This is the sixth post in the “Divorce & Hidden Money” series.
“Four Ways Assets Can Be Secretly Transferred” mentioned methods some use to move assets across international borders. My post regarding the 2011 divorce between Helga and Gaston Glock discussed additional asset concealment tools. Any one or a combination
This is the fourth post in the “Divorce & Hidden Money” series.
Mr. Gaston Glock’s creation of the ubiquitous Glock pistol turned him into a billionaire and he is thought to be one of the twenty wealthiest individuals in all of Austria. Mr. Glock’s ex-wife Ms. Helga Glock meanwhile, suspected he is concealing marital assets which could be connected to the couple’s 2011 Austrian divorce.
Ms. Glock therefore used civil law tools in an attempt to detect any marital assets / alleged hidden monies Mr. Glock supposedly possessed. The civil law tools Ms. Glock employed included: 1) her Swiss petition to freeze a UBS bank account reportedly maintained by Mr. Glock in Switzerland; and 2) the March 18, 2013 request for judicial assistance filed at In re application of: H.M.G., U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Index No. 13-cv-02598.
Ms. Glock’s March 7, 2013 affidavit filed at her request for judicial assistance, claimed Mr. Glock had earlier started hiding and moving personal and corporate assets in anticipation of the couple’s divorce. The March 7th affidavit discussed Ms. Glock’s belief that Mr. Glock was trying to transfer assets out of her reach; and that there had allegedly been a steady flow of assets out of Austria.
According to the affidavit, there were financial transfers to the above-mentioned UBS Swiss bank account and to bank accounts in Liechtenstein or Luxembourg. Also according to the affidavit, Mr. Glock had a Bermuda trust formed so that it could receive $51 million from “Glock”. The affidavit additionally referred to the “worldwide Glock Group structure” and indicated the structure was thought to be partially depicted by this chart:
This is the third post in the “Divorce & Hidden Money” series:
One divorcing wife explained to me that she believed her husband had hidden money in offshore bank accounts. This divorcing wife found a box her husband inadvertently left in the basement after he moved out of their marital residence. The box had an account opening application from one offshore bank and brochures from others.
Another divorcing wife found some correspondence at the family’s summer home. The correspondence was between her husband and the foreign attorney who helped establish the husband’s secret offshore bank accounts. A different divorcing wife found a scrap of paper on which her husband had scrawled the name of a Swiss banker and a Swiss financial account number.
The above-described matters raised the same question, how could these husbands secretly transfer funds across international borders into offshore bank accounts? Like narco-traffickers, tax evaders, terrorist financiers and others, divorcing spouses may use the following methods to secretly transfer assets:
Bulk Cash Smuggling– Determined criminals routinely smuggle cash through porous borders. Illicit cash couriers for instance, travel through Mexico-U.S. border crossings on behalf of Mexican drug cartels. German tax cheats are also known to smuggle undeclared cash into Liechtenstein by stashing the cash in luggage and then driving with it across the German-Liechtenstein border.
Portable Valuable Commodities Like Diamonds & Jewelry– After his arrest, Bernard Madoff seemingly tried to transfer watches, cufflinks and other jewelry worth more than $1 million. Madoff attempted to mail these items to friends and relatives. Bradley Birkenfeld the whistleblower, is believed to have similarly smuggled diamonds in a tube of toothpaste while on a jet flying across U.S.-Swiss borders.Continue Reading Divorce & Hidden Money: Four Ways Assets Can Be Secretly Transferred
In 2010, German customs police discovered that Mr. Cornelius Gurlitt had travelled by train from Zurich to Munich with a large sum of cash. A subsequent investigation revealed that Mr. Gurlitt reportedly failed to file tax returns. Since Mr. Gurlitt was suspected of a possible tax fraud, a search warrant for his Munich apartment was issued. Reuters, the Daily Mail, and The Economist explained that during the execution of the search warrant, approximately 1400 paintings were discovered stashed in the apartment.
As Germany Says 590 Artworks in Munich Haul May Be Nazi Loot suggests, some of these paintings will be the subjects of Holocaust-era art restitution claims filed by the heirs of Jewish art collectors. Raymond Dowd, Esq. handles these kinds of claims. Mr. Dowd tried Bakalar v. Vavra, Index No. 05-CV-3037 (S.D.N.Y.), the first Nazi-era art case ever to go to trial in federal court. He also lectured widely on Nazi-era art restitution cases, including at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel; the Jewish Museum, Berlin, Germany; The Prague Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets, Czech Republic; the New York State Bar Association and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.Continue Reading Stashed Paintings Bring Issue Of Art Restitution To The Forefront
My October 24th post “Concealing Monies In A Cayman Islands Bank Account”, supplied the fact pattern of a divorcing husband hiding funds offshore. That divorcing husband hid assets by putting a lawyer and other elements to work. The following money laundering typology ¹ similarly analyzes a scheme thought to have been facilitated by a lawyer:
This is the second post in the “Divorce & Hidden Money” series:
A divorcing spouse may combine a number of elements in one scheme to hide marital assets. Bearer shares can be one of these elements, as more fully set forth at my post Bearer Shares & An Asset Search. Bearer shares
This is the first post in the “Divorce & Hidden Money” series:
During ultra-high net worth divorces, one party can conceal vast sums of money from the other by going offshore. Stated differently, divorcing spouses may hide their wealth by utilizing cross-border elements, as money launderers do. The Financial Action Task Force
Google finance says that since 1993, Mr. Ty Warner’s company Ty Inc. “produced more than 370 different Beanie Babies with colorful names such as Feder Bear (current) and Cheeks the baboon (retired).” Google finance reveals that Mr. Warner creator of the Beanie Babies, parlayed his profits into his purchase of a half-dozen luxury hotels. Mr. Warner is a billionaire, with a net worth of 2.6 billion as of September 13th.
As outlined by a press release and his criminal information, Mr. Warner was accused of utilizing Swiss bank accounts to hide undeclared revenue from the IRS. At his arraignment hearing last Wednesday, Mr. Warner pleaded guilty to tax fraud. The Chicago Tribune reported that Mr. Warner told the judge at the hearing ‘I apologize for my conduct. It’s a terrible way to meet you’.
An October 2, 2013 plea agreement reveals that Mr. Warner participated in an abusive offshore tax avoidance scheme. To read Mr. Warner’s plea agreement, click on the image below:
Continue Reading Beanie Babies Tycoon Hid Cash In Secret Swiss Bank Accounts
Throughout its five seasons, Breaking Bad highlighted the ways narco-trafficker Walter White and his co-conspirators hid the illicit proceeds of their made-for-TV crimes. Breaking Bad could even be considered a case study of how determined criminals and others hide assets. For example, at Problem Dog, Season 4, Episode 7, Walter and his wife Skyler faced the dilemma of trying to conceal $7 million in drug profits, by laundering it through their A1A Car Wash.
During Mandala, Season 2, Episode 11, Skyler’s boss Ted Beneke admitted to hiding nearly $1 million in undeclared revenue from the IRS. In furtherance of this tax fraud, Ted had cooked the books of his company, Beneke Fabricators. At Caballo Sin Nombre, Season 3, Episode 2, Walter’s partner Jesse Pinkman seemingly washed $400,000 through the cash purchase of his parent’s home. In Gliding Over All, Season 5, Episode 8, Skyler disclosed she rented a storage unit to conceal a hoard of cash. At the end of Crawl Space, Season 4, Episode 11, Walter was also shown next to some illicit cash he had earlier secreted beneath his house:
Continue Reading How Walter White Could Take His Money To A Swiss Bank
The very last paragraph of my post Fighting Financial Fraud At UK Banks, featured a former vice-president of a global bank who indicated: “there was little standing in the way of a determined criminal because of the ‘complicity or misfeasance’ of many banks and the use of nominees to open bank accounts.“
