PANAMA PAPERS: Iceland’s prime minister faces calls for his resignation

Eleven million documents leaked from Mossack Fonseca show how the Panamanian law firm helped its clients launder money, evade tax and dodge sanctions, the BBC reports.

The massive amount of data includes documents pertaining to 72 current or former heads of state, including “dictators accused of looting their own countries”.

The documents were obtained by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which has been working on them for the last year or so together with its 107 media partners and hundreds of journalists in 78 countries across the world.

Gerard Ryle, director of the ICIJ (declaration of interest: my eldest son is a member of his data team), told the BBC that the documents “cover the day-to-day business at Mossack Fonseca over the past 40 years”.

“I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents,” he said.

BBC Panorama reports that the data contains secret offshore companies linked to the families and associates of Hosni Mubarak (Egypt), Muammar Gaddafi (Libya, as we in Malta know) and Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

The leaked documents also show how Iceland’s Prime Minister, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, had a vested interest in Iceland’s bailed-out banks even as he negotiated with them and on their behalf. He did not declare this interest at any point. Since the news broke at 8pm today, he has faced immediate calls for his resignation.

He stands accused of hiding “million of dollars of investments in his country’s banks behind a secretive offshore company,” BBC Panorama reports. Gunnlaugsson and his wife bought a Panamanian company, Wintris, in 2007. He sold his 50% of Wintris to his wife for $1 two years later.

Gunnlaugsson is fending off calls for his resignations by saying that he has not broken any rules, and that his wife did not benefit financially from his decisions.

“The offshore company was used to invest millions of dollars of inherited money, according to a document signed by Mr Gunnlaugsson’s wife Anna Sigurlaug Pálsdóttir in 2015,” BBC Panorama reports. Do you see a pattern here?

Mossack Fonseca also supplied Gunnlaugsson and his wife with a front man who pretended to own $1.8m, so that the real owners could get the cash from the bank without revealing their identity.

Iceland’s prime minister, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson