(Panama) The maximum sentence — twelve years in prison — was requested Wednesday in Panama against the two founders of the Mossack Fonseca law firm, accused of money laundering in the international tax evasion scandal revealed in 2016 by the ” Panama Papers.”
The prosecutor responsible for the fight against organized crime, Isis Soto, asked the court for a “maximum” sentence for money laundering against the two directors of the firm, now closed.
Jürgen Mossack, 76, and Ramon Fonseca, 71, “received and transferred funds from illicit activities in Germany and Argentina,” said Mme Soto, requesting their sentence to twelve years of imprisonment.
The two defendants also “concealed, covered up and provided false information to banking entities to open accounts and conceal ownership of assets,” added Mr.me Soto.
For the prosecution, the two founders of the study are responsible for having facilitated, through the Panamanian firm, the creation of opaque companies in which executives of the German multinational Siemens deposited millions of euros outside real accounts of the company. These companies would have been used to hide money from the payment of commissions.
The law firm would also have been used to keep money from a large fraud in Argentina.
Mme Soto on Wednesday also requested the conviction of 24 other defendants, mainly former employees of the company, and requested the acquittal of three others.
“I am not responsible,” Jürgen Mossack declared on the stand at the opening of the trial on April 8. “We are simply waiting to obtain justice and I am sure that this is how things will happen,” then affirmed the lawyer of German origin.
The trial, scheduled to last until April 26, was originally scheduled to be held in 2021 but has been postponed several times for various reasons.
Tax heavens
The “Panama Papers” affair broke out in 2016 after the publication of an investigation, known as the “Panama Papers”, carried out by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICJI).
Based on the leak of 11.5 million documents from the Mossack Fonseca study, it revealed that heads of state and government, top politicians and figures from finance, sports and the artistic world hid properties, businesses, capital and profits from the tax authorities.
Among the figures mentioned are, among many others, the former heads of government of Iceland Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif and of the United Kingdom David Cameron, the former president of Argentina Mauricio Macri, as well as the football star Lionel Messi and Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar.
The scandal led to the closure of the Mossack Fonseca firm and the image of the small Central American country was seriously affected.
In Panama, the crime of tax evasion has only been punishable since 2019 and for amounts above US$300,000 per year. Previously, tax evasion was not considered a crime, but a simple administrative offense.
The reforms undertaken by Panama following the scandal, however, enabled it in 2023 to be removed from the “grey list” of the anti-money laundering organization GAFI. But Panama is still on the blacklist of tax havens established by the European Union.
In June 2023, a sentence of up to twelve years in prison was requested against the founders of the law firm in the so-called “Lava Jato” case for money laundering in relation to Brazilian construction companies, including the giant Odebrecht.
The judgment has not yet been made public in this case independent of the “Panama Papers” scandal. It highlighted bribes paid by Brazilian construction companies, including Odebrecht, to officials in several Latin American countries to obtain public contracts between 2005 and 2014.