Private Bank Offshore The Inside Scoop on Latin American Private Banking

The Numbered Bank Account

Can You Open a Numbered Bank Account?

Perhaps some time ago it was possible. Nowadays the only numbered accounts in existence will be those that are inherited- but for the majority of those who desire one, a numbered bank account is off the cards.

Thirty years ago the world is very different. Swiss banks offered bank secrecy, numbered bank accounts, anonymous bank accounts, and, even the famous bearer passbook savings account known as the Sparbuch. Each tax haven used to provide exlusive private bank accounts with unshakeable financial privacy. Company formation agents could sign you up for an offshore bank account at the same time they sold you an offshore company or offshore trust. Asset protection specialists could set up simple offshore asset protection structures with bearer shares, nominee directors, and offshore bank accounts in various offshore jurisdictions.

But in those days governments were smaller and certainly less aggressive in collecting taxes. Today, every government in the world is hungry for more and more taxes. In the United States you could spend more time in prison for tax evasion then you could for murder.

Offshore Financial Centres

The problem for the high tax countries was that the offshore centres wanted income too, and they made their money by selling offshore companies, offshore trusts, opening an offshore bank account, and all the other elements of various successful asset protection strategies. It was better for a tiny offshore centre to get a flat annual offshore corporation tax of $200 than get no money at all. Because of that imperative, offshore centres refused to recognize tax offences in other countries as crimes. In fact, most of the less developed countries in the world did not rate tax offences as criminal, but rather as civil matters.

This offshore strategy was tremendously successful. Several of these offshore centres have grown to be major offshore financial centres today, such as Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and the Isle of Man; to name just a few. Everyone of them was built on some combination of offshore banking, bank secrecy, offshore asset protection, nominee directors, bearer shares, and private banking.

Because of this, today the offshore industry is valued at more than $14 trillion.

In light of this, high tax countries have had to find a way to fight back. A standard methodology is to further criminalize tax evasion by banding to together with other offences universally recognized as ”felonies”.

Money Laundering

They began with narcotics: offshore centres were attacked as havens for narco cash. From this sprang the very new concept of money laundering. Money laundering encompasses the idea that “somehow” anytime funds are used for anything illegal, they remain illegal. And, in fact, so does every other bit of money it “co-mingles” with. Conveniently, for the tax collectors, the money stays unclean until it is “cleansed” by passing into the possession of the government.

The attacks on the World Trade Centers helped validate the concept of “money laundering”.

Of course, money-laundering legislation in the United States and Western Europe represents the epitome a legal hypocrisy. More illegal money is laundered in New York, Miami, London, Frankfurt, and Milan, than in the rest of the world. At one anti-money laundering seminar on the island of Grenada, a US official was forced to admit that the Caribbean basin only accounted for 1.between 60-70% of money laundered worldwide, but the US instead focus on attacking tiny Caribbean countries.

The truth, of course, is that it is illegal to send funds of criminal origin by wire transfer. The bank sending said funds is committing a crime — not the bank receiving the funds. However, because the US and EU don’t want to punish their banks, they criminalize the receiving banks in foreign countries and seize or freeze their correspondent accounts.

The Numbered Bank Account is Endangered or Extinct

For all these reasons, the numbered bank account is a financial dinosaur. And, similar to dinosaurs only “lives” in books and movies. Rather than having to always deal with the standard channels (i.e. blacklisted offshore banks and tax havens), those in the know are finding much more succesful ways to get an offshore account with privacy.

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