Navigating International Cooperation, Disclosure Risks, and Asset Protection in an Era of Global Transparency
Executive Summary
The globalisation of wealth has brought undeniable efficiencies, but also unprecedented levels of scrutiny. Trusts, offshore structures, and family offices that were once bastions of confidentiality are now increasingly within reach of foreign governments through the process of Mutual Legal Assistance (“MLA”). These treaties, designed to facilitate international cooperation on legal matters, are no longer rare tools reserved for criminal prosecution they are now standard instruments used to request information, trace ownership, and freeze assets, even in jurisdictions known for privacy.
Family offices and trustees now face an environment where an MLA request can pierce through carefully designed layers of structure. Even if no wrongdoing is alleged, being the custodian of information or assets linked to a subject of an investigation can trigger extensive disclosure obligations. Compounding this is the fact that each jurisdiction handles MLA requests differently, and the threshold for what is considered relevant information continues to expand.
This insight explores how MLA works, how it interacts with trusts and offshore structures, and what trustees, advisors, and private clients can do to protect privacy, mitigate legal exposure, and maintain asset security in the age of coordinated transparency.
What is Mutual Legal Assistance and Why It Matters Now
MLA refers to formal legal cooperation between countries, usually conducted under treaties or memoranda of understanding, allowing one government to request information or legal action from another. While historically confined to serious criminal investigations, MLA is now routinely used to pursue tax evasion, money laundering, sanctions violations, and white-collar financial offences. The shift has profound implications for private wealth structures, especially those designed to operate discreetly across borders.
Unlike informal information sharing between law enforcement agencies, MLA is a judicially supervised process. A requesting authority must make a formal application through designated channels often via central authorities or diplomatic procedures. Once received, the requested state may compel the production of documents, bank records, or testimony that would be inaccessible otherwise. In many cases, these requests are granted with limited notice to the subject or those holding the relevant information.
Why Trusts and Family Offices are in the Crosshairs
Trusts and family offices are natural targets for MLA requests. Their core functions is asset protection, wealth structuring, and fiduciary management. Actions that governments and prosecutors scrutinise when investigating complex financial schemes. Trustees, especially when regulated, are often legally obligated to cooperate with court orders or MLA-based requests.
Family offices may not be financial institutions, but they frequently handle client onboarding, investments, transactions, and intergenerational planning. These roles create trails of correspondence, asset registers, tax filings, and banking documentation all of which may become subject to disclosure. Courts increasingly treat family office staff as relevant witnesses, and family offices as sources of documentary evidence in litigation or investigation.
When and How an MLA Request can Impact a Trust Structure
An MLA request can affect a trust structure directly or indirectly. Authorities may seek the production of trust deeds, letters of wishes, beneficiary communications, trustee resolutions, and any banking records linked to trust assets. Such disclosures are typically requested under the pretext of investigating fraud, tax evasion, or sanctions breaches.
Trustees, even if not suspected of wrongdoing, may receive compulsory production orders from domestic courts enforcing a foreign MLA request. Protectors and settlors, especially if resident in MLA-compliant jurisdictions like the UK or Switzerland, may also face disclosure obligations. In some cases, courts are willing to look beyond formal ownership and examine who exercises effective control over assets.
What’s more, jurisdictions with aggressive enforcement cultures may use freezing orders, based on evidence obtained via MLA, to block access to trust-held funds or real estate. If an offshore trust holds assets in a jurisdiction that honours MLA requests, those assets may be vulnerable to provisional measures even before a trial begins.
Strategic Risks for Trustees, Family Offices, and Advisors
Even when not directly involved in wrongdoing, trustees, family offices, and legal advisors may face substantial risk from MLA-driven inquiries. First and foremost is the risk of disclosure. Professional service providers, especially regulated entities like banks and trust companies, are often compelled to comply with MLA requests and may do so quickly, to avoid regulatory scrutiny.
Reputational risk is another major concern. Being named in an MLA correspondence, even in passing, can trigger red flags across global compliance databases such as World-Check or LexisNexis. This can lead to frozen accounts, suspended business relationships, and heightened scrutiny in future transactions.
Regulatory bodies may also investigate professionals who appear to have facilitated the concealment of assets, even unintentionally. Advisors and trustees who fail to report suspicious activity or fail to challenge obviously evasive client behaviour may find themselves entangled in enforcement actions. In extreme cases, they may be sued by beneficiaries, state actors, or counterparties alleging negligence or collusion.
How to Protect Clients and Structures Proactively
Effective risk mitigation starts long before any MLA request is received. Trustees and family office advisors must conduct periodic reviews of governance structures, evaluate jurisdictional risk, and stress-test the resilience of trust and corporate arrangements under legal pressure. Where control structures are too centralised, or where protectors have effective control, transparency risk increases.
Documentation should be reviewed to ensure that duties, rights, and discretion are clearly delineated. Where appropriate, restructuring may be needed to relocate trustees or administrators away from high-risk jurisdictions. Ownership and UBO registers must be kept accurate and up to date.
Most importantly, clients should appoint a central legal strategy coordinator to oversee international responses. Whether it is a potential MLA request, a freezing order, or a voluntary disclosure, coordinated legal action across jurisdictions will always outperform fragmented efforts.
How Linkilaw Works in These Cases
At Linkilaw, we do not merely advise on the law we lead strategy. In high-stakes matters involving MLA, offshore disclosure, or trust exposure, we act as the legal command centre, designing the overarching strategy and coordinating local counsel across multiple jurisdictions. We engage forensic investigators, compliance experts, and international law specialists to deliver a harmonised legal response.
We understand how authorities build cross-border cases. We help trustees and family offices stay compliant without compromising legitimate privacy. Our model avoids the fragmentation so common in international legal disputes. We centralise control, clarify risk, and drive outcomes that align with the client’s wider financial, reputational, and legal interests.
Final Thoughts — The Age of Coordinated Transparency
We are living in the age of coordinated transparency. Information moves faster than ever before between jurisdictions. The protections once afforded by complexity or obscurity are giving way to data sharing, regulatory cooperation, and digitised ownership registries. For clients operating across borders, the game has changed.
Trusts and family offices must now operate with strategic defensibility not just technical compliance. MLA may start as a formal request, but it can escalate into a multi-jurisdictional challenge with profound consequences. Preparation, coordination, and foresight are no longer optional, they are essential.
