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Notable Names On The Panama List by KayceeClassic(m): 8:08pm On Apr 05, 2016 |
What do heads of state, FIFA execs,
billionaires, celebrities, and hundreds
of their rich and powerful friends
have in common? Quite a few things,
I’d wager, but here’s something
specific: They’ve all been named in
the “Panama Papers,” the trove of
11.5 million records that give insight
into how the rich and powerful hide
their money abroad.
On Sunday, a consortium of
newspapers broke the news about the
documents and records, apparently
leaked from the Panamanian law firm
Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in
setting up offshore shell companies
for its clients.
How it all happened:
The German paper Süddeutsche
Zeitung obtained the documents,
which reportedly include e-mails,
PDFs, photos, and “excerpts of an
internal Mossack Fonseca database,”
dating from the 1970s up to this
spring.
The paper says the encrypted files
came from an “anonymous source,”
who apparently “wanted neither
financial compensation nor anything
else in return, apart from a few
security measures” for what came out
to 2.6 terabytes of data: the biggest
leak of this kind of all time.
SPONSORED
In a feat of impressive collaboration,
coordinated by the International
Consortium of Investigative
Journalists (ICIJ), 100 news outlets
publishing in 25 languages analyzed
the records for a year before
publication.
What’s in the documents:
The documents analyzed so far largely
relate to off-shore bank accounts
established by Mossack Fonseca on
behalf of its clients, which are said to
include politicians, celebrities, a ton
of very wealthy people, and quite a
few criminals—both alleged and
convicted.
There’s nothing illegal, per se, about
opening a shell company or using
bearer bonds, and there are plenty of
legitimate business reasons to do so.
But their use can also suggest the
owner is trying to hide funds or
disguise the terms of a transaction
like a divorce or real estate
acquisition .
And indeed, that appears to be the
case for a large number of Mossack
Fonseca’s clients. Reports Süddeutsche
Zeitung :
Clients can buy an anonymous
company for as little as USD
1,000. However, at this price it is
just an empty shell. For an extra
fee, Mossack Fonseca provides a
sham director and, if desired,
conceals the company’s true
shareholder. The result is an
offshore company whose true
purpose and ownership structure
is indecipherable from the
outside. Mossack Fonseca has
founded, sold, and managed
thousands of companies. The
documents provide a detailed
view of how Mossack Fonseca
routinely accepts to engage in
business activities that
potentially violate sanctions, in
addition to aiding and abetting
tax evasion and money
laundering.
According to the ICIJ, some of the
documents show that the banks, law
firms and middlemen involved “often
failed to follow legal requirements
that they make sure their clients are
not involved in criminal enterprises,
tax dodging or political corruption.”
Other documents examined by the ICIJ
reportedly show offshore middlemen
concealed suspect transactions.
According to Süddeutsche Zeitung,
concealing the client’s identity
constituted the primary goal in “the
vast majority” of cases. Which makes
sense—that’s why they go to Mossack
Fonseca, which, according to a 2015
audit, knew the true owners of just
204 of 14,086 companies it had
incorporated in the Seychelles.
According to the ICIJ, the company
once went so far as to remove paper
records from its Nevada offices to
protect its clients from discovery.
The end result? A lot of money no one
knows about.
The firm is denying everything:
Mossack Fonseca co-founder Ramon
Fonseca Mora tells CNN the reports
are false and claims several of the
parties named in the leak “are not
and have never been clients of
Mossack Fonseca.”
“Our services are regulated on
multiple levels, often by
overlapping agencies, and we
have a strong compliance
record,” the firm said.
“In addition, we have always
complied with international
protocols” to assure “that the
companies we incorporate are
not being used for tax evasion,
money laundering, terrorist
finance or other illicit purposes,”
it added.
Oh, and this meme:
Only a small percentage of the outlets
given access to the documents were
American. Plus some reports indicate
major papers like the New York Times
were intentionally left out of the loop.
This is largely a European issue
anyway: Despite indications that
further revelations may implicate
Americans, American corporate law
makes it largely unnecessary for
citizens to open shell companies
abroad. According to Fusion, only 200
or so companies were registered to
Americans.
Panama Papers on US front pages... or
not pic.twitter.com/uCYw3IJuvk
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) April 4,
2016
Who’s been implicated, so far:
It’s not clear that the ton of bold-
faced, high-profile names reported as
of today—at least 12 current or
former heads of state, plus hundreds
of their wealthy friends, family, and
countrymen—have done anything
illegal. But they also include at least
33 individuals and companies
blacklisted by the U.S. because of their
business dealings with entities like
Hezbollah, North Korea, and Iran.
According to the ICIJ, one of those
companies has been accused of giving
the Syrian government fuel to use to
bomb and kill its own citizens.
It’s going to take a while to parse out
who owns what and whether those
transactions were legal or illegal, and
more names are expected to be made
public in the weeks to come.
According to the ICIJ, the still-largely-
anonymous client list contains a bevy
of prominent and powerful people
that include “politicians, fraudsters
and drug traffickers as well as
billionaires, celebrities and sports
stars.”
All per the ICIJ, here’s who we know
about so far:
Vladmir Putin
At least two of Putin’s closest friends
are named in the documents, which
describe what appears to be a billion-
dollar money laundering ring.
Those two men are said to be concert
cellist Sergei Roldugin, a childhood
friend of Putin’s and godfather to
Putin’s daughter, and Yuri V.
Kovalchuk, the majority shareholder
of Bank Rossiya, referred to by some
as a “cashier” for Russian officials.
The Papers indicate Mossack Fonseca
created a “complex, deliberately
convoluted network of offshore
companies” for the men to funnel
close to two billion dollars through.
Documents also show Roldugin’s
involvement with other companies—
including the advertising firm
founded by Mikhail Lesin—who was
found beaten to death in a
Washington D.C. hotel.
Kovalchuk specifically denied the
allegations to the New York Times ,
saying, “I’ve got an apartment, a car
and a dacha... I don’t have millions.”
The Kremlin has so far, and will
undoubtedly continue to, dismiss the
papers as a smear campaign. Via CNN:
The Kremlin spokesman said it
was clear the main target of the
reports was Mr Putin, as well as
Russia’s political stability ahead
of parliamentary elections.
Dmitry Peskov dismissed the
investigation as insinuation and
speculation, and suggested many
of the team of journalists behind
it were actually former US state
department and CIA officials.
According to the ICIJ, documents also
show Putin associates “disguised
payments, backdated documents and
gained hidden influence within the
country’s media and automotive
industries.”
Petro O. Poroshenko
Documents in the trove also indicate
Petro O. Poroshenko, the reformer
president of Ukraine since 2014, lied
about divesting his assets before the
election.
Mr. Poroshenko, a tycoon with
assets in television and a
chocolatier before his entrance
into politics, pledged to divest
himself of his holdings but
instead moved the assets into an
offshore company in the British
Virgin Islands, according to the
consortium’s reporting. It said
that Mr. Poroshenko, who has
received political support from
the United States, had not
disclosed the arrangement.
His financial advisors tell the ICIJ he
did not disclose the firm because it
had no assets. Even so, evidence
indicates he was “scrambling” to find
a copy of his utility bill for the
paperwork as Russia began its bloody
invasion of the country in 2014.
Icelandic Prime Minister, Sigmundur David
Gunnlaugson
The documents indicate Iceland’s
Prime Minister, Sigmundur David
Gunnlaugson, bought an offshore
company called Wintris with his wife
in 2007 which held millions of dollars
in Icelandic bank bonds while the
country was in a financial crisis. Just
a day before he would have had to
declare his 50% interest as a
prerequisite of entering parliament,
he sold it to his wife—for the price of
$1.
The company held bonds
originally worth millions of
dollars in three giant Icelandic
banks that failed during the 2008
global financial crash, making it
a creditor in their bankruptcies.
Gunnlaugsson’s government
negotiated a deal with creditors
last year without disclosing his
family’s financial stake in the
outcome.
He walked out of an interview
yesterday when someone brought it
up.
FIFA
Documents show Juan Pedro Damiani,
a member of the FIFA ethics
committee, had business dealings with
at least three men implicated in the
FIFA scandal last summer. FIFA’s
ethics panel has since launched an
investigation.
Lionel Messi
The papers show the soccer player—
who is currently under investigation
for tax evasion in Spain—owns at
least one Panama company called
Mega Star Enterprises Inc.
Marianna Olszewski
Finally—an American.
One wealthy client, US
millionaire and life coach
Marianna Olszewski , was offered
fake ownership records to hide
money from the authorities. This
is in direct breach of
international regulations
designed to stop money-
laundering and tax evasion.
An email from a Mossack
executive to Ms Olszewski in
January 2009 explains how she
could deceive the bank: “We may
use a natural person who will act
as the beneficial owner… and
therefore his name will be
disclosed to the bank. Since this
is a very sensitive matter, fees
are quite high.”
Jackie Chan
Documents show Jackie Chan owns at
least six companies established by the
firm.
Hosni Mubarak
Documents show Mossack Fonseca was
fined $37,500 for money laundering
after it set up a company for
Mubarak’s son but “failed to identify
the connection” even after the former
Egyptian president and his son were
both charged with corruption.
At the time, an internal review
reportedly concluded, “our risk
assessment formula is seriously
flawed.”
Muammar Gaddafi
Details surrounding Gaddafi’s
involvement are scant, but the BBC
reports family members or associates
held secret offshore accounts created
by Mossack Fonseca.
President Bashar al-Assad
Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of al-Assad—
described by the U.S. as a “poster boy
for corruption”—was implicated in
the papers, the Guardian reports , and
while al-Assad is not specifically
mentioned, the documents reveal “any
foreign company seeking to do
business in Syria had to be cleared by
Rami.”
According to the Guardian’s analysis,
Mossack Fonseca helped the Makhlouf
family register its Syrian companies
in the British Virgin Islands, and kept
him as a client despite sanctions
imposed against him by the United
States and his involvement in the
Syrian civil war.
The documents show, however,
that the Panamanian firm
continued to work with the
Makhloufs, and in January 2011
it rejected the advice of its own
compliance team to cut ties with
the family as the crisis in Syria
began to unfold.
Documents show a Mossack
Fonseca compliance officer
wrote: “I believe if an individual
is found on a sanction list then
this is a serious red flag and we
should make every effort to
disassociate ourselves from
them.”
Though Mossack Fonseca was not
legally bound to comply with US
sanctions, it had an obligation to
react to EU measures imposed in
May 2011 and extended to the
British Virgin Islands (BVI) in
June of that year. It took until
September 2011 before the
partners finally agreed to resign
from Makhlouf’s companies.
Mauricio Macri
Argentina’s current president was
reportedly a director and vice
president of an offshore company
managed by Mossack Fonseca at the
same time he served as mayor of
Buenos Aires. Documents appear to
show he did not disclose these assets.
A spokesperson tells the ICIJ he never
personally owned shares of the firm.
Nawaz Sharif
Documents show the firm established
companies that hid real estate
holdings of Sharif’s children.
Ilham Aliyev
The firm established Panamanian
foundations and shell companies for
the family of Azerbaijan’s president
to hide their ownership in gold mines
and London real estate.
Xi Jinping
The family of Chinese president Xi
Jinping—who rails against the “armies
of corruption”—obtained offshore
companies through Mossack Fonseca.
The documents also indicate offshore
holdings of the families of at least
seven other members of China’s
Politburo Standing Committee.
That’s it?
This list is sure to grow. We’ll keep
you updated as it does. |
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