Asset Recovery

For nearly a century we have provided a full spectrum of asset recovery and judgment/arbitral award enforcement services for creditors. We create novel solutions to tough problems often involving the untangling of asset protection schemes, uncovering fraud, striking down fraudulent conveyances and insider transactions, and executing on assets. Those that have reaped the monetary benefits of fraud and theft will frequently go to great lengths to hide their spoils, often using improper corporate and tax structures to obscure beneficial ownership or to move their fraudulent gains to amongst multiple jurisdictions. Combatting well-resourced wrongdoers and their abettors to recover assets and recoup losses requires a high level of expertise, a knowledge of multiple legal systems, and a relentlessness that we sustain.

Successful asset recovery also requires creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. For three generations of Bluestone lawyers, we have excelled by freezing and recovering assets such as funds in hidden bank accounts, real estate, and expensive art and personal items. This work—on behalf of creditors, directors, trustees, committees, administrators, investors, and government agencies—requires us to not only look to traditional assets, but also at the possibility of holding aiders and abettors, conspirators, and facilitators liable through third-party actions. 

Our success relies on a deep focus on piercing the wrongdoer’s inner circle, utilizing powerful tools like asset freeze orders and other pre-judgment remedies, discrete but calculated methods of discovering concealed assets and beneficial ownership information, insolvency remedies, and direct claims against wrongdoers and third-party facilitators.  We also utilize pre-suit tools such as the 28 U.S.C. § 1782 statute to gather evidence for use in foreign proceedings.

Ultimately, we are able to successfully enforce judgments and secure assets through a multistep process that includes:

• Searching for pre-judgment remedies to secure assets, which can often be obtained in support of a court action and/or arbitration in certain litigations. We have developed strong working relationships with investigators whose experience is often crucial to successful enforcement when debtors take steps to hide their assets;

• Seeking enforcement of judgments in various courts across the globe by seeking assets either in the name of the judgment debtor or against other parties who hold those assets through attempts to camouflage what is owned by a debtor;

• Undertaking enforcement actions in arbitrations pursuant to the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards as adopted and implemented in the state of enforcement or under other international agreements.

Bluestone’s asset recovery work often includes collaboration with its affiliate Bluestone Recoveries International.