Following the revelation that the boss of Landsbanki’s legal team in Spain, Emilio Cuatrecasas, had come under fire from the Spanish Tax Office, Yvette Hamilius decided to pull the plug on them and appoint Plazas Abogados, based in Marbella and Sotogrande.
This move comes as a surprise since Plazas Abogados was one of the legal firms that actively participated, in the years 2005-2008, in the perpetration of this widespread scam.
Plazas Abogados have since confirmed that Landsbanki’s product did not aim to avoid IHT, adding that the bank did not offer the Equity Release product to avoid IHT.
Sadly for Plazas, two different lawyers for Cuatrecasas have argued quite the contrary: that the Equity Release was a popular product to minimize IHT and that this was the main reason why they bought into it (sic).
Read Landsbanki’s Torben Bjerregaard explaining all that needs to be known about IHT (translation required): http://www.sydspanien.dk/article.170.html
Although much of the blame for these financial scams is focused on the corrupt banking “industry” which provides the phony capital to finance schemes to defraud home owners … the role played by the scoundrels who construct the publicity brochures and marketing seminars (and the corrupt governments in tax havens who provide sanctuary for them) are equally to blame.
The Premier Group based on the Isle of Man has over the last fifteen years launched several investment funds – none of them have showed a profit to investors, but all have provided Premier and its gang of bloodsuckers with handsome profits. And it is into these types of funds that the “equity released” in the fraudulent tax evasion schemes by the re-mortgaging of pensioner´s homes was ploughed knowing that it was destined to misuse. And while the kleptomaniacs become increasingly rich, honest home owners lost everything they had worked for.
The moral is NEVER “invest” money in any “financial scheme” or “financial product” – the people who operate and market these scams will eventually defraud you.