The Bahamas as an offshore jurisdiction

Bahamian banking secrecy is misleading by the fact that banking institutions are prohibited from disclosing information about customers or account holders to third parties without the express consent of the account holder (I think Americans may have to sign a waiver when opening an account) or under a Bahamian court decision. The bad part is that banking institutions are free to report that a particular person or company does have an account with that bank. Although a bank may not, under Bahamas law, disclose specific details or balances of accounts, it can certainly disclose who owns their accounts. This means that wholesale fishing expeditions are a separate option, for example, give us a list of all account holders from a particular country. Not surprisingly, 45% of deposits left the banks of the Bahamas after they moved to this new legislation, which seriously violates banking secrecy.

Bahamas corporations are not bearer shares and therefore not anonymous. Interestingly, a LLC in the Bahamas cannot do business in the Bahamas or own real estate in the Bahamas, more cons.

The Bahamas gets about 5 cruise ships a day on average, each cruise ship averages about 2,500 people. If we calculate that each person spends an average of $ 50 in port and that the Bahamas is taxed at a head of about $ 20, we can understand why the Bahamas violates secrecy and confidentiality. If they didn’t, they would risk losing their travel business, which employs more people than their banking has ever done, and also brings in more income. The Bahamas was once a decent jurisdiction, but they sold out to protect their largest industry, tourism. They have large beach hotels, gambling casinos, fishing, diving, etc. – increasingly profitable than their offshore banking services.

The Bahamas does not provide anything like the level of privacy we require, so our advice is to stay away.