong protection.

New Identity Banking – This is the ultimate in protection. Another way to obtain extreme privacy is to modify your identity and country of citizenship. You can get a new citizenship with national identity card, driver’s license and passport in a brief period of time from one of several Central American Countries through the Guatemala Law Firm. Then you get a bank account in the country and obtain a bank reference letter. Next comes a reference letter from the law firm. Next comes a utility bill. A name change sealed in judge’s chambers can also be arranged so there is no trial from the old name to the new name. So now you have two government issued photo ID’s including a passport in your new name, a lawyer reference letter, a bank reference letter and a utility bill thus enabling you to open a bank account anywhere in the world (Switzerland, Austria, Singapore, Hong Kong. Etc) in your new identity without any reference to your original country.

Of course the identity documents are still you – your picture, index finger fingerprints, photo etc but again it is also not you. You can fund your new bank accounts by wiring the money first to the law firm in Guatemala Attorney Client Trust Account and then it gets sent to your new identity bank account. The countries we use do not tax offshore derived income so there is no need to worry about coming up in any fishing expedition, or getting involved in any sort of Tax Information Exchange Agreement and you would not even have to file a tax return with your new country. The passport is also good for visa free travel to the EU, Central and South America and much of Asia. It does not get any better than this.

Diplomatic Passport for Banking – Our law firm can arrange you to be posted as a diplomat with full diplomatic immunity in a country on any continent. You cannot be posted to a country where you currently hold a citizenship or residency. The diplomatic immunity makes you immune from any and all court proceedings in the country you are posted to. Thus you can bank in that country (personally) without any fear of court proceedings being used to attack your personal bank accounts. Any attachment or attack on your personal funds there could be quickly and easily set aside by showing your diplomatic passport and letter of posting to the court that issued any process against you or your bank account. You could not shelter corporate funds since diplomatic immunity is for you not an unnatural person like a corporation even if you own the corporation it would not be immune. This is a little known but highly effective asset protection scenario but it is a costly structure to set up.

Private Vault – For those of you that are ultra paranoid you can be referred to a private vault service in Guatemala. There is no ID required. The boxes are built into a fortress like hardened building that once belonged to a bank with extremely heavily armed security. The vault building could sustain a serious military ground attack. The boxes are available 24/7. They work on a two key system. You have one key and they have one key. A password is also required to protect against lost key problems.

Boxes come in various sizes. One can even get a walk-in closet sized vault just for your use. Without any ID on file we feel that it is near impossible for any court to order a box seized or opened unless you went on the record stating that it is your box and provided the key and password. Without the password the court could not prove it to be your box even if you said so. The box number itself would have to be implicated in some sort of legal process – most unlikely. The only information they have is the box number and if the fees have been paid. The law firm can pay for the box concealing the payment for the box with attorney client privilege.

You can pay cash for the box in person. The boxes are in Guatemala. You can keep cash in the box, gold, silver, platinum, precious stones, removable hard drives, documents and other valuables. The vaults are not climate controlled enough to be suitable for art, furs or other things requiring a climate-controlled environment. There is no insurance available. Insurance would require “Know Your Customer Due Diligence” an accounting of box contents with photos or movies, controls on content removals, etc. Not compatible with anonymity. Illegal drugs and narcotics are not allowed to be kept in the vault boxes and drug-detecting dogs are passed through the vault area with frequency to guard against this. No private vault service could stay in business if they allowed narcotics to be stored there.