CUTINO International frequently gets inquiries about collection of civil judgments from foreign countries. The short version is this is extremely difficult, time consuming, expensive and a most unlikely occurrence. CUTINO International has NEVER answered any inquiry about client to anyone.

Latin America Treaties Lacking

A Latin America nation has no treaties usually calling for the collection of foreign judgments. A Latin America nation has no treaties calling for the collection of child support, spousal support, or alimony when the order or judgment was issued by a foreign court. A Latin America nation has no treaties pertaining to bankruptcy proceedings in any other country.

Collecting a foreign debt in Latin America nations

Let us start out by saying we do not do debt collection work for creditors. CUTINO International is an Asset Protection Law Firm and full service law firm and professional group (immigration, civil, corporate, criminal banking, etc)

CUTINO International protects assets for clients, not the other way around. That being said we will describe what a creditor faces if they try to collect a foreign debt in Latin America nation.

 

Whose debt is it anyway?

Generally in Latin America nation if you have an anonymous bearer share corporation or an anonymous legal entity, these entities are judicial persons or artificial persons.
The legal entity and corporations have their own assets and debts separate from yours and your personal assets and debts are separate from theirs. So the first step in asset protection is to have the assets in the name of anonymous bearer share corporations or anonymous legal entity, preferably using legal entity owning the corporation. Now if the public ownership records of the corporation do not reflect your name (which is how we set things up) how can one transfer your debts to the corporation? Good question and a very tough one for your financial enemies.

This is so foreign and confusing to lawyers in other countries where these privacy safeguards do not exist that they often just give up, especially if they are working on commission. They often have little training and experience in such matters and really do not know what to do. Collection attorneys rarely chase debts into other countries let along a privacy jurisdiction in Latin America Nation.

Asset Recovery Law Firms

There are asset recovery international law firms that do understand such matters. They are extremely expensive with recovery fees often going into the multiple millions of dollars so they generally work on extremely large recoveries. For them to be effective there is generally some degree of criminality involved as well, and you will learn more about this as you read on.

They generally work on fiduciary fraud cases for example a stock broker sells a non existent gold mine stock and runs away with $100,000,000. This is criminal, usually in multiple jurisdictions and the asset recovery team is brought in to find whatever assets they can that belong to the culprit so the victims can get some relief. The culprits usually secret the funds away and in many countries they may go to jail briefly and want to retire when they get out. The victims of course want to get as much back as possible so they collectively hire an asset recovery law firm and undertake a long arduous and expensive cross border effort to see were the funds are. Sadly much of the time the funds wind up as diamonds buried in the woods somewhere awaiting collection years later.

If the culprits were knowledgeable and had resources it is near impossible to find their assets if they are unwilling to tell you what they did. Remember we said that asset recovery lawyer can possibly be effective when there is some criminality involved. If things are just civil in nature there is precious little they can do which we will explore more thoroughly. Sometimes switch attempts can cause these snoopy attorney to end up in a Latin America nation jail for criminal violations.

Jurisdiction, Venue and Authority

If a financial enemy does bring suit against you it is likely to be thrown out of court. Why? Latin America nations are usually not the correct location or venue for the action in most instances. Why? Because the events underlying the lawsuit took place in another nation.
The judge usually rules that Latin America nations have no authority to decide on cases where the underlying events took place outside of the jurisdiction.

The lawsuit will be dismissed out of court very quickly. So before we even get into the details the likelihood of the case surviving the first cut in court is extremely small unless somehow the underlying events that were tried in the foreign court involved the Latin America nation somehow like the lawsuit was based on events that transpired in that nation. Then the court case sues foreword very slowly for the next 5-20 years.