The New York Times “Room for Debate” opinion pages recently asked Alliance Trust Company in Reno to comment on the Panama Papers and the advantages of and lawful usages of shell companies. In this piece, Alliance notes that the vast majority of these companies are used legally, providing a layer of security and privacy for international families in an increasingly dangerous world.
The interest of non-US citizens using foreign grantor trusts in Nevada is increasing dramatically. Many countries are now recklessly sharing highly-sensitive and otherwise confidential individual financial information with rogue governments around the world under the OCED’s “Common Reporting Standards.” This program, which thankfully the United States is not participating in, gathers and automatically exchanges individual names, addresses, tax identification numbers, and financial account balances with the governments of Azerbaijan, Cameroon, China, Georgia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Russia, Senegal, Tunisia, and Uganda, to name a few. Where the information might go from there, no one knows. Many of these countries have Horrific human rights records and serious corruption issues. Automatically sharing this data will undoubtedly expose law-abiding individuals to the risk of extortion, kidnapping, or worse. The United States should remain proudly “non-compliant” with the CRS and its efforts to violate personal privacy.
it is worth noting that the State of Nevada offers excellent privacy provisions when establishing business entities such as LLCs, and there are options for the US and non-US citizens to keep their financial affairs private in trust. Please contact Alliance Trust for more information at 775-297-4000.
