Tax havens are often referred to as offshore financial centers. These offshore financial centers or jurisdictions not only provide for a legal way to avoid taxation, its local company law and corporate registry often provides for anonymity of shareholders, directors and beneficial owners. The limited administrative procedures invite legitimate business people and illicit actors to use and abuse the offshore arena to store their ill-gotten gains.
The combination of low taxation and financial secrecy is often used as part of a corporate international structure. Opaque company structures with different layers of companies in other countries create further indistinctness. The result is that illicit actors and organised financial crime can hide behind layers of companies and nominees in a wide array of countries. Locating stolen property then becomes a difficult task.
A process of fund recovery starts with the collection of intelligence and evidence of the whereabouts of missing assets. Fishing expeditions based on rumors can violate privacy laws and alert the fraudster. Therefore, the preparation phase of a recovery program or class action claim must be handled with utmost care. Once assets are located, a sophisticated plan needs to secure the assets before they get siphoned out of the jurisdiction, to other opaque and hidden corporate structures.
When organised crime groups defraud novice and ignorant investors, funds often end up in various companies in offshore financial centers. Over the years, fake investments in holiday ownership, real estate, high yields investment programs, binary options and foreign exchange, as well as the more traditional pump and dump schemes in stocks and shares were disclosed. Our customers have one thing in common: they believed in the beautiful words of a financial adviser they trusted and eventually lost their money. Depending on the number of victims and the amount they ‘lost’, we group victims and create an efficient recovery plan. Contact us for more information.