For many years off shore banking was portrayed with an aura of evilness.
The myth is off shore banking is done by extremely rich people, mainly criminals who keep their bank balances in far away islands so that no taxes are paid.
The media of course gives it a hype claiming off shore banking to be done by criminals only.
I have also often seen movies using the same concept of offshore banking to a more twisted element to their villains.
I have never seen any good guy in the movies involved in offshore banking.
Now the main question arises is offshore really used by evil people for evil purposes? Is offshore really bad? To understand the exact functioning of offshore bank and most importantly offshore banking.
lets take a look below: "Offshore banking" has originated from Channel Islands of Europe.
These islands are located between France and England.
These Channel Islands were geographically called "Offshore".
This term Offshore became the core identity of recognizing their banking.
And the entire term "Offshore banking" had nothing to do with interest it simply described something that was not located with in the boundaries of UK.
In the same manner off shore bank is nothing but a bank which is not located within the jurisdiction of depositors residence.
For instance you are living in Spain but you have your account in a Portuguese account so for you the bank is Portugal will be an off shore bank and the banking services they are offering is offshore banking.
Where the concept lies that off shore banks are criminal oriented then by definition there is nothing illegal about off shore banks.
Many a times people prefer to open their bank accounts with off shore banks because they charge very less tax or at times exempt it totally.
Saving yourself from not paying taxes cannot be defined as a crime as long as you are following all the rules of tax laws.
But I cannot strongly claim that offshore banks are saints.
Of course the fact that these banks offer no taxes and maximum secrecy does encourage people to use them for inappropriate acts.
However, it has been researched that a very a small fraction of people use it for criminal activities the rest of them use it just to avoid taxes.