Sorry I thought by "hold" you meant you already have the property and wanted to move it into an offshore structure. Purchasing property via an
offshore company is totally different game. All EU registries will eventually be open and UBO known to all, just like the UK has currently.
Ok so you want to "buy" a property in Central/Western Europe and hide ownership. Do you intend to live or use the property or is it just somewhere to park
cash?
Solution 1
I had a year back a client that bought a 1 bedroom flat for 2.6m in London. She was able to do so as the property was owned by an
offshore company already. The offshore company only did a transfer of shares to her offshore company. She retained the corporate director and she gave the UBO a brown bag. No changes are needed on the land register as the corporate ownership remains the same. She however avoided paying SDLT but gets hits with ATED annually. She will only then have to pay CGT if ownership changes from the company to new buyer outside company structure. She can also choose to sell on the structure. She is completely anonymous. Property taxes is an issue with Western Europe property ownership and needs to be carefully financed.
If you have no specific property in mind then best to see if you can find a property already held within a structure. ideally choose a stable place outside the EU to buy property. The EU laws change too often to make long term planning worthwhile.
Solution 2
Just setup an offshore foundation which owns the property. A foundation has only a founder, council, private letter of wishes and can opt for no beneficiaries. The founder can be a law firm or an offshore company that donates the assets to the foundation - this can be done via a back to back
loan. The offshore company can then be dissolved immediately after this is done. You now have an orphaned foundation.
The foundation buys the property and viola you have ownership of the property. Your ownership will only be known to the foundation council via a secret letter of wishes. The letter of wishes is never made public. The letter can contain instructions on how to guide the council. Your name does not need to appear in the letter if you wish although the letter is completely private. You can be creative in how you deliver instructions to the foundation council via the letter of wishes ;-)
There is zero chance of them finding you if you just put an anonymous or encrypted email address in the letter of wishes and ask the council to accept instructions via that email ;-) Even if the letter of wishes is discovered in a raid of the councils (csp/law firms) office they will only have an encrypted email to go by.