Opening an offshore bank account:
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Your address and offshore
bank mail snooping

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Make sure your offshore bank correspondence remains private -- because the mail service isn't.

OFFSHORE-FOX.COM
with Alex Hanson

Producing a utility bill for your offshore bank raises a number of privacy-related issues. Offshore banking, if it is to be successful, should be confidential -- and addresses do present several problems in terms of privacy.

To start with, having your offshore bank mail your statements to your house is just not smart.

Offshore bank mail: postmarked 'trouble'

The postal service has long been used by government snoops to keep an eye on their citizens. As early as between 1968 and 1971, the IRS identified over 50,000 suspected tax evaders by photocopying envelopes in a New York City post office that had been sent from Switzerland. This snooping produced no results back in the early seventies as the Swiss resolutely refused to cooperate. Today, things are not as certain.

While most proper offshore banks send their mail out in plain envelopes with no more than a non-descript sender's address on the back, professional snoopers can obtain much information from that innocent-looking line "If undelivered, return to P.O.Box 1234, Antigua, British West Indies". Often a quick check against a database reveals the name of the bank that owns the P.O. Box. This is assuming that they act within the law and do not actually open one of your letters.

Get a maildrop

A partial solution to the problem is to instruct your offshore bank to mail all correspondence to an address other than your place of residence. The majority of offshore banks will comply, but of course you will have to make arrangements with a mailing service provider (maildrop) beforehand.

Put it on hold

Most offshore banks will also hold all your mail, never sending anything out. You would be expected to collect your correspondence personally from time to time, or ask them to forward it in bulk once in a while.

While this is a favourite approach of many, it is still not perfect. Keeping track of your finances becomes more complicated without regular statements to refer to and may involve frequent telephone calls and faxes. You will not be surprised to learn that telephone records are a gold mine for anyone interested in your financial affairs -- simple precautions in this regard are common sense.

But while the problems regarding the receipt of mail from your offshore bank can always be overcome somehow -- even if this causes some inconvenience -- there are other reasons why your offshore bank shouldn't know your actual residential address.

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