Panama City, Panama – Local authorities were able to raid a warehouse belonging to the controversial law firm Mossack Fonseca on Friday. Officials have not commented over the possible findings that were mostly papers to be recycled,according to the firm’s report. However, the documentation compiled could be sufficient enough to prosecute the law firm located in Panama City.
Panamanian police raided the place and confiscated great amounts of documents in the warehouse, which were removed in bags filled with the shredded papers to be later admitted as evidence. “We have secured a large amount of evidence found in the location,” said special prosecutor for organized crime Javier Caraballo.
In a statement made by Mossack Fonseca, the firm assured that the gathered documents were already handed over to the authorities, because they were previously digitalized and just pending for recycling in the location. Nevertheless, the Panamanian law firm is not out of the hook just yet, as further investigations are still pending.
The headquarters of the firm were raided last week by the national police as well. An official report stated the police officers were searching for documentation that would establish the possible use of their services for illicit activities, as reported by Reuters.
The scandal has involved prominent figures in the world, from famous people to world leaders looking for privacy in their earnings, some of which are Russian President Vladimir Putin, some relatives of the prime ministers of Britain and Pakistan, Xi Jinping President of China.
Gathering the papers
Demands from the international community keep rising with the Germany’s federal states appealing to media outlets, also on Friday, to let prosecutors examine into full detail the so-called Panama Papers.
German legislative bodies representing 16 federal states passed the resolution that calls on Sueddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), one of the responsibles for exposing the papers, to hand over the documents they gathered for the investigations.
“If the data sets from the ‘Panama Papers’ are not made accessible, then we cannot draw any consequences,” said Peter-Juergen Schneider, Lower Saxony’s Finance Minister.
Source: Reuters