New Panama Paper Leak Finds 12,000 Indians Guilty of Illegal Offshore Dealings

Twelve lakh new documents, named Panama: Aftermath, have emerged, linking individuals and organisations to secret tax havens, with Indians in at least 12,000 of them. These are a result of the discoveries of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists(ICIJ) and German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, in collaboration with The Indian Express. The newly-leaked files reveal a hoard of other celebrities, politicians, and alleged criminals whose links to Mossack Fonseca, the firm that was in the spotlight during the first exposé, have not been reported and, often, that the firm itself didn’t know it represented.

Mossack Fonseca is a law firm based in Panama. It arranges investments by the rich and the powerful all across the globe in several offshore companies in a covert manner.  Some 11.5 million files, however, were leaked to Süddeutsche Zeitung in 2016, from Mossack Fonseca, by a source, whose identity remains unknown. The information in the files leaked by this source covered the period from 1977 to December 2015. The journalists at the German newspaper decided to share it with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, of which they are also members. The files, examined by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, showed how several heads of State across the world, the friends and relatives of other top leaders and functionaries, celebrities and business tycoons, had been using this route to secretly stash away enormous amounts of money in offshore companies, in violation of the laws of their own countries, including of course tax laws, by using the services of Mossack Fonseca. This information was released in 2016.

The 12 lakh new documents are part of the second leak of documents related to Panama Paperssince 2016. Investigation reveals how Mossack Fonsecatried to respond to the allegations in 2016. In the process, it revealed the existence of several customers, including Indians, who had earlier denied their links. The new documents exposed names of many Indian businessmen that had incorporated overseas companies, these names weren’t listed in the 2016 Panama leaks. They include Ajay Bijli, owner of PVR Cinemas, and members of his family; Kavin Bharti Mittal, the chief executive officer of Hike Messenger and son of Sunil Mittal, and Jalaj Ashwin Dani, son of Asian Paints promoter Ashwin Dani, The Indian Expressreported. The report says 426 clients from India are being investigated. Messages from Mossack Fonseca accessed at the time of the journalists’ investigation revealed the identities of Indians with links to offshore entities, the most prominent among them being actor Amitabh Bachchan, who has already been investigated. Others include SUN Group Vice Chairperson Shiv Khemka, KP Singh of the DLF Group and his immediate family, politician Anurag Kejriwal among others.

The new documents revealed that the Argentine president Mauricio Macri’s family was controlling a company in the Bahamas, Fleg trading Co. Emails between Mossack Fonseca’s head office in Panama and its Uruguay branch in September and October 2016 reveal employees discussing a plan to backdate documents to conceal the fact that the firm did not know that Fleg Trading Co., was controlled by the family of Argentine president Mauricio Macri. In March 2017, Mossack Fonseca discovered that a company it had registered in the British Virgin Islands was owned by Mohamed Nizam bin Abdul Razak, the brother of Malaysia’s former prime minister, Najib Razak. The company, Everbright Universal Holdings Ltd., owned property in the United States, according to the files. Najib Razak is now under the scanner as part of a probe into billions of dollars that went missing from the country’s state-owned investment fund during his reign. A focal point of the investigation has been $10.6 million that was transferred into a bank account owned by the former prime minister. The files reveal that a company registered by Mossack Fonseca was owned by Fahad al Rajaan, the former head of the agency that oversees Kuwait’s social security system.  Also named in the files is Vitaly Malkin, a Russian oligarch who resigned a seat in the country’s senate in 2013 after reports that he had undeclared assets overseas. He is revealed to be the owner of two British Virgin Islands companies, Audrey Holdings Group Ltd. and Top Matrix Holdings Ltd. In July 2017, Mossack Fonseca learned that the Panama shell companies it had set up were controlled by heirs of iconic French jeweller Pierre Cartier. The companies owned a Canadian forest and Swiss bank accounts. Reporters discovered that Dariga Nazarbayeva, the daughter of Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev, was the sole shareholder of a British Virgin Islands company. In October 2007, Nazarbayev became a shareholder of Asterry Holdings Ltd., which held a stake in sugar factories in Kazakhstan, via a chain of other companies.

From Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi to Indian film star Amitabh Bachchan, from celebrities that enjoy the devotion of millions to politicians that enjoy the confidence of people, tax evasion is a skill they have all acquired. The Panama leaks make it clear that tax avoidance is characteristic to the functioning of modern capitalism. The rich and powerful across the globe make use of international tax havens to avoid paying taxes in their respective countries. On the one hand, major politicians of countries themselves are involved in such activities, they launder huge amounts of money in tax havens and invest in offshore companies. On the other hand, they claim to protect the national interest. National interest is antagonistic to the interests of these oligarchs that grow rich at the expense of not paying their taxes essentially meant for public welfare.