Greetings.
I have been owning an offshore company for quite a while now. When it was started (2015), I was not much into this world, I did this together with my father as he made contact with a company in UAE, he's no expert too.
- In 2015, we started a Ltd in RAK, UAE. Opened a bank account in UAE. Main reason was to collect payments for "consultancy" services (which means, we have a regular company selling industrial goods in EU, and we let international customers pay a part of the order as commission to the offshore). Ownership is 50% me and 50% my father. We are also directors.
- A couple of years later, we started a FZE in Ajman, fully owned by the offshore, because we needed to receive and send payments within UAE (offshore companies cannot trade inside the country). Opened an account with Emirates NBD.
It all went fine for a while. I transfered some money from corporate account to personal EMI (Neat, Paysera, Revolut, Bitsa). I never held more money in the EMI account than would have forced me to report the account to my country's tax authority (basically, as long as the average balance is <EUR 5000, I'm not supposed to report it, though I should report the income), so my strategy was to simply own multiple accounts, so that if one causes trouble it doesn't bring heavy charges.
Then, all of a sudden our account was closed this summer. We were waiting for a big payment, so we had to find another way to open an account. Banks no longer seemed an option, so we were suggested by our broker in UAE to open an account for the offshore with Ebury. It costed a fortune (like EUR 4k), but we eventually got an account where we could receive money. I later opened a Transferwise account for free -I really hope that I paid so much to Ebury for a reason...-. We later closed the FZE.
Now we are brokering an industrial supply with 7 or most likely 8 digits figures. We must receive the sum from a US account, and then transfer it to a EU account My fear is that I can't really trust EMI with such large sums: even if the sum is split in several phases, we'd still be talking about several payments of 1M each: I'm quite sure the account would get frozen, and even if I can provide good reason for the transfer (basically, we'd have invoices), I just can't risk that much.
At the same time, I have now my doubts regarding our position: we have an account with an European EMI (Ebury and Transferwise). Even if we were registered with the UAE branch of Ebury (their iban was AE), the iban we were given belonged to Luxenbourg. So, I assume there are EU financial institutions that will eventually share the UBO of the company.
For now, I'm fine with using personal EMI to get the small sums to me (something like EUR 2k/month, spent with the EMI's debt cards linked through a Curve, which features a nice debt card with no name on it and makes every expenditure look like it's being paid from the UK), so that's not really an issue.
But the problem is 1) how to get the big payments and 2) how to stay off the radar of the UBO registry. I was considering a Georgian JSC with nominees shareholders upon initial setup, to later transfer shares to us, and eventually to split the payments in different countries (I am reading mixed reviews of North Cyprus for example, but that would quite be suitable for us if it's a non reporting entity and the outcoming payments are appearing from Turkey).
My final question is: 1) How bad was the scheme that was previously used? I understand that now RAK is no longer a safe place for personal informaiton, and by giving such info to EU EMI I fear I have handed my details on a silver platter, and 2) how would you arrange to receive and send multiple high amount payments?The source is perfectly legal: and end user in a bad bad country pays my company, my company pays a pump manufacturer, the pump manufacturer delivers pumps to a broker who then gets the goods to the end user.
Thanks in advance for your help
I have been owning an offshore company for quite a while now. When it was started (2015), I was not much into this world, I did this together with my father as he made contact with a company in UAE, he's no expert too.
- In 2015, we started a Ltd in RAK, UAE. Opened a bank account in UAE. Main reason was to collect payments for "consultancy" services (which means, we have a regular company selling industrial goods in EU, and we let international customers pay a part of the order as commission to the offshore). Ownership is 50% me and 50% my father. We are also directors.
- A couple of years later, we started a FZE in Ajman, fully owned by the offshore, because we needed to receive and send payments within UAE (offshore companies cannot trade inside the country). Opened an account with Emirates NBD.
It all went fine for a while. I transfered some money from corporate account to personal EMI (Neat, Paysera, Revolut, Bitsa). I never held more money in the EMI account than would have forced me to report the account to my country's tax authority (basically, as long as the average balance is <EUR 5000, I'm not supposed to report it, though I should report the income), so my strategy was to simply own multiple accounts, so that if one causes trouble it doesn't bring heavy charges.
Then, all of a sudden our account was closed this summer. We were waiting for a big payment, so we had to find another way to open an account. Banks no longer seemed an option, so we were suggested by our broker in UAE to open an account for the offshore with Ebury. It costed a fortune (like EUR 4k), but we eventually got an account where we could receive money. I later opened a Transferwise account for free -I really hope that I paid so much to Ebury for a reason...-. We later closed the FZE.
Now we are brokering an industrial supply with 7 or most likely 8 digits figures. We must receive the sum from a US account, and then transfer it to a EU account My fear is that I can't really trust EMI with such large sums: even if the sum is split in several phases, we'd still be talking about several payments of 1M each: I'm quite sure the account would get frozen, and even if I can provide good reason for the transfer (basically, we'd have invoices), I just can't risk that much.
At the same time, I have now my doubts regarding our position: we have an account with an European EMI (Ebury and Transferwise). Even if we were registered with the UAE branch of Ebury (their iban was AE), the iban we were given belonged to Luxenbourg. So, I assume there are EU financial institutions that will eventually share the UBO of the company.
For now, I'm fine with using personal EMI to get the small sums to me (something like EUR 2k/month, spent with the EMI's debt cards linked through a Curve, which features a nice debt card with no name on it and makes every expenditure look like it's being paid from the UK), so that's not really an issue.
But the problem is 1) how to get the big payments and 2) how to stay off the radar of the UBO registry. I was considering a Georgian JSC with nominees shareholders upon initial setup, to later transfer shares to us, and eventually to split the payments in different countries (I am reading mixed reviews of North Cyprus for example, but that would quite be suitable for us if it's a non reporting entity and the outcoming payments are appearing from Turkey).
My final question is: 1) How bad was the scheme that was previously used? I understand that now RAK is no longer a safe place for personal informaiton, and by giving such info to EU EMI I fear I have handed my details on a silver platter, and 2) how would you arrange to receive and send multiple high amount payments?The source is perfectly legal: and end user in a bad bad country pays my company, my company pays a pump manufacturer, the pump manufacturer delivers pumps to a broker who then gets the goods to the end user.
Thanks in advance for your help