Panama Papers firm did not know 75% of clients – leak

The offshore firm at the heart of the Panama Papers leak did not know who as many as three-quarters of its clients were at the time of the exposé, according to an investigation. A report in The Guardian says the Panamanian company Mossack Fonseca made frantic efforts to discover its clients’ identities in the spring of 2016 as it fell under global scrutiny. But an internal audit of the thousands of offshore companies it was acting for revealed that it had no records of the real owners of 75% of offshore entities in Panama, and 72% in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). The report says one client of the company also complained that the stories generated by the Panama Papers meant his customers would have to pay taxes. The Guardian says the revelations will harden the resolve of anti-corruption campaigners who have argued the offshore sector needs to become more transparent. Last month, states the report, they secured a major victory in the UK when MPs passed a law requiring British overseas territories, including the BVI, to create public registers of shell company owners. The extent of the firm’s record-keeping failures is revealed in a fresh leak of data from the company, which declared in March that it had gone out of business and was shutting down.