After several postponements, this Monday, April 8, the trial of the 'Panama Papers' or 'Panama papers' began, one of the largest leaks of documents that linked personalities from around the world to money laundering through the signature Panamanian Mossack Fonseca, a company that allegedly facilitated the illicit actions.
This Monday, April 8, the trial for the 'Panama papers' case began. Eight years after the case became public, becoming one of the largest documentary leaks in history that linked figures from all over the world, the case reaches court.
The opening of the trial will focus on the alleged money laundering carried out by the Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca.
The Judicial Branch of Panama reported that the Second Liquidation Court of Criminal Cases of the First Judicial Circuit of Panama, under the supervision of Judge Baloisa Marquínez, has “designated public defenders in case of absence of some private technical lawyers”, with the aim of avoid postponements of the start of the trial, something that had already happened.
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The hearing involves 27 defendants for alleged money laundering and will take place from April 8 to 26, an alternative date established by the court for the trial, which was originally scheduled for 2021. The investigation, which began in early 2016 , consists of 528 volumes.
The start of the trial, originally scheduled for December 2021, was postponed due to international assistance efforts. However, it was not carried out last December either “due to notifications that have to be made through international assistance,” according to the Judicial Branch.
Meanwhile, the second prosecutor against Organized Crime, Isis Soto, said that the Public Ministry (MP) has presented “testimonial evidence relevant to the theory of the case,” and assured that she “will ask for an exemplary sentence.” However, she recalled that the crime of money laundering in Panama has a maximum penalty of 12 years in prison.
More than 11 million documents as evidence
The 'Panama papers' comprise 2.6 terabytes of information and more than 11.5 million documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which reached more than 140 politicians and senior officials from around the world.
Among those charged are lawyers Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca Mora, founders of the now defunct law firm, which was at the center of the international scandal.
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The law firm, which had a presence in a dozen countries, closed all of its offices in March 2018 due to liquidity problems and lack of clients. Its founders distanced themselves from the investigation in a letter published in June of that same year, in which they declared that their firm had sold more than 250,000 companies in 40 years and that “it was never involved in illicit activities.”
The judicial process for alleged money laundering began after the revelations of an international journalistic investigation that leaked in 2016 details about financial transactions carried out through thousands of offshore corporations created by the Mossack Fonseca firm and linked to people in 200 countries and 21 jurisdictions. financial, according to a report from the Public Ministry of Panama.
Through complex corporate and financial schemes, “illicit assets and their real beneficiaries were hidden, facilitating the laundering of billions of dollars,” according to the report.
In Panama, the investigation continued until September 2019, when the Public Ministry (MP) asked the court in charge of the case to prosecute 44 people for money laundering and to dismiss eleven others.
Although the preliminary hearing was scheduled for a November 2020 deadline, it was held a year later, prosecuting 32 people for money laundering, including the two founding partners of Mossack Fonseca.
Messi, Macri and the owners of Red Bull appear in the papers
The 'Panama Papers' are made up of 11.5 million leaked documents from the Panamanian law firm that detail financial information and relationships between legal advisors on accounts abroad or in tax havens to supposedly hide fortunes.
A dozen world leaders, 128 politicians and public officials, and hundreds of sports or arts celebrities, businessmen and other wealthy people from more than 200 countries were named in the leak.
The research was carried out by more than 400 journalists from several countries and the results were presented simultaneously by 109 media outlets in 76 countries in April 2016.
The former Prime Minister of Iceland Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, that of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif and that of the United Kingdom David Cameron, as well as the former president of Argentina Mauricio Macri and even the footballer Lionel Messi and the Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar were some of the names that appeared in journalistic investigations.
The same happens with the famous energy brand Red Bull, whose family was accused of using companies in tax havens to hide purchases of airplanes and luxury properties, according to AP.
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The network of offshore companies of the Yoovidhya family, which owns the brand, was created by the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. And the Panama Papers showed that the family has used at least half a dozen anonymous companies in tax havens for more than two decades.
The former Argentine president Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) also appears among the papers, for having allegedly been part, along with his father Franco and his brother Mariano, of the board of directors of the offshore company Fleg Trading Ltd. registered in the Bahamas islands in 1998, which was dissolved in 2009, when he was already serving as head of Government of the city of Buenos Aires.
The journalistic investigation also includes the soccer star Lionel Messi, who would have hired Mossack Fonseca to create the Mega Star Enterprises firm, which had Uruguayan intermediaries hired by the Messi family to manage the company. However, the Messis had said days after the scandal that it was “a totally inactive company that never had funds or open accounts,” as quoted by El Comercio.
Hard blow for the country, which is making efforts to attract foreign investments
Panama suffered a significant blow to its reputation due to this scandal, being included in the gray lists of France, the European Union and also, for the second time, in the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), from which it was excluded last October.
The country has a tax regime for offshore companies that allows them to pay minimal taxes on their profits. This makes Panama an ideal destination for foreign investors seeking to keep their tax obligations to a minimum.
This has led to the nation being well positioned to do business in Latin America, added to its strategic location, which facilitates access for companies to the main markets in the region.
With AP, EFE and local media
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