Opinion/Editorial
HOW OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS REALLY WORK
There has been a lot of discussion about offshore bank accounts lately because some of our political candidates have admitted to having such entities. Only a small portion of offshore accounts, maintained in such places as The Channel Islands, Lichtenstein, The Cayman Islands, Ireland, Switzerland, and more, are held by individuals. Corporations are, by far, the greatest owners of offshore accounts, although the beneficiaries of the accounts are usually individuals. At one time a company called Enron possessed nearly a hundred thousand offshore accounts alone. Even through bankruptcy and ruin only four of those accounts were ever revealed as to who owned them or what was in them.
How does an individual establish an offshore account? No, you cannot fly to one of those financial havens and open an account. And, if they would allow that, you would not want to. Your account would be attributable if you followed or were allowed to follow that course. And the very reason you might want to enjoy an offshore account is the lack of attributability. If you establish an offshore account United States Tax Law requires you to list it on your annual tax submission forms. Over and above suspicion of tax evasion, the person or company who starts an account wants to avoid any such declaration, especially in light of the post-9/11 mentality. Fortunately, avoidance can be accomplished rather smoothly and easily, given sufficient liquidity. The importance of understanding what is being written here cannot be overstated. There is every appearance of over a quadrillion dollars (that’s one thousand trillion) of liquidity out there, all hidden away.
To establish an offshore account, one would travel to one of the havens, say The Channel Islands. To Guernsey, an island composed of a ‘bailiwick’ of ten smaller areas, encompasses a small landmass out in the English Channel between Great Britain and the coast of France. It is its own country with its own coins, notes, and money. Its business, once agriculture, is now only money. You would not go to Ansbacher Limited Bank, one out of 48 banks (Guernsey population 48,000!); instead, you would walk into the offices of one of the twenty-two law firms located there by the name of Carey Olsen.
There you would meet with a group of attorneys, retain them for fifty thousand dollars, and leave an initial deposit of at least one million for them to place in the new corporation account at Ansbacher they’ve created for you. Then you would fly to Washington D.C. and go to the offices of an attorney firm named Siddly & Austin. There you would retain that firm for another fifty thousand dollars and direct them to be your representatives in dealing with Carey Olsen.
Henceforth, you would instruct your attorney at Siddly Austin on what you wanted to be done with your money, which could be anything you wanted to be done with it, exclusive of repatriating it back to the United States, which might cause legal or tax problems. You would be issued a JCB credit card, which is the largest most extensive credit card in the world, and likely one, if you are an American, you’ve never heard of. That credit card is good in 167 countries, far beyond the penetration of either Visa or MasterCard. Although JCB cards are good in most places in the U.S. that take Discover it is not likely you would want to use it back here because of repatriation problems.
Most financial havens charge the same amount in expenses as you make in interest, so you do not put money in offshore tax havens to make money. You put money there to lose it. Whatever you pay in expenses or lost interest will be far exceeded by the tax money you save and the value of having the total sum held in strict secrecy. There are generally no taxes charged by such havens, but attorney fees remain high for protection. It is protection that is the primary reason you keep money offshore. Protection from anyone knowing whom the money belongs to, where it came from, or what is being done with it. None of the tax havens yield information on their clients, especially if the ‘double-blind’ of attorney firms is used to properly set them up. Switzerland has been the only financial haven to indicate it would reveal some of its client information, but over the years no such information has ever been forthcoming.
It is said that every major leader, every political notable, and every corporate executive of note holds and maintains at least one offshore account. One U.S. Presidential candidate has been asked about his accounts by investigative reporters. They have attributed more than ten to a company the man maintains in the Cayman Islands. The other candidates haven’t been asked about their own, nor has the U.S. President or any of his people. They will probably not be asked. The amount of money held by such offshore havens, on behalf of wealthy Americans, is said to exceed a quadrillion dollars, a sum greater than all other investment funds or accounts taken together on earth. All the actions I have described are completely legal and all of them are being done daily across the United States of America by the very people you have chosen to lead you and to be your business and bank owners and executives.
