Corruption Central

Panama Law Firm Opens Offshore Accounts for Officials World-Wide

Government officials world-wide—and their close relatives—were named in a deluge of leaked documents received by Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with several other news organizations, including the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

The contents of the documents, which are connected to Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, couldn’t be independently confirmed by The Wall Street Journal. Mossack Fonseca denied wrongdoing and said that “the parties in many of the circumstances [cited] are not and have never been clients of Mossack Fonseca.”

The documents, which came from an unidentified source, outline the systematic way in which people in power created and used offshore accounts based in places like the British Virgin Islands, Liechtenstein and the Bahamas. While the legality of many of these alleged arrangements remains murky, the revelations have stoked a global furor.