A group of more than 100 news organizations around the world – coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists – published stories Sunday about the inner workings of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which helps politicians, businessmen, athletes and celebrities create offshore accounts for untraceable funds.
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Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm has been estimated to set up more than 240,000 offshore companies for clients around the globe and denies any wrongdoing.
But the law firm and the government have stressed that offshore companies are not, in themselves, illegal, and that Mossack Fonseca was not responsible for what its clients used them for.
“The facts are these: while we may have been the victim of a data breach, nothing in this illegally obtained cache of documents suggests we’ve done anything wrong or illegal, and that’s very much in keeping with the global reputation we’ve worked hard to build over the past 40 years of doing business the right way”.Mr Corbyn will insist there cannot be “one set of rules for the wealthy elite and another for the rest of us”, adding that “the richest must pay their way”.
Big banks and other financial companies in the United Kingdom have been given a little over a week to disclose any links with Mossack Fonseca to the country’s financial regulator. “This is a hack”.
In a statement, the FCA said: “The FCA has written to a number of firms about this issue, including those on our Systematic Anti-Money Laundering Programme, and we are working closely with a number of other agencies who are also looking at this”.
“The associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin” are also identified for allegedly having operated shell firms. “What matters is knowing if these holdings in Panama, with Spanish shareholders or owners, are fulfilling their fiscal obligations”, Spanish Justice Minister Rafael Catala said earlier on Monday when asked about the case.
“The Panama Papers include approximately 11.5 million documents – more than the combined total of the Wikileaks Cablegate, Offshore Leaks, Lux Leaks, and Swiss Leaks”, SZ said.
“Swift progress on this was important before the Panama Papers”, the former French economy minister said.
Pascal Saint-Amans, head of tax policy at the OECD, said the leaks showed that Panama was among the world’s shadiest tax havens.
On Tuesday, Iceland’s prime minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, resigned, becoming the first casualty of the leak.
Australia, France and the Netherlands have announced investigations, while Canada has requested a copy of the papers for its own probe.
Beijing refused to respond to “groundless accusations” that eight current or former members of the ruling party’s most powerful body concealed their fortunes through offshore havens, as well as relatives of Xi, who has overseen a much-publicised anti-corruption drive. Germany’s finance ministry said the country would “pick up the ball” and start an investigation into major German banks that have been named in the leaks.
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Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has called for an investigation conducted by HM Revenue and Customs “about the amount of money of all people that have invested in these shell companies or put money into tax havens and to calculate what tax they should have paid over the years”.
