re: Carribean Accounts/Offshore Accounts

Back before the feds got serious about offshore accounts, I saw some. I had a client that had one that I had NO idea about, this was 5-6 years ago. His attorney didn't know about it either for a while. One day when the man was getting close to death, I got a call from the attorney who told me she had just found out a week before. The guy was incredibly wealthy and had set up a couple of Swiss UBS accounts about 20 years prior. He apparently had requested no paper statements ever be sent to anyone. His name was not on any of the paperwork, except for a single 20 something year old document that assigned him a random identification number.

All of my clients that have offshore accounts either live offshore of have significant business interests offshore that it makes sense to have an account. For example, I have a French national who lives and works here, but owns 6 rental properties in Paris and maintains a bank account at a French bank to handle income and expense for those properties.