Panama Papers Aftershocks: Mossack Fonseca's Offices Raided, Founders Arrested
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Martin Kenney
Managing Partner of Martin Kenney & Co., Solicitors
Authorities finally appear to have caught up with Mossack Fonseca’s (MF) founders, Jürgen Mossack and Ramon Fonseca, who were arrested last month in Panama City in connection to the Brazilian “Lava Jato” or “Operation Car Wash” corruption scandal. Along with the high-profile arrests, the firm’s offices were also raided.
The news is another blow to the company, which was already reeling from the aftershocks of the Panama Papers scandal, in which MF was shown to be the center of countless international shell companies and tax havens.
In a statement, Panama’s Attorney General Kenia Porcell said that recently the firm allegedly worked with contacts in Brazil to "destroy evidence related to those implicated" in the Brazilian scandal. "In short: money from bribes circulate through various places to return laundered to Panama," she said.
Although further details have yet to be released, tying the firm to Operation Car Wash will raise a few eyebrows. The year-long investigation reads like a Who’s Who of South American countries; added to the mix are the U.S. and Switzerland.
Although the Panama Papers scandal has been fading from the public eye, I had mused that silence was not linked to inaction. Most criminal investigations are cloaked in secrecy for obvious reasons. The Panama Papers story was simply too big and too grave for law enforcement to ignore. Public interest was always going to dictate that a full investigation would be required to gauge the depth of the problems being unearthed.
The Operation Car Wash investigation is similarly vast, and the many levels of corruption and the losses incurred by the public purse demand that many stones be overturned.
It remains to be seen if MF’s founders were involved in the events tying the firm to Operation Car Wash, either directly or by turning a blind eye. MF has issued a denial that they were connected to any entity linked to Operation Car Wash.
The underlying problems for the firm are a lack of plausibility and credibility. There have been too many revelations and too many blanket denials. MF handled the initial and subsequent fallout very poorly; issuing denial after denial, or flimsy excuses, is not the way to limit damage when under criticism from the press and the public. Ramon Fonseca argued that his firm can’t be held to account for how the 200,000+ offshore companies it formed behaved – just as GM can’t be blamed for a reckless driver doing harm with one of its vehicles. That’s just not credible, and it ignores his firm’s obligations to know its customers, identify the UBOs of the companies it formed, and to ferret out and report suspicious activities. The use of misdirection and red herrings is unhelpful in this context.
If MF has knowingly facilitated the improper movement of assets away from Brazil, then it deserves all it will get. In this instance, the ordinary citizens of Brazil have suffered the most as billions of dollars appear to have been unlawfully diverted elsewhere.
There is also going to be a lot more fallout from the Panama Papers scandal. The countries affected have lost billions in revenue as a consequence of tax evasion, and will not let matters lie. Add the facilitation of money laundering for criminal gangs and organized crime, plus the potential links to terrorist extremists and their revenue streams, and you have a heady cocktail of reasons why this scandal is anything but dead. Global authorities owe it to their people to right the wrongs and bring those responsible to book.
Martin Kenney is Managing Partner of Martin Kenney & Co., Solicitors, a specialist investigative and asset recovery practice based in the BVI and focused on multi-jurisdictional fraud and grand corruption cases www.martinkenney.com |@MKSolicitors . Mr Kenney was recently selected as one of the Top 40 Thought Leaders of the Legal Professionin 2017 by Who's Who Legal International. He is the only fraud and asset recovery lawyer included in this list of Thought Leaders drawn from 16 different practise areas.
The opinions expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of the ACFE.