Read This First – Why Go Offshore

Introduction – What we are going to do is show you some reasons for going offshore. This article is revised in November 2011 and is timed to the current political, legal and economic trends. You will probably never encounter a firm who spells it out like we do. Our selection of products and services is not run of the mill standard offerings commonly found. We go to great pains to make sure the clients are well protected using many layers to guard against all sorts of financial enemies the client might have today or financial enemies that may emerge sometime later on. This involves digging deep to find the right corporations, trusts, banks and jurisdictions. There are different structures for different clients. People come from different countries, do business in different countries, have different needs, have different financial concerns, goals etc. This means asset protection needs to be individualized to be optimum. That is why we are eager to talk with potential clients and discuss the various options and which one is best for them, and why this is so. We will explain this below so please keep reading. If nothing else we promise you a good education in the world of offshore asset protection with no punches pulled.

Information Sharing With Other Countries – We can put you into a jurisdiction where there is not going to be any sharing of information for tax purposes. The first thing you want to look for are Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEA). There are about forty nations that have not signed Tax Information Exchange Agreements. None of these nations has been placed on a gray list or a black list. There are too many of them for this to happen. In fact there is no such list to be found anywhere including with the OECD. The list did exist some years ago. Most of these nations lacking TIEA's are not suitable banking jurisdictions. The banks in some of these countries free of TIEA's are bad for serious reasons.

The country must not tax offshore derived income and have no capital gains or inheritance taxes.

The bank has to offer different currencies.

You need to be able to operate the bank account online including having the ability to send out wire transfers online.

The bank must not require a personal visit to the bank.

The bank must allow the account to be opened with a minimum of documents.

There needs to be bank secrecy present in the country.

The bank must allow the account to be opened using an anonymous bearer share corporation so your name does not appear as an owner in any public registry or database. Every time a wire is sent or received the name of the bank account appears in the wire. Banks, central banks and governments can see these wires traveling over the various wire systems (SWIFT and IBAN). Personal accounts are not secure because the name of the bank account is the name of the person. When we use an anonymous bearer share corporation the name of the bank account is the name of the corporation. With such corporations the name of the owners is not in any public registry or database so privacy is preserved.

So you can see there are a lot of parameters that we consider before we use a country or a bank.

Tax Information Exchange Agreements - These agreements are done through the OECD. To see the list of tax treaties go directly to the OECD website here:

Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs)

These treaties allow one country to request bank account information based on nothing more than suspicion of tax law violations. If the country wants the banking records they can request them from the government of the the country the bank is located in. They cannot say hey give me the bank records of every person who is from such and such a country. They could send over a list of 20,000 names and account numbers and say we would like these banking records. They did something like this in Switzerland. So if the bank is in a country that has a tax treaty with the country of your passport that was used to open the bank account, then this is not secure and your privacy is in potential jeopardy. This is one reason many people get second passports. When these countries get the bank records they can file court papers or tax related filings if they “think” you owe taxes, and thus your bank records can get into the public domain. Your private financial matters have now become public knowledge. This could open up issues with other legal matters and exposing you to potential financial enemies. This could affect past or ongoing court cases you might have had like divorce, bankruptcy, or civil disputes. It could lead to kidnapping, extortion, blackmail, theft, fraud and other crimes you could become a victim of. Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEA) are a major privacy violator. You will rarely if at all, ever encounter a firm who spells it out like we do. Our selection of products and services is not run of the mill by far. We go to great pains to make sure the clients are well protected. This involves digging deep to find the right corporations, trusts, banks and jurisdictions. Most will fail to point out that a TIEA can also be used to get into corporate or trust records, not just bank accounts. When you take this into account which is country specific, you can readily see why any decent asset protection package must be custom designed to take these things into account.

Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLAT) – These are treaties different countries have amongst themselves to assist each other in criminal matters. Such treaties could be used to get into corporate or trust records as well as bank accounts. It is best to set up the asset protection structure to avoid such treaties and this can be different for people from different countries. If you are charged with a tax crime this could affect you. The case must be filed in the national courts of the country charging you. They normally would tag on money laundering, tax fraud and other embellishments. Do bear in mind that these treaties can only be invoked if there is already a criminal case on file in the national courts, not the local courts. The MLAT is a diplomatic process. It works through the embassy and follows a MLAT treaty. Such a treaty could be used to get into bank records, corporate records, trust records etc. They have to request the information and say they need this information to prosecute their case and explain why they have no other way to get this information. The country makes a request and it gets considered. They might ask questions, they might refuse or they might comply in whole or in part with the request. We do offer corporations and banking in countries that do not have any MLAT treaties with USA, Canada and most nations. This would be Guatemala which also has no Tax Information Exchange Agreements and no double taxation agreements. They do not tax offshore derived income, they do not tax capital gains on bank interest income and they have no inheritance tax. They have multi currency capability. They have full online banking. They have bank secrecy laws in place. They also accept anonymous bearer share corporations to open bank accounts with and these corporations can come from nations without any Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties or Tax Information Exchange Agreements to ensure privacy and security.

The strongest Asset protection solution we have is Guatemala.

Guatemala – This is a sleeper and where we maintain an office. Guatemala is not considered to be an offshore tax haven of any sort and this helps a lot. They do not tax offshore derived income and no capital gains tax on bank interest. There is no Tax Information Exchange Agreement with any country. There are no Double Taxation Agreements. They have no Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties with EU, Canada, Asia and USA. Domesticating a foreign judgment in Guatemala is most difficult. They have billion dollar banks with online banking. You can bank in USD, Euros, or the local currency. The local currency, quetzal, is a good one. Banks pay 2.5% in USD and 7% on quetzal accounts. Guatemala banks have a small amount of government bank insurance. This let's you know the government is watching the banks. Guatemala has anonymous bearer share corporations. Corporation and bank account can be opened in 7-10 days. We only need a scan of a passport to get a bank account in Guatemala. Guatemalan banks do not require bank reference letters. Bank reference letters can be reported as a suspicious transactions by European Canadian and American banks. For more information go here:

Guatemala Bank Account

Belize - Belize does work but not for those from all nations. It will work for USA and Canada for instance but not for UK people due to some tax treaties with former British Colonies, so best to inquire about Belize. The banks are monitored closely by the Belize Banking Superintendent so the banks are relatively sound. English is an official language of the nation. All the banks have full online banking including sending wires out online. The banks allow one to hold different currencies which usually includes USD, EURO, CAD, GBP, AUD and JPY. The banks offer MasterCard, Visa and debit cards. They are a cost effective solution. Belize has some Tax Information Exchange Agreements (not with USA or Canada) and Mutual legal Assistance Treaties. Best to hold assets and bank accounts there using the Belize trusts which exempts the assets from foreign court decisions. The bank generally opens accounts without any bank reference letters, just a lawyer reference letter. Bank reference letters can be reported as a suspicious transaction by European Canadian and American banks. They accept commercial accounts as well as savings accounts.

Bank Accounts in Belize

Civil Court Cases – We have solutions for those involved in civil lawsuits (past, present or future) where your money will be kept safe out of the reach of creditors and this would include allegations of fraudulent conveyance. Guatemala is an excellent jurisdiction to be protected from frivolous lawsuits. The Belize trust is an excellent solution for such difficulties. Belize Trust Assets in Belize (think bank accounts) are exempt from the decisions of any foreign courts including bankruptcy, divorce, civil orders and fraudulent conveyance and this is contained in the written laws of Belize. We know of no other trust or foundation that protects against fraudulent conveyance. This can be complicated so best thing is to call.

Belize Trusts and Belize Bank Account

Asset Protection - In general it is a most difficult and laborious process for a creditor to take a civil court matter offshore to another jurisdiction. If these practices were easy to effect and enabled the creditor to get an easy financial recovery no one would use that jurisdiction for asset protection and the countries know this and want to stay in business. The creditor needs to get a final decision of judgment from the foreign court. Then the creditor has to know where your funds are – bank name, account name and account number. Then the creditor has to be able to show a direct link from the offshore entity (corporation, trust etc) to the debtor (you). Since we use anonymous bearer share corporations and anonymous trusts this is going to be let's say extremely difficult. Then the creditor has to show that it is his money or money he has a right to in the offshore bank account and that you had no right to keep this money from the creditor. If you are just using an anonymous corporation and a bank account with bank secrecy it is extremely difficult to get into the bank records unless it is a major criminal case (drugs, kidnapping, terrorism) filed in the national courts of a country. This might be easy in your home country but the offshore tax haven courts are going to have a much higher level of scrutiny to protect the person banking there. The money in the offshore bank account also has to be let's say “available” for lack of a better word. If the money went to an offshore corporation because a piece of offshore real estate was purchased the creditor cannot just ask the court to return the money because the recipient (corporation) of the money no longer has the real estate. No equity in such a scenario. So you can see the circumstances can become involved, expensive for a creditor and drawn out. To make matters worse (better for you) there is bank secrecy and anonymous corporations involved so the lack of transparency makes it extremely hard for the creditor to build a case in that he has no facts to link together. The general goal of the creditor is for the creditor to come to the offshore jurisdiction and try to post a bond to freeze the money without you knowing about it. This is often called an “ex parte” proceeding in that it takes place in a closed court without you present. Of course this is a travesty of justice. The idea is for the creditor to show the court that if you found out about the action you would remove the money and thus cause irrevocable harm to the creditor in that he might never ever again find the money. This works fine when the lawyers can get bank records and establish ownership of corporations. It does not work in the offshore jurisdictions due to all the secrecy involved. The lawyer from the home country has to hire local counsel in the offshore jurisdiction. This is costly to say the least. Now the creditor is paying for two sets of lawyers. With the lack of transparency (anonymous corporations and trusts) combined with bank secrecy the lawyers have an almost impossible task of convincing the court that these funds should be frozen pending the uncovering of a trail. The effect is they will probably never get the account frozen without notifying the corporation or trust registered agent (yes you always have a local registered agent) that there is a proceeding and asking the corporation or trust to appear to defend itself. Notice is given, usually 30 days. At that point in time there is nothing preventing you from removing your funds to another jurisdiction and ignoring the lawsuit. This means the adversary must start all over again at great expense in the next jurisdiction. This is why is so rare to ever see such cases ever get filed. When the amounts are say over $20,000,000 it can be cost effective for them to try. The problem then can be the trail ends with a large cash withdrawal, or a purchase of gold, diamonds etc which is not trackable. These are some of the reasons why banking offshore using anonymous structures works so well as long as you pick the right jurisdiction and structure and that is what we do for you.

Anonymous Corporations and Trusts – We use anonymous bearer share corporations. We favor the anonymous bearer share corporations formed in Guatemala. Your name does not appear in any public registry or database. With a trust it is similar your name never appears in any public registry or database. The beneficiaries of the trust never appear in any such database either. In one of the jurisdictions we use there is not even a publicly accessible database. This is to protect you from lawsuits, extortion, blackmail, kidnapping etc. If no one knows what or where your assets are it makes you less of a target. This is especially true when it comes to real estate holdings.

Multiple Currencies – Today the world is in financial crisis. There are no real hard backed currencies anymore. All the major currencies have already crashed. Ten years ago gold was about $300 an ounce. Today it is about $1800. That is a 600% increase. All the foreign currencies have already fallen against gold. The relative value of all the fiat currencies is down already. Do not expect to see any sort of currency collapse against other currencies. They are all fiat currencies and they have all already collapsed against gold.

Gold – The gold solutions out there expose EU citizens and USA citizens to a gold confiscation or forced buyout by the government of your country. We are working avidly on setting up a gold solution that is anonymous and will insulate one from confiscation efforts due to anonymity and the gold not being in a regulated entity with reportage like a bank.

Taxes – The jurisdictions we use do not tax offshore derived income or capital gains. They also have no inheritance tax. The net effect to you is no offshore taxes.

Visiting the Bank – None of the banks we use requires a personal visit. After your bank account is open you can always drop in for a chat, to make a deposit or take funds out.

Questions – Feel free to ask questions and discuss your individual needs with us. Thanks.