e-gold is for real. they have been around a while and haven't had any scandals. Basically they take your national currency, exchange it for gold at the current spot rate, and then credit your account with their electronic currency pegged to the price of gold. The charge fees for all this of course, so I think you must really need to own gold, or else hide your money for it to be worthwhile.
Setting up your own bank isn't for the casual situation. It costs around $20K+ in a place like Belize. If you've got a lot of dough you need to keep stealthed it's one way to do it though. Such a bank will be limited to taking only non-local (e.g., Belize citizens) accounts but banks like Bank of London and others will handle your bank's accounts, so you can access SWIFT and other normal banking features for your accounts. But you got to really need that angle for it to be worth your while. Most people looking for something along those lines can just go the offshore corp route.
False and that's the institutional banks and politicians use in fact for their own money laundering needs. What you can't do is generally trade with the offshore country's citizens. At the beginning of the century anyone could create a bank with 500$ . That's what in fact how Bank of America was created by an italian. He was laughed at because no one believed he would succed and JP Morgan who was also his "advisor" theorically tried to operate a raid on his bank through the market but he succeded to lock everything so that it wouldn't be possible. He was a very simple guy and he created the bank for helping the little commerce for they couldn't borrow from the banks. Even when very rich he never wear luxury clothes and when his daughter made him the remark he just answered that he was born to help others. If every banker was like him the world would be different for sure . Now today Bank of America must have become just as crook and controlled by the same maffia than others.