PANAMA CITY - Panama's public prosecutor
against organized crime said there was no evidence so far to take action
against the law firm at the center of the Panama Papers scandal,
following a raid lasting 27 hours on its offices.
Members of the Construction Workers Union demonstrate outside Mossack Fonseca headquarters at Panama city on April 13, 2016
"Right now we don't have any strong evidence allowing us to
take any sort of decision" against the firm Mossack Fonseca, the
prosecutor, Javier Caraballo, told reporters.
He said the swoop on its law offices, located in Panama's
banking district, had begun on Tuesday on the basis of the news reports
about the offshore businesses it created and in some cases ran for
wealthy clients around the world.
"The information we have collected is what will permit us to have evidence to take a decision later on," Caraballo said.
He said the investigation was complicated by the fact that
the firm kept most of its records in digital form, on more than 100
computer servers, and not on paper.
But he added that the firm had "cooperated" with his investigators.
Nearly 40 years' worth of archives from Mossack Fonseca have been
pored over by hundreds of journalists around the world since being given
to a German reporter a year ago.
They have resulted in the so-called Panama Papers: a series
of reports exposing politicians, celebrities and some criminals who used
Mossack Fonseca's services to stash assets in offshore companies.
Mossack Fonseca's founders, lawyers Ramon Fonseca and Juergen Mossack, insist they did nothing illegal.
They stress that offshore companies in themselves are not
illicit -- and they were not responsible for any activities their
clients did with the entities.
Fonseca is a friend of Panama's President Juan Carlos Varela and, until March, served as a senior advisor in his cabinet.
The Panama Papers revelations have triggered a multitude of
probes around the world as authorities look for evidence people named in
them might have committed tax fraud, money laundering or other criminal
acts.
Varela's government is currently fighting to prevent other countries
responding to the scandal by putting Panama back on international
blacklists of nations that facilitate money laundering or tax evasion.
Panama's chief state prosecutor, Kenia Porcell, earlier
Wednesday gave a news conference in which he noted that "in Panama, tax
evasion does not constitute a crime."
He said, however, that the country was extending "all necessary cooperation" to address the scandal.
Porcell said he had been contacted by counterparts from
Peru, Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador and Costa Rica, but did not
elaborate.
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