February 2005 Archives

The story broke today about the arrest and indictment of telecommunications entrepreneur Walter Anderson, of Washington D.C. for an alleged evasion of income tax in excess of $200 million, which sets a new record for the USA, relative to the size of a criminal tax case for an individual.

Anderson started a long distance telecommunications business at the time the industry was being deregulated. When his first company merged with another company in 1992, he formed offshore corporations in the British Virgin Islands to hide the income and mask his involvement in the companies, the indictment said.

Join our group today! Get up to the minute news that directly affects you and your international assets. Gain access to the regulations and laws that govern many of the worlds top offshore financial centers. Make use of our comprehensive links section. Talk with some of the international asset protection industries top minds. All of this by simply becoming a member of our group, absolutely free.

When it comes to international accounting practices, holding companies, investment counselors...it all comes down to this: Trust.

Today in the IRS announcd that they're targeting tax shelters in big firms, related to stock options, naming 42 companies - household names - and some of their top executives for participating in abusive tax shelters and then dropped the estimated number of $700 Million but saying it was probably lots more.

Here is where the problem lies; in the typical shelter, a corporation grants an executive stock options. The executive transfers the options to a family partnership established solely for receiving the options, usually owned by the executive, spouse and kids.

I was recently referred to this most interesting website called MicroFreedom.com - "The Micronation and Sovereignty Website Index" and yesterday I happened to notice that the author and I both share a fondness for Hunter S. Thompson, it made me realize that HST was a big advocate and proponent of freedom and sovereignty and undoubtedly influenced many people to think differently about how we're governed and who we're governed by.

Before I give you the link to check out the Micronation index, as I really think you should, I want to share with you the description of this important and significant body of work, as provided by the author;

Today was my birthday, so I've spent a mostly leisurely day relaxing at my club, swimming in the pool and enjoying an almost perfect Brasilian day, then a nice meal at a great steak restaurant and finally I sit to check my email once more and post some thoughts.

The first thing and the last thing I do each day is to check Internet mail and have a quick look at the most recent news on My.Yahoo. All day I kept remembering that HST was dead, apparently from a self-inflicted gun shot wound, which doesn't sound surprising. Never the less I think it's a loss. His writing had an effect on me and I know that his "fear and loathing" type lifestyle was very common in my generation. Adios Dr. Hunter, you'll be remembered.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- Cyclone Olaf has swung by the main populated area of the Cook Islands causing property damage but there are no reports of injuries or loss of life.

The cyclone, the third to hits the Cooks in the past two weeks, has now moved out into the Southern Ocean.

Full story here: CNN

I'm not sure which sounds worse a cyclone or a hurricane, each has a menacing connotation. Naturally (no pun intended) they're the same thing, however one is the Pacific version of a similar magnitude storm as a hurricane in the Atlantic. Actually, I think the names are different to distinguish between the directions in which the storm turns, in other words; one turns clockwise and the other counter-clockwise but I'm not sure. What I am sure of, having been present for two major hurricanes, including Andrew in South Florida, one typhoon in Hong Kong and a severe tropical storm in Hawaii, plus witness to the devastation of a direct hit to Jamaica, is that these acts of nature are extremely violent and very terrifying.

Other factors which affected my methodology of "Cyber Estate Development" were derived from having grown up in British Columbia, Canada, working on several jobs related to the exploration and mining of mineral wealth. Also, the mental impact that visiting the Klondike Goldfields in my early 20's, where 100 years earlier a real gold rush had happened, was to shape my vision of the coming Information Age, then and now.

I'll expand just a little, on the historic Klondike Goldrush so you can grasp a sense of the wisdom I gained from this great human experiment, the stories and pictures of which are to be found on the walls of truck stop diners, which are often conveniently 1 tank of gas apart (with nothing but dirt road and wilderness between), all along the Alaska Highway, where I've traveled on many occasion and completed from end-to-end twice in my life - Dawson Creek, B.C. to Inuvik, NWT.

The first Domain I registered was "InvestOffshore.com" in 1994 (when they were free from the National Science Foundation) because I was convinced that the Internet would be used in business to go Global. I was living in Boca Raton, Florida at the time and Bush Sr. was President, he kept repeating the mantra "New World Order" and after visiting Nassau, Bahamas and seeing Canadian Banks on every corner (I'm a Canuck), understanding that VSE public companies (gold mining companies mostly) and many American companies were domiciled offshore, I figured that every intelligent businessman would leverage the Internet to learn the same thing - "Invest Offshore".

To Paula Piazza Day
The Love of my life.

We met in Curacao in the fall of 1996, from the moment my eyes fell upon her I knew I was in love. Sounds silly I know but it can happen and I'll testify, here and now, that there was nothing I could do about it, except submit.

Casino beach is a place in Cyberspace devoted to the pursuit of leisure, pleasure, excitement and entertainment. We publish articles about great beaches and the best Casinos, for the most exciting places in the world to entertain yourself. Casino Beach is an electronic travel & lifestyle journal, Blog and Global Casino Guide.

The web has been a breeding ground of pretense, it's such a visual medium that all that's needed is a decent Domain name, several nice logos from well known established firms on a cheap corporate template, add a few thousand words of text describing what some other company does and your website is ready for deception. One of the early warning signs to a charlatan is the lack of contact names, addresses and numbers, as most scammers don't want to give up there whereabouts.

Truly, I think it's much harder today to pull wool over anyone's eye's with all the scam alert websites, KYC (know your customer, works both ways) and since the search engines themselves will expose any dirt, if you dig through it deep enough.

When I started writing commentary for this Blog I promised myself that I wouldn't become yet another pundit with a scathing tongue for mainstream media, after all, the press is doing what they're supposed to be doing, reporting. Today however, I saw a story in the USA today that I just had to borrow an excerpt from (see below) because it completely typifies the reason I created OffshoreNet some 10 years ago.

Corporate greed is not such a bad thing, since it's driven by shareholder demand for return on investment and shareholders are the public. The public has a right to profit from the success of good ideas and growing businesses need public capital to continue growing. It's an endless circle.

The city of Sao Paulo was almost back to it's normal busy, congested self today. The shops and banks opened at noon and things returned to normal, except with a little less pace than normal as people are still trying to get over the 5 continous days of celebrating. The Samba contest held in Rio officially ended at 7:00am on Tuesday morning, so the revellers would have a full day and half to prepare for work. The three top teams get to parade back into the Sambadrome one more time over the weekend, as the city of Rio de Janeiro brings the entire Carnival holiday week to it's finale.

Samba is the famous dance of the Brasilian Carnival, the main purposes of which is to hold and judge an annual Samba dance competition amongst all the Samba schools of Brasil. In Rio de Janeiro they stage the worlds largest Samba contest and the entire country pays attention, like the Super Bowl or World Cup of Samba, complete with play-by-play TV commentary, instant-replay and post-contest highlights. Either of these two things; Samba and Carnival, or the invention of the Bikini, is probably what you'll hear if you ask a foreigner for "first things that comes to mind about Brasil?".

The following article was written by Sarah-Lise Haith and re-published with permission from the editor of DeeperBlue.net

4 35 S, 55 40 E, lies a group of islands in the Indian Ocean, northeast of Madagascar. They comprise over 100 islands and are the only mid-ocean granite islands in the world. The islands are split into three main groups, the Inner Islands in the North, with the Amirantes and Aldabra & the Southern Islands lying to a South Easterly direction.

It's unfair to write about the Bahamas and not mention Atlantis, however keep in mind this is not a travel promotion, or anything of the sort, it's just important to describe the effect that the construction of Atlantis has had, not just on Nassau, the Bahamian Capital, but also on the entire country. Atlantis is the pride of Bahamas.

Forward, upward, onward, together.

It may become apparent to readers that I'm biased about the Bahamas, well there's good reason for that. Aside from having been the webmaster and original creator of the Bahama Out Islands website I've held a fascination for many years about this region and while living in South Florida for almost 12 years made several excursions to the islands but have only seen a handful of them (so far).

Samoa (formerly West Samoa) truly deserves the term "offshore" as this little island nation is in the middle of the Pacific has a decent reputation as an offshore business jurisdiction, with solid laws written in English and based on British Common Law.

As for the lifestyle on this Island Paradise, what better place to look for a second opinion than the famous (and my favorite) Lonely Planet Guide;

The pace of life in Samoa is so laid-back it's only a heartbeat away from being a nice little snooze. Its palm-fringed beaches, booming white surf, and lush rainforests wreathed in misty clouds make it the kind of place that Hollywood location scouts go gaga over.

If you've never heard of Wikipedia then this will be very useful information, as there's no better place on the web that I know of to get free information and learn more about any topic.

Wikipedia is a free content encyclopedia written collaboratively by people from all around the world. If a site is a wiki, that means that anyone can edit articles, simply by clicking on the edit this page link. It runs on MediaWiki software.