Good morning! RFE/RL resumes its Live Blog of the Panama Papers with this story out of Panama itself. Police there have raided the headquarters of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm that was the source of the leaks. Police say the raid was carried out "without incident or interference."
Police carried out Tuesday's raid along with officials from an organised crime unit. Officers set up a perimeter around the headquarters while prosecutors entered the offices to search for documents.
Afterwards, the attorney general's office said the aim had been "to obtain documentation linked to the information published in news articles that establish the use of the firm in illicit activities".
The statement added that searches would also take place at subsidiaries of the firm.
The Panama Papers revelations have reached Davit Kezerashvili, who was Georgia's defense minister during the 2008 war with Russia.
The Swiss newspaper Tribune De Geneve wrote that in 2006 when Kezerashvili was appointed minister, he owned only one flat. But his assets were soon to grow after he resigned in December 2008, a few months after the war with Russia.
Tribune De Geneve reported that ten days after Kezerashvili’s resignation, ten of his trustees founded three offshore companies. Millions obtained from oil sales was transferred to bank accounts. According to the Panama Papers, an account was opened for one of those companies in Swiss Bank BCGE. 20 million Swiss francs (nearly USD 21 million) was transferred to this account. A further 25 million was transferred the same way to the banks ABN AMRO and BNP Paribas.
The Swiss newspaper also writes that in the beginning of 2013, an investigation was launched against Kezerashvili for corruption. In May-June of the same year, a trustee of Kezerashvili contacted the Panamanian legal services company Mossack Fonseca to register documents and back date them. Later, before the start of the trial, Kezerashvili transferred his assets to the two other offshore companies.
Activists in Australia say their country's laws on money laundering and other financial manipulations are "less stringent" than those in Panama.
Uniting Church director Mark Zirnsak, a member of the secretariat for the Australian arm of the International Tax Justice Network, called on Assistant Treasurer Kelly O'Dwyer to commit to better protection for whistleblowers.
As The Australian Financial Review revealed in February, the Turnbull government is looking at extending whistleblower law to specifically protect – and possibly reward – those who inform on multinationals cheating on their tax bills.
"In light of the Panama papers, the government should be following through on these commitments previously made, not dragging the chain on them," Mr Zirnsak said.
An official in Sri Lanka has become the latest victim of the Panama Papers revelations.
Amarapala was the chairman of the CEB between 2010 and 2011. He also served as an executive at the IWS Holdings Ltd. owned by Arthur Senanayaka between 2003 to 2010.
He has maintained this particular account while serving as a Director of the Sovereign Capital Corporation (SCC) belonging to Senanayaka, and that company had not been charged for wrong-doing up to now after being named in the 2013 list, the statement said.
“Amarapala has decided to keep away from all his responsibilities and functions of this ministry and to tender his resignation papers to Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka with the hope that it will be easier if the Ministry decides to conduct any investigation into the issue.”
U.S. financial whistle-blower Bradley Birkenfeld, who revealed massive tax evasion by U.S. firms and citizens while working at UBS bank in Switzerland, says he is "sure" the CIA is behind the Mossack Fonseca leak.
Birkenfeld pointed to the fact that the political uproar created by the disclosures have mainly impacted countries with tense relationships with the United States. "The very fact that we see all these names surface that are the direct quote-unquote enemies of the United States, Russia, China, Pakistan, Argentina and we don't see one U.S. name. Why is that?" Birkenfeld said. "Quite frankly, my feeling is that this is certainly an intelligence agency operation."
As for Birkenfeld himself, his story is worth recounting a bit:
Birkenfeld, an American citizen, was a banker working at UBS in Switzerland when he approached the U.S. government with information on massive amounts of tax evasion by Americans with secret accounts in Switzerland. By the end of his whistleblowing career, Birkenfeld had served more than two years in a U.S. federal prison, been awarded $104 million by the IRS for his information and shattered the foundations of more than a century of Swiss banking secrecy.
Tax officials from 28 countries will gather in Paris on April 13 to discuss what to do in the face of the Panama Papers revelations and to discuss "a global approach" to tax information.
Senior officials from tax authorities around the world have said they intend to work together to analyse information revealed by the documents, which have provoked international concern over the offshore industry.
Investigations have been launched in a number of countries over the past week, but the Paris meeting will be an attempt to develop a global strategy to crack down on offenders.
The sheer scale of the leak – 11.5m documents, covering 210,000 companies in 21 offshore jurisdictions – has led to Wednesday’s hastily arranged meeting.
The aggressive new approach is being led by the Joint International Tax Shelter Information and Collaboration (Jitsic) network, of which the UK is a leading member.
Famed U.S. journalist Bob Woodward, of Watergate fame, has been speaking out a bit on the Panama Papers, which he says is a triumph of journalism. Here is his interview with the BBC.
And here is an interview with Slate.
I think the Panama Papers are a great story, and I think it’s astonishing they kept it secret for so long. There are so many dimensions to it. They’re still working on it. Last week I did an interview with the BBC. Radio interview. Also on the show was the guy who heads the journalism collective in Washington that’s done this.
We were going through and the BBC interviewer was saying to him, “So, what new revelations do you have? What’s new? Give us something hot,” and he kept driving at this. I finally said to the interviewer, “You know, here you are. It’s the BBC, this distinguished broadcast operation, and you’ve got internet-itis. You want to know what’s the latest, what’s next, and here’s somebody’s group of people who have done some of the most serious journalism of the era, and they’ve explained, ‘We’re not going to be able to tell you everything, we’ve got to draw the connections, these are, what, 11 million pages?’ ” Have you ever read 11 million pages of anything?
Russia's controversial nationalist culture minister, Vladimir Medinsky says there is nothing in the Panama Papers that would "destroy Russia." Medinsky made the comments while in London to promote the U.K.-Russia Year of Language and Literature.
Medinsky said: "I believe that they [the Panama Papers] have discredited the UK, Iceland and Ukraine in more ways than Russia. I haven't read anything that would destroy Russia. As for me, personally I found nothing new in this investigation," he said.
The Panama Papers allege Roldugin was earning £6.5m a year, had £19m in cash from a stake in the advertising agency Video International, and a separate investment worth £100m. The cellist denies any wrongdoing and told Russian TV the money came from donations to purchase expensive musical instruments for young Russians.
Medinsky said: "I think that the Russians have had enough of it, because there is a lot of talk of trillions of dollars but all they found was a cellist. He is a man who dedicated his whole life to art and he is definitely the most famous cellist in the world now.
"Such an excess of attention drawn to him puts him in an awkward position. It (offshore trusts) are not a problem of Russia, it is a problem of all countries, who have offshore territories. I have seen none in [the far eastern Russian island territory] Kamchatka."
The secrets of the Panama Papers were once guarded only by a thin layer of "glitter nail polish (color unknown)."
The government in Malta is expected to face a no-confidence vote as pressure mounts against it over revelations in the Panama Papers. The latest revelations cast doubt on the explanations of the government officials named in the documents.
Mr Schembri earlier this week lashed out at reports by the Financial Review, which he said were "absolutely baseless".
He said his Panama company, Tillgate Inc was "intended solely for estate planning".
Mr Mizzi said in a public statement last week that his New Zealand trust was set up for family reasons, and that he had told the prime minister of his intention to have a bank account to receive rent payments on his London property.
The Mossack Fonseca documents show a more diverse investment strategy.