The leak of secret documents offering an unprecedented insight into how the rich use tax havens to hide their wealth included some powerful Americans

A prisoner serving 13 years after being involved in a Ponzi scheme, a Florida billionaire found guilty of copying sculptures and a British national who lived the high life in Monte Carlo.

These are among 200 people in the US exposed this week by the Panama Papers, the leak of secret documents offering the world an unprecedented insight into how the rich and powerful use tax havens to hide their wealth.

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While the Washington and Wall Street establishments have emerged relatively unscathed – “How have Americans so far escaped the biggest leak of financial data of all time?” asked the influential Politico website – some colourful characters who fell foul of the law are identified in Mossack Fonseca’s files.

McClatchy DC, which has partnered with the Guardian and other media organisations to investigate the leak, reported that in four separate cases the Panama-based law firm helped register offshore companies for individuals who are now either accused or convicted of serious financial crimes.

Among the cases highlighted is that of Robert Miracle of Bellevue, Washington, whose company was an active shareholder in several offshores created by Mossack Fonseca in the British Virgin Islands. Miracle was indicted for a $65m Seattle-area Ponzi scheme involving investment in Indonesian oilfields, with new investors’ money allegedly used to pay off past investors. In 2011, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud and tax evasion.

McClatchy also cited the case of Anthony Gumbiner, the Dallas-area chairman of Hallwood Group. “He’s a British national with deep Texas ties who settled an insider trading case in 1996 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, paying $1.7m in penalties at the time,” it reported. “A jetsetter in the 1980s, Gumbiner was known for his lavish lifestyle in Monte Carlo.”

But Hallwood filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009, McClatchy added. His offshore shell companies ceased to be active in 2011. Last year Mossack Fonseca finally started to conduct enhanced background checks.

Another fish caught in the net is Benjamin Wey, president of New York Global Group, indicted last year on securities fraud charges. McClatchy noted that Wey is accused of using offshores set up with Mossack Fonseca to disguise complex transactions between Chinese operating companies and publicly traded American shell companies.

Igor Olenicoff, a property billionaire in Florida, appears as a shareholder of Olen Oil Management Limited. In 2007 he was sentenced to two years of probation for tax evasion and paid a $52m fine after not declaring more than $200m in offshore shell companies. In 2014 he was found guilty of making replicas of a sculpture and was ordered to make restitution to the sculptors concerned.

Also named in the files is John Michael “Red” Crim, author of self-published books From Here to Malta and I’ve Been Arrested, Now What? In 2008 federal jurors in Philadelphia convicted him and two associates of a plot to have investors use phony trusts to cheat the IRS out of roughly $10m in tax revenue.

According to McClatchy’s analysis of the treasure trove of millions of leaked documents, there are at least 200 scanned individual Americans passports in the Mossack Fonseca files, but establishing a final total is difficult. “Some appear to be American retirees purchasing real estate in places like Costa Rica and Panama,” it said. The database also contains about 3,500 shareholders of offshore companies who list US addresses.

Heather Lowe, director of government affairs at Global Financial Integrity, said: “I would expect the US to be highlighted for both prominent Americans who are using offshore companies and because Mossack Fonseca had what appears to be a network office in the state of Nevada,”

She added: “It is extremely easy, and legal, to create an anonymous company in any state in the US, but a few states are well-known for being open for anonymous business – Nevada, Delaware and Wyoming.”



