Report

On

Panama Papers scandal

Submitted to:
Mr. Md. Bokhtiar Hasan
Assistant Professor,
Dept. of Finance & Banking
Islamic University, Kushtia.

Prepared & Submitted by:

Group D

Date of Submission: 24- 05-16

Name of group members

Panama Papers Scandal

Roll No.

Name

1021031
1021032
1021033
1021034
1021035
1021036
1021037
1021038
1021039
1021040

MD Khairul Alam
Khondakar Habibur
Md. Monirul Islam
Belayet Hossen
Jamil Hossain
Shimul Sardar
Abu Sayed
Md. Shariful Islam
SM Nahidul Islam
Md. Tohidul Islam

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL

Panama Papers Scandal

May 24, 2016

Mr. Md. Bokhtiar Hasan
Assistant professor,
Dept. of Finance & Banking,
Islamic University, Kushtia
Subject: Prayer for submitting the Report.

Dear Sir,
With due respect, we would like to inform you that we have completed
our report on Panama Papers Scandal. In order to prepare this
report, we have collected required information through qualitative
research and finally completed the report which is now ready to
submit. It was really enjoyable to work on the report as it has provided
us with an opportunity to know about realistic fact of panama papers
scandal. We have learned a lot about the given term after preparing
this report. It was a great pleasure for us to work on such a challenging
and practical topic.
We shall be highly glad if you kindly receive this report and provide
your valuable judgment. It would really be our immense pleasure if you
find this report useful and informative.

Sincerely yours,
____________
Group-D

Panama Papers Scandal

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The successful completion of this report on Panama Papers
Scandal has been possible for many helping hands.
At first, we would like to express our infinite gratuity towards
almighty Allah and our course teacher Mr. Md. Bokhtiar Hasan,
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Finance & Banking, Faculty of Business
Administration,
Islamic University, Kushtia to provide not only
extremely well arranged guidelines to complete our report work but
would also help us to confront problems in our future career.
We would like to express our heartiest appreciation to our all
classmates, who have been a constant support to us and have
patiently helped us throughout our report.

Panama Papers Scandal

ABSTRACT
In recent years, using a new instrument - called Sukuk- has been increasingly taken into
consideration in Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Kuwait, Malaysia,
Bahrain, Qatar, Bangladesh and even some European countries. Sukuk is a financial
instrument backed by physical assets and balance sheet; Sukuk bonds can be used as a
financing method for government agencies as well as private companies. Given the
importance of the issue, this paper first discusses the history, defines Sukuk and explains
the differences between Islamic bonds and conventional financial bonds. The following
section describes the types of Sukuk. The next sections show the impact of Sukuk in
economic development of different countries in the world as well as the prospects of
Sukuk in Bangladesh. Finally, conclusions and references are presented.

Panama Papers Scandal

Table of Contents
Title
Page No.
Introduction
Core of the report
Objectives of the report
Limitations of preparing the report
Methodologies
Literature review
Overview of the concept
History of sukuk bonds
Definition of sukuk
Different types of sukuk

Empirical Analysis
Impact of sukuk in economic development of different
countries
Prospects of sukuk in Bangladesh

Conclusion
Conclusion
References

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8-9
9-10
10-11
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12-14
14-15
16-18
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19-21
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Panama Papers Scandal

Chapter
Introduction

Panama Papers Scandal

Objectives of the Report

Primary objective of the report is to meet the requirement of the course Strategic Financial
Management. Our secondary objectives are as follows:
To provide basic understanding of the concept of panama papers and its emergence.
To assess and evaluate the level of research achievement on the topic of panama
papers scandal.
To identify the relationship between panama papers and finance.

Limitation of Preparing This Report

While preparing the report, I have faced some limitations which are mentioned below:
The given time is not enough for such an extensive study. It is difficult to collect all
the required information in such a short period.
Most of the data and information used in this study are from the secondary sources.
Lack of available information

Methodologies
The term Methodology describes how the data, needed in order to fulfill
the purpose, is collected. It also discusses the formula and how to present
the formula in the report.
Quantitative research:
Qualitative research:
I have used qualitative approach for our report because the majority of
data collection from the qualitative approach.

Panama Papers Scandal

Panama Papers
The Panama Papers are 11.5 million leaked documents that detail financial and attorney
client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. The leaked documents were
created by Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca. The
leaked documents illustrate how wealthy individuals, including public officials, are able to
keep personal financial information private. While offshore business entities are often not
illegal, reporters found that some of the Mossack Fonseca shell corporations were used for
illegal purposes, including fraud, tax evasion, and evading international sanctions. The
records were obtained from an anonymous source by the German newspaper Sddeutsche
Zeitung, which shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative
Journalists (ICIJ). The ICIJ then shared them with a large network of international partners,
including the Guardian and the BBC.

Offshore company
A company incorporated for the purpose of operating outside the country of its registration.
A company may legitimately move offshore for the purpose of tax avoidance or to enjoy
relaxed regulations. Tax avoidance allows a person or business to lower the amount of
income tax owed by legal means by claiming permissible deductions and credits. Offshore
financial institutions can also be used for illicit purposes such as money laundering and tax
evasion. Tax evasion is illegal because it allows a person or business to intentionally avoid
paying taxes.

Mossack Fonseca
Mossack Fonseca is a law firm that set up some 214,000 shell companies (otherwise known
as "offshore companies" or "letterbox companies") on behalf of wealthy clients from every
corner of the world. According to journalists investigating the leak, these companies
facilitated the movement of funds related to drug dealing, human trafficking, financing
terrorism, tax dodging, embezzlement, sanctions evasion and other crimes.
The firm began life as the Jrgen Mossack Law Firm in Panama City in 1977. Its
eponymous founder, known in Panama City's financial district simply as "the German," was
born in Frth in 1948, and his family moved to Panama in the 1960s. Mossack thrived during
the 1980s, a time when instability born of the drug trade and Cold War geopolitics racked

Panama Papers Scandal

Latin America. He provided legal services to Caro Quintero, a Mexican drug boss whom he
described as making Pablo Escobar look like "a baby."
Quintero was arrested in 1985, and the next year the German partnered with a
Panamanian lawyer, Ramn Fonseca Mora, to form Mossack Fonseca. What occurred over
the subsequent years or a portion of them is the subject of the Panama Papers.
On April 13, Panamanian law enforcement raided the offices of Mossack Fonseca. The firm
has denied any wrongdoing, saying that the crime prosecutors should investigate is what it
calls the "hack" of its servers.

What do Panama Papers Reveal?

The documents show the myriad ways in which the rich can exploit secretive offshore tax
regimes. Twelve national leaders are among 143 politicians, their families and close
associates from around the world known to have been using offshore tax havens.
A $2bn trail leads all the way to Vladimir Putin. The Russian presidents best friend
a cellist called Sergei Roldugin is at the centre of a scheme in which money from Russian
state banks is hidden offshore. Some of it ends up in a ski resort where in 2013 Putins
daughter Katerina got married.
Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Nawaz Sharif, Pakistans prime
minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq; Petro
Poroshenko, president of Ukraine; Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypts former president; and the
prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Dav Gunnlaugsson.
An offshore investment fund run by the father of British Prime Minister David
Cameron avoided ever having to pay tax in Britain by hiring a small army of Bahamas
residents to sign its paperwork. The fund has been registered with HM Revenue and Customs
since its inception and has filed detailed tax returns every year.
The families of at least eight current and former members of Chinas supreme ruling
body, the politburo, have been found to have hidden wealth offshore.
Twenty-three individuals who have had sanctions imposed on them for supporting the
regimes in North Korea, Zimbabwe, Russia, Iran and Syria have been clients of Mossack
Fonseca. Their companies were harboured by the Seychelles, the British Virgin Islands,
Panama and other jurisdictions.
The scandal also touches football's world governing body, Fifa. Part of the documents
suggest that a key member of Fifa's ethics committee,Uruguayan lawyer Juan Pedro
Damiani, and his firm provided legal assistance for at least seven offshore companies linked
to a former Fifa vice-president arrested last May as part of the US inquiry into football
corruption.

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Panama Papers Scandal

One leaked memorandum from a partner of Mossack Fonseca said: Ninety-five per cent
of our work coincidentally consists in selling vehicles to avoid taxes.

Where companies that appear in the panama papers were incorporated:

Also mentioned are the brother-in-law of China's President Xi Jinping; UkrainePresident Petro
Poroshenko; Argentina President Mauricio Macri; The documents show that Iceland's Prime
Minister, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, had an undeclared interest linked to his wife's wealth. He
has now resigned. The leak has also revealed that more than 500 banks, including their
subsidiaries and branches, registered nearly 15,600 shell companies with Mossack Fonseca.
Lenders have denied allegations that they are helping clients to avoid tax by using complicated
offshore arrangements.

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Panama Papers Scandal

Tax Havens
Customers may open offshore accounts for any number of reasons, some entirely legal and
ethically irreproachable. A Canadian lawyer based in Dubai noted, for example, that
businesses might wish to avoid falling under Islamic inheritance jurisprudence if an owner
dies. Businesses in some countries may wish to hold some of their funds in dollars also, said
a Brazilian lawyer. Estate planning is another example of legal tax avoidance.
American film-maker Stanley Kubrick had an estimated personal worth of $20
million when he died in 1999, much of it invested in the 18th-century English manor he
bought in 1978. He lived in that manor the rest of his life, filming scenes from The
Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut there as well. Three holding companies set
up by Mossack Fonseca now own the property, and are in turn held by trusts set up for his
children and grandchildren. Since Kubrick was an American living in Britain, his estate
would otherwise have had to pay taxes to both governments and might have been forced to
sell the property to have the liquid assets to do so. Kubrick is buried on the grounds along
with one of his daughters and the rest of his family still lives there.

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Panama Papers Scandal

Poster issued by the British tax authorities to counter offshore tax evasion.
Other uses are more ambiguous. Chinese companies may incorporate offshore in order to
raise foreign capital, normally against the law in China. In some of the world's hereditary
dictatorships, the law may be on the side of the elite who use offshore companies to award
themselves oil contracts, or their children gold concessions, but such dealings are sometimes
prosecuted under international law.
No official definition exists, but a jurisdiction is typically considered an offshore
financial center, less formally known as a tax haven, when its banking infrastructure:

Primarily provides services to people or businesses who are not its own residents.

Requires little or no disclosure of information when doing business.

Offers low taxes.

"The most obvious use of offshore financial centers is to avoid taxes", however, The
Economist remarked. Oxfam blamed tax havens in its 2016 annual report on income
inequality for much of the widening gap between rich and poor. "Tax havens are at the core
of a global system that allows large corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid paying
their fair share," said Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, "depriving
governments, rich and poor, of the resources they need to provide vital public services and
tackle rising inequality."

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Panama Papers Scandal

International Monetary Fund (IMF) researchers estimated in July 2015 that profit
shifting by multinational companies costs developing countries around US$213 billion a
year, almost two percent of their national income. Igor Angelini, head of Europol's Financial
Intelligence Group, said that shell companies "play an important role in large-scale money
laundering activities" and that they are often a means to "transfer bribe money". Tax Justice
Network concluded in a 2012 report that "designing commercial tax abuse schemes and
turning a blind eye upon suspicious transactions have become an inherent part of the work of
bankers and accountants."
Money-laundering affects the first world as well, since a favored shell company
investment is real estate in Europe and North America. London, Miami, New York and
Vancouver have all been affected. The practice of parking assets in luxury real estate has
been frequently cited as fueling skyrocketing housing prices in Miami". There is a huge
amount of dirty money flowing into Miami that's disguised as investment," according to
former congressional investigator Jack Blum. In Miami, 76% of condo owners pay cash,
considered a red flag for money-laundering.
Real estate in London, where housing prices have increased 50% since 2007, is also
frequently purchased by overseas investors. Donald Toon, head of Britain'sNational Crime
Agency, said in 2015 that "the London property market has been skewed by laundered
money. Prices are being artificially driven up by overseas criminals who want to sequester
their assets here in the UK". Three quarters of Londoners under 35 cannot afford to buy a
home.
A study by Andy Yan, an urban planning researcher and adjunct professor at
the University of British Columbia, of real estate sales in Vancouveralso thought to be
affected by foreign purchasersfound that 18% of the transactions in Vancouver's most
expensive neighborhoods were cash purchases, and 66% of the owners appeared to be
Chinese nationals or recent arrivals from China. Calls for more data on foreign investors
have been rejected by the provincial government. Chinese nationals accounted for 70% of
2014 Vancouver home sales over $3 million Canadian.

The Mechanics behind Tax Havens

In his 2013 paper, Zucman explains the mechanics of tax avoidance through offshore
banking and shell companies. The function of offshore financial centres is to help foreigners
invest outside of these centres, the banks acting only as conduits: using Swiss data, he shows
that on their Swiss accounts, foreigners do own some U.S. equities, but they mostly own
Luxembourg and Irish fund shares (the funds, in turn, invest all around the world).
Investing in a Luxembourg fund through a Swiss account makes perfect sense for a French
tax evader: Luxembourg does not tax cross-border payments, so the tax evader receives the

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Panama Papers Scandal

full dividend paid by the fund on his or her account, and French personal income tax can be
evaded, since there is no automatic exchange of information between Swiss banks and the
French tax authority.
Swiss banks provide a unique kind of deposit owned by households only, in the form
of what are known as fiduciary deposits. Fiduciary deposits cannot be used as a medium of
exchange: they are useless for corporations. Swiss banks invest the funds placed in fiduciary
deposits in foreign money markets on behalf of their clients. Legally speaking, all interest is
considered to be paid by foreigners to the depositors, with the Swiss banks acting merely as
fiduciaries. Thus, fiduciary deposits are not subject to the 35% Swiss advance tax.
He shows that most Swiss fiduciary deposits held by foreigners are actually held in
the name of sham corporations set up in tax havens such as Panama, Liechtenstein and the
British Virgin Islands. He concludes that once you understand the purposes that sham
corporations serve, it becomes clear that most fiduciary deposits assigned to tax havens by
the Swiss National Bank belong to residents of rich countries, in particular to Europeans.

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Panama Papers Scandal

Chapter
Allegations,
reactions and
investigations

The allegations, reactions and investigations for panama paper scandal, country by
country, are discussed below:

United Kingdom
According to The Guardian, "More than 170bn of UK property is now held overseas. ...
Nearly one in 10 of the 31,000 tax haven companies that own British property are linked to
Mossack Fonseca.".

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Panama Papers Scandal

Included among the Panama Paper documents are the names of six members of the House of
Lords, several of whom have been donors to Cameron's Conservative Party, as well as other
Conservative donors. These include:
Anthony Bamford: 4 million in Conservative Party donations, made a
Conservative life peer in 2013;
David Rowland: 3.8 million in Conservative Party donations, former party
treasurer;
Fleming Family & Partners: Over 400,000 in Conservative Party donations,
including direct donations to David Cameron;
Juniper Equities Trading: 250,000 loan to the Conservative Party party from an
offshore fund with an opaque ownership structure;
Tony Buckingham: 100,000 donation to the Conservative Party;
Lord Ashcroft: the man who published "piggate" allegations about Cameron;[234]
Baroness Pamela Sharples (via her Bahamas company Nunswell Investments
Limited): made a life peer in 1973;
As the United Kingdom still exercises varying degrees of control over British Overseas
Territories and Crown dependencies which make up a large number of the many tax havens
and "secrecy jurisdictions" that exist, pressure has mounted on Prime Minister David
Cameron to make changes. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Panama Papers "are
shining a light on the constellation of offshore centers in the last remnants of the British
Empire, from Gibraltar to the British Virgin Islands (BVI)." Of the companies created by
Mossack Fonseca which were included in the leaked data, the BVI companies topped the list,
with 113,000 of the nearly 215,000 companies that Mossack Fonseca managed or
incorporated there. British Overseas Territory Anguilla was 7th on the list.
Cameron criticized complex offshore structures in 2013, saying that it is "not fair and
not right what some [companies] are doing by saying 'I've got lots of sales here in the UK but
I'm going to pay a sort of royalty fee to another company that I own in another country that
has some special tax dispensation.'" He said he would bring up the issue at the G8 summit
that year. At the summit, Cameron demanded more transparency, arguing that it would be
better for business. In 2014, Cameron asked all Overseas Territories and Crown
dependencies to set up an open register of firms and individuals with investments registered

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Panama Papers Scandal

in their jurisdictions, but by the time of the Panama Papers leak in April 2016, only
Montserrat and Gibraltar had agreed to do so.

France
French financial prosecutors opened an investivation, and President Franois
Hollande declared that tax evaders would be brought to trial and punished. Also as a result
of the leak, France restored Panama to its list of tax havens, from which Panama had recently
been removed.
Former French budget minister Jrme Cahuzac, who spearheaded a crackdown on
tax fraud while in office, was a client of Mossack Fonseca and through them owned a
Seychelles company named Cerman Group Limited, incorporated in 2009. When France
investigated 2013 allegations by Mediapart that in 2000 Cahuzac had held undeclared assets
in an account first in Switzerland, then Singapore, he resigned his cabinet post, protesting his
innocence, but admitted a few months later that he indeed had hidden 600,000 in
a UBS account and then moved it to keep it hidden, "while continuing to lead France's
clampdown on tax evasion." The French Socialist Party unanimously voted to expel him a
week later. On the heels of the April 2013 "Cahuzac affair", President Hollande created
the parquet national financier (PNF) a judiciary investigation unit specializing in large-scale
fraud and corruption investigations.

Italy
Silvio Berlusconi, former Prime Minister of Italy On April 6, 2016, Italy's Procura of
Turin ordered the Guardia di Finanza to investigate the 800 Italians contained in the Panama
Paper's documents.
Former long-time Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who had been already convicted
for tax evasion and expelled from the Parliament, was included in the papers. Other notable
people whose names are mentioned in the Papers include entrepreneurs Luca Cordero di
Montezemolo, Flavio Briatore, Adriano Galliani, and actor Carlo Verdone.
An investigation by ICIJ partner The Namibian found that the imprisoned
mafioso Vito Roberto Palazzolo shielded his finances from Italian, Namibian and South
African authorities with shell companies in the British Virgin Islands set up by a German
banker in Hong Kong, Wolf-Peter Berthold, which they also used to transfer control of
Palazzolo's assets to his son.

Russia

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The Sddeutsche Zeitung, one of the newspapers participating in the project that made the
papers public, described the connections of various individuals listed in them to Russian
president Vladimir Putin. They quoted Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman and US
State Department documents saying that Russia is a "kleptocracy" and a "mafia state"
respectively. The Sddeutsche Zeitung reported about $2 billion had moved through a
network of companies associated with Russian firms and individuals in "just a few years"
and the companies appeared to have been used for "questionable business transactions."
Putin has criticized offshore companies as "unpatriotic" on several occasions since 2011 and
in 2013 a law was passed banning foreign bank accounts for government officials.
Putin's name does not appear in any of the records released to date, but those of his
associates do. Construction billionaires Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, musician Sergei
Roldugin and business magnate Alisher Usmanov are mentioned in the leaked documents, as
are Putin's long-standing friend, billionaire Gennady Timchenko, as well as his press
secretary's spouse, his cousin, and former KGB colleagues, as well as several oligarchs
connected to Mossack Fonseca shell companies.
Sergei Roldugin, a cellist with the St Petersburg orchestra who is the godfather of
Putin's eldest daughter and who has been described as Putin's "best friend", appears
prominently in the Panama Papers. Panama Papers documents indicate that Roldugin
companies received several loans with no collateral, or at very low interest rates, or never
repaid. In 2013, several shell companies linked to the brothers Boris and Arkady Rotenberg
loaned worth about US$200 million to a company in Roldugin's network. The leaked
documents do not show whether they were repaid. Shortly before the loan was granted,
Arkady Rotenberg's company had been awarded the tender for the South Stream pipeline
project, worth billions. Asked about his companies, Rodulgin said "I have to take a look and
find out what I can say and what I can't", and that financial matters are "delicate".
Putin denied "any element of corruption", and said his opponents are trying to
destabilise Russia. Putin also said: "WikiLeaks has showed us that official people and official
organs of the US are behind this."

Sweden
The Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FI) said on April 4, 2016 it would investigate
the actions of Nordea, one of the largest financial institutions in the Nordic countries, after
the Panama Papers revealed the bank's Luxembourg office had helped to set up nearly 400
offshore companies for its clients between 2004 and 2014 in Panama and the British Virgin
Islands for their customers.
The Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FI) has said that "serious deficiencies"
exist in how Nordea monitors for money laundering, and had given the bank two warnings.
In 2015 Nordea had to pay the largest possible fineover five million EUR. In 2012 Nordea
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Panama Papers Scandal

asked Mossack Fonseca to change documents retroactively so that three Danish customers'
power of attorney documents would appear to have been in force since 2010. The director for
Nordea Private Banking, Thorben Sanders, has admitted that before 2009 Nordea did not
screen for tax evaders: "In the end of 2009 we decided that our bank shall not be a means
of tax evasion," said Sanders. Other Swedish banks are also present in the documents, but
Nordea occurs 10,902 times and the next most frequently mentioned bank only occurs 764
times.
The Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FI) later said that they would also
investigate the other three big banks in Sweden: Handelsbanken, Skandinaviska Enskilda
Banken(SEB) and Swedbank. Other Swedish banks also appear in the documents, but
Nordea occurs 10,902 times and the next most frequently mentioned bank only occurs 764
times.

Switzerland
On April 6, the federal police searched UEFA headquarters in Nyon as part of a "criminal
mismanagement" probe into a Champions League television rights deal signed by FIFA's
new president Gianni Infantino. The same day, Geneva's attorney general opened several
procedures in reaction to a report about misconduct by Swiss lawyers and trustees.
The leaked papers also shed light on the ownership of shell companies in protracted litigation
in Lausanne over ownership of artwork from the Gstaad chalet of the late Greek shipping
tycoon Basil Goulandris.
Bangladesh
On April 7, 2016, the Anti Corruption Commission Bangladesh launched an inquiry to obtain
details of the businesses and individuals allegedly affiliated with Moassack
Fonseca. Allegations have been made that thirty-two Bangladeshi individuals and two
corporations, however, media outlets staking this claim have referenced an old ICIJ database
of information compiled during the investigation of the 2013 Offshore Leaks.

China
Relatives of highly placed Chinese officials including seven current and former senior
leaders of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Chinahave been named, including former
Premier Li Peng's daughter Li Xiaolin, former Communist Party general secretary Hu
Yaobang's son Hu Dehua and Deng Jiagui, the brother-in-law of current general secretary Xi
Jinping. Deng had two shell companies in the British Virgin Islands while Xi was a member
of the Politburo Standing Committee, but they were dormant by the time Xi became General

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Panama Papers Scandal

Secretary of the Communist Party (paramount leader) in November 2012. Others named
include the son and daughter-in-law of propaganda chief Liu Yunshan and the son-in-law of
Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli.
Official Chinese statistics show investment in British Overseas Territories acting as
tax havens being much more significant than in other places: $44 billion invested in
the Cayman Islands and $49 billion in the British Virgin Islands. Despite these figures
"probably exclud[ing] the private investments of the many family members of the ruling elite
who have channelled money through the BVI", both figures exceed Chinese investment in
the United States and United Kingdom.
China's government is suppressing mention of the Panama Papers on social media and
in search engines results, and reportedly told news organizations to delete all content related
to the Panama Papers leak. Chinese authorities consider the material a concerted foreign
media attack on China, and ordered Internet information offices to delete reports reprinted
from the Panama Papers, and with no exceptions not to follow up on related content. Hong
Lei, spokesman for China's foreign ministry, responded that he had "no comment" for "such
groundless accusations" at an April 5 news conference.
Hong Kong
Mossack Fonseca's Hong Kong office was its busiest, says the ICIJ, as Chinese officials and
other wealthy figures would carry funds across the border and deposit them there to be
channeled to offshore entities. Hong Kong invested HK$4.6 trillion (360 billion) into the
BVI more than Hong Kong invested in mainland China and received HK$4.1 trillion
(over 300 billion) from the BVI. A further 20 billion or so was placed into the Cayman
Islands and Bermuda individually.
Newspaper Ming Pao fired deputy editor Keung Kwok-yuen following a front-page
article on the Panama Papers which mentioned many prominent Hong Kong citizens. The
paper blamed a "difficult business environment," but had previously fired another editor in
2014 over another leak of offshore documents. Employees have been publishing blank
columns scattered through the newspaper in protest of his dismissal.

India
Bollywood celebrities Amitabh Bachchan, his daughter-in-law and actress Aishwarya Rai
Bachchan and actor Ajay Devgan are listed in the papers. Bachchan has denied any
connection to overseas companies, and a spokesman for Rai also questioned the documents'
authenticity. Bachchan repeated the denial in response to an August 21 report that he was
listed as a director of two companies and participated in board meetings.
Indian politicians on the list include Shishir Bajoria from West Bengal and Anurag
Kejriwal, former chief of the Delhi Lok Satta Party. Bajoria said he owned two other Isle of
Man companies but not the one ascribed to him in the leaked documents. Corporate services
provider First Names Group acknowledged erroneously providing his information to
Mossack Fonseca. MF records show Kejriwal as director of three offshore companies based
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Panama Papers Scandal

in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), and holding two private foundations in Panama and
power of attorney of another BVI company. He acknowledged having had offshore
companies but said he shut them down after a short period of time.
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi ordered an inquiry, and subsequently the Indian
government announced that it was constituting a special multi-agency group comprising
officers from the investigative unit of the Central Board of Direct Taxes and its Foreign Tax
and Tax Research Division, the Financial Intelligence Unit and the Reserve Bank of India.

Pakistan
The Mossack Fonseca documents do not name either prime Minister Nawaz Sharif or his
younger brother, Punjab chief minister Shebaz Sharif. They do however link in-laws of
Shebaz Sharif and children of Nawaz Sharif to offshore companies. Mossack Fonseca
records tie Nawaz daughter Maryam Nawaz and her brothers Hussein and Hassan to four
offshore companies, Nescoll Limited, Nielson Holdings Limited, Coomber Group Inc., and
Hangon Property Holdings Limited. The companies acquired luxury real estate in London
during 20062007. The real estate was as collateral for loans of up to $13.8 million
according to the Panama Papers. The prime minister's children say the money came from the
sale of a family business in Saudi Arabia.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan called for an investigation of
Sharif family finances and asked how well public figures who send their own money
overseas could promote investment in Pakistan. Khan confirmed May 14, 2016 that he had
owned an offshore company set up in 1983 to avoid British taxes on the sale of a London
residence he bought through the company. Abdul Qayyum, a Pakistani senator and retired
lieutenant-general, commented that Khan had made the disclosures a political issue before
any investigation had been conducted, and that accountability should be enforced across the
board.

Saudi Arabia
King Salman is mentioned in the leaks in relation to two companies based in the British
Virgin IslandsVerse Development Corporation, incorporated in 1999, and Inrow
Corporation, incorporated in 2002. The companies took out mortgages totalling over
US$34 million and purchased properties in central London. His role in the companies
was not been specified. BVI Company Crassus Limited, incorporated in 2004, registered
a yacht in London, named Erga after King Salman's palace in Riyadh. The vessel boasts a
banquet hall and can comfortably sleep 30. King Salman is described in the documents as
its "principal user".

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Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef is also named in the papers.

Singapore
The Ministry of Finance and Monetary Authority of Singapore said in a statement that
"Singapore takes a serious view on tax evasion and will not tolerate its business and
financial centre being used to facilitate tax related crimes. If there is evidence of
wrongdoing by any individual or entity in Singapore, we will not hesitate to take fanel
will investigate Sri Lankan names that come up in the Panama Papers, as well as the 46
who appear in the 2013 Offshore Leaks, according to the Daily Mail, since earlier
leadership apparently did not do so. The country has many large outstanding foreign
loans taken out under the administration of former president Mahinda Rajapakse, and the
current government recently had to obtain a US$1.5 billion IMF bailout. Rajapakse has
denied diverting funds. The current government came to power in January 2016 on an
anti-corruption platform.

United Arab Emirates

ICIJ, The Guardian and The Independent have reported that UAE President Khalifa bin
Zayed Al Nahyan owns London real estate worth more than 1.2 billion through a
structure of some thirty shell companies Mossack Fonseca set up for him in the British
Virgin Islands and administer for him, using them to manage and control the luxury
properties in London. By December 2015, Mossack Fonseca held nearly all of the shares
in those companies in trust structures on his behalf, with the President and his wife, son
and daughter the trust beneficiaries.

Canada
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has denied any involvement in the affair, saying he
had "entirely and completely been transparent about mine and my family's finances. That is
something I learned early on that Canadians expect from their leaders." Canada Revenue
Agency said in a statement that its current tax evasion audits include "some Canadian clients
associated with law firm Mossack Fonseca," and added that it would communicate "with its
treaty partners to obtain any further information that may not currently be in its possession."
The CRA has tax treaties with 92 different countries and 22 Tax Information Exchange
Agreements.
The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) denied any wrongdoing associated with the 370+
clients it had referred to Mossack Fonseca over the years."We have an extensive due

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diligence process... RBC works within the legal and regulatory framework of every country
in which we operate," said a bank spokesman. CEO David McKay said the bank will review
the four decades of documentation for any problems. CEO Bill Downe of the Bank of
Montreal said "Canadian banks have 'dramatically' beefed up anti-money laundering control
over the last seven to 10 years," and added that any link between Canadian businesses and
the Panama Papers companies would have originated a long time ago, before Canadian banks
took action to stop money laundering.
Canadians for Tax Fairness had calculated that legal tax avoidance by corporations
alone cost the Canadian treasury almost $8 billion Canadian a year. When it calculated the
2015 numbers, they found that corporations and individuals combined sent CAN$40 billion
of declared assets to tax havens, and the ten most popular alone now held $270 billion
Canadian in assets.

United States
President Barack Obama was critical of Caribbean tax havens in his 2008 election campaign.
In 2010, the United States implemented the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act; the law
required financial firms around the world to report accounts held by US citizens to
the Internal Revenue Service.
The US on the other hand refused to sign on to the Common Reporting Standard set
up by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, alongside Vanuatu
and Bahrain. This means the US receives tax and asset information for American assets and
income abroad, but does not share information about what happens in the United States with
other countries, which in other words means that the United States has become attractive as a
tax haven.

Dubai
In theory American and European buyers of gold in Africa are required to review their supply
chain and report any use of conflict resources, such as gold from eastern Congo. In practice
the requirement is widely ignored, and an investigation by African Network of Centers for
Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) found examples in the leaked Mossack Fonseca documents
of anonymous shell companies doing the sourcing. For a start, most of the DRC gold winds
up in Dubai by way of Uganda. Dubai's $75 billion gold industry is regulated with a very
light hand by the quasi-private Dubai Multi Commodities Centre. (DMCC).

Australia

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Australia said April 22 that it will create a public register showing the beneficial, or actual,
owners of shell companies, as part of an effort to stamp out tax avoidance by multinational
corporations.
The Australian Taxation Office has announced that it is investigating 800 individual
Australian taxpayers on the Mossack Fonseca list of clients and that some of the cases may
be referred to the country's Serious Financial Crime Task Force. Eighty names match to an
organized crime intelligence database.
Leaked documents examined by the ABC "pierced the veil of anonymous shell
companies" and linked a Sydney businessman and a Brisbane geologist to mining deals in
North Korea. "Rather than applying sanctions, the Australian Government and the ASX seem
to have allowed a coach and horses to be ridden through them by the people involved in
forming this relationship, corporate relationship with one of the primary arms manufacturers
in North Korea," said Thomas Clark of the University of Technology Sydney.

New Zealand
New Zealand's Inland Revenue Department (IRD - Tax Dept) have stated that they were
working to obtain details of people who have tax residence in the country who may have
been involved in arrangements facilitated by Mossack Fonseca.
Gerard Ryle, director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, told
Radio New Zealand on April 8, 2016 that New Zealand is a well-known tax haven and a
"nice front for criminals".New Zealand provides overseas investors with foreign trusts
and look-through companies. The New Zealand government does not ask the identity of
either the settlor or the beneficiaries of the trust and thus the ownership remains secret,
hiding the funds from the trustholder's home jurisdictions. Furthermore, these foreign-owned
Trusts are not taxed by New Zealand's IRD. Operating within a loophole, these trusts can
then be used to acquire/own New Zealand registered companies which become a vehicle by
which said trusts' owners can exercise day-to-day control over their funds and assets. These
New Zealand registered companies can be made to operate in such a way as to not make a
profit using loans from tax havens and other profit shifting techniques. As a consequence,
foreign trustholders earn tax-free income/revenue - yet have the "air of respectability" that
has come to be associated with companies registered in New Zealand.

FIFA investigation
On May 27, 2015, the US Department of Justice indicted a number of companies and
individuals for conspiracy, corruption and racketeering in connection with bribes and
kickbacks paid to obtain media and marketing rights for FIFA tournaments. Some
immediately entered guilty pleas.
Among those indicted were Jeffrey Webb and Jack Warner, the current and former presidents
of CONCACAF, the continental confederation under FIFA headquartered in the United
States. They were charged with racketeering and bribery offenses. Others were U.S. and

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South American sports marketing executives who paid and agreed to pay well over $150
million in bribes and kickbacks.
Many individuals mentioned in the Panama Papers are connected with the world
governing body of association football, FIFA, including the former president
of CONMEBOLEugenio Figueredo; former President of UEFA Michel Platini; former
secretary general of FIFA Jrme Valcke; Argentine player for Barcelona Lionel Messi; and,
from Italy, the head manager of Metro, Antonio Guglielmi.
The leak also revealed an extensive conflict of interest between a member of the FIFA
Ethics Committee and former FIFA vice president Eugenio Figueredo. Swiss police searched
the offices of UEFA, European football's governing body, after the naming of former
secretary-general Gianni Infantino as president of FIFA. He had signed a television deal
while he was at UEFA with a company called Cross Trading, which the FBI has since
accused of bribery. The contract emerged among the leaked documents. Infantino has denied
wrongdoing.

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