What is the Panama Paper Leak?
It is a huge data leak from a law firm in Panama suggesting it hid billions of dollars in assets of global politicians, sports stars and entertainers.
What is Mossack Fonseca?
It is a Panama-based law firm whose services include incorporating companies in offshore jurisdictions such as the British Virgin Islands. It administers offshore firms for a yearly fee. Mossack Fonseca is the world’s fourth biggest provider of offshore services. It has acted for more than 300,000 companies.
How big is the leak?
The leak is massive. The Panama Paper leak is bigger than the WikiLeaks of 2010, where 1.7 gigabytes of data was leaked. There are 11.5m documents and 2.6 terabytes of information drawn from Mossack Fonseca’s internal database.
Is using offshore structures illegal?
Using offshore structures is legal. Business people put their assets offshore to save them from “raids” by criminals. People also use offshore for reasons of inheritance and estate planning. However, many people take illegal advantage of anonymous company structures.
Who are the big names allegedly involved?
So far, aides close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, footballer Lionel Messi, celebrities like Jackie Chan, Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Suspended UEFA chief Michel Platini and other big names have surfaced for having alleged involvement.
Is Panama known as a safe haven for shady deals?
Successive governments have strenuously sought to portray the country as a business-friendly financial hub akin to Singapore that actively encourages banking and investment.
But they have found it hard to shake a widely held image of Panama as a place where shady deals are done in secret to hide money from tax authorities and launder the proceeds of the rich, the powerful and the criminal. After coming under heavy scrutiny in recent years from other countries, especially the United States, Panama has cleaned up its act somewhat, enough to get off an international "blacklist" of suspected money-laundering states.
In February, Panama was also taken off a "gray list" of nations with lax financial laws, but still flagged as having deficiencies in fighting money laundering.
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