Even though the practice is generally legal, such financial arrangements can be misused for committing illegal practices, such as evading tax or money laundering.
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The Panama document dump, said to be the largest such hack in history, indicates the vast scope of the offshore tax evasion enterprise. Iceland Prime Minister Sigmundur Davio Gunnlaugsson, involved through his wife, is the first casualty of the affair; he resigned Tuesday under immediate public pressure.
“The only crime that has been proven is the hack”, he told Reuters.
“We rule out an inside job”. This is not a leak.
The Panama Papers have implicated a diverse range of figures, including Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan and Hong Kong-born action movie star Jackie Chan, who has a least six companies managed through Mossack Fonseca, the ICIJ says. We have a theory and we are following it…
He said his company had a staff of around 500, 300 of which work in Panama, but declined to comment on his law firm’s structure or franchises in other parts of the world.
He said the data leak was journalistic activism and sensationalism. “No one is talking about that”.
Ramon Fonseca, however, believes that isn’t the real story.
The business in question, Essar Company Inc, was managed by a company in Geneva, however, the lawyers for the Duchess contacted Mossack Fonseca to ask how the company was structured.
Miracle made a plea agreement in which he admitted he owed $326,650 in back taxes, under-reported his income by almost $500,000 and transferred more than $500,000 from the company accounts to his personal bank accounts for his own use.
Fonseca called the Panama Papers a “witch hunt”.
People and institutions from 200 countries and territories are named in the documents.
“Without a doubt if this happened to a company in DE nothing would happen, but because it’s Panama it’s the front page of the world’s newspapers”.
Mossack Fonseca stress that they have operated beyond reproach for 40 years, and have never been criminally charged with any offence.
The massive leak has prompted global investigations into suspected illegal activities by the world’s wealthy and powerful.
However, the president’s close relationship with Fonseca will bring doubts about his pledge of transparency-Fonseca had previously served in Varela’s cabinet as a special adviser.
They included links to 12 current or former heads of state, including dictators accused of looting their own countries, and more than 60 relatives and associates of heads of state and other politicians.
For now, here’s one way to understand the “Panama Papers”: By the numbers.
Although the Canadian company has always been dissolved, a phone number for Mossack Fonseca listed on online directories remains active.
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“We expect to have elections this autumn”, Johanssonn told reporters, insisting that the coalition would continue to run the country’s affairs despite thousands of protesters calling for the whole government’s resignation.
