Trove of Panama Papers data on offshore accounts prompts probe

WASHINGTON: The name Mossack Fonseca, evocative of an arch Bollywood villain, broke like a thunderclap over many world capitals on Monday as a treasure trove of documents pointing to illicit foreign holdings, slush money, and corruption involving scores of world leaders, tycoons and celebrities was leaked anonymously through a union of global investigative journalists.Leaders in Moscow (Vladimir Putin) and Beijing (Xi Jin-Ping) among major powers, Pakistan (Nawaz Sharif) and Iceland (Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson) among lesser powers, and familiar suspects such as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi, were named and shamed. Notable exceptions to the list of crooked leaders included US President Obama and India’s PM Narendra Modi.Nepotism coursed through the expose with Nawaz Sharif ’s daughter Maryam Nawaz, Li Xiaolin, daughter of former Chinese PM Li Peng, Mohd Nazifuddin Najib, son of Malaysian PM Najib Razak, Clive Khulubuse Zuma, nephew of South Africa President Jacob Zuma, and Kojo Annan, son of former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, featuring in the expose.Although graft, kleptocracy and nepotism is not new to most countries, the responses were predictable: It was all a grand conspiracy to undermine them and their countries. Why are there no leaders from the West except from Iceland was a question that erupted in several forums after the Panama-based law firm and corporate services provider itself withdrew into a shell after asserting its operations were above board and broke no law.Russia’s government has dismissed Mossack Fonseca reports as unfounded and based on “Putinophobia” while 10 Downing Street refused to comment on information in the files which showed that British PM David Cameron’s father, Ian, used offshore techniques to avoid paying UK tax. The PM’s family said their investments were a “private matter”. Iceland’s PM Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson announced on live TV that he will not be resigning.Conspiracy theorists dubbed it a “CIA false flag operations”, pointing to the absence of any American in the list, and maintaining that the real corruption lay in NATO and the UN.But who leaked the documents and what did they hope to gain from it? According to the ICIJ, the lead for the leak came in late 2014 when an unknown source reached out to the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, which had reported previously on a smaller leak of Mossack Fonseca files to German government regulators. The source reportedly contacted Suddeutsche Zeitung reporter Bastian Oberway via encrypted chat offering some sort of data intended “to make these crimes public”.However, the source warned that his or her “life is in danger”, was only willing to communicate via encrypted channels and refused to meet in person. “How much data are we talking about,” Obermayer asked, according to an account in Wired. “More than you have ever seen,” the source responded. The eventual stash added up to 2.6 terabytes, a 100 times bigger than Wikileaks’ Cablegate, and enough to fill 600 DVDs. Obermayer says he communicated with his source over a series of encrypted channels that they frequently changed, each time deleting all history from their prior exchange.In their Suddeutsche Zeitung report, Obermayer and his co-authors write that the source wanted neither financial compensation nor anything else in return, apart from a few security measures. To this day, Obermayer says he does not know the name of the person or the identity of the person who leaked the documents, but feels he knows the person. “For certain periods I talked to (this person) more than to my wife,” he told Wired.