Offshore Bank Accounts - Manage Your Risk and Stay Anonymous

Opening an offshore account will always involve a degree of risk. This article will discuss how to stay safe and anonymous in an increasingly unstable offshore environment.

The tradition of simply sticking your money in offshore companies, trusts and bank accounts no longer works as it once did. Financial privacy has been increasingly eroded by a succession of measures that seek to limit bank secrecy and expand the sharing of confidential information.

The most dangerous threat to financial privacy in recent years has come from the Patriot Act. It requires any bank with a US Dollar correspondent account to hand over customer information on demand, regardless of the privacy laws in that country and whether or not a transaction is suspicious. Furthermore if a country has a tax-information treaty with the US, that country's law can be overridden to gain access to their confidential account information.

Offshore Banking Probe

Justice Expands Offshore Banking Probe — The U.S. Dept. of Justice is expanding its criminal investigation into foreign banks that sell offshore private banking services to customers. The inquiry reportedly includes Credit Suisse and HSBC. Initially, the feds were looking into the overseas dealings of Swiss banking giant UBS. The big question: Are foreign banks illegally helping Americans hide assets and evade taxes?[Source: New York Times].

US, Liechtenstein to exchange data on tax evaders

Switzerland (AP) — Liechtenstein is to sign an agreement next week that allows U.S. authorities to request information on Americans suspected of hiding money in the tiny principality, officials said Friday.

The deal, ending Liechtenstein's traditional silence on tax evasion matters, will lay out the conditions under which U.S. officials can ask the country to hand over bank account information starting Jan. 1, 2010, said government spokesman Max Hohenberg.

Like its larger neighbor Switzerland, Liechtenstein distinguishes between tax fraud, which it regards as a crime, and tax evasion, which is an administrative offense. Until now, neither country has cooperated with other nations' investigations into tax evasion.

"We are very satisfied to have reached this agreement with the U.S. because it gives legal certainty to our bank clients," Hohenberg said.