Cyprus: Bank Levy of 10% on all accounts

FireWyrm

jumperabv3 wrote: »

The way to deal with this is to open a personal account in Hong Kong, a country where not Europe nor the US can touch ... and have a bank card you can withdraw money freely from the ATM and put this money for your bills etc, and this way if banks in Europe fall ... your money would remain protected no matter what.

Do enlighten us ordinary citizens as to how you go about doing this legally and without incurring the wrath of your local bank who suddenly 'withdraw' banking facilities from you for suspected 'money laundering'. Not to mention the prerequisit of opening such an account in person?

grumbler

jumperabv3 wrote: »

Based on the way governments treat citizens I wouldn't classify "tax dodgers" as the most dangerous people to society. They might "steal" from society and yes, they do it quietly ... however the banks do so massively and no one can say a word.

The enemy is not the tax dodger but the bank and the government that backs it up....

Not only governments back banks up, but often they are the main reason of banks collapsing - as this happened in Greece where the government was unable to refinance their enormous debt (to banks). I guess it's pretty much the same picture in Cyprus.

jumperabv3

FireWyrm wrote: »

Do enlighten us ordinary citizens as to how you go about doing this legally and without incurring the wrath of your local bank who suddenly 'withdraw' banking facilities from you for suspected 'money laundering'. Not to mention the prerequisit of opening such an account in person?

You just take a flight to Hong Kong, with your Passport and a proof of Address (your address in the UK) and you open a personal account over there. Not a big deal at all.

If you don't have lots of savings to keep then keep your money under the mattress or on a Pre-paid card, or PayPal or diversify between all of these ... Today people in Cyrus, can't even withdraw funds from the ATM, legitimately (what if they really need cash today to do some grocery shopping?) .... because all ATMs in Cyprus are blocked probably until Tuesday (should they take a flight to Greece and cashout Euros from these ATMs if their bank cards will even work?)

.....................

I don't know why but we have different mentality ... I don't live in the UK any longer, but I have a UK mailing address and that's how I keep my UK bank account open ... to be honest my UK bank account can serve as a better "offshore" account than all other tax-dodging offshore banks in the Isle of Man or Cyprus etc, because it's a regular account, sending statements to a UK address, and I can't be taxed on foreign income sent to that account coz I'm not even a UK resident for HMRC tax purposes.

That's what I call thinking outside the box, thinking like the banks ... they're evil, and what they do to the poor citizen is evil ... so why do I need to play fair with them? I'm happy with the way I have my bank accounts sorted ... I doubt if you would follow what I do but that is because as I explained we have a very big gap in our mentality of doing things right.