Take the guess work out of networking with Speed Networking, a structured face-to-face business networking activity similar to “Speed Dating” that enables participants to make new business contacts through one-on-one meetings lasting between 2-5 minutes each. Participants are asked to bring lots of business cards and a synopsis of their business.

Interested in sponsorship opportunities for the Speed Networking Event? Call Naomi Comerford on (305) 372-9761.

Come celebrate in style at OffshoreAlert's 8th Annual Red Carpet VIP Cocktail party. Join us Sunday evening for cocktails, hors d'oeuvres and plenty of networking in a plush, lounge setting with all the glamour of tropical South Beach.

Pro, anti and neutral senior figures with an interest in OFCs discuss the impact of the global recession and political and legislative initiatives to clamp down on tax evasion and other financial crimes.

• How have the core offshore sectors of banking, financial and corporate services, insurance and hedge funds coped with the turmoil?
• Which jurisdictions are hurting, surviving or thriving?
• What other political and legislative initiatives are in the works?
• What is a sustainable business model for OFCs in the modern era?

For over 20 years, private banker Rudolf Elmer worked for the Bank Julius Baer group, first in Switzerland, then in the Cayman Islands, where he was Chief Operating Officer until he was dismissed in 2002. Now living in his native Switzerland, Mr. Elmer has turned whistleblower, accusing Julius Baer of helping its clients to commit tax evasion on a grand scale.

In his first public appearance, Mr. Elmer will discuss the circumstances surrounding his departure from Julius Baer, the inner workings of the bank while he worked there, his evidence of tax evasion and his decision to pass on information about the bank's clients to the world's tax authorities.

The victims of international terrorism are fighting back in U.S. courts ... and winning, recovering billions in damages from State sponsors of terrorism and from financial institutions that launder money for terrorist organizations. In the process, they are testing traditional notions of sovereign immunity, establishing a new role for national courts and private litigants in regulating rogue State behavior, and holding even brand name financial intermediaries to account for their hidden role as the money men for murderers.

Our panelists will explore the cutting edge U.S. legal framework that permits these creative and important lawsuits, with reference to some of the more interesting cases in their portfolio.

In an attempt to prevent tax evasion estimated at $8.5 billion annually, this proposed new legislation would provide the U.S. Treasury Department with significant new tools to find and prosecute U.S. individuals who hide assets overseas from the IRS. The new law would force foreign financial institutions, foreign trusts, and foreign corporations to provide information about their U.S. account holders, grantors, and owners.

This session will also deal with the question: When does Tax Avoidance become Tax Evasion?

This session will explain why and how major corporations in the UK, the USA and other major countries use OFCs in different commercial structures in the areas of banking, funds, securitization, insurance and trusts, including an analysis of the tax, legal and regulatory advantages.

• What caused the economic demise of a fund?
• Was management blind-sided by an unexpected turn in the market?
• Were the directors honest and competent but simply the victims of bad luck? Or did they fall below the standard of care expected of them? Or was there malfeasance or breach of trust in office?
• How did external service providers perform – with vigilance, incompetence or with a wilfully blind eye to the obvious in the face of fraud?

How three US jurisdictions – offering minimal formation requirements, limited oversight, and allowing nominee directors and shareholders – are being used to launder the proceeds of tax evasion and other financial crimes, both domestically and on a global basis, and what the US is and is not doing to combat it.

• How can the US justify the rampant criminal activity occurring in these jurisdictions given its 'moral crusade' against OFCs?
• How could the Nevada Secretary of State get away with a boast that used to appear on its web-site that the state has "No IRS Information Sharing Agreement"?
• In US Vice President Joe Biden's home state of Delaware, an address that is operated by American Incorporators Limited appears time and again in requests for judicial assistance by eastern European countries regarding criminal tax evasion investigations?
• Surely American Incorporators' office at Suite 606, 1220 North Market Street, Wilmington is a worthier candidate for the moniker of 'the world's biggest building or the world's biggest tax dodge' than, as US Senator Carl Levin and US President Barack Obama have publicly proclaimed, Ugland House in the Cayman Islands?
• What pressure, if any, can countries like Russia, Poland, the Ukraine and Belarus exert on the USA to clamp down on Delaware?

What are the legal and ethical limits on the conduct of a private investigation? The dynamic tension between (a) an effective and appropriately aggressive investigation to find concealed assets and (b) these restraints will be examined. This is where the ‘right to privacy’ collides with the ‘need to know’.

It has been said of insolvency professionals that the following sentiment is all too common:

“The sole purpose of an IP is to use up in fees and costs everything that they can recover, and then go down the pub and boast to all their mates about it.”

This problem is exacerbated where the Universalist approach to trans-border insolvency is rejected; and the old territorial fight for assets between competing officeholders takes root. The current-day poster child for this will be examined – Stanford International Bank.

The delivery of civil justice to thousands of victims is nigh impossible in the absence of a group action. Class actions, representative actions, group actions, and multi-plaintiff actions will be considered.

When is a group of plaintiffs sufficiently ‘similarly situated’ to be certified as a class? Who funds the pursuit of the claimant and for what? What about multi-jurisdictional claims – how is a class to be recognised abroad?

Focusing on Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, and the British Virgin Islands.

• Which jurisdictions are taking seriously their commitment to clamping down on financial crime and which are paying it mere lip service?
• Are these jurisdictions enforcing new anti-financial crime laws they have passed or are they simply window-dressing?
• Are they passing on information to regulators and law enforcement in onshore countries?
• What new ways are financial criminals using to exploit these jurisdictions and what is being done to detect the activity and punish those responsible?

How to conduct investigations and gather intelligence in three of the world's fastest-growing economies. Includes looking at what records are publicly-available and how they can be accessed, e.g. courts, criminal history, corporations, officers & directors, shareholders, regulatory, and property ownership.

Join us for an evening of networking at one of South Beach’s most beautiful beach promenades, the oceanfront Dilido Beach Club at the Ritz-Carlton, South Beach. This special event will include cigar rolling, cocktails, hors d'oeuvres and more!

The US authorities handsomely pay whistleblowers whose information leads to the recovery of assets. Our panel will discuss how Whistleblower programs work, including those run by the IRS and, in response to the recent glut of major fraud cases, a proposed new program by the SEC couched in The Investor Protection Act of 2009, which is designed to reward whistleblowers in securities fraud actions by paying them up to 30% of monetary sanctions of more than $1 million.

This session will also look at the pros and cons of convicted criminal Bradley Birkenfeld's attempt to claim "billions of dollars" for whistleblowing on his former employer, UBS.

• Effective use of foreign laws and courts
• Sourcing and raising liquidation and/or litigation funding
• International cooperation
• Proprietary Claims over estate assets

Offshore hedge funds have been going into liquidation in unprecedented numbers.

This informative and interactive session will look at issues that have been thrown up by the plethora of recent litigation involving collapsed funds and other offshore investment vehicles.

Despite the lessons of Abacha, Mobutu and Marcos, banks are still doing business with corrupt regimes.

• What are the loopholes at the heart of the financial system that allow this sort of dirty money to flow?
• What is wrong with the current approach to customer due diligence?

Drawing on detailed case studies this session will propose some practical solutions for both compliance officers and political policy makers.

How to conduct investigations and gather intelligence in Latin America and understand what it means. Includes looking at what records are publicly-available and how they can be accessed, e.g. courts, criminal history, corporations, officers & directors, shareholders, regulatory, and property ownership, and an analysis of methods that are used to conceal the beneficial ownership of companies and mask the true nature of their business activity.

Charles Rawl is a former Financial Advisor for Allen Stanford's Stanford Financial Group who blew the whistle on the group's activities that ultimately contributed to its collapse and the criminal prosecution of Allen Stanford for allegedly masterminding a $8 billion fraud.

Martin Woods is a former Money Laundering Reporting Officer for Wachovia Securities International, the UK broker-dealer subsidiary of Wachovia Bank. In a whistleblower suit filed with an Employment Tribunal, Martin Woods claims that Wachovia destroyed his career after he contacted Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency to report evidence of multi-billion dollar money laundering by the bank's clients.

How to conduct investigations and gather intelligence in Offshore Financial Centers and understand what it means. Includes looking at what records are publicly-available and how they can be accessed, e.g. courts, criminal history, corporations, officers & directors, shareholders, regulatory, and property ownership, and an analysis of methods that are used to conceal the beneficial ownership of companies and mask the true nature of their business activity.

Securities fraud is one of the most widespread and destructive forms of financial crime, collectively costing investors billions of dollars each year. Our panelists will look at how stocks are manipulated, including the roles played by market-makers, brokers, promoters, and newsletter writers; the use of offshore shell companies to conceal illegal trading, and how to identify red-flags.

What is an asset? Inchoate vs. choate assets. Art work. Intellectual property. Equitable interests in land. Investment securities. Obscure choses-in-action. Where and how is value reposed?

In many jurisdictions, personal information constitutes a "regulated substance".

• What issues does data privacy raise in multi-jurisdictional discovery efforts?
• What are your obligations if a client wants to do business with other financial services providers?
• What are the legal, regulatory, operational and reputational ramifications if your controls fail?

Part Two will cover the following item:

• Understanding Data In Context: How to assess data psychologically for improved accuracy.

Soccer is the world's most popular sport and the FIFA World Cup – which will next be held in South Africa between June 11 and July 11, 2010 – is the world's biggest sporting event, bigger even than The Olympics.

British investigative reporter and film-maker Andrew Jennings will present evidence of bribery and corruption on a grand scale involving the most senior figures in soccer's governing body, FIFA, and CONCACAF, which governs the sport in the North America, Central America and the Caribbean.

Among other things, you will learn how corruption determines which countries host the highly-lucrative, four-yearly World Cup tournament, not the quality of bids.

Mr. Jennings poses the questions:

• Why do the world's major governments, including the USA and the UK (which are both currently attempting to hold near-future World Cups) and other major countries tolerate such conduct if they are serious about clamping down on serious financial crime?
• Why do banks ignore glaring red flags and continue to launder funds for those involved?
• Has soccer become so big that it is off-limits to regulators and law enforcement?
• Is this yet another example of Switzerland – where FIFA is headquartered – willfully turning a blind eye to financial crime on a massive scale?