Intel footprint

‘Panama Papers’ Law Firm Helped CIA Operatives, Gun-Runners Set Up Shell Companies

After journalists started naming names in the massive document dump known as the Panama Papers, which details the shadow networks of shell companies and tax havens used by the super-rich, many wondered why Americans went unmentioned in the international scandal. Now, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has implicated the CIA as one of the players of this secret — if technically legal — game of hiding money from tax collectors.

Mossack Fonseca, the law firm that sprung the leak, reportedly works with many intelligence operatives and CIA contractors to set up offshore companies to hold personal funds.

The documents name several intermediaries and gun-runners who helped the CIA supply firearms to anti-communist right-wing fighters in Afghanistan, South America and Saudi Arabia during the Cold War — including a couple of wealthy players suspected to be involved in the Iran-Contra affair, in which the Ronald Reagan administration secretly sold weapons to Iran in an attempt to free American hostages and bankroll right-wing rebels in Nicaragua.