[News] Panama Papers: Offshore Firm Helped Billionaires Plunder Africa

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Panama-Papers-Offshore-Firm-Helped-Billionaires-Plunder-Africa-20160726-0049.html 



  Panama Papers: Offshore Firm Helped Billionaires Plunder Africa

July 26, 2016

Mossack Fonseca, the offshore law firm at the heart of the Panama Papers 
leak, helped politicians, their families and businessmen rob Africa of 
billions of dollars, according to a new investigation.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which 
published the leak along with dozens of international media, found that 
44 of 54 African countries have a total of at least 37 mining, oil and 
mineral companies connected to offshore accounts.

Their research, published Sunday, focuses on a case in Algeria, where 
Farid Bedjaoui, nephew of a former Algerian foreign minister, arranged 
US$275 million in bribes through offshore companies to award US$10 
billion oil contracts.

Twelve of the 17 companies he used were created by Mossack Fonseca in a 
“crossroads of illicit financial flows,” according to Italian 
investigators. Algeria lost an estimated US$1.5 billion annually to tax 
dodging, bribery, corruption and criminality between 2004 and 2013, 
according to Global Financial Integrity.

Tax avoidance also deprives Africa of more than US$50 billion yearly, 
estimates the United Nations.

The offshore law firm was also involved in dozens of lawsuits and 
allegations of wrongdoing across the continent, especially with 
companies—often not African—involved in resource extraction.

Offshore protections allow those involved to exploit natural resources 
without paying taxes, to dodge prosecution for corruption and money 
laundering and to continue environmentally destructive practices with 
little oversight.

“Companies may be given access to lucrative extractive projects because 
their owners are politically connected, or because their owners are 
willing to engage in questionable deals aimed at generating quick 
profits for a few rather than benefits for wider society,” said Fredrik 
Reinfeldt, head of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, to 
ICIJ.

The anonymity allows the companies to “hide behind a chain of companies 
often registered in multiple jurisdictions.”

South Africa and Ghana’s AngloGold Ashanti, one of the world’s biggest 
gold producers, had 27 subsidiaries created by Mossack Fonseca, who 
insisted to the ICIJ that they follow “both the letter and spirit of the 
law.”

The Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria were also heavily cited in 
the research.

“Every dollar siphoned through dirty deals and corruption to offshore 
tax havens makes the livelihood and survival of the average African more 
precarious,” said Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari at an 
anti-corruption summit a month after the Panama Papers were released.

At least three Nigerian oil ministers and two former governors have been 
charged with money laundering.

The plunder of Africa is only the tip of the iceberg, said the 
investigation: in total, more than 1,400 companies involved in resource 
extraction were listed in the Mossack Fonseca files.

-- 
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