Question: The recently leaked Panama Papers are associated with which of the following firm?
(a) Mossack Fonseca
(b) I.C.I.J
(c) H.S.B.C
(d) All of the above
Ans:(a)
Related facts:
- The Panama Papers are 1.15 crore leaked documents that detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities created by Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca.
- In this connection, first reported was published on April 3, 2016 and the second on May 9, 2016 published by the I.C.I.J.
- Documents were leaked to German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and was shared with International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (I.C.I.J).
- 370 Journalists from 107 media organizations in 80 countries analyzed documents detailing the operations of the law firm.
- Under these inputs more than 140 politicians, many entrepreneurs, sportsmen, artists, etc., came under suspicion of having black money.
- It should be known that the head quarter of Mossack Fonseca is in Panama and its business is spread across 35 countries of the World.
- The files show how Mossack Fonseca helped their clients to launder money, dodge sanctions and avoid tax by opening shell companies in offshore financial centres or tax havens.
- Offshore companies are the companies which is incorporated or registered in an offshore financial centre or “tax haven. Whereas Shell companies are companies which are nominal they do not have any business in reality.
- As these companies are opened in tax havens hence used for hiding the true owners of money, the origin of the money and avoiding paying tax on the money.
- A random check of the database for India displays about 22 offshore entities, 1,046 officers or individual links, 42 intermediaries and as many as 828 addresses within the country.
- The addresses range from posh locations in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai to points in rural regions such as Haryana’s Sirsa, Bihar’s Muzaffarpur and Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur.
- Apart from the Special Investigation Team (SIT) on black money, India had created a Multi-Agency Group (MAG) comprising officers from various central investigative agencies to check the validity of these accounts.
Reference:
https://panamapapers.icij.org/about.html
http://www.mossfon.com/
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-panama-papers
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-35954224
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-35918844
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/04/panama-papers-mossack-fonseca/476727/
http://indianexpress.com/topic/panama-papers/