Article Surfing Archive

When we surf through the web we see many entities selling American corporations and other structures that they consider to be called asset protection strategies. These run the gamut of corporations in the states of Wyoming, Delaware or Nevada, trusts of various types and other structures all based in the USA.

What is wrong here is that nothing in the USA can protect you from an over zealous judge who feels your assets should be forfeited to satisfy some sort of debt or perceived debt. You are subject to the mercy of some Judge. Now if the Judge over steps his bounds you are faced with paying massive legal bills to correct the situation in the appeals court. Ask some of these law firms that do these asset protection structures what their rate per hour is going to be to try and recover your assets on appeal. Figure on rates starting at $325.00 and going up to $650.00 for a partner in a top drawer law firm in the USA. Ouch. Litigation in the USA is too prevalent and expensive to allow one to comfortably use this jurisdiction for preservation of assets. The legal expenses of defending the asset protection structure can wipe out the assets.

Next problem is government confiscation of funds. Usually this is temporary pending some court date but could be permanent in theory and/or practice. In the USA some government agencies can confiscate funds without taking you to court, thus no trial, no being judged guilty by a court of your peers, no due process, no trial by jury etc. There are other government agencies that need to get a court order to confiscate your funds and other assets but the courts tend to listen hard to these agencies and usually give them what they want which is going to be your assets. There are no really anonymous corporations in the USA. There is no bank secrecy or privacy at all. There is really no secure way to protect your assets from confiscation. Sure you might be able to go to court later on after the confiscation and convince a judge to return all or some of your assets but with what funds are you going to pay for your legal defense. Now you have to convince a lawyer to take your case onhoping he can get the judge to allow your money to be used to pay for your legal defense. These government agencies don*t even want you to be able to pay for your defense. They will argue that they are so sure of winning it is a waste of money to let you use the funds to pay for a high powered law firm. How can there be asset protection in this environment?

Let me explain what an Ex Parte proceeding is. Let us assume you feel you have a good case in a court of law against a person or corporation. You hire a reputable law firm and prepare a complaint with whatever evidence you may or may not have. Next you motion the court for an Ex Parte hearing in the Judges chambers in private before the other party even knows you are suing them. You basically tell the Judge that you feel you have an excellent chance of winning and you are most concerned that the defendant will attempt to flee with their assets when the lawsuit commences. You then ask the court to freeze the bank accounts, real estate and other property of the defendant so the defendant can not flee with the assets. You of course post a bond to cover any damages in case you lose. Now it is going to be an unlikely event that you lose since your adversary now has all his money frozen so how is he or she going to pay for an adequate legal defense. Essentially you are suffering as if you were bankrupt all before you had your trial in court, and in this case even before you knew anyone is suing you. If the defendant argues that he needs the money for defense the plaintiff argues that it is going to be a waste of time and money to let the defendant blow money that could go to them on a legal defense. So now the defendant is essentially broke, how can he manage his business and retain adequate legal counsel? Mind you all of this happened without the defendant ever having a chance to defend himself in court. This is one tactic wealthy corporations employ against small business people that get in their way. Don*t let your lawyer tell you this is rarely done. It is a common procedure. Most of the internet giants do this in their litigation, look up their court cases to see it happening. Government regulatory agencies have a very similar way of doing this in the court system as well. It operates slightly more openly but has the same effect * frozen assets before you get your day in court.

Do you know what a John Doe lawsuit is? I will explain this unusual tool of legal chicanery that as far as we know works in the USA. Let us say you are a large billion dollar corporation and you feel you have been harmed in some way but are not able to identify the party causing the injury. Say someone has been violating copyright protected material of yours by distributing it. You file a lawsuit in Federal Court against John Does 1-99 stating that you will identify the actual defendants as their identities are uncovered in the course of discovery. You send a clerk down to the courthouse and he has the court clerk stamp the lawsuit and now this lawsuit is live. OK now you have the subpoena power of the federal court at your disposal and there is no opposing counsel to block your subpoenas and depositions. So you go about your merry way issuing subpoenas for bank accounts, phone records, stock brokerage accounts, etc. all very lawful USA subpoenas. You might even take a few depositions to get the facts explained in more detail. The judge need not individually approve these subpoenas for them to be valid. So basically you don't even need to sue a real person or corporation to get to use the subpoena power of the US Federal Courts. Remember the entity being served with the subpoena like the bank or stock broker has no obligation to tell you the owner of the bank account that a subpoena was served on them for your records and they could even be ordered to keep their mouth shut so as to prevent flight with the assets. Another fine example of the sheer lack of privacy in the USA whereby your bank records can be examined by a stranger based on a lawsuit with nobody. If you haven't thought of it consider what happens to your bank records after the law firm has them. Can they enter them into the lawsuit and thus make them public or semi-public? Can they share them with others? Could they even publish them on the internet? Good questions to ask yourself now, not after something like this happens to you.

I know one can argue that their trust or corporation is not responsible for personal debts and there are court cases to back this up, but then inquire as to how much money it is going to cost you to defend the asset protection strategy against aggressive collection lawyers who know just how to make it real expensive for you so as to bring about a settlement. It is a legal jungle in the USA and we can not any daylight in trying to protect assets in the USA.

Now we can talk about private detectives in America getting bank information, credit card information, phone records etc. Go look at the ads on the internet and call these private detectives up, they even take credit cards. We can also go on to discuss identity theft from security violations concerning bank accounts, credit cards, public records (Panama has no credit bureaus so identity theft is of course not something frequently seen). If you vest your Panama real estate in the name of an anonymous bearer share corporation how could that possibly help someone do an identity theft on you? If your bank accounts were covered by bank secrecy laws wouldn't that help insulate you from identity theft? Panama is a much safer place legally.

In Panama lawyer games like those described above do not exist. Corporate and foundation assets belong to the corporation or foundation. Tagging on personal debts is extremely difficult to prove and there are tight statues of limitation concerning such fraudulent conveyances to defraud creditors ( three years). USA lawyers can not practice in Panama, they need to retain a Panama lawyer if they ever wanted to do anything in Panama. Government agencies from foreign countries have no levy, attachment or confiscatory powers in Panama. You and your assets are much safer in Panama.