Asset Protection Services in Panama

A privacy tax haven jurisdiction is one in which bank secrecy laws and corporate privacy laws are in place and the jurisdiction does not tax offshore derived income or capital gains and there is no inheritance tax.

Asset Protection strategies generally begin with an offshore bank account in a privacy oriented tax haven jurisdiction. To tighten the privacy up one needs to use an anonymous offshore corporation, an offshore trust, and/or an offshore foundation like the Panama Private Interest Foundation.  Otherwise, bank wires will have one's personal name as the sender or receiver, which effectively destroys bank secrecy.

Asset Protection & Bank Secrecy

Setting up the asset protection strategy in a jurisdiction with strong banking secrecy has got to be a cornerstone of the asset protection structure.

Favorable bank secrecy laws generally call for civil penalties and the opportunity for criminal convictions if any bank employee, officer or director divulges any banking information or files, statements etc pertaining to any bank account or the bank account holder.

Strong bank secrecy laws like Panama Bank secrecy Laws also allow the victim whose privacy was violated to file a lawsuit against not only the bank with their deep pockets but also the person(s) responsible for the privacy violation.

With strong measures like this in place, information leaks almost never happen in Panama. Only when ordered by a Panama court will a Panama bank release your information.

This only happens in criminal matters as determined by a Panama court. For example, tax evasion is NOT a crime in Panama and as such your records would not be opened up should someone come snooping.

In the USA, EU most private detectives have little or no trouble getting bank account information for clients. Their methods are highly illegal but we never hear of any of them getting prosecuted.

Be careful of this if you are considering an onshore asset protection plan.  Learn more about banking secrecy laws in Panama.

Piercing Asset Protection Structures

How does the asset protection corporate veil get pierced regarding an offshore bank account? Well a court order to get the information regarding a bank account, a trust, a corporation or a foundation is going to be required.

Such court orders are generally reserved for serious criminal matters like narcotics, terrorism etc. Civil matters from countries outside of the jurisdiction where the bank is would rarely if ever result in the production of a court order for information.

Civil financial enemies would have trouble ascertaining that you had a bank account in another country. If they got into your bank account in your home country and saw a wire transfer to a bank account in a tax haven privacy jurisdiction this would hardly qualify as grounds to get into the bank or corporate records.

The corporation should be an anonymous bearer share corporation and the financial adversary would have no way of connecting you to the ownership of the offshore corporation.

Offshore corporations and foundations have assets and debts separate from those of the person(s) controlling them. This is an offshore jurisdiction not North America.

If your financial enemies had a foreign judgment from another country against you this would not alter the facts. They do not have a judgment against the offshore corporation whose debts and assets are separate from yours.

Another problem the creditor has is that once they file an action in the offshore tax haven the person they are pursuing will know of it and they can just depart with their funds so it is sort of a waste of time and money.

The offshore privacy tax haven knows that once they start letting foreign creditors collect against assets in the banks of their country, their banks will start to lose clients big time.

Asset Protection and Government Pursuit of your Money

If a governmental agency of another country were to try to attach your money protected in an offshore bank account? Well this again is a different matter.

These cases start with a request for information, which is made pursuant to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) or through a Tax treaty (TIEA). Embassy officials in your offshore banking jurisdiction will receive a request.

It is a formal procedure requiring the requesting country to state specific reasons for the information, which usually means providing evidence of a criminal prosecution in the requesting country.

Pure tax information requests are based on the specific tax treaty if any in place between the two countries. (Panama for example, has no tax treaties).

Approval of such a request in civil matters (divorce, lawsuits, etc) never takes place because the proceedings go through official government channels in both countries.

Governments simply don't get involved in such matters unless they become a matter of national security. For jurisdictions with tax treaties (not Panama as it has no tax treaties), requests for information are not popular with the offshore tax haven jurisdictions but they will comply some day if the treaty terms are met.

They can challenge the request and ask for more information. The time frame for these treaty requests can be from six months to several years for this type of request to be granted. Sometimes the statue of limitations runs out and the request becomes moot.

The courts in the tax haven jurisdiction would eventually issue an order to produce the bank, corporate records and they would then serve the requested information on the requesting country embassy pursuant to the terms of the