The Western country most affected by the allegations is Iceland, which went through a major banking crisis last decade and where Prime Minister Sigmundur D. Gunnlaugsson now faces a confidence vote in parliament Monday after he and his wife appeared in documents as having an investment account in the British Virgin Islands to handle an inheritance.
The ICIJ’s report said account holders also include current and former leaders from Argentina, Georgia, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, and Ukraine.
The office of Argentinian President Mauricio Macri said in a statement that he had been “occasionally designated as a director” of an off-shore company mentioned in the report, but never held shares.
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The documents span from 1977 to 2015 and came from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, a top creator of shell companies that has branches in Hong Kong, Miami, Zurich and more than 35 other places around the globe, the ICIJ said.
What makes an offshore account legal or not is often simply a question of whether it’s declared to tax authorities, said Professor Peter Hahn at London’s Institute of Financial Services.
“Rather than blame the banks for such transactions, international attention should focus on requiring disclosure of the end of the chain owners of shell companies, eliminating the ability of the unscrupulous to misuse the banking system and create vast compliance costs for legitimate businesses,” Hahn said in response to e-mailed questions.
In written comments to the consortium, Mossack Fonseca said it “does not foster or promote illegal acts” and that the group’s allegations that it provides shareholders with structures “supposedly designed to hide the identity of the real owners are completely unsupported and false.”
The government of Panama said it will cooperate with any legal probe resulting from the data leak, Agence France-Presse reported.
The ICIJ, founded in 1997, is a global network of investigative journalists who collaborate on in-depth investigations on issues including cross-border crime, corruption and the accountability of power, according to its website.