DIRECTORS AND COMPANY PERSONNEL

Christopher Bean, Esq.
Based in South Africa, Christopher Bean, a lawyer qualified in the UK, the USA and South Africa, has been in the business of recovering debts internationally for the past 20 years for a variety of blue chip clients including commodity trading houses, credit insurers and banks. Between 1997 and 2006, Christopher has been traveling to at least 8 countries per annum.

• Family name:     Bean                                                    
• First names:      Christopher Mark
• Nationality:        South African
• Education:

Institution	Degree(s) or Diploma(s) obtained:
WITWATERSRAND UNIVERSITY	B.A.(ECONOMICS), LL.B

Additional Education / Training:

Institution	Certificates:
LONDON UNIVERSITY	LL.M.
(UNIVERSITY COLLEGE & LSE) 1975	Corporate Law & Conflicts of Law Majors

•  Language skills:  Indicate competence on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 - basic; 5 - excellent)

Language	Reading	Speaking	Writing
ENGLISH	5	5	5
AFRIKAANS /DUTCH	5	5	5
GERMAN	4	4	3
FRENCH	4	4	2
ZULU	3	5	2

• Membership of Professional Bodies:

• Admitted to the State Bar of California
• The  Superior Court of the State of CA in
• The U.S. Federal Court in
• The side bar in South Africa

• Other skills:  Computers, Excel, Word
• PPL (Pilot since 2002)
  

• Present Position: Attorney Private Practice      

• Key Qualifications (Relevant to the assignment): 
  
  
• Engaged in International Commercial transactions involving more than 2 jurisdiction since 1980.
• Commodity trading in Africa / Europe – disputes relating to bills of lading, letters of credit, shipping invoices, SGS certificates etc.
• Recovery of moneys in difficult countries in Africa, S. East Asia, U.S., Europe  and U.K.
• Since 2008 – engaged in  actions which are ongoing and relate to recovering illicit funds which are derived in Africa and then hidden in Europe / U.S. and S. East Asia.

Contact Details:

Email:
Tel: +2782 651 6262

Local Correspondents:

In those countries where we operate we have developed local agents and correspondents who have been put to the test many times and have worked closely with us in our collection matters.

FORENSIC TRACKING OF LAUNDERED MONEY / KNOW YOUR CLIENT AND THE US PATRIOT ACT:

With money laundering legislation in place for the last 10 years, it is now much easier to follow and find money belonging to debtors who are stealing money or are trying to avoid payment.

But there are still artificial obstacles:

• issues relating to the exorbitant costs of investigation  (lawyers fees / private investigators) which could be substantially reduced if the banking system were to be held more accountable and more open.
• there is too little use of the “politically exposed person “  principal which should be expanded to allow investigations of political despots – particularly in Africa .
• little things like suppliers of savings bank books which are designed to have similar security protection as normal cheques and problems arising from the bank manager taking kickbacks and ordering excessive numbers of savings books. This is not a figment of our imagination and is exactly what happened in a matter we were investigating in Malawi.

At the other side of the spectrum we have been involved in setting up legitimate corporations and bank accounts in  the various offshore countries mentioned for legitimate  corporations wishing to keep a low profile. Hence, we have direct knowledge of exactly what information  many offshore banks actually obtain from their clients and of how little information they hand out – even when forced to do so by way of court order or in circumstances when it is ethically correct to do so.

Conclusions:

Our services include getting around and avoiding the impact of the following issues:

1.Banks  which could make it  easier to combat money laundering – if they had a mind to!

2. EU banking confidentiality  legislation ( eg UK’s Data Protection Act ) which actually aids and assists criminals in money laundering activities by making it impossible to identify criminals and “follow the money”

3 .Additional legislation/ EU regulations relating to trade / individual embargoes  which only freezes money temporarily and does not make it easier to identify “disguised” accounts at all.  Hence embargoed money actually gets released to political criminals when “amnesties” are handed out a few years later.

4 In some countries banks can and often should be charged as accomplices / co-conspirators in cases where the banks directly or indirectly obstruct information relating to criminal activities that they knew or ought to have known about (kyc) – know your client policy -which most/all banks have in place. These are all contested issues and will always come to the fore when a lot of money is involved.