Panama Papers

src: s3.amazonaws.com

The Panama Papers are 11.5 million leaked documents detailing financial and client-client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. The documents, some dating back to the 1970s, were created by, and taken from, Panama's law firm and service provider company Mossack Fonseca, and leaked in 2015 by anonymous sources.

The documents contain personal financial information about rich people and public officials who had previously been kept secret. While offshore business entities are legal (see Offshore Magic Circle), reporters have found that some Monsack Fosseca shell companies are used for illegal purposes, including fraud, tax evasion, and avoiding international sanctions.

"John Doe," the whistleblower who leaked the document to German journalist Bastian Obermayer from the SÆ'¼¼ddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) newspaper, remains anonymous, even for journalists working in the investigation. "My life is in danger," he told them. In a May 6 statement, John Doe cited income inequality as an excuse for his actions, saying he leaked the document "just because I understood enough about it to realize the scale of the injustices they describe." He added that he never worked for the government or intelligence agencies and expressed willingness to assist prosecutors if given immunity from prosecution. After SZ verifies that the statement did indeed originate from a source for Panama Papers, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) posted a complete document on its website.

SZ asks for ICIJ help because of the amount of data involved. Journalists from 107 media organizations in 80 countries analyzed documents detailing the operations of law firms. After more than a year of analysis, the first news was published on April 3, 2016, along with 150 documents themselves. This project is an important milestone in the use of data journalism and mobile collaboration software tools.

The documents were dubbed Panama Papers because of the country where they were leaked; however, the Panamanian government expressed strong objections to the name, as did other entities in Panama and elsewhere. Some media covering the news have used the name "Mossack Fonseca paper".

Video Panama Papers

Disclosure

In addition to the very closed-door business transactions of British prime minister David Cameron and Icelandic prime minister Sigmundur DavÃÆ'ÃÆ' Â ° Gunnlaugsson, the leaked documents also contain identifiable information about shareholders and directors of the 214,000 shell companies founded by Mossack Fonseca, as well as some of their financial transactions. Much of this information shows nothing but wise financial management. In general, it is not contrary to law (in and of itself) to have offshore company shells, although offshore company shells can sometimes be used for illegal purposes.

The journalists on the investigation team found business deals by many important figures in politics, sports, and world arts. Many of these transactions are quite legal. Because data is incomplete, questions remain in many other cases; there are still others who seem to clearly show ethical innocence if it is not valid. Some disclosures - tax evasion in very poor countries by very wealthy entities and individuals - raises questions on a moral basis. According to Namibia, for example, a shell company listed in Beny Steinmetz, Octea, owes more than $ 700,000 US in property taxes to the town of Koidu in Sierra Leone, and $ 150 million in red, even though its exports are more from doubling in the average month in the period 2012-2015. Steinmetz alone has $ 6 billion in personal wealth.

Other offshore shell company transactions described in the document appear to have violated exchange laws, violate trade sanctions or derive from political corruption, according to the ICIJ reporter. As an example:

• Uruguay has arrested five people and accused them of laundering money through Fonseca's Mossack shell companies for Mexican drug cartels.
• Ouestaf , an ICIJ partner in the investigation, reported that they have found new evidence that Karim Wade received payment from DP World (DP). He and an old friend were convicted upon this in a UN trial and Amnesty International said it was unfair and violated the rights of the accused. The Ouestaf article did not address the conduct of the trial, but said that the journalist found the Mossack Fonseca document showing payment to Wade through a DP subsidiary and a registered shell company.
• Swiss lawyer Dieter Neupert has been accused of handling client funds and helping both Qatar's oligarchs and royal families to hide money.

Named in the leakage are 12 current or previous world leaders, 128 public officials and other politicians, and hundreds of celebrities, businessmen and other wealthy people from more than 200 countries.

Maps Panama Papers

Tax havens

Individuals and entities can open offshore accounts for a number of reasons, some of which are entirely legal but ethically questionable. A Dubai-based Canadian lawyer noted, for example, that a business may want to avoid falling under the law of Islamic jurisprudence if an owner dies. Businesses in some countries may want to keep some of their funds in dollars as well, says a Brazilian lawyer. Housing planning is another example of legal tax avoidance.

American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick has a $ 20 million personal fortune when he died in 1999, mostly invested in an 18th-century British noble house he bought in 1978. He lived in the manor for the rest of his life, filming scenes from The Shining , Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut there too. The three holding companies founded by Mossack Fonseca now own the property, and in turn are held by established trusts for their children and grandchildren. Because Kubrick is an American who lives in England, without trust, his inheritance must pay taxes to both governments and may be forced to sell property to get liquid assets to pay them. Kubrick is buried in the ground with one of his daughters and the rest of his family still lives there.

Other uses are more ambiguous. Chinese companies can join overseas to raise foreign capital, usually against the law in China. In some world-class dictatorships, the law may be on the side of the elite who use offshore companies to award oil contracts to themselves, or gold concessions to their children, but such transactions are sometimes prosecuted under international law.

Although there is no official definition of standards, the Economist and the International Monetary Fund describes offshore financial centers, or tax haven, as jurisdictions whose banking infrastructure primarily provides services to people or businesses that do not live there, require little or no disclosure of information while doing business, and offering low taxes.

"The most obvious use of an offshore financial center is to avoid taxes", The Economist added. Oxfam blames the tax haven in its 2016 annual report on income inequality for many of the disparities between rich and poor. "Tax Havens are at the core of a global system that allows large corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid paying their fair share," said Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, "depriving governments, rich and poor, the resources they need. vital public services and addressing increasing inequality. "

International Monetary Fund researchers predicted in July 2015 that earnings changes by multinational corporations weighed on developing countries around US $ 213 billion per year, almost two percent of their national income. Igor Angelini, head of the Europol Financial Intelligence Group, said that shellfish companies "play an important role in large money laundering activities" and that they often become a means of "transferring bribes". The Tax Justice Network concluded in a 2012 report that "designing a commercial tax abuse scheme and turning a blind eye to suspicious transactions has become an integral part of the work of bankers and accountants."

Money laundering also affects the first world, because the preferred shell company's investment is real estate in Europe and North America. London, Miami, New York, Paris, Vancouver, and San Francisco have all been affected. The practice of parking assets in luxury real estate has often been cited as a fuel that skyrocketed housing prices in Miami, where the Miami Association of Realtors says that cash sales accounted for 90% of new home sales by 2015. "There is a huge amount of dirty money flowing into Miami that disguised as an investment, "according to former investigator Jack Blum's congress. In Miami, 76% of condo owners pay cash, a practice that is considered a red flag for money laundering.

Real estate in London, where housing prices rose 50% from 2007 to 2016, is also often bought by overseas investors. Donald Toon, head of the UK National Crimes Agency, said in 2015 that "the London property market has been tilted by money laundered, prices are being artificially driven by foreign criminals wanting to confiscate their assets here in the UK". Three quarters of London under 35 can not afford a house.

Andy Yan, an urban planning researcher and professor at the University of British Columbia, studied real estate sales in Vancouver - also thought to be influenced by foreign buyers - found that 18% of transactions in Vancouver's most expensive neighborhood were cash purchases, and 66% of owners apparently a Chinese citizen or a newcomer from China. Calls for further data on foreign investors have been rejected by the provincial government. Chinese citizens accounted for 70% of Vancouver Vancouver home sales for over CA $ 3 million. On June 24, 2016, China CITIC Bank Corp. filed a lawsuit in Canada against a Chinese citizen who borrowed CN 50 million for his business in China but then withdrew about CA $ 7.5 million from the credit line and left the country. He bought three houses in Vancouver and Surrey, British Columbia together valued at CA $ 7.3 million over a three-month period in June 2014.

International banking

"This issue will definitely be lifted at the G20 summit," predicts Tomasz Kozlowski, EU Ambassador to India. "We need to strengthen international cooperation for the exchange of tax information between tax authorities".

Panama, Vanuatu and Lebanon may find themselves on the list of uncooperative tax-free states that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was reactivated in July 2016 at the request of the G20 nations, warning Le Monde, a French newspaper that participate in the investigation. The three countries do not follow any of the three broad guidelines of OECD for international banking cooperation:

• the exchange of information on request
• signed multilateral agreement on information standards
• commitment to implement automated information exchange in 2017 or 2018

OECD, G20, or the EU may also institutionalize other lists for inadequate countries in more than one region. Countries that do not meet these criteria, such as Panama, Vanuatu and Lebanon, will be blacklisted. Countries that meet only one criteria will enter the graylist. In April 2016, if this greylist is in place, it will cover nine countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahrain, Brunei, Dominica, Liberia, Nauru, Samoa, Tobago and United Arab Emirates.

src: swiss-banking-lawyers.com

Newsroom logistics

The International Investigative Journalists Consortium helps organize research and document review as soon as the SÃÆ'¼ddeutsche Zeitung realizes the scale of work required to validate the authenticity of 2.6 terabytes of leaked data. They requested reporters and resources from The Guardian, BBC, Le Monde, SonntagsZeitung, Falter , La NaciÃÆ'³n , German broadcaster NDR and WDR, and Austrian ORF broadcaster, and finally many others. In the end, "journalists at 100 news media outlets working in 25 languages ​​have used the document" to investigate the individuals and organizations associated with Mossack Fonseca.

Security is taken into account in a number of project management considerations. Says his life is in jeopardy, John Doe insists that journalists communicate through encrypted channels only and agree that they will never meet face-to-face.

The SZ also has security concerns, not only for their sources, leaked documents, and their data, but also for the safety of some of their partners in investigations living under a corrupt regime that may not want their money handling practices published. They store data in a room with limited physical access to computers that never connect to the Internet. The Guardian also limits access to the work area of ​​its journalist project. To make it harder to sabotage computers or steal their drives, SZ reporters make them more visible by painting screws that hold the drive in place with sparkling nail polish.

Journalists sort the documents into large file structures containing folders for each shell company, which stores associated emails, contracts, transcripts, and scanned documents that Mossack Fonseca has generated when conducting business with the company or organizing it on behalf of the client. Some 4.8 million leaked files are emails, 3 million are database entries, 2.2 million PDFs, 1.2 million images, 320,000 text files, and 2242 files in other formats.

Journalists index documents using open software packages Apache Solr and Apache Tika, and access them using a special interface built on Blacklight. SÃÆ'¼ddeutsche Zeitung reporters also use Nuix for this, which is proprietary software donated by an Australian company also called Nuix.

Using Nuix, the SÃÆ'¼ddeutsche Zeitung reporter processes optical character recognition (OCR) on millions of scanned documents, making the data it contains becomes searchable and machine-readable. Most project reporters then use Neo4J and Linkurious to extract individual and company names from documents for analysis, but some who have access to Nuix use them for this as well. Journalists then cross-refer the compiled list of processed documents, then analyze the information, try to connect people, role, money flow, and legality structure.

US banking and SEC expert David P. Weber assisted journalists in reviewing information from Panama Papers.

Additional stories were released based on this data, and the full list of companies was released in early May 2016. ICIJ then announced the release on May 9, 2016 from a searchable database containing information on more than 200,000 offshore entities involved in the Panama Papers investigation and more than 100,000 additional companies involved in the offshore leak investigation of 2013. Mossack Fonseca asked ICIJ not to publish documents leaked from its database. "We have sent a stop and stop letter," the company said in a statement.

Excessive amount of leaked data exceeds WikiLeaks Cablegate leak in 2010 (1.7Ã, GB), Offshore Leaks in 2013 (260Ã, GB), Lux leak of 2014 (4 GB), and 3.3Ã,GB Swiss Leaks of 2015 For comparison, 2.6 TB of Panama Papers is equivalent to about 2.660 GB.

src: panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de

Data security

Mossack Fonseca notified his client on April 1, 2016 that it has blocked mail hacking. Mossack Fonseca also told news sources that the company had been hacked and always operated in law.

The data security specialist notes, however, that the company has not encrypted its email and further seems to have run a three-year version of Drupal with several known vulnerabilities. According to Tech Republic, Drupal runs an Apache 2.2.15 version from March 6, 2010, and worse, Oracle fork of Apache, which by default allows users to view directory structures.

Network architecture is also not secure inherently; email and web servers are not segmented from the client database in any way.

Some reports also indicate that some parts of the site may have run WordPress with an outdated version of the Slider Revolution, plugin whose vulnerabilities were previously announced are well documented.

A gray hat hacker named 1ÃÆ' â € "0123 announced April 12 that the Fonseca Mossack content management system has not been secured from SQL injection, the famous database attack vector, and that it can access the customer database because of this.

Computer security expert Chris Kubecka announced May 24, 2016 that Fonseca's Mossack client portal runs four different government-class Trojans (RATs). Kubecka insists there are still many critical vulnerabilities, too many ports open to infrastructure and internet access to their archive servers due to weak security. Kubecka explains how each data security problem is found in detail in a long book titled Down the Rabbit Hole: An OSINT Journey .

src: s3.amazonaws.com

Leakage and leakage of journalism

Gerard Ryle, director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, called the leak "probably the biggest offshore world blow ever caused by the breadth of the document". Edward Snowden described the release in Twitter messages as "the biggest leak in the history of data journalism". ICIJ also said that the leak was "likely to be one of the most explosive [information leaks in history] in the nature of its disclosure".

"This is a unique opportunity to test the effectiveness of leaktivism", says Micah White, founder of Occupy, "... Panama Papers is being dissected through an unprecedented collaboration between hundreds of highly credible international journalists who have been working secretly, for a year This is the global professionalization of leaktivism.The days of WikiLeaks amateurism are over. "

WikiLeaks spokeswoman Kristinn Hrafnsson, an Icelandic investigative journalist working at Cablegate in 2010, said holding some documents temporarily did not maximize the impact of the leak, but called for full Panama Papers online publication in the end. Tweet from WikiLeaks criticizes ICIJ's decision not to release everything for ethical reasons: "If you censor more than 99% of documents, you are involved in 1% journalism by definition."

src: www.caymanfinancialreview.com

Person named

While offshore business entities are not illegal in the jurisdictions in which they are registered, and are often not illegal at all, reporters find that some of Monsack's Fosseca shell companies appear to have been used for illegal purposes including fraud, kleptocracy, tax evasion and international sanctions.

Reports of 3 April noted many of the law firm connections to political figures and their families a high level, as well as celebrities and business leaders. Among others, the leaked documents illustrate how the rich people, including public officials, can store personal financial information private.

The preliminary report identified five heads of state or government leaders from Argentina, Iceland, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates as well as government officials, close relatives, and close associates from various heads of government over forty other countries.. The names of the then national leaders in the document included President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates, Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, and Prime Minister of Iceland, Sigmundur DavÃÆ'ÃÆ' Â ° Gunnlaugsson.

The former head of state mentioned in the paper includes:

• Sudanese President Ahmed al-Mirghani, who was president from 1986-1989 and died in 2008.
• Former Emir of Qatar Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani owns Afrodille S.A., which has bank accounts in Luxembourg and shares in two South African companies. Al Thani also holds most of the shares in Rienne S.A. and Yalis S.A., holds a time deposit with Bank of China in Luxembourg. A relative has 25% of this: Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, former Qatari prime minister and foreign minister.

Former prime minister:

• Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili from Georgia
• Pavlo Lazarenko of Ukraine
• Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, the former vice president of Iraq, owns property through Fonseca's Mossack combat companies listed in Panama and the British Virgin Islands, for security reasons after the assassination attempt, according to his spokesman, adding that any income from property reported and taxes paid "promptly and on time."
• Ion Sturza from Moldova.
• Ali Abu al-Ragheb from Jordan.

The leaked files identify 61 family members and colleagues from the prime minister, president and king, including:

• China's most important brother-in-law Xi Jinping
• son of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak
• the children of Pakistan's former prime minister Nawaz Sharif
• the children of the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev
• Clive Khulubuse Zuma, the nephew of former South African president Jacob Zuma
• Nurali Aliyev, grandson of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev
• Mounir Majidi, private secretary of the king of Morocco Mohammed VI
• Kojo Annan, son of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
• Mark Thatcher, son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher
• Juan Armando Hinojosa, "favorite contractor" of Mexican president Enrique PeÃÂ Â a Nieto.
• The Spanish Royal Family: Infanta Pilar, Duchess of Badajoz and his son Bruno GÃÆ'³mez-Acebes, IÃÆ' Â ± aki UrdangarÃÆ'n, Amalio de Marichalar, and people close to the family like the former King Juan Carlos I mistress, Corinna Larsen.

Other clients include less senior government officials and close relatives and their peers, from over 40 countries.

More than Ã, Â £ 10 million in cash from the sale of stolen gold in 1983 Brink's-Mat robbery washed, first unconsciously and later with the involvement of Mossack Fonseca, through the Panama company, Feberion Inc. The company was founded on behalf of an unnamed client twelve months after the robbery. Brinks money is entered through Feberion and other front companies, through banks in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Jersey, and the Isle of Man. It issued shares only. Two nominated directors from Sark were appointed to Feberion by Jersey-based specialist offshore service center. Offshore companies recycle funds through land and property transactions in the UK. Although the Metropolitan Police Service raided Central Services offices in late 1986 in collaboration with the Jersey authorities, and seized letters and two stocks of Feberion carriers, it was not until 1995 Brink's-Mat's lawyers finally controlled Feberion and the assets.

Actor Jackie Chan is mentioned in the leaked document as a shareholder in six companies based in the British Virgin Islands.

Client services

Law firms play a central role in offshore financial operations. Mossack Fonseca is one of the largest in its field and the largest financial institution is referring customers there. Its services to clients include incorporating and operating shell companies in friendly jurisdictions on their behalf. They can include creating "complex shell enterprise structures" which, while legal, also allow corporate clients "to operate behind an often impenetrable wall of secrecy". Leaked papers detail some of their complex, multilevel, and multilational corporate structures. Mossack Fonseca has acted with global consulting partners such as Emirates Asset Management Ltd., Ryan Mohanlal Ltd., Sun Hedge Invest and Blue Capital Ltd. on behalf of over 300,000 companies, mostly registered with the British Overseas Territories.

The leaked documents also indicate that the company will also backdate documents on request and, based on 2007 email exchanges in leaked documents, it is quite routine to form a pricing structure: $ 8.75 per month in the past. In 2008, Mossack Fonseca hired a 90-year-old British man to pretend to be the owner of offshore company Marianna Olszewski, a US businesswoman, "a blatant violation of anti money laundering rules" according to the BBC.

Client with sanction

The anonymity of offshore shell companies can also be used to avoid international sanctions, and more than 30 Mossack Fonseca clients at one time or another blacklist by the US Treasury, including businesses linked to senior figures in Russia, Syria and North Korea.

Three Fonseca Mossack companies started for Helene Mathieu Legal Consultants clients then approved by the Office of Foreign Assets Supervision (OFAC). Pangates International Corporation was accused in July of 2014 of supplying the Syrian government with "a large number of special oil products" with "limited civil application in Syria". The other two, Maxima Middle East Trading and Morgan Additives Manufacturing Co., and their owners Wael Abdulkarim and Ahmad Barqawi, are said to have "engaged in deceitful actions" to supply oil products to Syria.

Mossack Fonseca also runs six businesses for Rami Makhlouf, Syrian president's cousin Bashar al-Assad, despite US sanctions against him. The Fonseca Mossack Internal Document shows that in 2011 Mossack Fonseca rejected the recommendation by their own compliance team to sever ties with Mr. Makhlouf. They agreed to do it only a few months later. The company says it has never allowed anyone linked to the evil regime to use its company.

Frederik Obermaier, co-author of the Panama Papers and an investigative reporter in the German newspaper SÃÆ'¼ddeutsche Zeitung, told Democracy Now: "Mossack Fonseca realizes that Makhlouf is a cousin, and they realizing that he got sanctioned, and they realized he was suspected to be one of the financiers of the Syrian regime, and they said, 'Oh, there's a bank still doing business with him, so we have to stay with him, like good'. "

HSBC also appeared to convince Mossack Fonseca not only that it was "comfortable" with Makhlouf as a client but suggested there might be a conformity to the Assad family by the US. Makhlouf is well known as a long-term client of the Swiss private bank HSBC, holding at least $ 15 million with it on multiple accounts in 2006. The Panamanian file also shows HSBC provides financial services to Makhlouf's company Drex Technologies, which HSBC says is a "reputable company good".

DCB Finance, a shell company based in the Virgin Islands founded by North Korean banker Kim Chol-sam and British banker Nigel Cowie, also ignores international sanctions and continues to do business with North Korea with help from the Panama company. The US Treasury Department in 2013 named DCB Finance as a leading company for Daedong Credit Bank and announced sanctions against both companies to provide banking services to North Korean arms agents, Korea Mining and Development Trading Corporation, which sought to avoid sanctions against the country, and helped sell arming and expanding North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Cowie said the parent company was used for legitimate business and he was not aware of any illicit transaction.

Mossack Fonseca, required by international banking standards to avoid money laundering clients or fraudsters, is, like all banks, who should be very wary of signs of corruption with politically exposed people (PEP), in other words, good clients or have close relationships with government officials. But they somehow fail to show a red flag about Tareq Abbas even though he shares his surname with the Palestinian president, and sits on the company's board of directors with four directors of the company presuming PEP because of their relationship to Palestinian politics. But Mossack Fonseca actually performs and documents research on due diligence, including Google search.

src: laopinion-digital.com

Fonseca Mossack Client

Mossack Fonseca has managed over 300,000 companies over the years. The number of active companies reached more than 80,000 in 2009. More than 210,000 companies in twenty one jurisdictional areas in the leak. More than half are incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, others in Panama, Bahamas, Seychelles, Niue, and Samoa. Mossack Fonseca clients come from more than 100 countries. Most of the company's clients come from Hong Kong, Switzerland, UK, Luxembourg, Panama, and Cyprus. Mossack Fonseca works with over 14,000 banks, law firms, incorporators, and others to set up companies, foundations, and trusts for their clients. Some 3,100 listed companies in the database appear to have links with US offshore specialists, and 3,500 offshore company shareholders register US addresses. Mossack Fonseca has offices in Nevada and Wyoming.

The leaked documents show that about US $ 2 trillion has passed the company's hands. Some of the parent companies that appear in the document do business with sanctioned entities, such as arms dealers and relatives of dictators, while sanctions are imposed. The company provides services to a Seychelles company called Pangates International, which the US government believes to supply aviation fuel to the Syrian government during the current civil war, and continues to handle documents and declare it as a company with a good reputation, despite sanctions, until August 2015.

More than 500 banks registered nearly 15,600 shell companies with Mossack Fonseca, with HSBC and affiliates accounting for more than 2,300 of the total. Dexia and J. Safra Sarasin from Luxembourg, Credit Suisse from the Channel Islands and Switzerland UBS each requested at least 500 offshore companies for their clients. A spokesman for HSBC said, "The accusations are historical, in some cases since 20 years ago, preceding our well-publicized, significant reforms that have been carried out over the past few years."

src: www.thestar.com

Response by Mossack Fonseca

In response to questions from the Miami Herald and ICIJ, Mossack Fonseca issued a 2,900-word statutory requirement that prevents the use of offshore companies to avoid taxes and total anonymity, such as the FATF protocol that requires identifying the final benefits of owners of all firms (including offshore company) before opening any account or transacting any business.

The Miami Herald prints a statement with an editorial notes saying the statement "does not address one of the special due diligence failures discovered by journalists".

On Monday, April 4, Mossack Fonseca released another statement:

The fact is this: while we may be the victim of data breaches, nothing we have ever seen in the cache of this illegal document indicates that we have done something illegal, and it fits perfectly with our global reputation built over the past 40 years in doing business by way of correct.

Co-founder RamÃÆ'³n Fonseca Mora told CNN that the report was wrong, full of inaccuracies and that the parties "in many situations" cited by ICIJ "did not and never became Mossack Fonseca clients". The company gave a longer statement to ICIJ.

In its official statement dated April 6, Mossack Fonseca argued that responsibility for violating the law may lie with other institutions:

about 90% of our clients are made up of professional clients... who act as intermediaries and are regulated within their business jurisdictions. These clients are obliged to perform due diligence on their clients in accordance with KYC and AML rules that are the subject.

In an interview with Bloomberg, JÃÆ'¼rgen Mossack said: "Cats are out of the bag, so now we have to deal with the consequences."

He said the leak was not an "inside job" - the company had been hacked by servers based overseas. This filed a complaint to the Panama attorney general's office.

On April 7, 2016, Mossack resigned from the Panama External Affairs Council (Conarex), though he was not officially serving at that time. His brother Peter Mossack is still the Honorary Consul of Panama, as he has since 2010.

On May 5, 2016, Mossack Fonseca sent a cease and desist letter to ICIJ in an attempt to stop ICIJ releasing leaked documents from the Panama Papers scandal. However, ICIJ released a leaked document on May 9, 2016.

In March 2018, Mossack Fonseca announced it would be closed.

src: www.caymanfinancialreview.com

Response in Panama

At 5:00 am on April 3, when the first news broke out, RamÃÆ'³n Fonseca Mora told the TVN television channel that he was "irresponsible or he has been charged in court".

He said the firm was a hacking victim and that he was not responsible for what the client did with the foreign company they bought from Mossack Fonseca, which is legal under Panamanian law. Later that day, the Independent Movement (MOVIN) called for calm, and expressed hope that the Panama justice system would not allow principals to go with impunity.

Public officials

On April 8, the government understood media reports discussing tax evasion that did not invade Panama. The President met on Wednesday 7 April, with CANDIF, a committee of representatives from various economic sectors including the Chamber of Commerce, the Chamber of Industry and Agriculture, the National Bar Association, the International Bar Association, the Association of Banking and Stock Exchange, and entered a full crisis management mode. He announced the creation of a new judicial court and a high-level commission led by Laureate Nobel Prize Joseph Stiglitz.

Isabel Saint Malo de Alvarado, Vice President of Panama, said in an open article published April 21 in The Guardian that President Juan Carlos Varela and his government have strengthened the Panamanian control over money laundering in the twenty months they have been in power , and that "Panama prepares an independent commission, co-chaired by Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, to evaluate our financial system, determine best practices, and recommend measures to strengthen global financial and legal transparency.We expect their findings in the next six months, and will share the results with the international community. "

However, in early August 2016, Stiglitz resigned from the committee because he knew that the Panama government would not commit to making their final report public. He said that he always "assumed" that the final report would be transparent.

On April 8, President Varela criticized France's proposal to return Panama to a list of countries that did not cooperate with the exchange of information. Presidential Secretary Alvaro AlemÃÆ'¡n has firmly denied that Panama is a tax haven, and says the country will not be a scapegoat. AlemÃÆ'¡n says that talks with the French ambassador to Panama have begun.

On April 25, a meeting of finance ministers of Panama and France resulted in an agreement under which Panama will provide France with information about French citizens with taxable assets in the country.

Panama's Ministry of Economy and Finance, Dulcidio de la Guardia, formerly an offshore specialist at Mossack Fonseca, a Morgan & amp; Morgan, said the niches are legal but often "murky" in establishing accounts abroad, companies and trusts constitute "less than half a percentage point" of Panama's GDP. He seems to indicate that the publication of the newspapers was an attack on Panama because of the high rate of economic growth that the country showed.

Eduardo Morgan from Panama Morgan & amp; Morgan accused the OECD of starting a scandal to avoid competition from Panama with the interests of other countries. The Panama Papers affect Panama's image in an unfair way and have been revealed not as a result of the investigation, but about hacking, says Adolfo Linares, president of Panama's Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture (Cciap).

Colegio Nacional de Abogados de Panama (CNA) urges the government to sue. Political analyst Mario Rognoni says the world views Panama as a tax haven. The administration of President Juan Carlos Varela may be involved if he tries to cover those involved, Rognoni said.

Economist Rolando Gordon said the affair was detrimental to Panama, which had just emerged from the FATF graylist, and added that every country, especially Panama, had to conduct an investigation and determine whether an act was illegal or inappropriate.

The Panama Lawyers Movement called Panama Papers leaked "cyber bullying" and in a press conference condemned it as an attack on the 'Panama' brand. Fraguela Alfonso, his president, said it was a direct attack on the country's financial system.

I invite all the organized troops of the state to create a great crusade to save the image of the country

Offshore companies are legal, says Panama's lawyers and former republican controller Alvin Weeden; illegality arises when they are used for money laundering, arms smuggling, terrorism, or tax evasion.

On October 19, 2016, it was discovered that a government executive had just spent $ 370 million to "clean up" the country's image.

On October 22, 2016, in the midst of a state visit to Germany, Varela told reporters Jenny PÃÆ' Â © rez, from Deutsche Welle that there has been "progress" in transparency and many agreements to exchange tax information, and tax evasion is a global matter. Asked about his relationship with RamÃÆ'³n Fonseca Mora, managing partner of Mossack Fonseca firm, he admits he is a friend.

Law enforcement

The ProcuradurÃÆ'a de la NaciÃÆ'³n announces that they will investigate the documents of Mossack Fonseca and Panama. see On 12 April, the newly formed Second Special Attorney against Organized Crime raided the Mossack Fonseca and searched their Bella Vista office as part of an investigation initiated by Panama Papers. The Attorney General's Office issued a press release after the 27-hour raid, stating that the aim was "to obtain documents relevant to information published in news articles establishing the possibility of using law firms in illegal activities". The search ended without action against the law firm, confirmed prosecutor Javier Caraballo from the Second Attorney Against Organized Crime.

On April 22 the same unit attacked another Panama location and "secured a large amount of evidence".

Municipal Regulations and Supervision of Financial Subjects [not Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF)] commenced a special review of the Fonseca Mossack law firm to determine whether it follows the tax law. Carlamara Sanchez, in charge of this process, told a press conference that the quartermaster had come to verify whether the company had complied since April 8 with due diligence, customer knowledge, final beneficiaries and suspicious transaction reporting to the Financial Analysis Unit (UAF) operations. He said that the 23rd Act of 2015 empowers regulation and oversight and says some companies have been monitored since late last year with particular attention after the Panama Papers, and noted that the law carries a fine of $ 5,000 to $ 1 million or even suspension.

ICIJ's investigation of Mossack Fonseca was reported to the Ministry of Public. Samid Dan Sandoval, former mayor of Santiago de Veraguas (2014), filed a lawsuit against journalists and all those who have participated. He said the name of the project undermines the integrity, dignity and sovereignty of the country. and that the consortium shall bear legal liability for all damages caused by the Panamanians.

The Change.org petition asked ICIJ to stop using the Panama name as in Panama Papers. The request said the generally accepted name for the investigation "damaged (d) the image of" Panama.

Suspension of investigation

Panama's Attorney General Kenia Isolda Porcell Diaz announced on January 24, 2017 that he suspended the investigation against Mossack Fonseca for appealing for the protection of constitutional rights before Panama's First High Court of Justice and requested that he provide all original documents for issuing judgments.

Bill

Mossack and Fonseca were arrested on 8 February 2017 on charges of money laundering.

src: www.globalresearch.ca

Europe

European Union

Many senior EU leaders are involved in the Panama Papers scandal. The European Commissioner for Taxation, Pierre Moscovici, said that the EU as a whole has an "obligation" to prevent the kind of tax avoidance found in the Panama Papers scandal. Moscovici told reporters that the use of offshore companies to conceal what he calls "the surprising number" of financial assets from "unethical" tax authorities. He estimates that the tax shelter resulted in the annual loss of some EUR1 trillion in public finances, adding that the European Commission has been trying to tighten tax rules across the union since November 2014 because of the Luxembourg Leak scandal, also revealed by ICIJ, and that he hopes to what extent Panama's disclosure Papers will encourage countries to act.

In a letter issued in 2013 by the Financial Times to the president of the Council of Europe, Herman Van Rompuy, British Prime Minister David Cameron said that overseas trust should not automatically be subject to the same transparency requirements as the company shell.

Andorra

The Panama Papers revealed that Andorra Finance Minister Jordi Cinca, when he was CEO of Orfund SA, ran an offshore company called Mariette Holdings Inc., until its dissolution in 2002 for fear of inventing its participation in the business. Orfund's business activities have links to the blood diamond trade, as well as the purification and sale of African gold. The company closed shortly before the civil war in Ivory Coast.

The opposition demanded his resignation as a result. In response Cinca said that "if their connections will affect the Government of Andorra, will retreat". However, he did not do it.

Austria

Austrian financial market authorities have announced that they will audit two Austrian banks mentioned in Panama Papers - Raiffeisenbank International (RBI) and Hypo Vorarlberg. It will specifically check whether the bank has fulfilled their obligations to prevent money laundering. Hypo Vorarlberg then announced that while they have complied with all laws in the past, they are planning to retire completely from the offshore sector.

Cyprus

The Central Bank of Cyprus officially declared: "With regard to press reports citing leaked documents, known as Panama Papers, the Central Bank of Cyprus announced that it assessed information as far as possible regarding the Cyprus banking system and took, where necessary, appropriate action." Cyprus's online newspaper says "Cyprus links stem from the fact that Fonseca runs an office in Cyprus and, more specifically, in Limassol.In the graph, the name leaks Cyprus as a tax haven (countries that offer little or no tax), although it has a level corporate tax of 12.5%, equal to Ireland. "

French

French finance prosecutors opened an investigation, and former President FranÃÆ'§ois Hollande stated that tax evaders will be brought to justice and punished. Also as a result of the leak, the French restored Panama to the list of tax havens, from which Panama was recently removed.

Former French budget minister JÃÆ'Â Â © rÃÆ'Â'me Cahuzac, who spearheaded a crackdown on tax fraud while in office, is a Mossack Fonseca client and through they owns a Seychelles company called Cerman Group Limited, which was founded in 2009. When France investigates alleged 2013 by Mediapart that in 2000 Cahuzac had held unreleased assets in the first account in Switzerland, then Singapore, he resigned from his cabinet post, protesting his innocence, but admitted a few months later that he had indeed hidden EUR600,000 in UBS accounts and then moved to hiding it, "while continuing to lead France's crackdown on tax evasion". The French Socialist Party unanimously decided to expel him a week later. On the heels of April 2013 "Cahuzac's infidelity", President Hollande created a parquet national financier (PNF), a judicial investigation unit specializing in large-scale fraud and corruption investigations.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder and former leader of the right-wing Front National Front (FN) and now a member of the European Parliament, has been the subject, along with his daughter, Marine Le Pen and his staff, from the PNF tax fraud investigation. Drawing official oversight is a declared HSBC account containing EUR2.2m in gold and coins, managed from Geneva by assistants through confidence based in British Virgin Islands which is closed and then moved to the Bahamas in 2014; allegations of overbilling; misuse and withdrawal of campaign funds; and tax evasion. Jean-Marie Le Pen is also alleged to use the funds of the European Parliament for the campaign and administrative costs of his French political party. Jean-Marie Le Pen is mentioned in the document, along with his daughter Marine Le Pen, who is the current party leader, and Frederic Chatillon, an FN insider who is also a close friend of the Marines. Among the three of them, they may have hidden a million pounds in offshore accounts.

Georgia

Bidzina Ivanishvili became wealthy in Russia before returning to Georgia and becoming prime minister in 2012; assertion of assets of public officials is 72 pages. However, it does not include Lynden Management, a Fonseca Mossack company that holds about 20% of Raptor Pharmaceuticals (which it claims), a US-based company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. He has refused for nearly four years to provide copies of his passport and proof of address to law firm, which requires him to comply with money laundering and inquiries to the company by the Virgin Islands Financial Investigation Agency..

Forbes calculated the net worth of Ivanishvili at $ 4.8 billion.

Greek

The Panama Papers affirmed that politician Stavros Papastavrou, who is an adviser to former Prime Ministers Kostas Karamanlis and Antonis Samaras, has been a board member in Panama, the Green Shamrock Foundation and the Diman Foundation, from 2005 to 2014. In 2006, he became vice chairman The Aisios Foundation, which still exists today. However, Papstavrou resigned from the Aisios Foundation in 2012.

A number of Greek families with significant art collections are involved in this scandal.

Iceland

Prime Minister Sigmundur DavÃÆ'ÃÆ'Â Â ° Gunnlaugsson, elected after the 2008 banking collapse in Iceland, has promised to clean up corruption in the banking system. But when Sigmundur DavÃÆ'ÃÆ'Â ° took his seat, he did not disclose 50% of Wintris's shares, a company that had a bond from one bank that went bankrupt, or released himself, until the day before the new law took effect on January 1, 2010 which would require him to declare this conflict of interest. He sold his share to his wife, who had the other half. The couple came from a wealthy family. When they bought Wintris, he worked as a journalist and he was an anthropologist. Until his failure to reveal the assets, he did not seem to break the law. But the country recalled the 2008 financial crisis very well and thought it had put it in the past. Because Sigmundur DavÃÆ'ÃÆ'Â Â ° negotiated on behalf of Iceland with creditors failing Icelandic banks, the discovery that the wife of Sigmundur DavÃÆ'ÃÆ'Â ° is the bond holder caused so much anger that 22,000-24,000 people attended an anti-government protest outside the parliament on April 4, 2016, nearly 8 % of the population. Sigmundur DavÃÆ'ÃÆ'Â ° suggests quick elections, but other members of the coalition government do not want elections, just resignation. On April 5, 2016, Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur DavÃÆ'ÃÆ'Â Â ° Gunnlaugsson announced his resignation.

The Reykjavik Grapevine and the Kjarninn news website reveal that the President ÃÆ' "Lafur Ragnar GrÃÆ'msson has a connection to Lasca Finance Limited, registered in 2005 in the British Virgin Islands." Ragnar has categorically rejected personal ties or any family with a company in a tax-exempt country The parents of his wife, Dorrit Moussaieff, operated the company from 1999 to 2005. Moussaieff's family business finance report showed that he received nearly £ 7 million ($ 10.2 million US, EUR9.1 million) in interest payments from Lasca from 2000 to 2005. In 2005, Moussaieff Jewelers Limited sold 10% of its shares from Lasca to the father of the late S. Dorrit Moussaieff and his mother, who is now 86 years old and the owner of the registered Lasca share, Dorrit and his sister Tamara and Sharon will inherit their wealth, considered the largest in the world.

Bjarni Benediktsson, Iceland's finance minister and head of coalition partner Gunnlaugsson, came from one of Iceland's richest families. He confirmed that he has 33% of Falson & amp; Co., a Seychelles shell company established in 2005 to buy real estate in Dubai. It was still active in 2009, when Benediktsson was already a member of parliament with terms of financial disclosure. He said he registered the company to the tax authorities, and he did not know it was registered in the Seychelles. Minister of Home Affairs ÃÆ' â € Å"lÃÆ'¶f Nordal and her husband have the power to Dooley Securities S.A., an offshore company located in Panama. He says that the company was set up for her husband but never used, so she does not think she should reveal it. HrÃÆ'³lfur ÃÆ'â € "lvisson, managing director of the Progressive Party Gunnlaugsson, said that the Fonseca Mossack companies that registered his name had been inactive for a long time, and legal.

The entrepreneur IngibjÃÆ'¶rg PÃÆ'¡lmadÃÆ'³ttir and her husband JÃÆ'³n ÃÆ' sgeir JÃÆ'³hannesson have for several years financed their business transactions through a Panama company, Guru Invest, which owns shares in Sports Direct retailers through Rhapsody Investments (Europe), based in Luxembourg. Master Invest paid approximately USD 16 million to Glitnir Bank after failing to cover up the debt of Gaumur, one of the JÃÆ'³n ÃÆ' sgeir companies, and lent ISK 100 million to the company JÃÆ'³n ÃÆ' sgeir ÃÆ'žÃÆ'º BlÃÆ'¡sÃÆ'³l through its offshore company Jovita. Asked by reporters at Kjarninn where the money came from, IngibjÃÆ'¶rg did not answer. IngibjÃÆ'¶rg is the main owner of 365 media groups, which owns Iceland VÃÆ'sir.is news stations, StÃÆ'¶ÃÆ'  ° 2 television channels and Bylgjan, X-iÃÆ'  ° and FM 957 radio stations, none of which appear to report this disclosure.

ireland

The Irish Times newspaper deals with Irish leak components. Signed Irish names listed include golfers PÃÆ'¡draig Harrington, property developer Sean Mulryan and manager of Irish rock group U2, Paul McGuinness. The list also includes Stanley Watson, senior partner of Ireland's largest tax law firm, Matheson, who has led many Irish tax-management tools used by US multinationals in Ireland to avoid billions in US taxes. The list also includes Irish Fine Gael political adviser Frank Flannery.

Italy

On April 6, 2016, Procura of Turin Italy ordered the Guardia in Finanza to investigate 800 Italians contained in the Panama Papers document.

Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who has been found guilty of tax evasion and expelled from Parliament, was included in the newspaper. Other famous people whose names are mentioned in the Papers include businessmen Luca Cordero at Montezemolo, Flavio Briatore, Adriano Galliani, and actor Carlo Verdone.

Investigations by ICIJ counterpart Namibia found that the mafioso imprisoned Vito Roberto Palazzolo protected his finances from Italian authorities, Namibia and South Africa with shell companies in the British Virgin Islands founded by German banker in Hong Kong, Wolf -Peter Berthold, which they also use to transfer the asset control of Palazzolo to his son.

Malta

The Panama Papers link a minister in the government of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, Konrad Mizzi, and chief of staff of prime minister, Keith Schembri, to rob companies in Panama. In addition, Mizzi's wife Sai Mizzi Liang, who is Malta's trade envoy to China and Consul General for Malta in Shanghai, China, is also called a recipient, along with their children, from a New Zealand-based trust holding the company shell Panama Mizzi.

Mizzi, until April 28, 2016 Minister of Health and Energy, and currently Minister of Tourism, is listed in Panama Papers as owner of a Panama shell company named Hearnville Inc.

The indications in Maltese's press of Mizzi's relationship with offshore confidence did not prevent Mizzi from being elected as deputy leader for party affairs of the ruling Labor Party on February 25, 2016, following changes in party legislation to allow a seated parliamentarian to be appointed. Mizzi resigned as vice chairman of the Labor Party on April 28, 2016.

Schembri, an entrepreneur who runs the Labor election campaign in the 2013 Malta general election, and serves as chief of staff for Muscat, is reported to hold an offshore company based in the British Virgin Islands, and has an anonymous shell company in Panama, called Tillgate Inc., held by the trust established for him in New Zealand. Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri acquired their shell companies in Panama, Hearnville Inc and Tillgate Inc respectively, through Mossack Fonseca's representatives in Malta, who also tried to open bank accounts associated with two shell firms from two people politically exposed in various jurisdictions. The owner of the third anonymous shell company in Panama, Egrant Inc., whose existence is revealed in the same document in reference to the other two companies, remains unknown, despite the strict confidentiality observed in the acquisition, including the avoidance of e-mail communications and the use of communication via Skype, a strong suspicion that a politically respected third person in Malta was involved.

In the asset declaration of 2015, dated February 8 and submitted to Parliament Maltese at the end of March 2016, which Muscat said has been shown in draft form before the leaked Papers Papers, Mizzi noted confidence in New Zealand and shell companies in Panama. On April 28, 2016, a report on the issue assigned by the Government of Malta by an unnamed international audit firm was pending. On April 28, 2016 Muscat announced a cabinet reshuffle; Mizzi lost her ministry's portfolio to Health and Energy, but was retained as a minister without a portfolio at the Prime Minister's Office.

Malta is the only EU member who has ministers involved in this scandal and to date. Not holding Mizzi and Schembri's involvement in the scandal, they still hold a very high position in the Maltese government.

Mark A. Sammut wrote a book about the case, called L-Aqwa fl-Ewropa. Il-Panama Papers u l-Poter ( The Best in Europe The Panama Papers and Power ).

In October 2017, Daphne Caruana Galizia, a blogger who led the Panama Papers investigation into corruption in Malta, was killed by a car bomb near her home.

Norwegian

The Norwegian Tax Administration expects to demand access to information from the DNB (the largest financial services group of Norway) about 30 companies formed by DNB owned by Norwegians, 20 of whom live in Norway. 200 Norwegians are on the Fonseca Mossack client list.

Portugal

The ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database shows that Portugal has 246 Offshore Entities, 300 Officers, 40 Intermediaries and 175 Addresses linked to the activities described in the Mossack-Fonseca paper, with newspapers reporting the involvement of several politicians, government officials, bankers and corporate managers. Since May 2017, there are no criminal or judicial consequences for anyone involved.

Russian

The SÃÆ'¼ddeutsche Zeitung , one of the newspapers participating in a project that makes a public newspaper, describes the connections of the various individuals listed on it to Russian President Vladimir Putin. They cited Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman and the State Department document that Russia is a "kleptocracy" and a "mafia state" respectively. The SÃÆ'¼ddeutsche Zeitung reported about $ 2 billion has moved through a network of companies associated with Russian companies and individuals within "just a few years" and companies seem to have been used for "questionable business transactions".

Putin has criticized offshore companies as "non-patriotic" on several occasions since 2011 and in 2013 the law passed a law prohibiting foreign bank accounts for government officials.

Putin's name does not appear in any of the records released to date, but belongs to his colleagues. Billionaire Arkady and Boris Rotenberg's construction, musician Sergei Roldugin and businessman Alisher Usmanov are mentioned in the leaked documents, as are old friends of Putin, billionaire Gennady Timchenko, as well as his press secretary, cousin and former KGB counterpart, as well as several oligarchies linked to the company shell Mossack Fonseca.

Sergei Roldugin, a cellist with the orchestra St. Petersburg, the godfather of Putin's eldest daughter and who is described as Putin's "best friend", stands out in the Panama Papers. According to leaked paper, Roldugin acquired assets worth at least $ 100 million, including a 12.5% ​​stake in Video International (Russia's largest television advertising company), a company that has stock options for some of Russia's largest companies and rights to loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2008, a company controlled by Roldugin joined several other offshore companies to help "other Putin insiders" to take control of Kamaz, Russia's largest truck manufacturer, and get investment from German carmaker Daimler AG, $ 250 million for 10% from Kamaz. Sandalwood, another company in which Roldugin and other insiders have interest issued a credit line between 2009 and 2012 worth $ 800,000 by Russian Commercial Bank (RCB) in Cyprus, then a wholly owned subsidiary of VTB Bank, mostly owned by the Russian state. The Panama Papers document shows that the Roldugin company received some unsecured loans, or with very low interest rates, or never paid. In 2013, several shell companies associated with the Boris brothers and Arkady Rotenberg lent US $ 200 million to a company in the Roldugin network. Leaked documents do not indicate whether they have been paid. Just before the pinj

Source of the article : Wikipedia