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Mossack-Fonseca logo in Hong Kong (2016): Shops closed in 2018
Photo: BOBBY YIP / REUTERS
Four and a half years after the publication of the Panama Papers, media reports suggest that German authorities have issued arrest warrants against the previous owners of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.
Jürgen Mossack, who comes from Germany, and his Panamanian partner Ramón Fonseca are wanted worldwide for aiding and abetting tax evasion and the formation of a criminal organization, reports "Süddeutsche Zeitung" ("SZ"), NDR and WDR.
Mossack and Fonseca opened a law firm in Panama in the 1980s that specialized in setting up and running letterbox companies.
A spokesman for the Cologne public prosecutor's office confirmed the reports that there were two international arrest warrants, but did not say against whom they were directed.
According to the report, 68-year-old Fonseca and 72-year-old Mossack both have Panamanian citizenship, Panama does not extradite its citizens on principle.
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As the so-called Panama Papers show, the law firm Mossack Fonseca helped politicians, football officials and criminals, but also billionaires and celebrities, to hide their money.
In 2016, more than eleven million internal documents from the firm, apparently copied by an insider, ended up in an international media network to which the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" in Germany belongs.
Less than a year later, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) bought an updated version of the files, allegedly for a seven-figure sum.
After the publication, a number of politicians had to resign, including the then Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson and the Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Thousands of investigative proceedings have been initiated worldwide and the equivalent of more than two billion euros in fines and back payments have been collected.
According to "SZ", around 2000 proceedings against tax evaders were initiated in Germany, and several banks and asset managers paid fines running into the millions.
In the US, an asset manager and a Mossack-Fonseca customer were recently sentenced to several years in prison.
The founders of the firm, however, have remained largely unmolested so far.
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