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The Panama Papers () are 11.5 million leaked documents (or 2.6 terabytes of data) published beginning April 3, 2016. The papers detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. These documents, some dating back to the 1970s, were created by, and taken from, the former Panamanian offshore law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, and compiled with similar leaks into a searchable database. The documents contain personal financial information about wealthy individuals and public officials previously private. Their publication made it possible to prosecute Jan Marsalek, a person of interest to a number of European governments and revealed his links with Russian intelligence, and international financial fraudster Harald Joachim von der Goltz. While offshore business entities are legal , reporters found that some of the Mossack Fonseca shell corporations were used for illegal purposes, including
fraud In law, fraud is intent (law), intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly. Fraud can violate Civil law (common law), civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrato ...
,
tax evasion Tax evasion or tax fraud is an illegal attempt to defeat the imposition of taxes by individuals, corporations, trusts, and others. Tax evasion often entails the deliberate misrepresentation of the taxpayer's affairs to the tax authorities to red ...
, and evading
international sanctions International sanctions are political and economic decisions that are part of diplomatic efforts by countries, multilateral or regional organizations against states or organizations either to protect national security interests, or to protect i ...
. "John Doe", the whistleblower who leaked the documents to German journalist Bastian Obermayer from the newspaper ''
Süddeutsche Zeitung The ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'' (; ), published in Munich, Bavaria, is one of the largest and most influential daily newspapers in Germany. The tone of ''SZ'' is mainly described as centre-left, liberal, social-liberal, progressive-liberal, and ...
'' (''SZ''), remains anonymous, even to the journalists who worked on the investigation. "My life is in danger", the whistleblower told them. In a May 6, 2016, document, Doe cited income inequality as the reason for the action and said the documents were leaked "simply because I understood enough about their contents to realize the scale of the injustices they described". Doe had never worked for any government or
intelligence agency An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, Intelligence analysis, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy obj ...
and expressed willingness to help prosecutors if granted immunity from prosecution. After ''SZ'' verified that the statement did in fact come from the source for the Panama Papers, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) posted the full document on its website. ''SZ'' asked the ICIJ for help because of the data involved. Journalists from 107 media organizations in 80 countries analyzed documents detailing the operations of the law firm. After more than a year of analysis, the first news stories were published on April 3, 2016, along with 150 of the documents themselves. The project represents an important milestone in the use of
data journalism Data journalism or data-driven journalism (DDJ) is journalism based on the filtering and analysis of large data sets for the purpose of creating or elevating a news story. Data journalism reflects the increased role of numerical data in the p ...
software tools and mobile collaboration. The documents were dubbed the Panama Papers because of the country they were leaked from. Still, the Panamanian government, as well as other entities in Panama and elsewhere, expressed strong objections to the name over concerns that it would tarnish the government's and country's image worldwide. Some media outlets covering the story have used the name "Mossack Fonseca papers". In October 2020, German authorities issued an international arrest warrant for the two founders of the law firm at the core of the tax evasion scandal exposed by the Panama Papers. Cologne prosecutors sought German-born Jürgen Mossack and Panamanian Ramón Fonseca on charges of accessory to tax evasion and forming a criminal organization. In June 2024, a judge in Panama acquitted all former Mossack Fonseca employees, including the two founders, due to insufficient evidence and problems with the
chain of custody Chain of custody (CoC), in legal contexts, is the chronological documentation or paper trail that records the sequence of custody, control, transfer, analysis, and disposition of materials, including physical or electronic evidence. Of particul ...
of evidence.


Disclosures

In addition to the much-covered business dealings of British Prime Minister
David Cameron David William Donald Cameron, Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton (born 9 October 1966) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016. Until 2015, he led the first coalition government in the UK s ...
and Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, the leaked documents also contain identity information about the shareholders and directors of 214,000 shell companies set up by Mossack Fonseca, as well as some of their financial transactions. Although it is generally not against the law to own an offshore shell company, reporters found that some of the shell corporations were used for illegal purposes, including fraud, tax evasion, and evading international sanctions. The journalists on the investigative team found business transactions by many important figures in world politics, sports, and art. While many of the transactions were legal, since the data is incomplete, questions remain in many other cases; still others seem to clearly indicate ethical if not legal impropriety. Some disclosures –
tax avoidance Tax avoidance is the legal usage of the tax regime in a single territory to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable. A tax shelter is one type of tax avoidance, and tax havens are jurisdictions that facilitate reduced taxe ...
in very poor countries by very wealthy entities and individuals for example – led to questions on moral grounds. For example, the shell company Octea is registered to Beny Steinmetz and owes more than US$700,000 in property taxes to the city of Koidu in
Sierra Leone Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered to the southeast by Liberia and by Guinea to the north. Sierra Leone's land area is . It has a tropical climate and envi ...
, and is $150 million in debt, even though its
export An export in international trade is a good produced in one country that is sold into another country or a service provided in one country for a national or resident of another country. The seller of such goods or the service provider is a ...
s were more than twice that in an average month in the 2012–2015 period. Steinmetz himself has a personal worth of $6 billion. Other offshore shell company transactions described in the documents seem to have broken exchange laws, violated trade sanctions or stemmed from political corruption, according to ICIJ reporters. For example: * Uruguay has arrested five people and charged them with
money laundering Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities (often known as dirty money) such as drug trafficking, sex work, terrorism, corruption, and embezzlement, and converting the funds i ...
through Mossack Fonseca shell companies for a Mexican drug cartel. * ''Ouestaf'', an ICIJ partner in the investigation, reported that it had discovered new evidence that Karim Wade received payments from DP World (DP). He and a long-time friend were convicted of this in a trial that the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
and
Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...
said was unfair and violated the defendants' rights. The ''Ouestaf'' article does not address the conduct of the trial, but does say that ''Ouestaf'' journalists found Mossack Fonseca documents showing payments to Wade via a DP subsidiary and a shell company registered to the friend. * Swiss lawyer Dieter Neupert has been accused of mishandling client funds and helping both oligarchs and the Qatari royal family to hide money. Named in the leak were 12 extant or former world leaders; 128 other public officials and politicians; and hundreds of celebrities, businessmen, and other wealthy individuals from over 200 countries. One notable case involved former Iceland Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, who was found to possess a secret offshore account in a shell company called Wintris Inc., along with his wife. When Gunnlaugsson was elected in 2013, he had promised to be tougher on Iceland's foreign creditors. However, as revealed by the Panama Papers, Wintris Inc., which he and his wife owned a stake in, was one of these creditors. This conflict of interest ultimately led to his resignation in 2016.


Tax havens

Individuals and entities may open offshore accounts for any number of reasons, some of which are legal. A Canadian lawyer based in Dubai noted, for example, that businesses might wish to avoid falling under Islamic inheritance jurisprudence if an owner dies. Businesses in some countries may wish to hold some of their funds in dollars also, said a Brazilian lawyer. Estate planning is another example of legal
tax avoidance Tax avoidance is the legal usage of the tax regime in a single territory to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable. A tax shelter is one type of tax avoidance, and tax havens are jurisdictions that facilitate reduced taxe ...
. American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick had an estimated personal worth of $20 million when he died in 1999, much of it invested in an 18th-century English manor he bought in 1978. He lived in that manor for the rest of his life, filming scenes from '' The Shining'', '' Full Metal Jacket'', and '' Eyes Wide Shut'' there as well. Three holding companies set up by Mossack Fonseca now own the property, and are in turn held by trusts set up for his children and grandchildren. Since Kubrick was an American living in Britain, without the trust his estate would have had to pay transfer taxes to both governments and possibly have been forced to sell the property to obtain the liquid assets to pay them. Kubrick is buried on the grounds along with one of his daughters, and the rest of his family still lives there. Other uses are more ambiguous. Chinese companies may incorporate offshore in order to raise foreign capital, normally against the law in China. In some of the world's hereditary 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, however such dealings are sometimes prosecuted under international law. While no standard official definition exists, ''
The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British newspaper published weekly in printed magazine format and daily on Electronic publishing, digital platforms. It publishes stories on topics that include economics, business, geopolitics, technology and culture. M ...
'' and the
International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution funded by 191 member countries, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. It is regarded as the global lender of las ...
describe an offshore financial center, or
tax haven A tax haven is a term, often used pejoratively, to describe a place with very low tax rates for Domicile (law), non-domiciled investors, even if the official rates may be higher. In some older definitions, a tax haven also offers Bank secrecy, ...
, as a jurisdiction whose banking infrastructure primarily provides services to people or businesses who do not live there, requires little or no disclosure of information when doing business, and offers low taxes. "The most obvious use of offshore financial centers is to avoid taxes", ''The Economist'' added. Oxfam blamed tax havens in its 2016 annual report on income inequality for much of the widening gap 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, of the resources they need to provide vital public services and tackle rising inequality".
International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution funded by 191 member countries, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. It is regarded as the global lender of las ...
(IMF) researchers estimated in July 2015 that profit shifting by multinational companies costs
developing countries A developing country is a sovereign state with a less-developed Secondary sector of the economy, industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to developed countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. ...
around US$213 billion a year, almost two percent of their national income. Igor Angelini, head of
Europol Europol, officially the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, is the law enforcement agency of the European Union (EU). Established in 1998, it is based in The Hague, Netherlands, and serves as the central hub for coordinating c ...
's Financial Intelligence Group, said that shell companies "play an important role in large-scale money laundering activities" and that they are often a means to "transfer bribe money". Tax Justice Network concluded in a 2012 report that "designing commercial tax abuse schemes and turning a blind eye upon suspicious transactions have become an inherent part of the work of bankers and accountants". Money laundering affects the first world as well, since a favored shell company 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
asset In financial accounting, an asset is any resource owned or controlled by a business or an economic entity. It is anything (tangible or intangible) that can be used to produce positive economic value. Assets represent value of ownership that can b ...
s in luxury real estate has been frequently cited as fueling rocketing housing prices in Miami, where the Miami Association of Realtors said that cash sales accounted for 90% of new home sales in 2015. "There is a huge amount of dirty money flowing into Miami that's disguised as investment," according to former congressional investigator Jack Blum. In Miami, 76% of condo owners pay cash (as opposed to using a mortgage), a practice considered a red flag for money-laundering, as of 2016. Analysis from Redfin in 2022 found that 31.9% of houses were purchased with cash across the 39 largest metropolitan areas in the US. This is higher than the sub 25% cash purchase rate as seen during the purchase of the Panama papers. Real estate in London, where housing prices increased 50% from 2007 to 2016, also is frequently purchased by overseas investors. Donald Toon, then head of Britain's
National Crime Agency The National Crime Agency (NCA) is a Law enforcement agency#natlea, national law enforcement agency in the United Kingdom. It is the UK's lead agency against organised crime; Human trafficking, human, Arms trafficking, weapon and Illegal drug t ...
, said in 2015 that "the London property market has been skewed by laundered money. Prices are being artificially driven up by overseas criminals who want to sequester their assets here in the UK". Three-quarters of Londoners under 35 cannot afford to buy a home. Andy Yan, an urban planning researcher and adjunct professor at the
University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...
, studied real estate sales in Vancouver—also thought to be affected by foreign purchasers—found that 18% of the transactions in Vancouver's most expensive neighborhoods were cash purchases, and 66% of the owners appeared to be Chinese nationals or recent arrivals from China. Calls for more data on foreign investors have been rejected by the provincial government. Chinese nationals accounted for 70% of 2014 Vancouver home sales for more than CA$3 million. On June 24, 2016, China CITIC Bank Corp filed suit in Canada against a Chinese citizen who borrowed
CN¥ The renminbi ( ; symbol: ¥; ISO code: CNY; abbreviation: RMB), also known as the Chinese yuan, is the official currency of the People's Republic of China. The renminbi is issued by the People's Bank of China, the monetary authority of Chin ...
50 million for his lumber business in China, but then withdrew roughly CA$7.5 million from the line of credit and left the country. He bought three houses in Vancouver and Surrey, British Columbia together valued at CA$7.3 million during a three-month period in June 2014.


International banking

"This issue will surely be raised at the G20 summit," predicted Tomasz Kozlowski, Ambassador of the
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
(EU) to India. "We need to strengthen international cooperation for the exchange of tax information between tax authorities". Panama,
Vanuatu Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (; ), is an island country in Melanesia located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, east o ...
and Lebanon may find themselves on a list of uncooperative tax havens that the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; , OCDE) is an international organization, intergovernmental organization with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and international trade, wor ...
(OECD) re-activated in July 2016 at the request of G20 nations, warned ''
Le Monde (; ) is a mass media in France, French daily afternoon list of newspapers in France, newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average print circulation, circulation of 480,000 copies per issue in 2022, including ...
'', a French newspaper that participated in the investigation. Those three countries followed none of the OECD's three broad guidelines for international banking cooperation: * information exchange on request * a signed multilateral agreement on information standards * a commitment to implement automated information exchange in 2017 or 2018 The
OECD The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; , OCDE) is an international organization, intergovernmental organization with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and international trade, wor ...
, the G20, or the
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
could also institute another list of countries that are inadequate in more than one area. Countries meeting none of these criteria, such as Panama, Vanuatu and Lebanon, would go on the blacklist. Countries that meet only one criterion would go on the greylist. In April 2016, if this greylist had been in place it would have included nine countries:
Antigua and Barbuda Antigua and Barbuda is a Sovereign state, sovereign archipelagic country composed of Antigua, Barbuda, and List of islands of Antigua and Barbuda, numerous other small islands. Antigua and Barbuda has a total area of 440 km2 (170 sq mi), ...
,
Bahrain Bahrain, officially the Kingdom of Bahrain, is an island country in West Asia. Situated on the Persian Gulf, it comprises a small archipelago of 50 natural islands and an additional 33 artificial islands, centered on Bahrain Island, which mak ...
,
Brunei Brunei, officially Brunei Darussalam, is a country in Southeast Asia, situated on the northern coast of the island of Borneo. Apart from its coastline on the South China Sea, it is completely surrounded by the Malaysian state of Sarawak, with ...
,
Dominica Dominica, officially the Commonwealth of Dominica, is an island country in the Caribbean. It is part of the Windward Islands chain in the Lesser Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean Sea. The capital, Roseau, is located on the western side of t ...
,
Liberia Liberia, officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to Liberia–Sierra Leone border, its northwest, Guinea to Guinea–Liberia border, its north, Ivory Coast to Ivory Coast–Lib ...
, Nauru,
Samoa Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa and known until 1997 as Western Samoa, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania, in the South Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu), two smaller, inhabited ...
,
Tobago Tobago, officially the Ward of Tobago, is an List of islands of Trinidad and Tobago, island and Regions and municipalities of Trinidad and Tobago, ward within the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. It is located northeast of the larger islan ...
and the
United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a Federal monarchy, federal elective monarchy made up of Emirates of the United Arab E ...
.


Newsroom logistics

The ICIJ helped organize the research and document review once ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'' (SZ) realized the scale of the work required to validate the authenticity of 2.6 terabytes of leaked data. The group enlisted reporters and resources from a variety of outlets including ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'',
BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
, ''
Le Monde (; ) is a mass media in France, French daily afternoon list of newspapers in France, newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average print circulation, circulation of 480,000 copies per issue in 2022, including ...
'', '' SonntagsZeitung'', '' Falter'', '' La Nación'', German broadcasters NDR and WDR, and Austrian broadcaster ORF. Ultimately, "reporters at 100 news media outlets working in 25 languages had used the documents" to investigate individuals and organizations associated with Mossack Fonseca. Operations security factored into a number of project management considerations. Saying "my life is in danger," one anonymous "John Doe" insisted that reporters communicate over encrypted channels only and agreed that they would never meet face-to-face. SZ also had concerns about security, not only for their source, the leaked documents, and their data, but also for the safety of some of their partners in the investigation living under corrupt regimes who might not want their money-handling practices made public. They stored the data in a room with limited physical access on air-gapped computers that were never connected to the Internet. ''The Guardian'' also limited access to its journalists' project work area. To make it even harder to sabotage the computers or steal their drives, SZ journalists made them more tamper-evident by painting the screws holding the drives in place with glitter nail polish. Reporters sorted the documents into a huge file structure containing a folder for each shell company, which held the associated emails, contracts, transcripts, and scanned documents Mossack Fonseca had generated while doing business with the company or administering it on a client's behalf. Some 4.8 million leaked files were emails, 3 million were database entries, 2.2 million PDFs, 1.2 million images, 320,000 text files, and 2242 files in other formats. Journalists indexed the documents using open software packages Apache Solr and Apache Tika, and accessed them by means of a custom interface built on top of Blacklight. ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'' reporters also used Nuix for this, which is
proprietary software Proprietary software is computer software, software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing t ...
donated by an Australian company also named Nuix. Using Nuix, ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'' reporters performed
optical character recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronics, electronic or machine, mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo ...
(OCR) processing on the millions of scanned documents, converting the data they contained to searchable and machine-readable text. Most project reporters then used Neo4J and Linkurious to extract individual and corporate names from the documents for analysis, but some who had access to Nuix used it for this as well. Reporters cross-referenced the compiled lists of people against the processed documents, then analyzed the information, trying to connect people, roles, monetary flow, and structure legality. US banking and SEC expert David P. Weber assisted journalists in reviewing information from the Panama Papers. Additional stories were released based on this data, and the full list of companies was released in early May 2016. The ICIJ later announced the release on May 9, 2016, of a searchable database containing information on over 200,000 offshore entities implicated in the Panama Papers investigation and more than 100,000 additional companies implicated in the 2013 Offshore Leaks investigation. Mossack Fonseca asked the ICIJ not to publish the leaked documents from its database. "We have sent a cease and desist letter," the company said in a statement. The sheer quantity of leaked data greatly exceeds the WikiLeaks Cablegate leak in 2010 (1.7  GB), Offshore Leaks in 2013 (260 GB), the 2014 Lux Leaks (4 GB), and the 3.3 GB Swiss Leaks of 2015. For comparison, the 2.6 TB of the Panama Papers equals approximately 2,660 GB.


Data security

Mossack Fonseca notified its clients on April 1, 2016, that it had sustained an email hack. Mossack Fonseca also told news sources that the company had been hacked and always operated within the law. Data security experts noted, however, that the company had not been encrypting its emails and furthermore seemed to have been running a three-year-old version of Drupal with several known vulnerabilities. According to James Sanders of ''
TechRepublic TechRepublic is an online trade publication and social community for IT professionals, providing advice on best practices and tools for the needs of IT decision-makers. It was founded in 1997 in Louisville, Kentucky, by Tom Cottingham and Kim S ...
'', Drupal ran on the Apache 2.2.15 version from March 6, 2010, and worse, the Oracle fork of Apache, which by default allows users to view directory structure. The network architecture was also inherently insecure; the email and web servers were not segmented from the client database in any way. Some reports also suggest that some parts of the site may have been running
WordPress WordPress (WP, or WordPress.org) is a web content management system. It was originally created as a tool to publish blogs but has evolved to support publishing other web content, including more traditional websites, electronic mailing list, ma ...
with an out-of-date version of Slider Revolution, a plugin whose previously announced vulnerabilities are well-documented. A
grey hat A grey hat (greyhat or gray hat) is a computer hacker or computer security expert who may sometimes violate laws or typical ethical standards, but usually does not have the malicious intent typical of a black hat hacker. The term came into u ...
hacker named 1×0123 announced on April 12 that Mossack Fonseca's
content management system A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content ( content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...
had not been secured from SQL injection, a well-known database attack vector, and that he had been able to access the customer database because of this. Computer security expert Chris Kubecka announced on May 24, 2016, that the Mossack Fonseca client login portal was running four different government-grade remote access trojans (RATs). Kubecka confirmed there were still numerous critical vulnerabilities, too many open ports in their infrastructure and internet access to their archive server due to weak security. Kubecka explained how each data security issue was discovered in detail in a book titled ''Down the Rabbit Hole: An OSINT Journey''.


Leak and leak journalism

Gerard Ryle, director of the ICIJ, called the leak "probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents". Edward Snowden described the release in a Twitter message as the "biggest leak in the history of
data journalism Data journalism or data-driven journalism (DDJ) is journalism based on the filtering and analysis of large data sets for the purpose of creating or elevating a news story. Data journalism reflects the increased role of numerical data in the p ...
". The ICIJ also said that the leak was "likely to be one of the most explosive eaks of inside information in historyin the nature of its revelations". "This is a unique opportunity to test the effectiveness of leaktivism", said Micah White, co-founder of Occupy, "... the Panama Papers are being dissected via 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 WikiLeaks () is a non-profit media organisation and publisher of leaked documents. It is funded by donations and media partnerships. It has published classified documents and other media provided by anonymous sources. It was founded in 2006 by ...
spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson, an Icelandic investigative journalist who worked on Cablegate in 2010, said withholding some documents for a time does maximise the leak's impact, but called for full online publication of the Panama Papers eventually. A tweet from WikiLeaks criticized the decision of the ICIJ not to release everything for ethical reasons: "If you censor more than 99% of the documents you are engaged in 1% journalism by definition." The whistleblower reported that the murder of journalists Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017 and Ján Kuciak in 2018 due to their investigations of the Panama Papers had deeply affected him and called upon the European Union to deliver justice.


People named

While offshore business entities are not illegal in the jurisdictions where they are registered, and often not illegal at all, reporters found that some Mossack Fonseca shell corporations seem to have been used for illegal purposes including
fraud In law, fraud is intent (law), intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly. Fraud can violate Civil law (common law), civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrato ...
,
kleptocracy Kleptocracy (from Greek , "thief", or , "I steal", and from , "power, rule"), also referred to as thievocracy, is a government whose corrupt leaders (kleptocrats) use political power to expropriate the wealth of the people and land the ...
,
tax evasion Tax evasion or tax fraud is an illegal attempt to defeat the imposition of taxes by individuals, corporations, trusts, and others. Tax evasion often entails the deliberate misrepresentation of the taxpayer's affairs to the tax authorities to red ...
and evading
international sanctions International sanctions are political and economic decisions that are part of diplomatic efforts by countries, multilateral or regional organizations against states or organizations either to protect national security interests, or to protect i ...
. Reports from April 3 note the law firm's many connections to high-ranking political figures and their relatives, as well as celebrities and business figures. Among other things, the leaked documents illustrate how wealthy individuals, including public officials, can keep personal financial information private. Initial reports identified five then-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 of various heads of government of more than forty other countries. Names of then-current national leaders in the documents include President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates,
Petro Poroshenko Petro Oleksiiovych Poroshenko (born 26 September 1965) is a Ukraine, Ukrainian politician and Oligarchy, oligarch who served as the fifth president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019. He served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs (Ukraine), Minister ...
of Ukraine, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, and the Prime Minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson. Former heads of state mentioned in the papers include: *Argentinian president Mauricio Macri who was president from December 2015 to December 2019. Moreover, the moral problem, the opposers claimed illegality because he never put this in his patrimonial declarations. For one of the official sources of Panama papers: "Macri's official spokesman Ivan Pavlovsky said that the Argentine president didn't list Fleg Trading Ltd. as an asset because he had no capital participation in the company. The company, used to participate in interests in Brazil, was related to the family business group. "This is why Maricio Macri was occasionally its director," he said, reiterating that Macri was not a shareholder." *Sudanese president Ahmed al-Mirghani, who was president from 1986–1989 and died in 2008. *Former Emir of Qatar Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani owned Afrodille S.A., which had a bank account in Luxembourg and shares in two South African companies. Al Thani also held a majority of the shares in Rienne S.A. and Yalis S.A., holding a term deposit with the Bank of China in Luxembourg. A relative owned 25 percent of these: Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, Qatar's former prime minister and foreign minister. Former prime ministers: *Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili of
Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...
* Pavlo Lazarenko of
Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...
*Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a former vice president of Iraq, owned property through Mossack Fonseca shell companies registered in Panama and the British Virgin Islands, for security reasons following an assassination attempt, according to his spokesperson, who added that any income from the properties was reported and taxes paid "promptly and on time". * Ion Sturza of Moldova. * Ali Abu al-Ragheb of Jordan. The leaked files identified 61 family members and associates of prime ministers, presidents and kings, including: *the brother-in-law of China's
paramount leader Paramount leader () is an informal term for the most important Supreme leader, political figure in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). The paramount leader typically controls the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People's Liberatio ...
Xi Jinping Xi Jinping, pronounced (born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has been the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (China), chairman of the Central Military Commission ...
*the son of former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak *children of former Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif *children of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev * Clive Khulubuse Zuma, the nephew of former South African President
Jacob Zuma Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma (; born 12 April 1942) is a South African politician who served as the fourth president of South Africa from 2009 to 2018. He is also referred to by his initials JZ and clan names Nxamalala and Msholozi. Zuma was a for ...
*Nurali Aliyev, the grandson of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev * Mounir Majidi, the personal secretary of Moroccan King Mohammed VI * Kojo Annan, the son of former
United Nations Secretary-General The secretary-general of the United Nations (UNSG or UNSECGEN) is the chief administrative officer of the United Nations and head of the United Nations Secretariat, one of the United Nations System#Six principal organs, six principal organs of ...
Kofi Annan Kofi Atta Annan (8 April 193818 August 2018) was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh secretary-general of the United Nations from 1997 to 2006. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. He was the founder a ...
* Mark Thatcher, the son of former British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013), was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of th ...
* Juan Armando Hinojosa, the "favourite contractor" of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. * Spanish Royal Family: Infanta Pilar, Duchess of Badajoz and her son Bruno Gómez-Acebes, Iñaki Urdangarín, Amalio de Marichalar, and people close to the family like the mistress of former King Juan Carlos I, Corinna Larsen. Other clients included less senior government officials and their close relatives and associates, from over forty countries. Over £10 million of cash from the sale of the gold stolen in the 1983 Brink's-Mat robbery was laundered, first unwittingly and later with the complicity of Mossack Fonseca, through a Panamanian company, Feberion Inc. The company was set up on behalf of an unnamed client twelve months after the robbery. The Brinks money was put through Feberion and other front companies, through banks in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Jersey, and the Isle of Man. It issued bearer shares only. Two nominee directors from
Sark Sark (Sercquiais: or , ) is an island in the southwestern English Channel, off the coast of Normandy, and part of the archipelago of the Channel Islands. It is a self-governing British Crown Dependencies, Crown Dependency, with its own set o ...
were appointed to Feberion by
Jersey Jersey ( ; ), officially the Bailiwick of Jersey, is an autonomous and self-governing island territory of the British Islands. Although as a British Crown Dependency it is not a sovereign state, it has its own distinguishing civil and gov ...
-based offshore specialist Centre Services. The offshore firms recycled the funds through land and property transactions in the United Kingdom. Although the Metropolitan Police Service raided the offices of Centre Services in late 1986 in cooperation with Jersey authorities, and seized papers and two Feberion bearer shares, it wasn't until 1995 that Brink's-Mat's solicitors were finally able to take control of Feberion and the assets. Actor Jackie Chan is mentioned in the leaked documents as a shareholder in six companies based in the
British Virgin Islands The British Virgin Islands (BVI), officially the Virgin Islands, are a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, to the east of Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands, US Virgin Islands and north-west ...
.


Client services

Mossack Fonseca is one of the biggest in its field and the biggest financial institutions refer customers to it. Its services to clients include incorporating and operating shell companies in friendly jurisdictions on their behalf. They can include creating "complex shell company structures" that, while legal, also allow the firm's clients "to operate behind an often impenetrable wall of secrecy". The leaked papers detail some of their intricate, multilevel, and multinational corporate structures. Mossack Fonseca has acted with global consultancy partners like Emirates Asset Management Ltd, Ryan Mohanlal Ltd, Sun Hedge Invest and Blue Capital Ltd on behalf of more than 300,000 companies, most of them registered in the
British Overseas Territories The British Overseas Territories (BOTs) or alternatively referred to as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs) are the fourteen dependent territory, territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom that, ...
. Leaked documents also indicate that the firm would also backdate documents on request and, based on a 2007 exchange of emails in the leaked documents, it did so routinely enough to establish a price 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 the offshore company of Marianna Olszewski, a US businesswoman, "a blatant breach of anti-money laundering rules" according to the BBC.


Sanctioned clients

Many firms and individuals take advantage of the anonymity of offshore shell companies to circumvent international sanctions. More than 30 Mossack Fonseca clients were at some point in time blacklisted by the US Treasury Department, including businesses linked to senior figures in Russia, Syria and North Korea. Three Mossack Fonseca companies started for clients of Helene Mathieu Legal Consultants were later sanctioned by the US Treasury's
Office of Foreign Assets Control The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is a financial intelligence and enforcement agency of the United States Department of the Treasury, United States Treasury Department. It administers and enforces economic and trade economic sanctions, ...
(OFAC). Pangates International Corporation was accused in July 2014 of supplying the government of Syria with "a large amount of specialty petroleum products" with "limited civilian application in Syria". The other two, Maxima Middle East Trading and Morgan Additives Manufacturing Co, and their owners Wael Abdulkarim and Ahmad Barqawi, were said to have "engaged in deceptive measures" to supply oil products to Syria. Mossack Fonseca also ran six businesses for Rami Makhlouf, cousin of the former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, despite US sanctions against him. Internal Mossack Fonseca documents show that in 2011 Mossack Fonseca rejected a recommendation by their own compliance team to sever ties to Mr. Makhlouf. They agreed to do so only months later. The firm has said it never knowingly allowed anyone connected with rogue regimes to use its companies. Frederik Obermaier, co-author of the Panama Papers story and an investigative reporter at the German newspaper ''
Süddeutsche Zeitung The ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'' (; ), published in Munich, Bavaria, is one of the largest and most influential daily newspapers in Germany. The tone of ''SZ'' is mainly described as centre-left, liberal, social-liberal, progressive-liberal, and ...
'', told '' Democracy Now'': " Mossack Fonseca realised that Makhlouf was the cousin, and they realised that he was sanctioned, and they realised that he's allegedly one of the financiers of the Syrian regime. And they said, 'Oh, there is this bank who still does business with him, so we should still keep with him, as well'."
HSBC HSBC Holdings plc ( zh, t_hk=滙豐; initialism from its founding member The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is a British universal bank and financial services group headquartered in London, England, with historical and business li ...
also appeared to reassure Mossack Fonseca not only that it was "comfortable" with Makhlouf as a client but suggested there could be a rapprochement with the Assad family by the US. Makhlouf is already known to be a long-standing client of HSBC's Swiss private bank, holding at least $15 million with it in multiple accounts in 2006. The Panamanian files also show HSBC provided financial services to a Makhlouf company called Drex Technologies, which HSBC said was a company of "good standing". DCB Finance, a Virgin Islands-based shell company founded by North Korean banker Kim Chol-sam and British banker Nigel Cowie, also ignored international sanctions and continued to do business with
North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...
with the help of the Panamanian firm. The US Treasury Department in 2013 called DCB Finance a front company for Daedong Credit Bank and announced sanctions against both companies for providing banking services to North Korean arms dealer Korea Mining and Development Trading Corporation, attempting to evade sanctions against that country, and helping to sell arms and expand North Korea's nuclear weapons programme. Cowie said the holding company was used for legitimate business and he was not aware of illicit transactions. Mossack Fonseca, required by international banking standards to avoid
money laundering Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities (often known as dirty money) such as drug trafficking, sex work, terrorism, corruption, and embezzlement, and converting the funds i ...
or fraudster clients, is, like all banks, supposed to be particularly alert for signs of corruption with politically exposed persons (PEP), in other words, clients who either are or have close ties to government officials. However they somehow failed to turn up any red flags concerning Tareq Abbas even though he shares a family name with the president of Palestine, and sat on the board of directors of a company with four fellow directors the firm did deem PEP because of their ties to Palestinian politics. Yet Mossack Fonseca actually did and documented due diligence research, including a Google search.


Clients of Mossack Fonseca

Mossack Fonseca has managed more than 300,000 companies over the years. The number of active companies peaked at more than 80,000 in 2009. Over 210,000 companies in twenty-one jurisdictions figure in the leaks. More than half were incorporated in the
British Virgin Islands The British Virgin Islands (BVI), officially the Virgin Islands, are a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, to the east of Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands, US Virgin Islands and north-west ...
, with others in Panama, the Bahamas, the
Seychelles Seychelles (, ; ), officially the Republic of Seychelles (; Seychellois Creole: ), is an island country and archipelagic state consisting of 155 islands (as per the Constitution) in the Indian Ocean. Its capital and largest city, Victoria, ...
, Niue, and Samoa. Mossack Fonseca's clients came from more than 100 countries. Most of the corporate clients were from Hong Kong, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Panama, and Cyprus. Mossack Fonseca worked with more than 14,000 banks, law firms, incorporators, and others to set up companies, foundations, and trusts for their clients. Some 3,100 companies listed in the database appear to have ties to US offshore specialists, and 3,500 shareholders of offshore companies list US addresses. Mossack Fonseca has offices in Nevada and Wyoming. The leaked documents indicate that about US$2 trillion has passed through the firm's hands. Several of the holding companies that appear in the documents did business with sanctioned entities, such as arms merchants and relatives of dictators, during the time that the sanctions were in place. The firm provided services to a Seychelles company named Pangates International, which the US government believes supplied aviation fuel to the Syrian government during the current civil war, and continued to handle its paperwork and certify it as a company in good standing, despite sanctions, until August 2015. More than 500 banks registered nearly 15,600 shell companies with Mossack Fonseca, with
HSBC HSBC Holdings plc ( zh, t_hk=滙豐; initialism from its founding member The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is a British universal bank and financial services group headquartered in London, England, with historical and business li ...
and its affiliates accounting for more than 2,300 of the total. Dexia and J. Safra Sarasin of Luxembourg,
Credit Suisse Credit Suisse Group AG (, ) was a global Investment banking, investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland. According to UBS, eventually Credit Suisse was to be fully integrated into UBS. While the integration ...
from the Channel Islands and the Swiss UBS each requested at least 500 offshore companies for their clients. An
HSBC HSBC Holdings plc ( zh, t_hk=滙豐; initialism from its founding member The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is a British universal bank and financial services group headquartered in London, England, with historical and business li ...
spokesman said, "The allegations are historical, in some cases dating back 20 years, predating our significant, well-publicized reforms implemented over the last few years."


Responses by Mossack Fonseca

In response to queries from the ''
Miami Herald The ''Miami Herald'' is an American daily newspaper owned by McClatchy, The McClatchy Company and headquartered in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Founded in 1903, it is the fifth-largest newspaper in Florida, serving Miami-Dade, Broward County, Fl ...
'' and ICIJ, Mossack Fonseca issued a 2,900-word statement listing legal requirements that prevent using offshore companies for
tax avoidance Tax avoidance is the legal usage of the tax regime in a single territory to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable. A tax shelter is one type of tax avoidance, and tax havens are jurisdictions that facilitate reduced taxe ...
and total anonymity, such as FATF protocols which require identifying ultimate beneficial owners of all companies (including offshore companies) before opening any account or transacting any business. The ''
Miami Herald The ''Miami Herald'' is an American daily newspaper owned by McClatchy, The McClatchy Company and headquartered in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Founded in 1903, it is the fifth-largest newspaper in Florida, serving Miami-Dade, Broward County, Fl ...
'' printed the statement with an editor's note that said the statement "did not address any of the specific due diligence failings uncovered by reporters". On Monday, April 4, Mossack Fonseca released another statement:
The facts are these: while we may have been the victim of a data breach, nothing we've seen in this illegally obtained cache of documents suggests we've done anything illegal, and that's very much in keeping with the global reputation we've built over the past 40 years of doing business the right way.
Co-founder Ramón Fonseca Mora told CNN that the reports were false, full of inaccuracies and that parties "in many of the circumstances" cited by the ICIJ "are not and have never been clients of Mossack Fonseca". The firm provided longer statements to ICIJ. In its official statement April 6, Mossack Fonseca suggested that responsibility for any legal violations might lie with other institutions:
approximately 90% of our clientele is professional clients ... who act as intermediaries and are regulated in the
jurisdiction Jurisdiction (from Latin 'law' and 'speech' or 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, the concept of jurisdiction applies at multiple level ...
of their business. These clients are obliged to perform due diligence on their clients in accordance with the KYC and AML regulations to which they are subject.
In an interview with ''Bloomberg'', Jürgen Mossack said: "The cat's out of the bag, so now we have to deal with the aftermath." He said the leak was not an "inside job"—the company had been hacked by servers based abroad. It filed a complaint with the Panamanian attorney general's office. On April 7, 2016, Mossack resigned from Panama's Council on Foreign Relations ( Conarex), even though he was not officially serving at the time. His brother Peter Mossack still serves as honorary Consul of Panama, as he has since 2010. On May 5, 2016, Mossack Fonseca sent a cease and desist letter to the ICIJ in an attempt to stop the ICIJ from releasing the leaked documents from the Panama Papers scandal. Despite this, the ICIJ released the leaked documents on May 9, 2016. In March 2018, Mossack Fonseca announced it would close down due to "irreversible damage" to their image caused by the Panama Papers scandal. In October 2019, ''The Laundromat'', a movie based on the events of the Panama Papers was released on the streaming service
Netflix Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...
. Prior to this, Mossack and Fonseca issued a lawsuit in aim of preventing the release, citing defamation and potential damage to their rights of a fair trial by jury, should one begin. On July 17, 2019, the judge, based in
Connecticut Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...
, refused the injunction citing lack of jurisdiction, and ordered the case be transferred to
Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
,
California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
.


Responses in Panama

At 5:00 am on April 3, as the news first broke, Ramón Fonseca Mora told television channel TVN he "was not responsible nor he had been accused in any tribunal". He said the firm was the victim of a hack and that he had no responsibility for what clients did with the offshore companies that they purchased from Mossack Fonseca, which were legal under Panamanian law. Later that day, the Independent Movement (MOVIN) called for calm, and expressed hope that the Panamanian justice system would not allow the culprits to go with impunity.


Public officials

By April 8, the government understood that media reports were addressing tax evasion and not attacking Panama. The then-president Varela met on Wednesday, April 7, with CANDIF, a committee of representatives from different sectors of the Panamanian economy which includes the Chamber of Commerce, Chamber of Industry and Agriculture, the National Lawyers Association, the International Lawyers Association, the Banking Association and the Stock Exchange, and entered full crisis management mode. On the same day, he announced the creation of a new judiciary tribunal and a high-level commission led by Nobel Prize Laureate Joseph Stiglitz. There were accusations that foreign forces were attacking Panama because of Panama's "stable and robust economy". Isabel Saint Malo de Alvarado, then-Vice President of Panama, said in an
op-ed An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page," is a type of written prose commonly found in newspapers, magazines, and online publications. They usually represent a writer's strong and focused opinion on an issue of relevance to a targeted a ...
piece published April 21 in ''The Guardian'' that then-President Juan Carlos Varela and his administration have strengthened Panama's controls over
money laundering Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities (often known as dirty money) such as drug trafficking, sex work, terrorism, corruption, and embezzlement, and converting the funds i ...
in the twenty months they had been in power, and that "Panama is setting up an independent commission, co-chaired by the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, to evaluate our financial system, determine best practices, and recommend measures to strengthen global financial and legal transparency. We expect its findings within 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 learned that the Panamanian government would not commit to making their final report public. He said that he had always "assumed" that the final report would be transparent. On April 8, then-President Varela denounced France's proposal to return Panama to a list of countries that did not cooperate with information exchange. Minister of the Presidency Alvaro Alemán categorically denied that Panama is a tax haven, and said the country would not be a scapegoat. Alemán said that talks with the French ambassador to Panama had begun. On April 25, a meeting of the Panamanian and French finance ministers resulted in an agreement under which Panama would provide information to France about French nationals with taxable assets in the country. The Minister of Economy and Finance of Panama, Dulcidio de la Guardia, formerly an offshore specialist at Mossack Fonseca competitor Morgan & Morgan, said the legal but often "murky" niche of establishing offshore accounts, firms and trusts make up "less than half a percentage point" of Panama's GDP. He appeared to suggest that the publication of the papers was an attack on Panama because of the high level of economic growth that the country had shown. Eduardo Morgan of the Panamanian firm Morgan & Morgan accused the OECD of starting the scandal to avoid competition from Panama with the interests of other countries. The Panama Papers affect the image of Panama in an unfair manner and have come to light not as the result of an investigation, but of a hack, said Adolfo Linares, president of the Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture of Panama (Cciap). The Colegio Nacional de Abogados de Panama (CNA) urged the government to sue. Political analyst Mario Rognoni said that the world perceives Panama as a tax haven. The government of then-President Juan Carlos Varela might become implicated if he tries to cover up for those involved, Rognoni said. Economist Rolando Gordon said the affair hurts Panama, which has just emerged from the greylist of the FATF, and added that each country, especially Panama, must conduct investigations and determine whether illegal or improper acts were committed. Panama's Lawyers Movement called the Panama Papers leak "cyber bullying" and in a press conference condemned it as an attack on the 'Panama' brand. Fraguela Alfonso, its president, called it a direct attack on the country's financial system.
I invite all organized forces of the country to create a great crusade for the rescue of the country's image.
The law firm Rubio, Álvarez, Solís & Abrego also reacted and in a press release said that "In recent decades Panama has been in the most important financial and service centers of Latin America and the entire world. As a result, all kinds of attacks on our service system have been attempted." Offshore companies are legal, said Panamanian lawyer and former controller of the republic Alvin Weeden; illegality arises when they are used for money laundering, arms smuggling, terrorism, or tax evasion. On October 19, 2016, it became known that a government executive had spent 370 million US dollars in order to "clean" the country's image. On October 22, 2016, during a state visit to Germany, Varela told journalist Jenny Pérez, of
Deutsche Welle (; "German Wave"), commonly shortened to DW (), is a German state-funded television network, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the Federal Government of Germany. The service is available in 32 languages. DW's satellite tele ...
that there had been "progress" in transparency and many agreements to exchange tax information, and that
tax evasion Tax evasion or tax fraud is an illegal attempt to defeat the imposition of taxes by individuals, corporations, trusts, and others. Tax evasion often entails the deliberate misrepresentation of the taxpayer's affairs to the tax authorities to red ...
was a global problem. Asked about his ties with Ramón Fonseca Mora, managing partner of the firm Mossack Fonseca, he acknowledged that he is a friend.


Law enforcement

On April 4, 2016, the Attorney General's office announced that it would investigate Mossack Fonseca and the Panama papers. On April 12, the newly formed Second Specialized Prosecutor against Organized Crime searched the Panama City and Bella Vista offices of Mossack Fonseca for 27 hours. Following the search, the Attorney General's office stated that the purpose of the search was "to obtain documents relevant to the information published in news articles that establishes the possible use of the law firm in illegal activities". The search ended without measures against the law firm. On April 22 the same unit searched another Panama location and "secured a large amount of evidence". The Municipality of Regulation and Supervision of Financial Subjects initiated a review of Mossack Fonseca to determine whether it had followed tax law, specifically due diligence, customer knowledge, disclosure of the final beneficiary, and the reporting of suspicious transactions to Financial Analysis Unit (UAF) operations. Some firms had been monitored since late 2015, with special attention after the publication of the Panama Papers. Violation of Panamanian law carries penalties of $5,000 to $1 million or even suspension of the firm. The ICIJ investigation of Mossack Fonseca was reported to the Public Ministry. Samid Dan Sandoval, former candidate for mayor of Santiago de Veraguas (2014), filed legal action against the journalists and all those who had participated. He said the project name damaged the integrity, dignity and sovereignty of the country and that the consortium would have to assume legal responsibility for all damage caused to the Panamanian nation. A Change.org petition also requested the ICIJ stop using the name of Panama as in the Panama Papers. The request said the generally accepted name for the investigation "damage(d) the image" of Panama. Attorney General of Panama Kenia Isolda Porcell Diaz announced on January 24, 2017, that she was suspending the investigations against Mossack Fonseca because it filed an appeal for protection of constitutional rights before the First Superior Court of Justice of Panama and requested that he deliver all the original documents to issue a judgment. Mossack and Fonseca were detained on February 8, 2017, on money-laundering charges. They were initially refused bail because the court saw a flight risk, but were released on April 21, 2017 after a judge ruled they had cooperated with the investigation and ordered them each to pay $500,000 in bail. On June 28, 2024 Judge Baloísa Marquínez acquitted the 28 accused individuals. She explained that the evidence brought against Mossack and Fonseca was insufficient and the chain of evidence was not comprehensible.


Allegations, reactions, and investigations


Europe


Asia


North America


South America


Africa

Former South African president
Thabo Mbeki Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki (; born 18 June 1942) is a South African politician who served as the 2nd democratic president of South Africa from 14 June 1999 to 24 September 2008, when he resigned at the request of his party, the African National Cong ...
, head of the
African Union The African Union (AU) is a continental union of 55 member states located on the continent of Africa. The AU was announced in the Sirte Declaration in Sirte, Libya, on 9 September 1999, calling for the establishment of the African Union. The b ...
's panel on illicit financial flows, on April 9, 2016 called the leak "most welcome" and called on African nations to investigate the citizens of their nations who appear in the papers. His panel's 2015 report found that Africa loses $50 billion a year due to tax evasion and other illicit practices and its 50-year losses top a trillion dollars. Furthermore, he said, the
Seychelles Seychelles (, ; ), officially the Republic of Seychelles (; Seychellois Creole: ), is an island country and archipelagic state consisting of 155 islands (as per the Constitution) in the Indian Ocean. Its capital and largest city, Victoria, ...
, an African nation, is the fourth most mentioned tax haven in the documents.


Oceania


Australia

On April 22, 2016, Australia said it would create a public register showing the beneficial, or actual, owners of shell companies, as part of an effort to stamp out tax avoidance by multinational corporations. The Australian Taxation Office has announced that it is investigating 800 individual Australian taxpayers on the Mossack Fonseca list of clients and that some of the cases may be referred to the country's Serious Financial Crime Task Force. Eighty names match to an organized crime intelligence database. Leaked documents examined by the ABC "pierced the veil of anonymous shell companies" and linked a Sydney businessman and a Brisbane geologist to mining deals in North Korea. "Rather than applying sanctions, the Australian Government and the ASX seem to have allowed a coach and horses to be ridden through them by the people involved in forming this relationship, corporate relationship with one of the primary arms manufacturers in North Korea," said Thomas Clark of the
University of Technology Sydney The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) is a public university, public research university located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The university was founded in its current form in 1988, though its origins as a Institute of technology, ...
. David Sutton was director of AAT Corporation and EHG Corporation when they held mineral licenses in North Korea and did business with Korean Natural Resources Development and Investment Corporation, which is under
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
sanctions, and North Korea's "primary arms dealer and main exporter of goods and equipment related to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons, responsible for approximately half of the arms exported by North Korea." The geologist, Louis Schurmann, said British billionaire Kevin Leech was key to putting the deal together. Leaked documents also reveal the involvement of another Briton, Gibraltar-based John Lister. According to ABC, the
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) is the department of the Australian government responsible for foreign policy and international relations, development aid (under the name Australian Aid), consular services, overseas trad ...
was aware of these mining deals, which had also been brought up in the
Australian Senate The Senate is the upper house of the Bicameralism, bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the Australian House of Representatives, House of Representatives. The powers, role and composition of the Senate are set out in Chap ...
, but nobody ever referred the matter to the Australian Federal Police. On May 12, 2016, the names of former
Prime Minister of Australia The prime minister of Australia is the head of government of the Commonwealth of Australia. The prime minister is the chair of the Cabinet of Australia and thus the head of the Australian Government, federal executive government. Under the pr ...
Malcolm Turnbull, and former
Premier of New South Wales The premier of New South Wales is the head of government in the state of New South Wales, Australia. The Government of New South Wales follows the Westminster system, Westminster Parliamentary System, with a Parliament of New South Wales actin ...
Neville Wran Neville Kenneth Wran, (11 October 1926 – 20 April 2014) was an Australian politician who was the Premier of New South Wales from 1976 to 1986. He was the national president of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) from 1980 to 1986 and chairman o ...
, were both found in the Panama Papers, due to the pair's former directorship of the Mossack Fonseca-incorporated company ''Star Technology Systems Limited''. Turnbull and Wran resigned from these positions in 1995, and the Prime Minister has denied any impropriety, stating "had tar Technologymade any profits—which it did not regrettably—it certainly would have paid tax in Australia."


Cook Islands

Media initially reported that the Panama Papers lists 500 entities created under the jurisdiction of the Cook Islands, population 10,000, almost as many as Singapore, whose population is 5.7 million. After the Winebox affair, the Cook Islands gave New Zealand jurisdiction over tax matters.


New Zealand

New Zealand's Inland Revenue Department said that they were working to obtain details of people who had tax residence in the country who might have been involved in arrangements facilitated by Mossack Fonseca. Gerard Ryle, director of the ICIJ, told Radio New Zealand on April 8, 2016, that New Zealand is a well-known tax haven and a "nice front for criminals". New Zealand provides overseas investors with foreign trusts and look-through companies. New Zealand government policy is not to request disclosure of the identity of either the settlor or the beneficiaries of the trust, making the ownership secret, as well as concealing the assets from the trust-holder's home jurisdictions. These trusts are not taxed in New Zealand. These trusts can then be used to acquire and own New Zealand registered companies, which become a vehicle by which the trust owners can exercise day-to-day control over their assets. These New Zealand-registered companies can be designed not to make a profit using loans from tax havens and other profit-shifting techniques: the result being tax free income with the general respectability that has typically been associated with companies registered in New Zealand. Prime Minister John Key responded on May 7 to John Doe's remark that he had been "curiously quiet" about tax evasion in the
Cook Islands The Cook Islands is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It consists of 15 islands whose total land area is approximately . The Cook Islands' Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) covers of ocean. Avarua is its ...
by saying that the whistleblower was confused and probably European. While the Cook Islands use New Zealand currency, "I have as much responsibility for tax in the Cook Islands as I do for taxing Russia." New Zealand does represent the Cook Islands on defence and foreign policy, but not taxation, he said. In distancing New Zealand from the Cook Islands, Key ignored the close ties between the two countries and the crucial role New Zealand had in setting up the Cook Island taxation system.


Niue

Mossack Fonseca approached Niue in 1996 and offered to help set up a tax haven on the tiny South Sea island. The law firm drafted the necessary legislation, permitting offshore companies to operate in total secrecy. They took care of all the paperwork, the island got a modest fee for each filing, and it seemed like quite a deal, even if they were required by law now to provide all banking paperwork in Russian and Chinese as well as English. Soon the filings almost covered the island's year budget. The US government however made official noises in 2001 about laundering criminal proceeds and
Chase Bank JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., Trade name, doing business as Chase, is an American National bank (United States), national bank headquartered in New York City that constitutes the retail banking, consumer and commercial bank, commercial banking su ...
blacklisted the island and Bank of New York followed suit. This caused inconvenience to the population so they let their contract with Mossack Fonseca expire and many of the privacy-seekers on the banking world moved on. Some did stay however, apparently; the Panama Papers database lists nearly 10,000 companies and trusts set up on Niue, population 1200.


Samoa

Many recently created shell companies were set up in Samoa, perhaps after Niue revised its tax laws. The Panama Papers database lists more than 13,000 companies and trusts set up there. Samoa has a population of roughly 200,000.


International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) investigation

On May 27, 2015, the US Department of Justice indicted a number of companies and individuals for
conspiracy A conspiracy, also known as a plot, ploy, or scheme, is a secret plan or agreement between people (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder, treason, or corruption, especially with a political motivat ...
,
corruption Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense that is undertaken by a person or an organization that is entrusted in a position of authority to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's gain. Corruption may involve activities ...
and
racketeering Racketeering is a type of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercion, coercive, fraud, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a "racket") to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit. ...
in connection with bribes and kickbacks paid to obtain media and marketing rights for
FIFA The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (), more commonly known by its acronym FIFA ( ), is the international self-regulatory governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal. It was founded on 21 May 1904 to o ...
tournaments. Some immediately entered guilty pleas. Among those indicted were Jeffrey Webb and Jack Warner, the current and former presidents of
CONCACAF The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football, abbreviated as CONCACAF ( ; typeset for branding purposes since 2018 as Concacaf), is one of FIFA's six continental governing bodies for association football. Its 4 ...
, the continental confederation under FIFA headquartered in the United States. They were charged with racketeering and
bribery Bribery is the corrupt solicitation, payment, or Offer and acceptance, acceptance of a private favor (a bribe) in exchange for official action. The purpose of a bribe is to influence the actions of the recipient, a person in charge of an official ...
offenses. Others were US and South American sports marketing executives who paid and agreed to pay well over $150 million in bribes and kickbacks. On December 12, 2014, José Hawilla, the owner and founder of the Traffic Group, the Brazilian sports marketing conglomerate, waived indictment and pleaded guilty to a four-count information charging him with racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Hawilla also agreed to forfeit over $151 million, $25 million of which was paid at the time of his plea. Torneos & Traffic (T&T) is a subsidiary of Fox International Channels since 2005 (with investments since 2002) and is the same company involved in corrupt practices in the acquisition of rights to major South American soccer tournaments. Many individuals mentioned in the Panama Papers are connected with the world governing body of association football,
FIFA The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (), more commonly known by its acronym FIFA ( ), is the international self-regulatory governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal. It was founded on 21 May 1904 to o ...
, including the former president of
CONMEBOL CONMEBOL ( ) or CSF (; ; ), is the continental governing body of football in South America and it is one of FIFA's six continental confederations. The oldest continental confederation in the world, its headquarters are located in Luque, Parag ...
Eugenio Figueredo; former President of UEFA Michel Platini; former secretary general of FIFA Jérôme Valcke; Argentine player for Barcelona
Lionel Messi Lionel Andrés "Leo" Messi (; born 24 June 1987) is an Argentine professional Association football, footballer who plays as a forward (association football), forward for and Captain (association football), captains both Major League Soccer ...
; and, from Italy, the head manager of Metro, Antonio Guglielmi. The leak also revealed an extensive
conflict of interest A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple wikt:interest#Noun, interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates t ...
between a member of the FIFA Ethics Committee and former FIFA vice president Eugenio Figueredo. Swiss police searched the offices of
UEFA The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; ; ) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs football, futsal and beach soccer, beach football in Europe and the List of transcontinental countries#A ...
, European football's governing body, after the naming of former secretary-general
Gianni Infantino Giovanni Vincenzo Infantino (); (born 23 March 1970) is a Swiss-Italian Association football, football Administrator (business), administrator and the president of the FIFA, Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) since 26 Febr ...
as president of FIFA. He had signed a television deal while he was at UEFA with a company called Cross Trading, which the
FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...
has since accused of bribery. The contract emerged among the leaked documents. Infantino has denied wrongdoing.


Recovered money

In April 2019, the ICIJ and European newspapers reported that the global tally of recovered sums from litigation, fines and back taxes exceeded $1.2 billion. Great Britain recovered the largest amount ($253 million), followed by Denmark ($237 million), Germany ($183 million), Spain ($164 million), France ($136 million) and Australia ($93 million). Colombia recovered $89 million, the highest amount for any South or Central American country. , investigations are ongoing in Austria, Canada and Switzerland, and many other countries are conducting inspections of companies and private individuals revealed in the report.


See also

* Pumpkin Papers (1948) * Pentagon Papers (1971) * Swiss Leaks (2015) * Bahamas Leaks (2016) * Paradise Papers (2017) * Afghanistan Papers (2019) * Mauritius Leaks (2019) * Dubai Uncovered (2020) * FinCEN Files (2020) * Pandora Papers (2021) * Suisse secrets (2022) * Daphne Caruana Galizia * Distributed Denial of Secrets * ''The Laundromat'' (2019 film) * ''Papers'' (2025 film)


Notes


References


Further reading

*


External links


Searchable full-text database
of Panama Papers and related leaks

by Panama Papers leaker
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