Full report
Executive summary
- This case study examines the Liberty Mundo network, a group of websites and social media channels marketing offshore tax, asset protection, cryptocurrency privacy tools and multiple-residency services directly to retail consumers. These platforms exemplify a “new offshore” market, in which cross-border tax and asset protection strategies are sold through online content (some AI-generated), newsletters, and paid consultations, rather than through traditional professional advisers. They are are aimed at a wider consumer market than offshore advisers’ traditional high-net-worth clients.
- Advising on offshore secrecy: Liberty Mundo and associated websites/channels present their advice as legal and compliant. Much of the freely visible content encourages customers to structure their affairs to reduce or eliminate disclosure of potentially taxable assets and income to tax authorities. Although the techniques described may be lawful depending on individual circumstances, some of the advice nonetheless promotes the exploitation of gaps in international reporting regimes and the use of privacy-enhancing cryptocurrency tools which make assets and transactions more difficult to trace. This raises significant consumer protection concerns, particularly given the absence of regulation of tax advice in the UK.
- Invisible advisers: The websites attribute content to several named experts and authors, and offer one-to-one consultations with some of them. TaxWatch has been unable to find independent, verifiable public profiles or professional histories of these individuals. AI image detection software suggests that some of their profile images are AI-generated. Two UK companies registered to the address given on one of these websites have listed a director with the same name as one of the named website experts, but each company provided different personal details for the individual in their listings at the UK corporate registry. It is not known who created the profiles of the individuals mentioned on the websites, or who registered the information about the two companies’ directors with Companies House.
- A real-life connection: Evidence from website infrastructure, source code and associated domains indicates links to Craig Whyte, a well-known UK businessman who formerly purchased Rangers FC in 2011 before it went into administration, and who has been disqualified from acting as a UK company director until 2029. Whyte is not mentioned on Liberty Mundo and the other advisory websites.
Recommendations
This group of websites and social media channels is only one of many sets of online/offshore tax advisers, financial influencers (‘finfluencers’) and advice retailers. There is no suggestion that the individuals named in our report have acted unlawfully.
This is a market without meaningful regulation. The UK government needs to ensure accountability and transparency by:
- Introducing at least some minimum standards and independent oversight of tax advice provided to UK consumers: including considering requiring UK tax advice providers to be registered with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and/or a dedicated ombudsman for tax advice within the FCA;
- Ensuring that Companies House has automated procedures for identifying and investigating director identity discrepancies at the point of director registration; and
- Ensuring the FCA and Advertising Standards Authority have effective powers to regulate or block offshore content providers and advisers marketing high-risk financial and tax services accessible to UK consumers.
TaxWatch made repeated attempts to contact the websites, named individuals and entities listed in this report, including by email, social media, website contact forms and post. We have heard only from Craig Whyte, who declined to comment on the record but has denied involvement (which we do not allege) in the UK and New Zealand companies listed in the report, whether as a director or shadow director, shareholder, beneficial owner, ultimate beneficial owner, in their management or control, or in any filing made with a company registry.