Mexican Anti Money Laundering Statutes
In 2007, an employee of a Swiss branch office of HSBC stole computer files containing private banking information of over 100,000 clients from all around the world. That information included not only client names and account numbers, but also confidential correspondence between the bank and its customers showing that the bank actively sold products, such as shell corporations and trusts, for the express purpose of hiding money from different world governments. The named clients included big businesses, private individuals, arms runners, drug dealers, blood diamond dealers, and people and businesses that the bank knew were under criminal investigation. The files turned out to provide conclusive evidence that HSBC was actively involved in the business of helping clients defeat criminal investigation, evade taxes, hide assets, and launder money for terrorist organizations, drug smugglers, and governments under international economic sanctions.
It sounds like a movie. It was, in fact, the beginning of the end for the centuries old sanctity of each individual nation state’s right to govern its own banking industry. It opened the door for the US government to bring the world’s banking system under the control of the IRS. And that is what they did. In the years that followed, the US government enacted a series of statutes so broad and far reaching that they have transformed the international banking system.
What does this have to do with US citizen retirees, families with young children, and ordinary citizens who have chosen to live in Mexico, to buy homes and start businesses? Unfortunately, the laws enacted to curtail international, criminal activity have the potential to make criminals out of ordinary, hard-working, tax-paying citizens. Due to the fact that you are a US citizen, living in a foreign country, with assets and money in foreign bank accounts, you are vulnerable to suspicion by the US government of tax evasion and laundering money. You fall square in the middle of the new US, and subsequently passed Mexican, anti-money laundering statutes. The burden is on you to be sure you understand them and are in compliance with the new regulations.
In a series of articles which will follow, we will describe how this happened and what legal requirements you are subject to by virtue of being a US citizen living and owning assets in Mexico.