0.0001 Percent of People and Companies Named in Panama Papers Are American
Just a handful of Americans are among the 360,000 companies and people named in the Panama Papers.
The U.S. economy is the largest in the world. Trillions of dollars flow in and out of it each day. It touches every foreign market, from Europe to Asia to South America. But according to a new batch of Panama Paper documents released Monday, just a handful of Americans used offshore accounts set up by a Panamanian law firm to avoid the U.S. financial sector.
The U.S. economy is the largest in the world. Trillions of dollars flow in and out of it each day. It touches every foreign market, from Europe to Asia to South America. But according to a new batch of Panama Paper documents released Monday, just a handful of Americans used offshore accounts set up by a Panamanian law firm to avoid the U.S. financial sector.
Material released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which has managed the investigation and initial release of the Panama Papers in early April, found that at least 36 Americans accused of fraud and other financial crimes did business with Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm that’s the source of the 11.5 million document leak.
To put that in perspective, more than 360,000 individuals and corporations are mentioned in the documents. That means Americans make up 0.0001 percent of the entities or individuals who used the firm to hide money from the eyes of prying governments. Offshore accounts aren’t illegal in every case, but they can be used to hide illicit activity and avoid taxes.
According to the documents, the law firm avoided doing business with Americans because of fears of finding themselves in the crosshairs of U.S. law enforcement. ICIJ reported Monday that the FBI contacted Michael B. Edge, a U.S.-based representative for the law firm, and threatened to subpoena him to get information from Mossack Fonseca on an offshore company involved in “an apparent banking fraud.” In a 2014 email, Edge wrote that the firm kept few U.S. clients to “avoid further attempts by American authorities to attack the partnership.”
In other words, whatever the FBI and the Treasury Department are doing to discourage U.S. citizens from hiding cash — at least through Panama — appears to be working.
Photo credit: JOE RAEDLE/Getty Images
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