The Latest Trend—Money on the Move
But where is the money going to move?
There are numerous great indicators and trackers for this sort of question that are released annually–visual capitalist are experts at presenting this data, henley and partners often track this, as well as Knight Frank and Mr. Family Office (to share some names with you).
But, like the police, they are reactive not proactive in this reporting so while On The Ball doesn’t pull the weight these firms do, we can try to approach it differently by being predictive in our work for you as an investor.
The Recent News
Hackers breached Liechtenstein’s Register of Beneficial Owners (known as the Verzeichnis wirtschaftlich berechtigter Personen or VwbP) during the night of July 29–30, 2026. The highly sensitive cyberattack resulted in unauthorized data copies being stolen from approximately 31,000 legal entities, including companies, foundations, and low-tax trusts.
Key Details of the Breach
- What was stolen: The compromised data contains personal information about the ultimate flesh-and-blood beneficial owners who control these structures. This includes names, dates of birth, nationalities, and countries of residence.
- What was NOT stolen: The government and the Liechtenstein Bankers Association confirmed that no banking systems, client accounts, or financial data (such as assets, revenues, or dividends) were affected.
- Database Purpose: The VwbP register was established in 2021 as a vital tool to comply with European Union anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CFT) regulations.
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Government Response & Current Status
Following the discovery of irregularities by the Office of Justice, authorities took the affected database completely offline to secure the network.
- Crisis Management: Prime Minister Brigitte Haas and Justice Minister Emanuel Schaedler convened a dedicated crisis task force. Law enforcement has submitted initial reports to public prosecutors to launch formal criminal inquiries.
- No Ransom Demands: Prime Minister Haas stated that investigators have not received any ransom demands, nor has the data been spotted for sale on the dark web. The perpetrators and their core motives remain unknown.
- Precautionary Measures: As a widening precaution, Liechtenstein has temporarily taken several other connected government systems offline while conducting safety audits. Prince Michael of Liechtenstein (chair of Liechtenstein Finance) warned the Financial Times that the European Union’s plans to interconnect national beneficial ownership networks across the European Economic Area would “multiply the risk” of catastrophic cyber threats.
- Switzerland’s Stance: Despite calls from Swiss industry groups to pause similar transparency efforts out of fear of a copycat attack, neighboring Switzerland pushed forward with plans to publish its own corporate transparency registry in October 2026
Broader Financial Industry Fallout
The breach has shaken international trust structures and created immediate political ripple effects in neighboring countries. In what would be obvious for you and I, for whatever reason, Swiss wealth managers are scrambling to compensate for the future risks of Switzerland’s own Transparency Register. It is quite clear that centralization creates massive honeypots for hackers and in the case of Switzerland, there’s data on 600,000 entities available.
Recent Conversation
I had an interesting meeting the other day where I asked what the latest occurrences in Europe are to be watchful about. I was expecting that a bail in of savings accounts was high on the agenda but this was not the primary concern.
The item that the eurocrats are pushing hardest for is a complete and thorough asset registry. They want to see every single asset that an individual has, at what price and where. One’s land, IP asset, goodwill, inheritance, real estate, dividends, stocks, precious metals, company records, cryptocurrency, everything… This, I’m told is just a precursor to knowing where and to whom has the low-hanging fruit to tax or regulate (steal) from EU citizens to their own pockets.
Long story short, they’re working on a complete invasion of autonomy and PRIVATE property. Without having privacy inherent to one’s wealth, ownership is always disputed and can allow the state to intervene, modify, freeze and seize whenever they wish. Even children learn at a young age while on the playground that when one side of the see-saw goes down, the other side goes up proportionally, which is to say, actions have consequences.
Punchline
This is why I believe jurisdictions that preserve their corporate laws of holding directors, founders and shareholder private will receive a massive increase of interest and wealth begging to utilize their financial systems; as a means to preserve their private property. The notion that one wouldn’t have complete anonymity and privacy over their ownership would have been absurd merely 20 years ago, but the regulators, central planners and statists continue to encroach on the individual.
And for anyone who legitimately thinks this is for “money laundering”, while billions are laundered in Mexico, USA, Ukraine, China every week–is either dim witted or very naïve.
Jurisdictions that are wealth powerhouses
Asia: Singapore & Hong Kong
Caribbean: Cayman Islands, BVIs & Bermuda
Latin America: Panama & Uruguay
Oceania: New Zealand, Cook Islands & Marshall Islands
Europe: Jersey, Switzerland & Monaco
These jurisdictions, and others, will have to maintain their stronghold by retaining professional standards but also shareholder, director and beneficial ownership privacy to the highest degree in this era of cybersecurity and personal data held in the cloud.
Europe seems committed to removing their offshore corporate standing by all means necessary (for instance, other than the odd expensive stock corporation setup in about 5 countries in Europe, every director AND shareholder is available to the public in European corporate structures). I don’t have to remind you of reasons why you might not want the public knowing everything about you and your net worth (and where it is), but according to the changes in Europe–they’re an open book (with your book that is…).
Future
I am fairly confident that the future for jurisdictions that maintain investor and director privacy will be the recipient of huge amounts of capital as it becomes apparent this transparency is no longer for professional or benign reasons. I promise that broadcasting your ownership to the world will not help you with the banks, with your investments, with your business plans–there’s only downside in that trade.
As a result, when structuring my own (or advising others under Open Door Consultancy), I hold privacy as a major commodity in itself. For subscribers, I invite you to learn more about my ideas on how to offer services that I believe will be the recipient of this interest in the future. Please subscribe on Substack, OR on my site here
https://ontheballllc.substack.com/subscribe
If you want help in structuring your international portfolio and offshore companies, I am happy to jump on a call with you.
