Russia claimed ‘Putinphobia’ was afoot, but Iceland’s PM was less cool under pressure – and David Cameron is still feeling the heat

Russia

What did we learn?

Vladimir Putin’s friend – a cellist called Sergei Roldugin – has secret offshore companies registered in his name worth many millions of dollars. Roldugin has said he is no businessman. But the Panama Papers reveal $2bn flowing from Russian state banks to offshore companies and a firm in the British Virgin Islands called Sandalwood Continental Ltd. The money is cycled back to Russia. Some $11m of it went to a ski resort outside St Petersburg called Igora, where in 2013 Putin’s younger daughter Katerina got married. The evidence suggests Roldugin is a proxy, with managers at Bank Rossiya in St Petersburg running his affairs. The US has designated Bank Rossiya a “crony bank” for top Kremlin bigwigs. It says its boss, Yuri Kovalchuk – another presidential buddy – is “essentially Putin’s personal banker”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sergei Roldugin, Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, then Russian president, in St Petersburg in 2009. Photograph: Dmitry Astakhov/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool/EPA

What happened next?

Mainstream TV and media are under the Kremlin’s thumb. Consequently, Russian citizens know little of the Panama Papers; the Putin story has been ignored. The president’s veteran spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, dismissed it as an example of “Putinphobia” and suggested that many of the investigative journalists involved were actually CIA spies. Peskov denied that his wife, Tatiana Navka, a former Olympic ice skater, had an offshore company. She did. On Monday the Guardian published an image of her passport, which features in the files. Three people demonstrated outside Russia’s Duma, or parliament, calling for Putin’s impeachment. They were arrested. On Thursday, Putin dismissed claims of corruption and said Roldugin had used his money to import musical instruments.

Azerbaijan

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Arzu and Leyla Aliyeva attend a magazine launch in London in 2011. Photograph: Eamonn McCormack/Getty Images

What did we learn?



Azerbaijan’s ruling first family, the Aliyevs, have a huge offshore business empire. It includes banking, telecoms, goldmines and London mansions. Among the Panama Papers is a Mossack Fonseca firm called Exaltation Ltd. It belongs to President Aliyev’s socialite daughters, Leyla and Arzu. It was set up in 2015 to hold UK property. The upmarket Knightsbridge solicitors who registered it, Child & Child, claimed wrongly that the two women had no political connections.

What happened next?

A small war. Fighting raged for four days between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region. Regime critics say the flare-up was designed to distract from the Panama Papers. Whether this is true or not, the country has a lousy human rights record. Azerbaijani authorities have shut down critical media organisations and jailed prominent journalists, bloggers, and freedom-of-expression advocates.

Iceland

What did we learn?



Iceland’s prime minister, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, and his wife, Anna Sigurlaug Pálsdóttir, had a secret British Virgin Islands firm. They set up Wintris Inc in 2007. Its purpose was to invest her share of the proceeds from the sale of her father’s car business. In 2009, Gunnlaugsson sold his 50% stake to his wife for a symbolic $1. At this point he was an MP. In 2013, he became prime minister for the centre-right Progressive Party. He failed to declare his offshore firm, perhaps hoping that its existence would stay hidden. Last month, Swedish journalists working on the Panama Papers ambushed Gunnlaugsson during a TV interview. He denied wrongdoing, but his face – alarm, confusion, hesitation – told its own sorry story. Edward Snowden tweeted this dramatic moment as a gif.

What happened next?

On Monday, 10,000 people – in a country of 330,000 – protested outside Iceland’s parliament in Reykjavik. They shouted slogans calling for Gunnlaugsson to quit. They banged drums, blew whistles, and waved bananas – a symbol suggesting the country that suffered a banking collapse in 2008 had turned into a banana republic. The next day, after a meeting with party colleagues, Gunnlaugsson resigned. Reluctantly, it appeared: his party said it was a temporary measure and that he might come back after a period of leave. Gunnlaugsson is the Panama Papers’ biggest casualty so far, and proof that democratic leaders have a tougher time than their authoritarian counterparts.

UK

What did we learn?



It was known that David Cameron’s late father, Ian, ran an investment fund called Blairmore Holdings Inc. The fund was based in the Bahamas and named after the family’s ancestral home in Aberdeenshire. It managed tens of millions of pounds on behalf of wealthy clients. The new facts, however, were piquant. In 30 years of trading, Blairmore did not pay any UK tax on its profits. Additionally, the fund’s directors went to extravagant lengths to give the impression that the company was based in the Caribbean. They hired 50 officers from the Bahamas, one of them a part-time bishop. (This was the late Solomon Humes, a lay bishop with the non-denominational Church of God of Prophecy.) The fund also used bearer shares, where the person who holds the physical share certificate is the company’s owner. Ironically enough, David Cameron outlawed bearer shares as PM, recognising that they could be used for money-laundering.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest David Cameron on Friday. Photograph: David Hartley/Rex/Shutterstock

What happened next?



Downing Street initially said that Blairmore was a “private matter”. This line of defence swiftly crumbled when Cameron was grilled about Blairmore. Sky’s Faisal Islam asked if he had benefited in the past from the fund, or would do so in the future. The answer was a masterclass in how to stick to the simple present tense. Cameron said: “I have no shares, no offshore trusts, nothing like that.” No 10 issued a further statement which said that Samantha Cameron has a “small number of shares connected to her father’s land” on which she pays tax. Cameron, it seemed, was reluctant to acknowledge the obvious: that his father’s offshore fund had helped the family financially.



There were further damaging revelations. In 2008, Blairmore’s directors considered moving the fund to Bermuda or the Cayman Islands before deciding on Ireland. The FT revealed that Cameron had personally lobbied against EU plans to name the owners of offshore trusts. Then on Thursday came the bombshell. Cameron admitted to ITV’s Robert Peston that he and Samantha did own shares in Blairmore, sold for £31,500 just before he became prime minister in 2010.

China

What did we learn?

Like other ruling elites, many of China’s red aristocrats are offshore enthusiasts. Eight senior members of China’s Communist party used offshore companies, including the granddaughter of a top political leader. Jasmine Li was a student at Stanford University in the US in 2010 when two British Virgin Islands companies were registered in her name. Her grandfather, Jia Qinglin, was the country’s fourth most powerful figure. Others who feature in the Panama Papers are the brother-in-law of China’s president, Xi Jinping, and the son-in-law of Zhang Gaoli, a member of the politburo standing committee. China and Hong Kong were Mossack Fonseca’s biggest sources of business, we learned. Chinese clients were linked with 40,000 companies.

What happened next?



China’s reaction was predictable. Its censors blocked access to the Panama Papers revelations as they made headlines elsewhere. Searches returned no results. On Thursday, the Guardian’s website was blocked after its red nobility stories from the leaked files were published.

Zimbabwe

What did we learn?

Two alleged cronies of Robert Mugabe – an arms dealer and a mining tycoon – were able to keep their offshore companies despite being blacklisted by the EU.



What happened next?



Mugabe’s supporters pointed out that the offshore firms were not linked to the president; detractors said Mugabe may not have featured in this particular data dump, but had vast assets overseas.

Iran

What did we learn?



Mossack Fonseca acted for an Iranian state oil company, Petropars, which was blacklisted by the US. The firm was registered in the British Virgin Islands. The Panamanian law firm also serviced another Iranian outfit called Petrocom. Leaked emails suggested that its ultimate owner was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s former president.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Robert Mugabe and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex/Shutterstock

What happened next?



Not much. The story was picked up by semi-official news agencies and covered extensively by the BBC’s Persian service. Only Iran’s elites got the news.

Australia

What did we learn?



Australia’s tax office was already embroiled in a major operation against suspected tax evaders. The Panama Papers revealed that many of them had offshore companies managed by Mossack Fonseca. They included Philip de Figueiredo, partner at an accounting firm based in the Channel Islands, who was jailed for two years for running a massive tax evasion scheme. Another partner, Philip Egglishaw, is under investigation, with an Interpol red notice issued for his arrest.

What happened next?

The tax office said it was investigating more than 800 wealthy clients of Mossack Fonseca. The figure included 120 people linked to an associate offshore provider in Hong Kong. The revelations caused widespread indignation. The Labor opposition said not enough had been done to tackle tax abuses by individuals. The government said it had introduced significant measures, adding: “Nothing makes Australians angrier than having to pay more tax because someone is avoiding tax.”

Panama

What did we learn?

The Panama Papers shone an uncomfortable light on the small Central American republic, home to 3.9 million people. That Panama is a tax haven was not news, but the country was revealed as a super-node through which the world’s illicit billions flow. Mossack Fonseca’s founders are a German, Jürgen Mossack, and a Panamanian, Ramón Fonseca. Fonseca is friends with Panama’s president, Juan Carlos Varela, and Mossack has advised the foreign ministry.

What happened next?



Faced with international embarrassment, Varela pledged to create an international panel. It would help improve transparency in the country’s offshore financial industry, he told the nation in a TV address. The law firm, meanwhile, denied wrongdoing. In a statement on its website, Mossack Fonseca said that over the past 40 years it had never been charged with criminal wrongdoing.



Pakistan

What did we learn?

A son of Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, owns four luxury flats in Park Lane in London. The properties are held via offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands set up by Mossack Fonseca. Sharif’s children raised a £7m loan from Deutsche Bank against this property empire.

What happened next?



The Sharifs – Nawaz, sons Hussain and Hassan and daughter, Mariam – denied wrongdoing. They said the flats belonged solely to Hussain and that all relevant taxes had been paid. On Tuesday Sharif said that a judicial commission led by a former supreme court judge would investigate what critics allege is the hiding of assets. The president said: “I want the nation to decide for themselves the reality behind these allegations which are being levelled for the last 25 years.”

Argentina

What did we learn?

The country’s rightwing president, Mauricio Macri, had links with an offshore company in the Bahamas. Macri was director of Fleg Trading between 1998 and 2009. He failed to list the company in his 2007 financial filing, when he became mayor of Buenos Aires. Nor did he mention it in his 2015 declaration when he became president, having campaigned on a platform of cleaning up political sleaze.

What happened next?

A federal prosecutor opened an investigation into the president’s financial dealings, and summoned Macri on Friday. The country’s tax authority and anti-corruption bureau gave evidence. Macri insisted he had done nothing wrong, telling the nation in a TV address: “I want to say one more time that I am very calm, I have complied with the law, I have told the truth and I have nothing to hide.” His office said he owned no shares in the offshore firm and had not derived any income from it. On Thursday night, thousands of demonstrators flooded the capital’s Plaza de Mayo demanding his resignation.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protest in Buenos Aires against Mauricio Macri. Photograph: David Fernandez/EPA

Syria

What did we learn?



Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of President Bashar al-Assad, had a string of offshore companies with Mossack Fonseca. So did his brother Hafez. Washington sanctioned Makhlouf in 2008, claiming that he helped the “public corruption of Syrian officials”. Leaked files show that the Panamanian law firm carried on working with the brothers as the war in Syria erupted, despite advice from its own compliance team.

What happened next?

Nothing as such. The Syrian regime is back on the front foot, having recaptured Palmyra with Russian military support.