International

Panama Papers: police raid Mossack Fonseca’s office in El Salvado

Authorities in El Salvador have raided the local offices of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, seizing documents and equipment, the country’s attorney general’s office said. The Panama-based law firm is at the centre of the world’s largest data leak scandal that has embarrassed several world leaders and shone a spotlight on the shadowy world of offshore companies.Attorney general Douglas Melendez, who personally oversaw the raid, said the government decided to sweep the offices on Friday after noticing Mossack Fonseca had removed its office sign late on Thursday, which raised suspicions. An employee later said the company was planning to move, according to the attorney general’s Twitter feed, The Guradian reports.The El Salvador office is not listed on Mossack Fonseca’s corporate website, and officials from Mossack Fonseca in Panama were not available to comment late on Friday.El Salvador’s government seized about 20 computers, some documents and interviewed seven employees, but did not detain anyone, Melendez said at a press conference. “At this moment we cannot speak about (any) crimes; all we can do at this moment is our job,” he said, adding the government would analyze all the confiscated information and examine its financial, accounting and legal aspects. He said it appears the law firm’s local affiliate helped process information for clients worldwide.Governments across the world have begun investigating possible financial wrongdoing by the rich and powerful after the leak of more than 11.5m documents, dubbed the Panama Papers, from the law firm that span four decades. The papers have revealed financial arrangements of prominent figures, including friends of Russian president Vladimir Putin, relatives of the prime ministers of Britain and Pakistan and of China president Xi Jinping, and the president of Ukraine.Iceland’s prime minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson resigned after leaked documents revealed that his wife owned an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands with multimillion-pound claims on Iceland’s three collapsed banks. Following Gunnlaugsson’s exit, the opposition party tabled a vote of no confidence in the government, which was defeated in parliament on Friday. Founding Mossack Fonseca partner Ramon Fonseca said this week that his firm, which specialises in setting up offshore companies, had broken no laws and that all its operations were legal. He also said his firm had never destroyed any documents or helped anyone evade taxes or launder money.