Cross-Border Asset Recovery

Wealthy individuals often conceal their assets, even from those closest to them, such as their spouses, children, or business partners. They often maintain their wealth in complex corporate structures, offshore holdings, trusts and other hiding places. Because of our extensive experience litigating financial fraud, our team is uniquely suited to uncover and expose financial schemes involving multiple jurisdictions and multiple lawyers of “asset protection.” For over a decade, our attorneys have represented multiple foreign individuals seeking information, documents or assets in the U.S. to assist in their foreign divorce, probate or business proceedings. Our track record is such that most of our petitions to subpoena banks for specific financial information to use abroad have been granted "in one day".

We have extensive experience with treaty-based evidence-gathering mechanisms, including mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT) requests, requests made under the Hague Evidence Convention, letters rogatory, letters of request, and 28 U.S.C. §1782, commonly known as “Section 1782.” This federal statute allows foreign litigants and interested persons to request judicial assistance from U.S. federal courts to obtain evidence for use in a foreign proceeding or international tribunal in civil, criminal, probate, bankruptcy, marital, administrative, and regulatory cases. Section 1782 is a unique and powerful tool that can be pursued directly by the litigant or interested party without participation by the foreign court, tribunal or governmental authorities. A successful Section 1782 applicant can obtain access to U.S.-style discovery such as site inspections, requests for production of documents, or deposition testimony under oath. Typical Section 1782 subpoena targets include businesses, financial institutions, professionals such as lawyers and accountants, brokers, escrow agents, art galleries, and former employees, among many others.