Onshore Conference on Offshore "Opportunities"

The Wall Street Journal today has an article titled "Under Florida Sun, Tax Avoiders, Enforcers Trade Notes, Schmooze" which may be viewed here. The article discusses an annual conference run by one David Marchant. The teaser in the introduction is:

Mr. Marchant runs one of the country's more unusual annual trade gatherings. The OffshoreAlert Conference since 2002 has brought together a diverse collection of the hunters and the hunted: tax avoiders, convicted fraudsters, and their advisers -- as well as the regulators and law-enforcement officials who try to catch them. This week, they sat side by side on conference panels, and sipped cocktails a few yards from the beach outside the swank Eden Roc hotel.

This year's conference drew about 250 attendees from 29 countries, including financial officials from Caribbean nations as well as agents from the Internal Revenue Service, former Securities and Exchange Commission officials and numerous liquidators, white-collar defense lawyers and bankruptcy attorneys, who paid between $1,295 to $1,695 to attend the gathering.

The article is worth a read for those playing in the tax haven arena.