If you already have a corporation and are interested in opening a corporate bank account, there are many different scenarios, and we can provide solutions for all of them.
The simplest situation is a client that made a corporation with their own directors, or a client that has every piece of the right documentation. In these cases, opening a bank account for you would be almost as simple as opening an account for a corporation formed by us.
Anyone can form an offshore corporation without visiting Panama or producing any type of documentation. In very few cases, however, an offshore business can operate with full control by the beneficial owner without a bank account. Unlike the formation of the corporation, opening a bank account requires strategic planning, the correct documentation, scrutiny and attention to detail. Thus, a lot of clients with Panama Corporations are unable to open a Panama bank account for a number of reasons. Some clients have assumed that it is as easy to open a bank account in Panama as in their country of residence and become sloppy in the completion of the bank forms or provide incorrectly completed documentation. Unfortunately, the most common reason we hear from our clients is that they got fed up with many unanswered emails or phone calls from another offshore firm while trying to get things done for their corporation and account, and decided to go with another option to see if things could be done easier. We have conducted several case studies about people that sent money to another firm and then didn't receive a response in weeks, people that found out their corporation wasn't truly anonymous, and many other similar horror stories.
In cases like this, it's difficult to give a general assessment of how things will play out without knowing the client's specific situation. Our normal advice is to wait before contacting your old service provider. Many reputable law firms may have good reasons why a Panama bank account cannot be easily opened for your particular case but there are a few other firms that will flat out lie about the situation, so it's best to compare information with a more trusted third party and make sure you don't close any doors or trip any alarms. Getting into bad terms with your offshore agents might make it unnecessarily more expensive for you to gain control of your corporation, and this will also make it more difficult for us to open a bank account for that corporation – in Panama at least.
Many times we suggest to our clients to simply open a properly formed, trusted anonymous corporation with us, in which case the bank account opening in Panama would come at no extra cost.
Some clients decide to simply abandon the existing problematic corporations while others are not in a position to follow that route because they have already established a name or have entered into a contractual agreement with that particular corporation. In cases like these, we can still provide solutions. Contact us for a no-obligation consultation to accurately assess your specific situation.