Panama Papers firm did not know who 75% of its clients were

Source: The Guardian

Panama Papers firm did not know who 75% of its clients were

Mossack Fonseca made frantic efforts to discover its own clients’ identities as it fell under global scrutiny

David Pegg
Wed 20 Jun 2018 20.00 BST

The offshore firm at the heart of the Panama Papers leak did not know who as many as three-quarters of its clients were at the time of the exposé, according to an investigation.

The Panamanian company Mossack Fonseca made frantic efforts to discover its clients’ identities in the spring of 2016 as it fell under global scrutiny.

But an internal audit of the thousands of offshore companies it was acting for revealed that it had no records of the real owners of 75% of offshore entities in Panama, and 72% in the British Virgin Islands (BVI).

One client of the company also complained that the stories generated by the Panama Papers meant his customers would have to pay taxes.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/20/panama-papers-firm-mossack-fonseca-did-not-know-who-75-of-its-clients-were