I believe the OP was creating a nonexistent hypothetical case of fraud to get members of this forum excited. S/he seems to have succeeded.

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	I don't have a problem with bankruptcy per se. And I don't want to join a drug cartel - that is a trite comment and one that suggests to me that you are taking this (too) personally.

Not at all. I practised bankruptcy law for about 3 years, and only in relation to clients who were defrauded by Lloyd's of London, who were running a Ponzi scheme on the level of Madoff. But who got away with it for various (and perhaps quite understandable) political reasons.

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	I do have a problem with fraud. What's more your posts suggest that this (hiding money) can be done if you know the loop holes.

Exemptions have been around a long time, and in the USA (Florida and Texas especially) homestead exemptions are quite generous. In the UK they are not very generous: company and government pensions are largely exempt but private assets including private pensions are not. But discretionary trusts are everywhere exempt (although sometimes taken into consideration for alimony and child support). Nobody can force your parents to pay your debts for you.



I leave this issue to Elizabeth Warren, formerly Harvard Law School professor, now consultant to the Obama Administration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Warren With her daughter, she has written extensively on predatory financing and consumer overindebtedness.

If you want to bring back debtor's prisons, re-read Charles Dickens first.

I have no constituency and no particular law to defend or criticise. As a comparative lawyer I write articles setting out how different legal systems handle comparable problems differently. That's what I did here. In Dubai they throw debtors in prison: the airport parking lot is full of partly-paid-for cars, abandoned by absconders.

I do repeat this: there is nothing wrong with pre-bankruptcy planning. Laws were enacted that reflect local needs, and they are taken into consideration when banks and others extend credit. If a Payday or a Title loan company is going to demand 400% or 800% interest it's either because they expect to suffer substantial loss or they are taking advantage of ignorant, needy poor (and hey, they've got offices outside every US military base where local law allows, and do you really think that an overindebted soldier is going to have his mind on the job when he goes to war?)

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	Regarding your sister, given you seem to know your way around law, if I was in your shoes I'd have hung the company out to dry.

I've lost you on that one. I have several sisters but I don't remember any of them having a problem with a company.

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	As for the French quote, you're basically saying the banks are to blame.

No, I was ridiculing the exchange. You should have read the linked article on Scribd:

"In Le Bourg regénéré a young postal employee arrives in a small dormant town which does not understand, as Romains phrases it, 'why modern cities are so anxious and what prevents them from being happy.' The young man decides to awaken the town by writing on the wall of a urinal: 'Celui qui possede vit aux depens de celui qui travaille; quiconque ne produit pas l'équivalent de ce qu'il consomme est un parasite social.' The idea germinates slowly, but finally succeeds in undermining a complacent city organization."

To end it: anyone who puts £100k into a Swiss bank account and then files bankruptcy in the UK or the USA, concealing the fact of having absconded with or exported and hidden the money, will go to jail. That's what I said. I also added that if the guy were American, or became a US resident, the possibilities are different, and that, like Bowie Kuhn or OJ Simpson he could buy an expensive home in Florida and ignore his creditors. But he'd need a green card to get homestead exemption in Florida, and he can't get that very easily or very quickly, so it was a highly theoretical point. And Congress sort of agrees with you since they restricted the homestead exemption in the 2005 bankruptcy law revisions. Here's what a leading trust and estates (and asset protection) lawyer in America had to say about that: http://www.alperlaw.com/asset_planning_newsletter.html