Dear Mavericks,

3,000 euros.

Under a law that just passed in Spain, that’s now the maximum you can withdraw from your bank account without having to deal with the local tax agency.

Here’s more from EuroWeekly:

“From now on, anyone withdrawing €3,000 or more from a Spanish bank must notify the Agencia Tributaria (Spain’s tax agency) in advance. If you’re planning to take out €100,000 or more, you’ll need to give at least 72 hours’ notice. For smaller sums over €3,000, a 24-hour notification is mandatory.

The warning must be filed through the tax agency’s official website using a digital certificate, Cl@ve PIN, or electronic ID card. You’ll receive a receipt that must be shown at the bank when withdrawing your cash.

Fail to notify? You risk a fine between 1 per cent and 10 per cent of the amount withdrawn — starting at €600 and climbing up to a massive €150,000, depending on the seriousness of the violation.

Banks are now required to block withdrawals if they detect missing paperwork, and must report suspicious transactions to the authorities, even if amounts are repeatedly just under the threshold.”

Why? To fight terrorists, of course. Because remember, only criminals use cash.

Unfortunately, Spain is not an anomaly. It’s just the latest country to tighten the noose on people’s money.

The Netherlands is moving to introduce a ban on cash payments over 3,000 EUR (again, ostensibly to combat crime).

And over in Greece, the maximum limit for cash payments is 500 EUR, with talk of lowering this further to 200 EUR.

Across the entire EU, cash transactions will be limited to 10,000 EUR starting from 2027. Any transactions above that threshold will have to be cashless. Sorry!

And in the land down under, the Currency (Restrictions on the Use of Cash) Bill 2019 limits cash payments to AU$10,000. Try and make/accept more and you risk getting fined or even thrown in jail.

Not only are capital controls coming. They’re already here.

But as Mavericks, we’re doers. And we’re not just sitting idly and watching the pointy shoes ringfence and plunder our assets under the banner of equity and inclusion. But more on that later in the newsletter.

Now, you might be wondering, what the heck is happening? And why now?

Andrew recently shared a great speech by Russel Napier (in case you haven’t heard of him before, Napier is a financial markets strategist and best-selling author) on Mavericks Social.

If you haven’t got a chance to watch it yet, you can catch up on Napier’s entire presentation here. It’s an eye-opening one and well worth your time!

It was recorded in October 2024, which makes it even more fascinating as today — not even a year later — it’s becoming increasingly clear Napier was right on the money… and it also goes to show how quickly things are unfolding.

Napier argues we are living through a collapse of the global (dollar-based) financial system that we have known for the past decades is collapsing right in front of our eyes. As a result, we are in for years, even decades of financial repression and governments inflating away eye-popping debt levels.

As a Maverick, this probably won’t come as news to you.

What is curious, however, is that, as Napier put it, a new system is being ushered in now, a system of national capitalism (as an aside, it’s telling that the term “national capitalism” has been used in the past, by none other than comrade Lenin). In national capitalism, Napier argues, governments will direct national savings towards national purposes.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Here’s the head of the EU Commission a few weeks ago…

For starters, EU apparatchiks are greenlighting outright confiscation… I mean, mobilisation of 10 trillion EUR of citizens’ savings (or “unused savings” as they call them) to “militarise Europe and support the European military-industrial complex.” You really can’t make this isht up!

Furthermore, Napier believes that one of the defining features of this system of national capitalism will be… deep breath… various forms of capital controls.

It’s something the MSM is already prepping the populace for…

If there’s one thing to glean from capital controls in the past, it’s that they are never called capital controls. And this time won’t be any different (note how they call them “money tariffs” in the above article). They’ll probably be rolled out with The Economic Stability and Citizen Financial Protection Act or some similarly silly name to make the average voter feel like he’s being protected from… ummm… something, I guess.

Whatever the name, it’s a matter of when, not if. And as Napier puts it, in today’s world, where most financial assets are held by institutions, one of the best ways to impose capital controls is in the form of regulation.

For instance, a government regulator mandating all pension funds to buy a certain amount of government debt or other domestic financial assets. Or — as you might’ve experienced yourself — your bank making moving money (especially overseas) difficult or outright impossible due to all the regulatory requirements.

Indeed, Napier says the ability to move capital freely around the world will be increasingly restricted.

Again, this won’t be news to most of you reading this newsletter. You’ve probably dealt with this in some shape or form lately. And with the globalists in charge now setting us up for CBDCs, expect the screws on movement of capital to tighten even further. As a matter of fact, the digital euro is now scheduled for official launch in October this year — just months from now.

It’s not hard to guess as to what this might mean for anyone looking to move their money around. The clues that this is now underway are out there.

And it’s not just EU pointy shoes with their harebrained ideas. This is a concerted global effort.

From the US…

To Brazil…

Make no mistake: what’s happening are capital controls in various shapes and sizes. And once imposed, they won’t be going away anytime soon.

Just like income tax in the United Kingdom was meant to be a temporary measure to help fund the war against Napoleon. And today — a full 200 years later — our blood pudding-eating friends are still saddled with it.

Capital controls won’t be any different, especially with Western governments getting deeper and deeper in debt to finance wars, bloated social programs, and unsustainable pension schemes.

The following chart about the state of government finances in the US is a great reminder about why the Rubicon has long been crossed and why getting out of this isht will be messy (for the everyday folk, anyway).

And zooming out, global debt has ballooned about 3x over the past 20 years.

And as Russel Napier mentioned, these crippling debt levels necessitate capital controls (among other things).

Indeed, (soft) capital controls are already being applied today — as we’ve already shown earlier. The dollar-based financial system that regulates the majority of capital flows around the world (and runs on the SWIFT network) is acting like a giant boa constrictor.

Increasingly, this boa is tightening its grip on any and all transactions it sees as a threat to its existence.

And when money is fleeing this system (especially when the participating governments are spending and taxing like a leech on a prize-winning bull), the boa’s existence is indeed being threatened.

Capital Takes Flight…

For most of history, the capital was largely static (think capital intensive factories and real estate) and anchored to a single jurisdiction. But that’s no longer the case.

You’ve probably heard the old chestnut that capital goes where it’s treated best. And in today’s world, where capital is — at least on paper — increasingly mobile, this is as true as ever.

It’s why the pointy shoes are now scrambling to close off any and all escape valves (and why the boa’s grip is getting tighter and tighter).

And when you look at the numbers (or even your lived experience probably), one thing is clear:

Capital is NOT welcome in most Western countries.

Right now, Australia a bill to tax unrealised capital gains in retirement accounts over AU$3 million is now on the table.

As an aside, guess who’s bound to be exempt from this tax?

Funny how it works, heh? Taxes for thee, but not for me.

And it’s not just the Aussies. The EU and UK also seem to be hellbent on driving away whatever capital is left — and with a good deal of success, we should add.

You’ve probably heard about the “success” story that is Norway. The podium donuts over there raised wealth taxes to bring in $146 million in additional revenue per year.

What happened instead was that $54 billion-worth of wealthy folks said “no mas” and left, resulting in $549 million lost tax revenue. Brilliant!

Or consider this article, which popped up on our screens the other day…

Long story short…

The UK’s long-standing “non-dom” tax haven status was killed on 6 April 2025. Under the new regime, UK residents will now be taxed on worldwide income and gains.

Meanwhile, Italy rolled out the red carpet with a low flat tax on foreign income, no wealth and inheritance tax on foreign assets, zero disclosure requirements, etc.

For comparison, someone earning 10 million abroad might pay 4 million EUR (or more) in UK taxes, but  just 200,000 EUR in Italy. Quite a difference, heh?

As a result, Milan has emerged as Europe’s new wealth capital.

This is not just an anomaly. It’s a growing trend. Here’s from the article (emphasis ours):

“He resigned as a director of the London branch of his family office, NNS Group, in November last year.

Shortly after, NNS Group was registered in Abu Dhabi, a tax-friendly jurisdiction that is proving an increasingly bolt-hole for the world’s super-rich.

Now Sawris has formally moved away from the UK, just days before the non-dom regime, a 200-year-old tax status allowing wealthy foreigners only to be taxed on their UK income and assets, is annulled on April 6.

Sawiris’s decision to quit the UK, first reported by the Birmingham Mail, follows several other high-profile departures of ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWIs) fleeing what they perceive to be an assault on wealthy investors from the government.

Last week, it emerged that Lakshmi Mittal, a steel tycoon ranked seventh in the Sunday Times Rich List, had decamped from the UK in favour of the United Arab Emirates.

And in September last year, German crypto investor Christian Angermayer moved to Switzerland before unleashing a fierce broadside at the government’s plans to scrap the non-dom status.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Angermayer said that every non-dom he knew “has left, or [was] about to leave”, and branded the Chancellor’s plans, which had not been formally announced at the time, as a “huge mistake”.

Sawiris is now likely to take up Italy’s attractive flat tax scheme. The regime, which is levied at a blanket rate of €200,000 (£166,600), allows wealthy foreign nationals to reside in the Mediterranean country without paying tax on their global income and assets.”

The numbers back it up (and this chart is from last year, mind you):

From a bigger picture, this is bad news for anyone living in these countries waging war on the “wealthy elites.”

With high earners leaving in droves, you have less spending and less economic activity overall, which only perpetuates the vicious circles further.

And it’s not just the rich folks. Anyone with some money (and common sense) is heading for the greener pastures (and it’s one of the reasons why we remain bullish on Dubai long-term — remember, capital goes where it’s treated best).

But the thing is, moving capital across borders is increasingly more challenging. In fact, it’s often next to impossible — at least when one is utilising the legacy banking system. Maverick Ladislas recently shared this:

Even more alarmingly, the noose isn’t just tightening around European bank accounts. We recently had a close encounter with the aforementioned boa in Panama. And the whole ordeal gave us a good deal of insight into how global capital flows are being curtailed or blocked altogether.

Think of the global banking system as a bunch of sandboxes (jurisdictions) inside a playground.

As long as you play inside one sandbox (one jurisdiction), you probably won’t be bothered (in most cases, though not always). But if you so much as look at a different “sandbox…” or worse, if you have money coming into your account from a different sandbox, that’s when trouble begins.

Additionally, when non-fiat alternatives (i.e. crypto) are being used, restrictions are imposed at on and off ramps. Here’s just one of the latest hurdles that’s being thrown at crypto…

We’ve experienced these hurdles firsthand when putting together all the pieces for our El Silencioso deal.

The issue wasn’t hitting the wall with our local developer partners or getting all the paperwork squared away by the lawyers . No. Instead, it was what was supposed to be the most routine part of the process — moving money into Argentina.

To spare you the entire sob story, here’s an abridged version…

Our plan was to set up banking in Panama. Over the years, Panama has quietly become one of the biggest pools of capital outside of the Western system — an alternative to long-standing hubs like Hong Kong or Switzerland.

But as it turns out, Panama has had — pardon our French — its balls cut off by the EU and US pointy shoes.

Which brings us to another point… and something Russel Napier pointed out in his presentation.

It’s not the banks, brokerages, and crypto exchanges pushing for this (although, they do act as enforcers). All this is being orchestrated by regulators controlling the SWIFT-based system, and it has been underway for years.

It started after 2001 and then ramped up after 2008 — initially from the big banks and small banks, and now to also include crypto exchanges.

Try sending money from, say, a bank account in Hong Kong to the US. Or from a US-based crypto exchange to a bank account in Dubai. Invariably, you’ll experience a bunch of KYC choke points at different points. The regulatory busybodies will want to know exactly why that money’s coming in and where it came from (“source of funds,” as pointy shoes call it).

In our case, when trying to set up a structure for El Silencioso in Panama, this would entail background checks for every investor participating in the deal (yes, it’s that insane).

Not to mention the fact that — having no previous relationship with that particular bank — they were asking for our firstborn and a kitchen sink… just to get things set up. Not to mention the fact that we would need to provide background info on any Maverick who wanted to invest in El Silencioso. No way, Jose!

After months of getting absolutely nowhere, one thing was obvious to us…

We desperately need an alternative to today’s banking infrastructure — a solution that can help us step out of the digital matrix and the increasingly onerous system (and one that’s also antifragile, resilient, and accessible across different jurisdictions).

It’s something we’re working on here at Mavericks, and we have an entire event dedicated to this topic in a few weeks (more on that in a moment).

Now, we’re not the only ones looking beyond the confines of the SWIFT-based banking system.

In a world of increasingly onerous traditional banking, it’s no surprise to see alternatives such as stablecoins popping up (much to the pointy shoes’ chagrin).

Stablecoins are one such elegant solution, where one can effectively bank in US dollars (or any other currency), but outside the legacy system.

Just take Tether, a stablecoin backed by US treasuries. Launched back in 2014, Tether is today one of the biggest holders of US treasuries on the planet — bigger than many G20 countries.

We could dedicate an entire newsletter purely to stablecoins… and other alternatives. But there’s a couple of other obvious takeaways from all this…

The first one is, diversify, diversify, diversify. We’re probably preaching to the choir, but this bears repeating…

It’s Not Your Money!

If your financial and human capital is dominated by a single (Western) jurisdiction, you’re exposing yourself to a whole lotta risk… and risk that’s growing by the day.

It’s worth reminding you here that once you make a deposit in your bank account, that money is no longer yours. It’s the bank’s.

Ivor Cummins recently shared this shocking exchange at a bank branch in the UK.

In today’s world, this is a growing risk, especially if you only have one bank account (and in the same jurisdiction where you spend most of your time).

With a push of a button by an employee from the compliance department (or increasingly, an AI)… and often for no good reason (it’s not like they give you a reason, anyway), your funds can be frozen, your transfers, or your account can be shut down altogether.

Considering all this, diversifying your strategy globally — across different “sandboxes” — has never been more critical.

Own properties around the world, store gold in different jurisdictions, and have multiple residencies.

The Mavericks Project is about wealth protection strategies and navigating our way through the Fourth Turning. And that’s why, over the past couple of months, we’ve been accelerating our push into partnerships.  

These are partnerships with trusted providers from our network — whether real estate firms, lawyers, precious metals companies, etc. — that can help Mavericks with diversification (while also bringing tangible, financial benefits for our members).

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the active partnerships (you can find further details on each partnership in the Directory on Mavericks Socials)…

New Mavericks Partnerships

A few months ago, we hosted a Dubai real estate webinar with Paul Sharland from Haus & Haus.

Paul has been based in Dubai for two decades now and is intimately familiar with the local property market and works predominantly with overseas investors (both Chris and Andrew have worked with him in the past, as have other Mavericks).

Paul has agreed to offer 25% back on the commission when buying property in the UAE through him. With property prices in Dubai in high 6 or 7 dollar figures, this perk alone can put tens of thousands of dollars back in your pocket.

This deal is exclusive to Mavericks members only and — as far as we know — it’s unique in the market.

If you missed the webinar with Paul (or need a refresher), you can watch the replay here. You can find all the details under

On the real estate front, we also have a partnership with Keith Boyle and his firm My Bricks in Istanbul, Turkey, which might be particularly interesting to those of you considering Turkey’s is a true citizenship-by-investment (CBI) scheme.

As a Maverick, you can benefit in two ways when you work with Keith:

1. For property purchases, he offers a ⅓ rebate on the real estate commission for Mavericks. On a $400,000 transaction, and assuming you’re paying the standard 2% commission as a buyer, you’re saving $2,640 as a Maverick.

2. For rentals, you get a 10% discount on the regular property management fee, which usually works out to 8% of the rental price.

On top of these, we also inked a partnership with Strategic Wealth Preservation (or SWP for short) — a precious metals dealer and storage company based in the Cayman Islands and with storage facilities in the Cayman Islands as well as Canada, the United States, Switzerland, Singapore, Dubai and New Zealand.

As a Maverick member, you get to benefit from SWP’s preferred rates on precious metals storage.

Join Us in the Cayman Islands?

Now, speaking of the Cayman Islands…

The next Mavericks Mastermind will take place between June 6-9 in the stunning Cayman Islands, at the Westin Resort overlooking the famous Seven-Miles sandy beach.

The event will focus entirely on the stuff we covered in today’s newsletter — capital flows, global opportunities, and strategies to safeguard your capital and wealth in the face of an unstable global system.

More importantly, we will discuss the opportunities and emerging solutions surfacing from these growing threats to your wealth, including the stuff we’ve been working on behind the scenes here at Mavericks HQ, along with a few fellow members.

As it turns out, there’s dozens of people who are also looking into these same issues and working on solutions. We’re tapping into the experts and projects and innovations to get out of this regulated system. And we’re bringing these people together at the upcoming event.

We have a few tickets available for the Cayman Mastermind. With just days until we kick off what promises to be another epic event (and to take full advantage of the pre-event webinars we’re hosting on the topic of diversifying in Cayman), you might want to grab yours ASAP if interested. You can get more details about the event here.

Subvertere Capital Update

A penny for your guess — what do you think is the most difficult part of launching a new fund?

When we kicked off Subvertere Capital, it was framed by Chris’ worldview in terms of investing into hard assets outside of the failing monetary system. As we witness the implosion of the dollar-debt-based monetary system (with front row seats), the idea of owning hard assets outside of that system seems prudent.

The following chart is a great reminder. Compared to stocks, hard assets are as cheap as they’ve been in 50 years. And right now, we’re still in the warm-up stage of what promises to be an epic capital rotation event. The spring is coiling tighter and tighter. Once all this pent-up energy is released, patience will pay juicy dividends.

What does this mean for Mavericks… and for you?

Teaming up with Andrew, who has experience building businesses in emerging markets, and the clear cyclical directional change that’s engulfing Argentina, it seems logical to race off and build a private equity deal flow in the Southern Cone.

So exactly a year ago, Andrew set off across the Atlantic to knock on doors and remarkably over the course of the subsequent 9 months, developed an impressive network of connections, businesses and opportunities, across the Southern Cone and particularly Argentina.

When we met up prior to our Buenos Aires event last November, the question was raised — now, with an impressive stack of dealflow and opportunities, the challenge is how do we finance this. So we tapped the Mavericks network and started conversations with accredited investors, HNWIs, and institutional capital. Unsurprisingly, we found a healthy appetite for the types of deals we’re looking at and a growing awareness of the opportunity that is Argentina.

Now we roll into 2025, it would seem that we have both the deal flow and a growing appetite by the investment community to back said deals.

Giddy up, we’re off to the races!

That lasted about an hour, till we hit the brick wall of the global regulators who decide where and how one can place capital!

If we turn our minds back to the “convid” fraud, where big-pharma co-opted global institutions (including governments) and through their corrupted institutional control, used the medical & education system and their propaganda machine (ahem, the media) as the policy enforcers. Schools and airlines became the new medical enforcement arm for big pharma!

Well, if you take that model and overlay it to the global monetary system, the parallels are stark. The banking cabal, through unlimited fiat creation, have co-opted the global institutions (including the parasites in governments) to control the banking, regulatory, and fund administrators as their policy enforcers. Want a bank account? Ask compliance! Want a fund administrator? Work within their predefined structure.

So the idea of popping into your preferred jurisdiction to set up a company, call your old pal in the private banking sector, and start running a business… well, today that is a bit of a fairytale story. Good in theory, but in reality it’s… well, fairy dust!

The realization quickly dawned on us that we either do nothing or comply!.

But you know what? As Mavericks, we picked door #3.

We set about to find the solution to said problem! Donut worry… the irony is not lost on us just the same. Andrew’s knowledge (and interest) in crypto is about as good as his singing abilities. While both Chris and Andrew set out their investment mandate for Subvertere Capital it was to avoid the tech and crypto space due to lack of knowledge in that sector.

Meanwhile, for the past 4 months, deal flow and capital raising has taken a back seat while we researched and built a model to raise and deploy capital, whilst being “unbanked.”  How, you might ask. Well, by utilizing crypto payment rails, a crypto treasury management system, a crypto centric onboarding firm, and tackling the inevitable on and off ramping from fiat to crypto.

Hence this newsletter, which nicely articulates the problem and teases out the solutions, more of which we’ll be sharing with you at our Cayman event in a few weeks.

Now, let’s be real here — we haven’t created a new form of energy, like a new windmill for energy production. But we have certainly made progress. We’re close. Real close! And we aim to (re)launch our inaugural El Silencioso deal very, very soon. But we’ve still got a couple of loose-ends to tie together before we go.

Meanwhile, we are excited to launch the new Subvertere Capital website which, buried deep in the site somewhere, has two video series that are well worth your time.

1. Our Investment Thesis, where Chris and Andrew talk through the journey that has led to why we’re investing in hard assets and outside the West, and
2. Our El Silencioso Series. This is a really nice production of four videos that outline the tailwinds behind Vaca Muerta, the township of Añelo and its future, and the El Silencioso project.

Enjoy!

And to wrap up this newsletter, a quote that highlights perfectly why this merry band of Mavericks exists — to bring good men and women together and amplify our collective voices.

Until next time!

The Mavericks HQ