Panama raids offices of Mossack Fonseca law firm
Reuters:Panama’s attorney general late on Tuesday raided the offices of the Mossack Fonseca law firm to search for any evidence of illegal activities, authorities said in a statement.
The Panama-based law firm is at the center of the “Panama Papers” leaks scandal that has embarrassed several world leaders and shone a spotlight on the shadowy world of offshore companies.
The national police, in an earlier statement, said they were searching for documentation that “would establish the possible use of the firm for illicit activities.” The firm has been accused of tax evasion and fraud.
Police offers and patrol cars began gathering around the company’s building in the afternoon under the command of prosecutor Javier Caravallo, who specializes in organized crime and money laundering.
Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in setting up offshore companies, did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
Earlier, founding partner Ramon Fonseca said the company had broken no laws, destroyed no documents, and all its operations were legal.
Governments across the world have begun investigating possible financial wrongdoing by the rich and powerful after the leak of more than 11.5 million documents, dubbed the Panama Papers, from the law firm that span four decades.
The papers have revealed financial arrangements of prominent figures, including friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of the prime ministers of Britain and Pakistan and of China’s President Xi Jinping, and the president of Ukraine.
There are more details. From Joseph FITSANAKIS of IntelNews in part:
The Süddeutsche Zeitung said on Monday that senior intelligence officials from Rwanda and Colombia are listed as Mossack Fonseca customers, but did not report the names of the individuals. It did, however, single out the late Sheikh Kamal Adham, who was director of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Directorate in the 1960s and 1970s. During his 14-year directorship of the GID, the agency became a leading intermediary between the CIA and Arab intelligence agencies, notably those of Egypt and Iraq. Sheikh Adham was also a personal friend of CIA Director George Bush, who was later elected US president.
According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Sheikh Adham is one of many individuals with close CIA links whose names appear in the Panama Papers. Another is Farhad Azima, an Iranian-born American businessman, who is rumored to have leased aircraft to the CIA in the 1980s. The American intelligence agency is said to have used the aircraft, which belonged to Azima’s Kansas City, Missouri-headquartered Global International Airways, to transport weapons to Iran. The secret transfers were part of what later became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, in which US officials secretly sold weapons to Iran in return for the release of American hostages held by Iran-linked groups in the Middle East. The funds acquired from these weapons sales were then secretly funneled to the Contras, a medley of anti-communist paramilitary groups fighting the Sandinista-led government of Nicaragua.
