Panama allows for the use of an anonymous bearer share corporation to own real estate, boats or planes. The person who has the physical possession of the stock certificates of the corporation is the one who controls the disposition of the asset be it real estate, a plane or a boat. There is no registry to look up who owns the bearer share company. Ownership is anonymous. There is also no requirement to report sales or transfers of the bearer share stock, so no one knows who the new owners are, possibly not even the old owner if the sale was to another bearer share corporation or Panama Foundation which is also anonymous. Let us take a hypothetical example:
An investor from outside of Panama wishes to acquire some real estate as an investment and wishes to derive rental income from it all done anonymously to secure the investment away from the reaches of potential financial enemies. A trip to Panama is made to inspect various properties for investment. After a property is isolated an offer needs to be made. So an anonymous corporation is formed to make the offer. Remember no one knows who owns this anonymous corporation. The owner never appears in any registry. This is not to say that a court order is needed, it is to say that there are no records to get a court order for. So now the attorney representing the client submits an offer on the property in the name of the anonymous corporation.
This is a common practice in Panama. Now the offer is accepted. So the client wires the funds to the lawyer representing him/her, the lawyer puts the funds into the escrow and the purchase is made with title going to the anonymous corporation. When the property is sold the stock certificates from the corporation are transferred to the new owner thus avoiding tax of 10% on the profit realized from the real estate transaction. The lawyer can obtain the services of a real estate broker to rent the property and sign a lease on behalf of your corporation. The lawyer can collect the rental income in their bank account and forward it to you or do with the funds as you so direct. This is a relatively solid asset protection scenario. To add another layer to the structure (normally not needed because no one knows who owns the corporation) one has a foundation own the corporation that owns the real estate. The personal debts do not transfer to the foundation if the debt was not in place at the time the foundation received the assets in question from the person.
So if you legally owe people money today and transfer money, real estate etc to a foundation next week the debt could follow the asset. If you tried to collect this in Panama and the debt was from another country the expense, time delay, chances of success collecting on a civil judgment concerning matters outside of Panama, etc would probably not warrant the collection action but the exposure would still be there but only for three years from the date of the transfer since Panama has a statue of limitations on these transfers to defraud creditors. If the court case took longer than three years which it probably would that could possibly be the end of it as well. So if the lawful collectible debt was not in place at the time of the transfer to the foundation the asset would be immune from court ordered collection. If it is starting to sound like it couldn't be better even if you wrote the laws, you are getting the idea.
The same scenario can essentially be used to acquire boats, planes, art, jewelry and other collectibles.
For more information go to: http://www.panamalaw.org
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