5 ways the world has reacted to the Panama Papers
BRITAIN Tax office wants access to data that revealed the prime minister’s father used offshore fund to beat U.K. taxes.
CHINA Government censors online discussion after family members of the president are linked to offshore firms.
INDIA Finance minister warns that those with undeclared assets abroad will find “such adventurism extremely costly.”
RUSSIA Washington is behind reports linking Putin to offshore accounts, spokesman suggests.
CANADA Revenue minister tells CRA to secure leaked data that contains hidden identities of 350 Canadians.
In the first 24 hours after the Panama Papers investigations into the secretive cash flows into tax havens were published by more than 100 news organizations around the world, reaction has poured in.
The firm: Mossack Fonseca Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm whose files were originally leaked to journalists at Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in Germany, said it cannot comment on individual cases, but said it is a “responsible member of the global financial and business community” and has broken no laws.
However, in an email sent out to clients over the weekend, the firm confirmed its email server had been breached, according to copies of the email obtained by the Star and now circulating online.
“The identity of certain individuals and information on aspects of their affairs may have been exposed as a result of this unauthorized access,” wrote Carlos Sousa-Lennox, the firm’s marketing and sales director.
“We do not yet know the identity or the motivation of the persons who have committed this act,” he wrote. “We are working to trace all activities of the perpetrators and determine what information they obtained.” Panama The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development used the release of the Panama Papers investigations to denounce “Panama’s culture and practice of secrecy.”
In a press release, the international organization of wealthy countries said the investigation data “expose nefarious activities.”
“Panama is the last major holdout that continues to allow funds to be hidden offshore from tax and law enforcement authorities.” Iceland Thousands of Icelanders gathered in the capital Reykjavik Monday evening, calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, who has alleged links to offshore holdings.
Gunnlaugsson faces a no-confidence vote after the files disclosed offshore holdings linked to him and his wife. He said there is “nothing new” in the reports, but walked out of a TV interview when asked about it.
That interview, which aired Sunday night on Icelandic television, was watched by 58 per cent of the country’s population. Russia A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin told The Guardian that the media investigation into offshore accounts is motivated by “Putinphobia,” and that he has not been implicated in any wrongdoing.
The documents allege that Putin’s friends, including a leading cellist, were engaged in an offshore scheme.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “it’s obvious that the main target of such attacks is our president,” and claimed that the publication was aimed at influencing Russia’s stability and parliamentary elections scheduled for September.
He suggested the Washingtonbased International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which co- ordinated the international investigation, has ties to the U.S. government. Britain British Prime Minister David Cameron is under pressure to crack down on offshore tax havens, after a leak disclosed details of the asset-hiding arrangements of wealthy people, including his late father.
The Guardian newspaper revealed in 2012 that Ian Cameron, who died in 2010, used a Panamanian fund and other offshore investments to help shield investments from UK taxes.
The prime minister’s office said the Cameron family’s investments were a “private matter.”
Britain’s tax office said it had asked the ICIJ for access to the leaked data and would “act on it swiftly and appropriately” if it saw any wrongdoing. Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko told the BBC he has done nothing wrong. But that hasn’t stopped the opposition from calling for impeachment proceedings, saying the data on offshore financial dealings has implicated Poroshenko in alleged abuse of office and tax evasion.
Poroshenko promised voters he would sell his candy business when he was elected in 2014. But documents of the Panamanian firm indicated he set up an offshore holding company and may have saved millions of dollars in Ukrainian taxes. FIFA A FIFA judge who helped ban Sepp Blatter for financial misconduct is now under investigation by his ethics committee colleagues after being named in an international probe of offshore accounts.
The FIFA ethics prosecution chamber said Monday it “opened a preliminary investigation to review the allegations” linked to lawyer Juan Pedro Damiani of Uruguay. Damiani was identified in the reports Sunday. China Family members of China’s President Xi Jinping and two other members of the country’s elite Standing Committee are also named in the leaked documents as having links to offshore firms. The Chinese government has not responded to requests for comment and appears to be censoring social media posts on the topic. India India’s finance minister said those who did not take advantage of a government compliance window last year to declare their illegal assets stashed abroad would find “such adventurism extremely costly.”
According to the new reports, the names of film superstars Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Amitabh Bachchan feature among the more than 500 Indians with connections to offshore financial firms in Panama. France The president said the leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm are “good news” because it will help the state to recover money from people who have committed tax evasion. Tax investigations Tax officials in France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden and Australia have launched investigations into their citizens found in the archive. These countries are among the governments that purchased small parts of the leaked data before the investigation was published.