Panama Papers database on shell companies goes online

Washington

The database, built on just a portion of the 11.5 million documents leaked from the Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, reveals more than 3,60,000 names of individuals and companies behind the anonymous shell firms, the ICIJ said on Monday. It reveals the full extent to which the world’s wealthy, alongside criminals, create such nominee companies to stash and transfer assets out of sight of the law and tax officials.

Reports already published in April based on the explosive dossier linked some of the world’s most powerful leaders, including Russian President
Vladimir Putin, British Prime Minister David Cameron and others to unreported offshore companies. Iceland’s prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, and Spain’s industry minister Jose Manuel Soria, were forced to resign when they were tied to shell companies.

Until now access to the total cache of documents, originally provided by a mysterious “John Doe”, was restricted to the ICIJ and a select group of international media.
The ICIJ said on Tuesday it is publishing some of the information catalogued in a database “in the public interest,” as a global movement against tax evasion and the secrecy accorded the beneficial owners of anonymous shell companies gains force.

The database “allows users to explore the networks of companies and people that used — and sometimes abused — the secrecy of offshore locales with the help of Mossack Fonseca and other intermediaries,”
the ICIJ said. It said it was not making available raw records online, nor was it putting all the information from the records out, in part to prevent access to bank account details and personal data of those mentioned.

The database can be searched by individual and company name and address, and shows links between those in the database. But it gives no information — beyond their name — on the full identities of those behind the companies, nor of the underlying assets linked to the accounts.

Mossack Fonseca sought a court order last week to prevent the ICIJ from putting the data online, arguing it would violate attorney-client privilege. But the ICIJ said it is important the public be able to look up information on any offshore company. Marina Walker Guevara, deputy director of the ICIJ, stressed, however, that “this is not disclosing private information en masse.”