BENJAMIN FRANKLIN had not heard of Mossack Fonseca when he observed “nothing can be said to be certain,apart from death and taxes,” and the Panama-based law firm might maintain changed his mind. Mossack is at the centre of a huge tax and money-laundering scandal, or now coming to light thanks to the so-called “Panama papers”. What exactly are these papers and why do they matter?Companies such as Mossack specialise in helping foreigners cloak wealth. Clients may want to maintain money absent from soon-to-be ex-wives,dodge sanctions, launder money or evade taxes. The main tools for doing so are anonymous shell companies (which exist only on paper) and offshore accounts in tax havens (which often come with perks such as banking secrecy and low to no taxes). These structures obscure the identity of the true owner of money parked in or routed through jurisdictions such as Panama.
But authorities (and disgruntled ex-wives) just caught a atomize. Over 11m documents maintain been leaked from Mossack’s secretive offices. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) this weekend went public with its findings that the firm...
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Source: economist.com