Saturday, August 11, 2007

Go Offshore Young Man



Where Your Banker Does NOT Freelance as a Government Spy

There was a time in the United States and other major nations when personal and financial privacy was taken for granted. Your business was your own and nobody else's.
In those long gone days your banker was a person of discretion who would never discuss your financial affairs with anyone, certainly not government agents without first being served with a court order.
Today your American banker is an official government spy, (although they don't call it that), obliged to report constantly on any "suspicious activities" to the federal money police. Under the terms of the USA PATRIOT Act, government agents can secretly nose through your finances, files and accounts and even freeze your assets without even charging you with any crime. And if your banker tells you that you're under investigation, he could be fined and jailed.
You may not realize it, but there are many foreign nations that not only preserve financial privacy, but do so as a matter of law, punishing those who violate that privacy with fines and jail terms - just the opposite of the U.S. police state attitude. Switzerland has had just such a law since 1934. In Austria, firm privacy guarantees are on a par with the country's constitution and can be repealed only by national referendum. Similar privacy protections are written into the laws of tax havens such as Panama, Nevis, Andorra and Monaco.
In most of these privacy havens only a court order can pry open your financial records, and only after they send you notice and give you a chance to defend yourself. And in these offshore jurisdictions, often a U.S. civil judgment will not be honored unless and until an entirely new trial is conducted under local law.
Thus it only makes good sense to reorder your wealth and assets so that a reasonable portion is located in an offshore jurisdiction where privacy is guaranteed by law. That's why you should consider setting up an offshore bank account, asset protection trust or a family foundation. You may even consider using an offshore nation as a base for your business or profession.
Until you do, you're at the mercy of government and private snoops, especially if you live in the U.S. or the U.K.
To really go offshore, you need to know the specifics - where do you go, and how do you choose a bank from among many options. You can find all this and more in my book, Where to Stash Your Cash . Click here to learn more.

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