Part 1 of the instant post notes that if your divorce is
Divorce & Hidden Money: Asset Searches In The U.S. For Divorces Brought Outside The U.S. (Part 2)
Divorce & Hidden Money: Asset Searches In The U.S. For Divorces Brought Outside The U.S. (Part 1)
This 27th post in the “Divorce & Hidden Money” series looks at a way to search for assets in the U.S. when your underlying divorce case is brought outside of the U.S.
If your underlying divorce case is commenced in a foreign country, how do you search for secret bank accounts or other
Using Real Estate To Wash & Hide Assets
“Searching For Assets Laundered Through Real Estate” shows how one divorcing husband washed & hid assets during his divorce. The following is a sanitized case study from the Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units. It is about “O” & “R” who may have similarly employed real estate in a scheme to hide assets.
An Asset Search Over Corruption Proceeds
Transparency International leads the fight against public corruption which includes bribery & theft by government officials. It basically says that corruption proceeds are transferred offshore & are one of the sources of illicit financial flows. How do financial investigators across the globe search for these illicit assets? One way they search is by looking
Asset Search & Recovery Talking Points
The following is a list of Asset Search Blog posts which discuss data brokers; private investigators; bankers; suspected tax fraudsters; etc. As these posts show, asset searches & asset recoveries sometimes raise privacy &/or criminal law issues.
A) Data Brokers, Data Mining & Your Privacy
An Asset Search Seeking Laundered Money Hidden Across The Globe
Spotting the red flags/the money laundering indicators is one way to search for hidden assets. The red flags may help you sniff out money or other assets concealed in matters ranging from a high net worth divorce to a securities fraud. Financial Intelligence Units part of the Egmont Group employ red flags to search for money hidden across the globe by terrorist financiers; narco-traffickers; kleptocrats & others. As more fully set forth here, red flags include:¹
- Large-scale cash transactions.
- Atypical or uneconomical fund transfer to or from foreign jurisdiction.
- Unusual business activity or transaction.
- Large and/or rapid movements of funds.
- Unrealistic wealth compared to client profile.
- Defensive stance to questioning.
The case study below, (sanitized for privacy reasons), is also from the Egmont Group.² It is about a homicide; public corruption; fraud; & the laundering of $9.5 million dollars in “Economy F.” The money was washed through a corporate bank account; lawyers’ trust accounts; & bank accounts belonging to money mules. The Financial Intelligence Unit (“FIU”) involved in the case analyzed Suspicious Transaction Reports (“STRs”); issued orders freezing monies; etc.
ECONOMY F: A CASE STUDY
The Economy F police received a criminal complaint from a government department involving fraud and theft. The facts related to the predicate offenses indicated that staff working in the government department colluded with an external crime syndicate to assist in obtaining copies of legitimate vendor payments, which were subsequently duplicated and processed to the benefit of various accounts indirectly linked to the syndicate. The initial loss exposure amounted to approximately US$573,000. Police requested Economy F’s FIU’s assistance in blocking the accounts that received the proceeds of crime, with an additional request to identify other possible players.
The FIU interacted with the relevant accountable institutions and subsequently issued several postponement orders, resulting in US$317,000 of the initial proceeds being secured. This enabled the prosecuting authority to obtain a preservation order to secure the proceeds. These interventions were brought immediately after the police provided proof of the nexus between the criminal offense and the funds that were still available in the identified bank accounts. Upon analysis of the STRs and bank records received of the accounts, the FIU identified various other payments originating from different government departments, which were unknown to the police at that stage, amounting to US$9.5 million.
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Divorce & Hidden Money: Suing Your Spouse For Fraudulently Conveying Assets
An asset search may reveal that your spouse is hiding assets from you during your divorce. You might then be able to sue your spouse & possibly others for fraudulently concealing assets. As this 25th post in the “Divorce & Hidden Money” series shows, you may be able to sue on the ground that assets were fraudulently conveyed away from you:
Before leaving New York, the divorcing husband in Skiff-Murray v. Murray¹ fraudulently conveyed his business and former marital residence to his newly created Nevada corporation. Violating a restraining order, the husband next conveyed the residence from his Nevada corporation to his aunt and uncle. The aunt and uncle then mortgaged the residence to a third party.
According to the Court in Skiff-Murray, the divorcing husband had “…made it impossible for plaintiff [the wife] to enforce her judgments for child support arrears or obtain the maintenance, distribution of marital property and counsel fees awarded in the judgment of divorce.” After the divorce was over, the now ex-wife filed a lawsuit against the aunt; uncle & others. The lawsuit alleged the residence had been fraudulently transferred. It asked the Court to set the transfer aside under N.Y. Debt. Cred. Law. §§ 270 – 281, which is the codified version of the Uniform Fraudulent Conveyance Act.
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An Asset Search To Find Secret Offshore Bank Accounts
If you are a divorcing spouse, judgment creditor or anyone else who believes they may need to do a bank search to locate hidden assets parked offshore, read this post to see how individuals sometimes hide their assets. It covers the legal remedies that may be available to you in your asset search for offshore bank accounts. This post was first published in 2013 and was called “Hidden Assets Offshore & A Bank Search To Find Them.”
Beneficial owners around the world are able to secretly transfer assets across international borders into offshore bank accounts. The beneficial owners sometimes do this by money laundering through multiple jurisdictions; bulk-cash smuggling; back-to-back loans; shell companies; nominee incorporation services & gatekeepers like lawyers. Legal remedies are however, usually available for finding hidden assets transferred offshore. These remedies may even include seeking a court order directing a Swiss or other offshore bank to perform a bank search and disclose bank customer information.
MONEY LAUNDERING
The link chart below describes how one divorcing husband concealed both undeclared revenue and marital assets via multiple jurisdictions.¹ The husband laundered millions from the U.S., through a Swiss bank and a German one. Prior to the equitable distribution hearing in his divorce, the husband alleged he had a liability of $29 million owed to a prime bank in Germany because of an arm’s length business loan. As this link chart reveals, the supposed arm’s length loan was back-to-back , (i.e. a fully collateralized loan in which the borrower and the lender are one and the same):
(Click On The Link Chart To Enlarge)
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Divorce & Hidden Money: An Asset Search For Nominees
Many Asset Search Blog articles emphasize the role intermediaries, (i.e. “nominees”), can have in asset concealment schemes. This 24th post in the “Divorce & Hidden Money” series reminds you that your divorcing spouse might utilize nominees to hide assets from you.
During your divorce you may need to pursue an asset search in
Divorce & Hidden Money: An Asset Search Of A Lawyer Employed To Conceal Cash
This is the 23rd post in the “Divorce & Hidden Money” series:
What can you do