An Offshore Mystery

At the Sovereign Society we are very proud of the men and women who serve as members of our distinguished Council of Experts.

The Council consists of professionals located in the United States, Canada, the U.K., Switzerland, Panama and many selected tax and asset havens around the world. Our experts include professionals with impressive credentials as investment advisors, trust officers, bankers, insurance experts, accountants and attorneys -- people who well know the best global investments, the safest tax havens and the most secure legal devices that will return profits and protect your assets.

One of our distinguished Council members, a good friend of mine, Derek R. Sambrook, is managing director of Trust Services SA in Panama, a leading service for the creation of trusts, family foundations and corporations.

Derek has been an offshore trust and estate practitioner since 1979 and is a former member of the Latin America and Caribbean Banking Commission, as well as a former offshore financial services regulator for the British government.

Mr. Sambrook is also a prolific author whose articles and comments appear in Offshore Investment magazine and other international publications, as well as on his web site.

Two Island Tax Havens

The current issue of his Offshore Pilot Quarterly caught my eye when I read it yesterday because his theme is one I often address -- the hypocrisy of the governments of major nations, such as the U.S. and U.K., that continually attack offshore tax havens for fictional wrongs, while they themselves are the real culprits.

Indeed, in dollar and pound sterling volume in the multi-millions, two islands are the undisputed leading tax havens of the world -- the Borough of Manhattan in New York City and the City in London.

For reader interest, try and guess what international financial center Derek is describing in the current issue of Offshore Pilot Quarterly:

In Derek's inimitable words: "I had read about one financial services jurisdiction whose companies had been involved in the laundering of some $36 billion from the former Soviet Union; that is an amount that could finance the present Panama canal expansion project at least six times over. In this same jurisdiction, Russian officials had used companies to unlawfully divert $15 million in international aid meant to fund a safety upgrade of former Soviet nuclear power plants and in another case an individual had set up more than 2000 companies, established bank accounts for them without disclosing identities, and then passed some $1.4 billion through the accounts. It turned out, in fact, that one of those companies had received over 3,700 suspicious wire transfers which, during a two-year period, added up to just over $81 million. But the authorities could not pursue this case because they were unable to discover who owned the company due to the lax laws of the jurisdiction."

Major Money Laundering

Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it, all those millions of dirty cash sloshing around in secret accounts.

Do you think Mr. Sambrook is describing his home place of Panama? Perhaps some remote Pacific Island such as Vanuatu or Niue where rumors of the Russian Mafia have long circulated? How about exotic locals such as Monaco, Campione d'Italia or Andorra?

None of the above.

I invite you to click on the link below and read his full commentary, but here's Derek's hint that answers the question: "What country would allow such highly questionable financial activity?"

Says Mr. Sambrook: "I can tell you that none of the members of Senator Carl Levin’s U.S. Senate Subcommittee would need passports to visit it..."

LINK: Offshore Pilot Quarterly: The Evil that Walks Invisible.

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