Firm under scrutiny again

The release of the Panama Papers may introduce most people to the secretive law firm that created offshore corporations that helped world leaders hide assets, but Mossack Fonseca was already well known to investigators and prosecutors around the world.

The Panama City firm, created in the 1980s through a merger of the law practices of German-born Jurgen Mossack and Panamanian lawyer Ramon Fonseca, has long been in the middle of investigations into moneylaundering, corruption and government graft.

In January, one of the lead prosecutors in Brazil’s ever-growing corruption scandal publicly called Mossack Fonseca “a big money launderer” involved in the wide-ranging probe. Last year, the firm became a central part of a lawsuit that alleged Argentina’s former president created 123 shell companies in Las Vegas to hide stolen assets. As far back as 2001, the U.S. State Department said the firm entered into an “awkward sharing agreement” with the tiny Pacific island of Niue to control foreign companies’ ability to establish themselves there.

Despite so many question marks over the years, the firm responds with a simple point.

“We have never been found guilty of absolutely anything,” Ramon Fonseca said Sunday in an interview with Panamanian news channel TVN.

Fonseca said his firm legally creates companies on behalf of a wide variety of entities — banks, corporations, lawyers and other agents.

He said his firm has some responsibility to ensure those entities are legal and not engaged in criminal activity.

Once a corporation is created and handed over to those entities, Fonseca said, his firm’s involvement and culpability are over.

“We are not responsible for the actions of the corporations that we form,” he told TVN after reports of the Panama Papers were released. “Ninety-nine percent of the corporations we sell are legitimate, they don’t get into trouble. But because of the enormous numbers of corporations we sell, some of them are going to get into trouble. That’s normal.”

The Panama City firm has long been in the middle of investigations into moneylaundering, corruption and government graft.