(Panama) The trial of 27 people tried in the “Panama Papers” affair, a scandal of tax evasion and money laundering through a Panamanian law firm revealed in 2016, has opened Monday with one of the main defendants denying any responsibility.
“I am not responsible,” declared on the stand at the start of the hearing Jürgen Mossack, one of the founders, with Ramon Fonseca Mora, of the Mossack Fonseca firm at the heart of the scandal.
“We are simply waiting to obtain justice and I am sure that this is how things will happen,” said the 76-year-old lawyer after the hearing.
Ramon Fonseca Mora, 71, was not present at the hearing because he was hospitalized, explained his lawyer Daika Indira Levy.
The 27 defendants, including the two founders of the firm, are accused of money laundering and each of them faces a maximum sentence of 12 years in prison. All plead innocence.
“The crime of money laundering has been proven and we must now determine the criminal responsibility of the accused,” declared the prosecutor responsible for the fight against organized crime, Isis Soto, at the end of the first day of the trial.
A few hours earlier, she had indicated that the prosecution would request an “exemplary sentence” for the accused.
The trial, scheduled to last until April 26, was originally scheduled to be held in 2021, but was postponed several times for various reasons.
Tax heavens
The actions of the Mossack Fonseca study were revealed in 2016 by 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 world artistic have hidden properties, businesses, capital and profits from their tax services.
Figures mentioned include, among many others, former heads of government of Iceland Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif and the United Kingdom’s David Cameron, former Argentine President Mauricio Macri, as well as 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. Panama is therefore on the blacklist of tax havens established by the European Union.
Some provisions of Panama’s anti-money laundering laws were not yet in place when the case broke, which could make convictions more difficult.
In Panama, the crime of tax evasion has only been punishable since 2019 and for amounts exceeding $300,000 per year. Previously, tax evasion was not considered a crime, but a simple administrative offense.
“Changes in progress”
“The crux of the problem is whether or not a crime was committed in Panama according to the rules of the time,” Carlos Barsallo, former president of the Panamanian section of the anti-corruption association Transparency International, told AFP.
The Supreme Court exonerated a Mossack Fonseca employee in 2021, finding that her actions at the time did not constitute a crime, he recalls.
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.
“Eight years later, changes are underway, but additional actions are also necessary,” Olga de Obaldia, executive director of Transparency International in Panama, told AFP.
In June 2023, a sentence of up to 12 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 unrelated to the “Panama Papers” scandal, which exposed bribes paid by Brazilian construction companies to officials in several Latin American countries to obtain public contracts between 2005 and 2014.