You have a high-risk passport.
If you’re from MENA, CIS, Latin America, Africa, or South Asia – and you’ve already been told “we can’t open an account for you” – this page is for you.
Roman Verzin · Founder
After 2022, every bank I went to said no – not because our business was problematic, but because of where I’m from.
Consultants could not help me either: almost none of them take on a case like mine.
Read Roman’s story →Case studies
Founders who were in the same position
Anonymised – names removed, industries and regions kept.
LatAm trader · from three refusals to two open accounts
European-passport founders in LatAm-connected minerals trade. Their Hong Kong company had an account closed in 2025. The trigger sat outside the company: their corporate-secretary provider hosted a sanctioned entity at the same registered address. Three later bank applications were refused. Ownership sat 50/50 between two founders with high-risk birthplaces, and the founders’ addresses on the company’s public file still pointed to a high-risk country even though both had lived in Europe for years.
A profile audit found the real reasons the bank had acted on. We consolidated ownership to the single founder, who became sole director, and updated his address to his European country of residence, then moved the registered office to a clean provider. From there we rebuilt the application from scratch and matched the case to several banks based in Hong Kong and mainland China.
Two banks moved the founders to onboarding. Three weeks to fix the profile, three weeks to prepare for the trip to China and open the accounts in person.
High-barrier-country founder · a contractor filed the company at a loss instead of claiming the offshore exemption
A founder from a high-barrier country came to us after his Hong Kong company’s first year had already been filed by a China-based contractor. The contractor had taken the standard local shortcut – booking the company at a loss so the tax came to zero – instead of claiming Hong Kong’s offshore exemption, the proper route for a business whose operations all sat outside Hong Kong. The offshore route takes more work and more knowledge of the rules; the loss was simply the easier thing to file.
We took the company over onto our own infrastructure – our registered address and our corporate secretary – so the file was clean and consistent. The following year we did it properly. We prepared the full offshore-exemption package and the evidence that the business operates entirely outside Hong Kong, then filed the claim on grounds the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) could accept.
The company went from a paper loss that no one could call a sustainable business to a proper offshore-exemption filing built on real substance.
European trader · non-resident accounts in several jurisdictions
A trader from Europe with a multi-region business needed a Hong Kong company whose corporate documents would be accepted by banks in third jurisdictions – so they could run local business across several countries in Central Asia and Europe. That meant preparing an extended document package, agreed with the banks in advance and apostilled in Hong Kong.
We registered the company and agreed with each bank on the document package they would accept to open an account. After that we ran the apostille chain from start to finish and managed the annual review. Each time a new bank or counterparty asked, the document bundle was ready.
Because the document package was pre-cleared with each bank, the founder opened non-resident accounts across several countries without a single application bouncing back for missing or wrong paperwork.
Common questions
How long a high-risk passport stays a problem
Will my passport always be a problem?
Yes and no. The friction reduces over time: after the first couple of years of clean banking history, transparent tax filings, transaction patterns that match your declared business, and growing presence in your industry – you move almost a tier higher (see the passport-tier matrix →). If you run the business properly, life gets easier, and you can focus more on the product than on solving structural problems.
But there are limits. If you hold a Libyan, Lebanese, or other high-risk passport, the current banking system will never treat you the same as a European. That is something you can only accept and find practical ways around.
How to start working with you?
A 30-minute call. You explain your situation – which country you’re from and what you’re trying to do. We tell you which solutions exist today for your case. If we’re not the right fit, we’ll tell you so.
What if you take the case and can’t fix it?
We don’t promise outcomes we aren’t confident about. Sometimes we propose a path and tell you that the result isn’t fully under our control – no one can guarantee, for example, that the Hong Kong tax office approves an offshore claim.
If you decide to go ahead and the result is negative, what we refund depends on the service: for some we return the fee in full; for others we tell you in advance which part of the fee can’t be returned. When something goes wrong on our side, we fix it.
Our approach is long-term: we work with you for the relationship.
Do I need a co-founder or nominee owner with a different passport?
Not always. If you have a partner you trust – someone who participates in the business and holds a position – then yes, having them as a co-founder with a lower-barrier passport will make life easier.
A nominee owner is a grey area. It exists as a practice, but we believe it creates more problems and risks than it solves. Feel free to check our video on this topic.
The passport sets the route.
From a free 30-minute call you walk away with the options open to you and what they cost.
Book a free 30-minute call →Or write to us first: business@usg.world