The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has started to release information based on a massive leak of information from a secretive Panamanian law firm that specializes in setting up shell corporations that can be used, for example, by people looking to hide their money from the taxman.
This may have serious consequences. Close associates of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, appear to have moved $2 billion through a series of complex financial maneuvers. Iceland’s prime minister, Argentina’s president and the speaker of Brazil’s house of representatives are among those struggling to explain why they set up offshore companies. The newspaper that first received the leaked information is promising revelations about U.S. owners of shell corporations very soon. Here’s what you need to know to understand this story.
Shell corporations are a common way to avoid taxes
Shell corporations — firms that have no concrete business activity — allow people to conceal the true ownership of assets. This can have legitimate uses — for example, a pop star might not want people to be able to track down her home address, or a business might want to conceal its research activities so as not to give its competitors information about a planned product. However, shell corporations are also very commonly used to hide activities from governmental authorities. For example, if you are very rich and want to avoid taxes, you might pay a law firm to set up a complicated set of shell corporations with tangled ownership relations to hold your assets and conceal them from tax officials. You might also use shell corporations to launder money from criminal acts, to hide the fact that you are bribing someone, or being bribed by someone, or are trying to evade economic sanctions. It is plausible that most, but not all, of the activity revealed by the leak involves tax avoidance and tax evasion. According to one leaked memorandum, 95 percent of the law firm’s work consists of “selling vehicles to avoid taxes.”
Read the full piece at The Washington Post.
- Publication Type:Other Writing
- Publication Date:04/05/2016