Panama Papers (Africa)
[1][2] The documents, some dating back to the 1970s, were created by, and taken from, Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca,[3] and were leaked in 2015 by an anonymous source.
His panel's 2015 report[5] found that Africa loses $50 billion a year due to tax evasion and other illicit practices and its 50-year losses top a trillion dollars.
The company, active in Turkey, Great Britain and Algeria, is managed through Compagnie d'Etude et de Conseil (CEC), based in Luxembourg, and has an account in the Swiss NBAD Private Bank.
[9] According to the leaked documents approximately fifteen shell companies funneled money through UBS bank accounts to elites in Portugal with direct ties to Helder Bataglia dos Santos of Escom, which describes itself as one of the largest investors in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
[10] ICIJ partner Le Monde says it has seen documents that show he was the proxyholder for Medea Investments Limited, founded in Niue in 2001, and moved to Samoa five years later.
[13] From 1999 to 2002, the Kabila regime "transferred ownership of at least $5 billion of assets from the state-mining sector to private companies under its control ... with no compensation or benefit for the State treasury", a United Nations investigation found.
[8] Lucien Ebata, a Kinshasa businessman, runs Orion Group SA, registered in the Seychelles in 2009 by Mossack Fonseca through the Luxembourg-based Figed, according to the Panama Papers.
[13] Ebata, who receives a salary of a million dollars, does a business volume of around a billion, and counts both Shell and the Société nationale des pétroles du Congo (SNPC) among his customers.
[23] The assets of his Virgin Islands-registered firm Pan World Investments were frozen in response to a European Union order when his father stepped down in 2011 during the Arab Spring.
[26] Orange Star Corporation bought a long-term lease in a tony London neighborhood near Hyde Park for $600,000 the same year al-Mirghani created it, and at the time of his death held assets worth $2.72 million.
But Kane, a close associate of the Gabonese ruling family, was questioned and jailed in Nanterre for ten hours by anti-corruption agents in connection with an investigation opened in July 2007.
[27] In January 2013 Kane was briefly questioned while in transit to Miami at Le Bourget by French authorities whose curiosity was piqued by €2.5 million cash he had on his person.
[28] According to Senegalese daily Libération, the money-laundering unit Tracfin became interested in 2006 in a €300,000 payment from Groupe Marck, a French company specializing in military uniforms and anti-riot gear, to a Monaco-based entity called Citp.
[29] Mossack Fonseca opened two holding companies for Kane in 2013 and 2014: Maxi Gold International Limited and Smart Key LTD, which according to their paperwork traded in sundries on the one hand and gym equipment on the other.
[32] US authorities say that Steinmetz paid Mamadie Touré $5.3 million for her help in obtaining the concession from her husband Lansana Conté, president of Guinea, shortly before he died.
[34] Mounir Majidi, personal secretary of King Mohammed VI was designated in March 2006 as the representative of SMCD Limited created in 2005 through Geneva financial advisor Dextima Conseils.
His family's Julex Foundation was the shareholder in Stanhope Investments, a company incorporated in 2003 on the island of Niue, to which he funneled millions of dollars so he could buy a private jet.
A portion of the wealth owned by former Chairman of the United Bank for Africa (UBA), Hakeem Belo-Osagie, is domiciled in trusts and shell companies in some notorious tax havens around the world.
[10] Leaked documents show that Brigadier-General Emmanuel Ndahiro, using a London address, become a director of a British Virgin Islands company, Debden Investments Ltd. in 1998, owner of a jet aircraft.
[46] In April 2009 Wade became minister of international cooperation, of territorial development, air transport and infrastructure, which he remained until his father's defeat by Macky Sall in the 2012 election.
[49] The ICIJ investigation traces out many levels of offshore holdings in multiple countries related to the business dealings of Beny Steinmetz, with many serious findings such as a request that Mossack Fonseca backdate the revocation of a power of attorney.
[21] Mossack Fonseca records show that Sierra Leone diamond exporter Octea, based in the British Virgin Islands with the Steinmetz family as its beneficiaries, is wholly owned by Guernsey-based BSGR Resources, linked to a bribery scandal in Guinea.
These unpaid taxes are discounted, according to mayor Saa Emerson Lamina, because Octea promised a 5% profit−sharing agreement, and payment of 1% of its annual profit to a community development fund, but it did not do this either.
Fighting had stopped in Sierra Leone, and the mine had previously been held and worked by South African firm Branch Energy, in payment for the services of its parent company, Executive Outcomes, "effectively...a military battalion for hire,"[50] against rebel fighters in the area.
[51] According to the World Bank, Sierra Leone for a long time based its growth forecasts on the success of two companies, one of which was Octea parent BSGR[21] Two men linked to Fidentia, a South African asset management company that looted 1.2 billion rand[52] from pension funds meant to provide for 46,000 widows and orphans of mineworkers,[53] had accounts with Mossack Fonseca, which was willing to help hide the money even after South Africa made their names public.
[26] Orange Star Corporation bought a long-term lease in a tony London neighborhood near Hyde Park for $600,000 the same year al-Mirghani created it, and at the time of his death held assets worth $2.72 million.
[26] The trial court prosecutor in Tunis ordered a judicial inquiry into the Panama Papers and Tunisian political figures suspected of hiring the firm.
[55] The Tunisian Assembly of the Representatives of the People established a parliamentary commission of inquiry as well[56] Newspaper Inkyfada had access to the documents and reported a dozen politicians, former government officials and lawyers had been implicated, as well as a leading media figure.
[57] Inkyfada was forced to briefly shut down its website following the report due to a cyberattack that attempted to insert names of politicians who had not been mentioned in the leaked documents.
[10] According to the Panama Papers, Zimplats Holdings, a large platinum mining concern, set up a shell company to pay the salaries of its senior managers.
