Panama Papers Trial Begins for 27 Defendants

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Facts

• Roughly eight years after the Panama Papers were revealed, 27 people connected to the scandal are on trial for money laundering and tax evasion charges in a Panamanian court.¹
• At the center of the 11M-page financial document dump scandal was the Mossack-Fonseca law firm, whose owners — Juergen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca — are accused of setting up shell companies to help some of the world's richest people hide their money.²
• The two men were acquitted on similar charges — including money laundering and making offshore bank accounts to move bribe money from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht — in a 2022 Panama trial.³
• The other defendants are employees who worked for the law firm. Panama changed its definition of money laundering in 2019, and Panama's Supreme Court previously ruled that shell companies couldn't be ruled criminal if they were created before the law changed.⁴
• The document leak, however, went beyond just Mossack and Fonseca — connecting over 100 politicians, then-heads of state, billionaires, and sports stars to tax evasion in places such as Panama and the British Virgin Islands.⁵
• Among those exposed were cellist Sergei Roldugin, a friend of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who was keeping $2B in an offshore company, and former Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan and Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson of Iceland, who were forced to resign.⁴

Sources: ¹Dw.Com, ²FOX News, ³Newsroom Panama, ⁴Guardian and ⁵BBC News.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by Associated Press. The system is working well when a phenomenal piece of journalism leads the authorities to scrutinize the wrongdoings of the elites. Tax evasion hurts smaller countries as well as the biggest, so hopefully this trial provides justice for taxpayers and holds accountable those who worked to help wealthy individuals avoid paying taxes.
• Narrative B, as provided by World Socialist Web Site. The Panama Papers probe, and investigations like it, do a great job of holding some wrongdoers accountable, but there is wider-spread systemic corruption than these US State Department-funded reports are showing. Those who are friendly with the US should face the same justice as those who oppose American influence worldwide.

Predictions