Financial world rocked by Panama Papers: Three Sri Lankan companies in list?

The Panama Papers are a leaked set of 11.5 million confidential documents that provide detailed information about more than 214,000 offshore companies listed by the Panamanian corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, including the identities of shareholders and directors of the companies. The documents show how wealthy public officials hide their money and identify current government leaders from five countries – Argentina, Iceland, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates – as well as government officials, close relatives, and close associates of various heads of government of more than 40 other countries, including Brazil, China, Peru, France, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Syria, and the United Kingdom.

The interactive map by an Irish Times journalist shows companies in Mossack Fonseca database “connected” to a particular country by address. The data also shows clients, beneficiaries, and shareholders by country. The map includes Sri Lanka too and indicated three companies involved in the financial.

Amounting to 2.6 terabytes of data, the papers, which go back to the 1970s, were supplied to the Süddeutsche Zeitung in August 2015 by an anonymous source, and subsequently to the U.S.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The papers were distributed to and analyzed by about 400 journalists at 107 media organizations in more than 80 countries. The first news reports based on the set, along with 149 of the documents themselves, were published on April 3, 2016, and a full list of companies is due to be released in early May 2016.

Early reports noted financial and power connections between multiple high-ranking political figures and their relatives. Several other current national leaders have been named in the Panama Papers, including presidents Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates, Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, as well as the Prime Minister of Iceland Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson. Among former country leaders, there were the Sudanese President Ahmed al-Mirghani, the Emir of Qatar Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, as well as prime ministers of Georgia (Bidzina Ivanishvili), Iraq (Ayad Allawi), Jordan (Ali Abu al-Ragheb), Qatar (Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani), Ukraine (Pavlo Lazarenko), and Moldova (Ion Sturza).

The Australian Tax Office subsequently announced that it was investigating 800 individual Australian taxpayers who were clients of Mossack Fonseca and that some of the cases could be referred to the country’s Serious Financial Crime Task Force.

On April 5, 2016, Prime Minister of Iceland Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson announced his resignation. Reykjavík City Council Member Júlíus Vífill Ingvarsson resigned earlier in the day on April 5, 2016.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered an inquiry, and subsequently the Indian government announced that it was constituting a special multi-agency group comprising officers from the investigative unit of the Central Board of Direct Taxes and its Foreign Tax and Tax Research division, the Financial Intelligence Unit and the Reserve Bank of India.