[NYTIMES] The Panamanian authorities have raided the offices of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the center of the vast leak of documents this month that exposed the global use of offshore tax shelters, and spent at least 16 hours combing through the company’s files looking for evidence of possible "illegal activities," officials said on Wednesday.
| The crime isn't hiding money: it's making powerful people look bad... |
The search at the company’s headquarters in Panama City, which was led by an organized crime unit from the attorney general’s office, began Tuesday afternoon and lasted until Wednesday morning. Other groups of Sherlocks also searched subsidiaries of the firm in Panama and a Panamanian telephone company’s data support center, officials said.
The disclosure of about 11.5 million documents from the firm, which specializes in setting up offshore accounts, laid bare the elaborate system of shell companies that the world’s wealthy and powerful use to stash their money, often in an effort to minimize or avoid tax payments.
The revelations have spurred criminal investigations around the world, brought pressure on senior politicians in numerous countries and led to the resignation of the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson. |