Mossack y Fonseca, in another international scandal
Thousands of documents, supposedly leaked, revealed relations of the firm's clients with tax evasion and money laundering. The people involved in the scandal include heads of State, members of the European monarchy, politicians and sportspeople.
Mossack y Fonseca, in another international scandal
Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca property of Minister-Counsellor of the President Juan Carlos Varela, Ramón Fonseca Mora, one of the men with more power within the current Government is linked in the largest global scandal over money laundering through companies.
Fonseca Mora, who until a few days ago was Chairman of the Panameñista party, is also linked to a scandal of corruption in Brazil.
According to sources related to the panameñismo, Fonseca Mora was one of three main ones of President Varela´s campaign. He is also linked with the consulates in Hong Kong and Dubai, in addition, his brother is the director of the Civil Aviation Authority of Panama.
During a journalistic investigation documents from the past 40 years leaked, the thorough review of 11.5 million files allowed to verify that the main activity of Mossack Fonseca is the creation of paper companies. They are societies tailor-made to their clients; in many cases corrupt or fraudulent politicians or drug traffickers.
Mossack Fonseca set up societies for the company who the Guatemalan Marllory Chacón Rossell presided, who was later identified as the most active money laundering company in their country and leader of a cell of the Sinaloa cartel.
Another example of the movements of business is Leticia Montoya, clerk of Mossack Fonseca, figure in the Panama Public Registry in 10,967 societies created by the firm. Despite this, Montoya lives in the popular district of Vacamonte and has a salary of 900 dollars a month, according to a document from the law firm dated in December 2015.
Born in 1977, the Group Mossack Fonseca, "with offices in every continent", according to its web site, is dedicated to creating partnerships.
Filtration of the files reveals that Mossack Fonseca has served clients from destinations as diverse as Russia, Syria, Nigeria and Argentina.
Argentine President, Mauricio Macri, Icelandic Prime Minister, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson Daví, an Assistant to Russian President Vladimir Putin, cousins of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, among others, appear in a list of 140 politicians from 50 countries of the world, linked to 21 tax havens, according to the information that the above consortium of journalists received.
Personalities such as footballer Lionel Messi, filmmakers such as Pedro Almodóvar and King Don Juan Carlos I´s older sister, Doña Pilar de Borbón also appear in the list. Prime Minister of Iceland resigned.
One of its partners, Ramón Fonseca Mora, Minister Counsellor of the Presidency of Panama and President of the governing Panameñista party, asked President Juan Carlos Varela last March 11, a work leave for a year to defend himself about the accusations linking him to the plot of corruption in the Brazilian State Petrobras by means of the law firm.
At the end of last January, Brazilian authorities said they suspected that Mossack Fonseca, Minister-Counsellor to Varela, facilitated several favored ones in the corruption plot of Petrobras the opening of "offshore" companies in Panama, which could serve to launder money diverted from Petrobras through real estate transactions.
Mossack Fonseca firm rejected any link with the Brazilian case, on which the auxiliary Prosecutor's Office of Panama said on 29 January that they would open an "ex officio investigation" in January.
"Our firm is being wrongly linked with issues in which we don't have any interference", the then law firm said in a 'clarification'.
German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung said that it obtained a huge amount of documents that detailed accounts abroad of the rich and famous.
The Munich newspaper said that it received an anonymous source data more than one year ago and that it shared with over 100 news organizations.
Their work was coordinated by the international consortium of investigative journalism, a Washington-based nonprofit organization.
Sueddeutsche Zeitung said on Sunday that the amount of information received is several times greater than data published by Wikileaks in 2013 that exposed the finances of prominent individuals.
According to the BBC, there are millions of leaked documents about law firm Mossack y Fonseca.