Overseas investing

[Ken Riedel]

My wife is a Romanian immigrant, and her brother (still in the old country) did well in Real Estate investing in Romania before the market crash in 2008.  As bad as the crash was here, it was worse there.  He's been trying to get back on his feet ever since.  He's convinced my wife that he's got some great investment opportunities, but needs capital. We'd like to participate, but want to avoid sending money in the form of a loan (our experience lending money to family hasn't been so great).

What I suggested was that if he has a specific property that looks promising, he should send us a proposal.  If it looks good we'll buy the property and pay him a commission.

Or, to create something more ongoing, set up a corporation in Romania where my wife and I are the owners and he'd be an officer of the corporation.  For that, we'd need a business plan from him showing how he could make it work and what the risks are.

So my questions to the group are:

1. Does anyone have any advice on investing overseas (especially in Eastern Europe)?
2. What's the best way to do business with family?
3. Is there a way to arrange an overseas real estate investment so that we could write off travel expenses to inspect the property?