The web of
hidden money and offshore shell companies documented in the Panama Papers
reveals an alternate financial universe that links a single law firm with a
globe-spanning rogue's gallery of politicians, moguls, criminals and shady
agents.
While much
attention has focused on links to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose name
doesn't appear in the documents, the leaked files — reported by The
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists — also expose new details
about far-flung capers dating back decades.
The cases
have little in common other than the involvement of the law firm,Mossack Fonseca.
The connections are sometimes tangential, and the firm insists it did nothing
illegal.
Ramon
Fonseca, a co-founder of Mossack Fonseca, said the people connected to the
companies were not the law firm's clients.
"They
are clients of bank intermediaries, that bought one of our incorporated
companies, sold it, and those people used it for who knows what," Fonseca
told Panamanian television.
But the
documents illustrate the breadth of the underground economic network exploited
by the extravagantly wealthy.
Here are a
few examples:
Britain's 'Crime of the Century'
In November
1983, a team of masked robbers committed one of the most brazen and lucrative
heists in modern history, stealing three tons of gold — worth about over $100
million today — two boxes of diamonds and stacks of cash from a Brink's-Mat
warehouse near London's Heathrow Airport. The bandits were caught, but most of
the loot was never recovered. The proceeds were allegedly laundered to cover
conspirators' tracks.
That's where
the Panama Papers come in. The leaked documents show that the law firm Mossack
Fonseca and one of its founders, Jurgen Mossack, helped protect a shell company
belonging to one of the men who handled the Brink's-Mat haul, ICIJ member BBC
reported.
Mossack
Fonseca set up a company called Feberion Inc. and installed Mossack as a
nominal director, with no actual say in its operations. At the time, Mossack
wrote in a memo that the company was "apparently involved in the
management of money from the famous theft from Brink's Mat," according to
the ICIJ. Nevertheless, Mossack Fonseca blocked authorities from seizing the
company, the Panama Papers show. Only after the launderer, Gordon Parry, was
imprisoned did the firm cut ties to the Feberion, the ICIJ reported.
Watergate
As his law
firm tried to protect Feberion from Brink's-Mat investigators, Jurgen Mossack
stepped down from the company's board of directors, with plans for his
replacement to be named by another Panama-based company, this one run by an
American named Gilbert R.J. Straub, the ICIJ reported.
The ICIJ
interviewed a former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent who said he
investigated Straub in an unrelated money-laundering case. The former agent,
Robert Mazur, told the consortium that while he was working undercover, Straub
boasted of illegally funneling $50,000 to pay the burglars who broke into the
Democratic National Committee's offices at the Watergate complex in Washington
in June 1972. The infamous crime sparked a scandal that forced President
Richard Nixon to resign.
Miami's luxury real estate
Authorities
have long suspected that foreign criminals hide ill-gotten gains by secretly
buying high-priced homes in America, including the booming Miami skyline. The
Panama Papers provided potential evidence: documents showing that Paulo Octávio
Alves Pereira, a Brazilian politician under indictment for corruption, was the
owner of an offshore company, formed with help from Mossack Fonseca, that
bought a $3 million oceanfront condominium in 2011.
The Miami
Herald, which is part of the ICIJ, reported that the leaked documents also
revealed 18 other foreign nationals — including eight linked to crimes in their
home countries — who'd created shell companies in order to buy luxury Miami
real estate. The newspaper stressed that the documents did not contain proof
that any dirty money was used to buy the homes.
Fugitive drug kingpin
Rafael Caro
Quintero, once one of Mexico's most powerful drug lords, was convicted in 1989
of the torture and murder of U.S. DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena.
When authorities seized his property, the holdings included an estate in Costa
Rica owned by an offshore company set up by Mossack Fonseca, according to the
ICIJ.
Costa Rican
authorities asked Mossack Fonseca for help, according to the Australian
Financial Review, a member of the consortium. The law firm declined, saying
they could do nothing without the help of the company's shareholders. The firm
told authorities that they didn't know who those shareholders were. But in an
email exchange included in the Panama Papers leak, a Mossack Fonseca lawyer
acknowledged that Caro Quintero was the assumed owner.
Jurgan
Mossack, one of three directors listed on the company's paperwork, wrote about
his fear of Caro Quinero's power. Notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar paled
in comparison to Quintero, he said. "I don't want to be among those
Quintero visits after jail," Mossack wrote, according to the AFR.
Caro
Quintano did leave prison — after serving 28 years of a 40-year sentence. In
2013, an appeals court overturned his sentence on a procedural issue. Now under
indictment in the United States, he remains one of the DEA's most wanted
fugitives.
Sunken ferry
In 2005, a
boat loaded with elderly tourists sank in Lake George in upstate New York,
killing 20. The survivors sued the ferry company, which, it turned out, had
bought a bogus insurance policy from con men. An investigation led to an
accountant in St. Kitts, who'd helped the swindlers launder their profits — and
had served as a on-paper-only director for 30 shell companies created by
Mossack Fonseca, according to the ICIJ. The accountant, Malchus Irvin
Boncamper,pleaded guilty in 2011.
Mossack
Fonseca, meanwhile, rushed to replace Boncamper on the companies' leadership,
and backdated the records to make it look like it had been done years earlier,
the ICIJ reported.
Know more
about Keith Knutsson:
No comments:
Post a Comment