Asset tracing aims to answer the question where money flows and assets are hidden to ultimately initiate seizure and repayment to victims of scams, fraudulent activities, theft and other disadvantaged creditors. Asset tracing involves several discovery stages, including forensic accounting and advanced data analytics, among various other strategies.
Revelations like the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers revealed ground-breaking strategies used by the rich and powerful to hide their money and assets. The data leak allows private investigators, the media and law enforcement to get a clear picture of the strategies used to conceal beneficial ownership of different assets, as well as illicit behaviour including tax avoidance and even tax evasion.
Where the ultra-rich individuals, political exposed persons and multinationals utilize the loopholes in limitation and overlap of international company law and international private law, small players and copycats often think they can do the same. Those with illicit and sly thoughts abuse globalisation and the potential of offshore tax havens to hide their ill-gotten gains. This leaves victims of abuse in a difficult situation where knowledge of civil law and common law, including domestic laws in several jurisdictions is required. Even when the money flow is detected cooperation from the various jurisdictions is not easy to arrange. Hence the reason that only professional asset tracing firms should assist.
Financial crime is not always easy to detect, the distribution of the criminal proceeds further complicates discovery. The facilitators and wrongdoers play an efficient cat and mouse game making it even difficult for law enforcement to unravel their strategies, civil agreements, corporate structures and complex financial networks. However, efficient strategies and our experience in various tax havens and financial centres allows us to combine local knowledge with intelligence to achieve outstanding results for our clients.