The Icelandic Prime Minister has resigned, even as the world seeks replies from the named, defaulting parties.
Icelandic PM Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson
As much of the world reveled the beginning of a peaceful Sunday, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published a breakthrough set of leaked financial documents, more famously dubbed as the Panama Papers. An international coalition of media outlets, the ICIJ revealed online a set of 11-million strong documents related to Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, a firm that the ICIJ claims to help the setting up of foreign accounts and clandestine shell companies for international financial powers, while helping them evade tax and launder money. Reportedly, the firm is also unaware of a majority of the identities of its clients, especially its establishments in Indonesia, widely known to be a tax haven. The document, provided and published by 76 countries has been under scrutiny ever since.
Said the Director of the ICIJ, Gerard Ryle, “These documents, if nothing else, raise an awful lot of questions.”
The groundbreaking document reveals the names of twelve current and former world leaders, 128 politicians and public workers as well as a myriad of other public personalities. President Vladimir Putin of Russia, although not having been found in direct involvement, has several of his close aides under the scanner, while the President if Iceland, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and President Mauricio Macri of Argentina are also accused of having undisclosed holdings in offshore companies. A senior member of the international FIFA organization has also found his name in the text.
However, the Kremlin has refuted the claims by calling then a ‘series of fibs’. At the same time, the FIFA ethics committee has launched an inquiry into its accused member, Uruguayan lawyer Juan Pedro Damiani’s holdings, a man who was known to have dealt with companiesowned by former FIFA official Eugenio Figueredo, who is already being investigated under charges of corruption. The legal firm connected to this uproar, J.P. Damiani, stated,” Our firm did not maintain any business relationship or conduct business with or for Mr. Eugenio Figueredo, nor for any of the other people mentioned in the newspaper article.” The spokesperson of the Argentenian President claimed that the head of the state had no links with the firm in which he was said to have holdings.
The Prime Minister of Iceland, having consistently denied the documents’ credibility for the last two days by saying that the offshore company , Wintris Inc., was created to hold his wife’s many assets to avoid conflicts withing Iceland, has put in his papers to the office on Tuesday, buckling under mounting pressure from the Icelandic population. The people of Iceland had taken to the streets of Reykjavik and they demanded a change of government after the Panama Papers revelation. The Deputy Chair of the PM’s Progressive Party was slated to take over temporarily and to negotiate with the Finance Minister for the next course of action. However, analysts added that the PM was not incorrect in not disclosing Wintris Inc., since the state policy required only those assets to be disclosed which were ‘commercially active’. “It’s been clear since before I began participating in politics that my wife had a considerable amount of money,” he wrote on Monday.” Some people find that in itself very negative. I can’t do much about that because I’m neither going to divorce my wife nor demand that she relinquish her family inheritance. My political participation and the policies I have fought for have resulted in her wealth being decreased.”
Amitabh Bacchan
Meanwhile, Indian Bollywood veteran Mr. Amitabh Bachchan, has denied his directorship of all the four British Virgin Island and Bahamas-based companis that he was reportedly made director of in 1993 according to the Panama Papers. Said he, “I have never been a director of any of the… stated companies. It is possible that my name has been misused. I have paid all my taxes including on monies spent by me overseas have been in compliance with law, including remittances through Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS), after paying Indian taxes. In any event the news report in Indian Express does not even suggest any illegality on my part.” Another Bollywood star, Mrs. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and daughter-in-law of Amitabh Bachchan, has, through her media adviser, rubbished the credibility of the documents. They are two out of 500 Indians named in the documents.
The firm in question, Mossack Fonseca, claimed that much of the information included in the leaked documents is false, inaccurate and names parties that have never been clients of the firm. A statement put forth by the firm spokesperson said,” Our industry is not particularly well understood by the public, and unfortunately this series of articles will only serve to deepen that confusion. The facts are these: while we may have been the victim of a data breach, nothing we’ve seen in this illegally obtained cache of documents suggests we’ve done anything illegal, and that’s very much in keeping with the global reputation we’ve built over the past 40 years of doing business the right way, right here in Panama. Obviously, no one likes to have their property stolen, and we intend to do whatever we can to ensure the guilty parties are brought to justice. But in the meantime, our plan is to continue to serve our clients, stand behind our people, and support the local communities in which we have the privilege to work all over the world, just as we’ve done for nearly four decades.”
Aishwarya Rai Bacchan
Until late on Monday, it remained unclear who or what the source of this leak was. The German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung received the documents from an anonymous source on Sunday, and it further shared the data with the ICIJ. The source claimed to be in danger if he/she came to be known as the source of the leak and that he/she shared the data because of his/her worry about its implications on the financial world.
The Director of ICIJ said that,” Of course, the documents started as a trickle but turned into a flood, a torrent in the end.”
As of now, no organizations, government bodies or international forums have been able to verify the data and investigative journalists are seeking comment from the named parties, a massive group of people spread across several continents including Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa and the Americas. Britain, France, Australia and Mexico have assured their people of thorough investigations to discover and bring to justice all the cases of tax evasion.
On the other hand, the accused parties and other involved parties are trying to find ways to cope with possible consequences that are bound to arise out of the broken promise to secrecy, used as a USP by all offshore tax havens. “The offshore world really only has one product and that is secrecy and when you take away that product they don’t have anything for sale. For years and years they’ve been getting away with this secrecy and we’re also seeing in the documents that every time the governments and the authorities try to crack down, they’re finding new ways to get around those obstacles or barriers,” commented Gerard Ryle.
Source: BBC, CNN
Tags: ICIJ Mossack Fonseca Panama Panama Papers Panama Papers reveal
