In a press conference, Attorney General Douglas Melendez said officials became suspicious after Mossack Fonseca removed the sign from its office door late on Thursday evening.
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The attorney general also told reporters “we are going to raid neighboring offices because we have information there are more documents or computers”.
Melendez later told the media that seven employees were queried and 20 computers had been seized, but no detention was made. As Sara Hemrajani reports, offshore companies incorporated in offices in China and Hong Kong make up 29 percent of the law firm’s active companies worldwide.
The offshore companies of Mossack Fonseca’s Salvadoran clients were used for transactions of hundreds of thousands of dollars, including to buy property in El Salvador “all under the radar of local authorities”, El Faro, an online newspaper, reported.
“At this moment we cannot speak about [any] crimes; all we can do at this moment is our job”, he said, adding the government would analyze all the confiscated information and examine its financial, accounting and legal aspects.
ICIJ hasn’t released all its names yet; however, here are some Latinos who are allegedly tangled up in the Panama Papers scandal.Among those named for their offshore dealings are relatives of President Xi Jinping and close associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and Barcelona striker Lionel Messi.
The paper is one of the media outlets investigating the leaked documents from a Panama-based law firm.
The Geneva prosecutor’s office says it has opened an investigation in connection with revelations from the so-called Panama Papers.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said every bit of the expose that pointed toward offshore companies set up by more than 500 Indians will be probed and that people with illegal money stashed overseas “won’t get to sleep” at night now.
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Documents published by investigative journalists at Rise Project this week reveal that Tiriac in 2009 used Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca to transfer the control of his assets from an offshore firm registered in the British Virgin Islands to a private foundation registered in Panama, Puma Foundation.
