The paper is one of the media outlets investigating the leaked documents from a Panama-based law firm.
Advertisement
Friday’s raid was personally supervised by Attorney General Douglas Melendez.
Panama is listed by the European Union as a country that is not cooperative on tax issues, Associated Press reported.
Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca – from where The Panama Papers data leak occurred – has been figuring in confidential reports of the Income-Tax (Investigation) Headquarters in New Delhi since as early as 2007. Managers of the law firm’s El Salvador bureau contend they removed the sign because they were moving to a new office location.
Panama had at first warned it could retaliate, but the president said on Friday he prefers a diplomatic solution and would not seek “retorsion measures”.
As the Panama Papers show, in some cases these opaque shell companies may have been used to hide wealth from tax collectors, or evade financial sanctions.
Mr Fonseca, who was a senior government official in Panama until March, said “thousands of lawyers around the world” were doing the same “completely legal” work as Mossack Fonseca, which specialises in setting up offshore companies.
This story will surely continue to develop as more actors become known for their use of worldwide tax havens.
Documents and equipment were seized in the raid, the official said on Twitter. The political upheaval came three days after Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, 41, stepped aside following disclosure of his offshore investments in the Panama Papers.
While offshore trusts are not illegal under British law, the revelation are seen as embarrassing for the Prime minister as he had called complex tax avoidance schemes as “morally wrong”.
France and Panama plan to hold a finance minister meeting amid tensions sparked by the Panama Papers leak allegations, Panama’s government said in a statement.
“They are trying to destabilize us from within in order to make us more compliant”, he said Thursday at a forum in St. Petersburg.
It said Toyin Saraki “was a mere business front” for her husband, senate president Bukola Saraki.
A global expose by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and over 100 global media organisations involving millions of leaked documents of Mossack Fonseca reveal how it allegedly facilitated the rich and the powerful to open offshore companies. Federal prosecutors may also seek to establish jurisdiction over foreign persons to the extent that activities involved USA intermediaries or transactions cleared in United States dollars through correspondent accounts.
Advertisement
Klaus Mangold, a friend of Tiriac’s and board member at Daimler from 1995 to 2003, is on Puma Foundation’s board.
