Good morning. We'll start the live blog today with this item from the AFP news agency on a potential development in El Salvador:
Police on Friday raided the El Salvador offices of the Panama-based law firm at the heart of the "Panama Papers" scandal that has revealed how the wealthy in many countries stashed their riches offshore.
The swoop on the San Salvador offices of Mossack Fonseca netted "a good amount of computer equipment," El Salvador's state prosecutor's office said on its Twitter account.
No arrests were made.
The authorities in El Salvador on Wednesday had announced a probe into whether the Salvadorans identified in the Panama Papers reports had broken any laws. Reports said some 33 Salvadorans were named.
The state prosecutor, Douglas Melendez, visited the law firm's premises on Friday.
He told reporters that around 20 computers and a quantity of documents were confiscated, and seven employees questioned but not detained.
The authorities decided to conduct the raid when they observed staff removing the law firm's sign from outside the building, he said.
"We are going to carry out a complete investigation in compliance with the law," Melendez added.
He called on Salvadoran law firms that did business with Mossack Fonseca to come forward to speak with prosecutors.
The offshore companies of Mossack Fonseca's Salvadoran clients were used for transactions of hundreds of thousands of dollars, including to buy property in El Salvador "all under the radar of local authorities," El Faro, an online newspaper, reported.
In this week's Power Vertical Podcast, Brian Whitmore and guests discuss what the Panama Papers scandal tells us about Russia under Vladimir Putin:
They've given us a glimpse of how Vladimir Putin's regime plunders and launders state assets. They've highlighted the difference between corruption in the West, where it is a bug in the software, and in Russia, where it isn't a bug, where it isn't even a feature.
No, in Russia corruption is the software -- it's the country's operating system. LISTEN
The Financial Times proves that setting up an offshore company is sooooo simple that even a journalist can do it.
The Seychelles option caught my eye, mostly because it had one of the loosest requirements for paperwork. Costing just £335, it also had no residency requirement, no need to file annual accounts, no tax and promised confidentiality as a “key feature”. Would they really just let me have it? “I think I will go for the Seychelles company,” I said. “OK sir, I will put that in your online shopping basket right now,” replied Emily, asking me to transfer the money via the website.
It's funny because it's true?
U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has temporary political asylum in Russia, has taken to Twitter to urge British Prime Minister David Cameron to resign because of the Panama papers revelations.
The Independent covers Snowden's tweets.
Robert Palmer, a campaigner for the anticorruption NGO Global Witness, talks in this TED video about the impact of the Panama leak and his optimism that that it can lead to real change.
"For us at Global Witness, this is a moment for change," Palmer says. "We need ordinary people to get angry at the way in which people can hide their identity behind secret companies. We need business leaders to stand up and say, 'secrecy like this is not good for business.'"