Official sources said a plan of action was charted by the agencies today as part of which the Financial Intelligence Unit and the Income Tax department and FT and TR (under CBDT) will approach the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and Panama to obtain more details on the Indian perspective.
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Grahammer said in a statement that “media prejudgment” prompted him to resign, but that both he and the bank had acted according within the law.
The uproar has brought down the prime minister of Iceland and raised questions about the presidents of Argentina and Ukraine, senior Chinese politicians, and the circle of friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The ICIJ reports claim that Mossack Fonseca’s clients included at least 33 people and companies blacklisted by the US government because of links to drug trafficking and terrorism.
The documents relate to Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which helps create shell companies for the world’s rich and famous.
The European Union’s top taxation commissioner is calling on Panama to engage in talks on improving transparency so that it might eventually be taken off a list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions.
But Varela defended his country against what he called a “media attack” by wealthy nations that he says are ignoring their own deficiencies and unfairly stigmatizing Panama.
Europe is also home to countries that provide banking secrecy that could provide haven from taxes, such as Luxembourg, Switzerland and Andorra.
Fonseca said his firm creates about 20,000 shell companies annually but also rejects about 70 to 80 clients every year due to conflicts that arise during due diligence.
“We’re not flawless and some surely escape by”, he said.
The cache of 11.5 million Mossack Fonseca documents reveals how more than 500 banks worldwide were responsible for registering almost 15,600 offshore companies offering anonymity to their beneficial owners.
Responding to readers’ queries about the absence of prominent German or American politicians in the reports, Sueddeutsche Zeitung said such names haven’t yet been found in the documents.
But there is another possible reason that Americans are not so visible in the Panama Papers.
Also on Thursday, an Argentine prosecutor asked a judge to authorize an investigation into President Mauricio Macri’s role in offshore companies.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority said banks and other financial firms have until next week to carry out urgent reviews of whether they are linked to the law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers data leak, the Financial Times reported.
Montezemolo said at a UniCredit bank board meeting on Thursday that a check of his records indicated that references to him in a database of leaked off-shore accounts were related to “proposals by my financial consultants about investments that were never made”.
Putin described the allegations as part of the U.S.-led disinformation campaign waged against Russian Federation in order to weaken its government.
“We do not yet know how much of this activity was illegal, but much of it is certainly, first, true and, second, certainly immoral, unethical and in one word unacceptable”, he said.
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Associated Press writer Juan Zamorano reported this story in Panama City and AP writer Joshua Goodman reported from Bogota, Colombia.
