The co-founder of Mossack Fonseca is complaining about the reputation they are getting from the media related to the leaked Panama papers, which revealed details of how some of the world's richest individuals transfer their assets into secretive shell companies.
According to ABC News, Ramon Fonseca claims Panama's success in establishing itself as an offshore banking giant has bred jealousy from the first-world rivals at a time of increasing competition. Fonseca said that it's "very unfair what's happening since there's not a level playing field". He added that if the issue happened to a bank in Delaware, it will not be in the headlines; but because it's from Panama, it's the front page of every newspaper in the world.
In 1980, Panama cemented its status as a center for money laundering, when dictator General Manuel Noriega rolled out the red carpet to Colombian drug syndicates. The Panama became a magnet for illegal money, as well as legitimate finances because its dollarize economy sits at the crossroad of the United States.
Economic growth surged to an average of 8.5 percent increase a year for a decade. Panama is known as the Latin America's Dubai.
Bloomberg reported that 11.5 million documents, which took up to 2.6 terabytes of space on a hard drive, contain 40 years of records from Mossack Fonseca. Mossack Fonseca is a niche law firm that represents wealthy business customers and has 40 offices around the world. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which led the reporting on the leaked documents, said the documents reveal that the law firm set up more than 300,000 shell companies, many in tax havens, to assist businesses in concealing their assets.
Officials all over the globe are being spurred into action after the huge leak of the confidential documents which revealed how tax havens are used to hide wealth. Countries including Australia, Spain, and France all opened legal investigations on Monday after the revelations, reports The National News.
Panama President Juan Carlos Varela has promised to cooperate with any judicial investigations stemming from the leaked data, and the country's chief prosecutor's office said Monday that it will look into the documents to see if they reveal any wrongdoing.
RM Koster, an American-born novelist who stayed in Panama City for decades, said Panama wanted to pretend to live in a first world country run by serious people, but at the same time won't give up the culture of bribes and grafts.
