Americans show up in the Panama Papers, too
Americans show up in the Panama Papers, too
No politicians of note are in files but plenty of others
Among them: Retirees, scammers, and tax evaders
All find a use for secrecy of offshore companies
Anthony Gumbiner is a British citizen found among the more than 3,000 companies with U.S. addresses, or that have U.S. based shareholders or true owners as part of the massive leak of offshore company data. The chairman of Dallas-area company Hallwood Group, he settled with regulators in the 1990's for insider trading. More recently his Hallwood Energy filed for bankruptcy protection.
John "Red" Crim was found guilty in January 2008 of a scheme to defraud the IRS out of $10 million in tax revenue. He wrote a book about the offshore shell company world called From Here to Malta, and was interviewed by Fusion on Feb. 7, 2016 at a halfway house in Los Angeles.
Igor Olenicoff is found among the more than 3,000 companies with U.S. addresses, or that have U.S. based shareholders or true owners as part of the massive leak of offshore company data. The Florida billionaire pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 2007 and got a light sentence of two years probation after admitting he hid more than $200 million in offshore companies.
Anthony Gumbiner is a British citizen found among the more than 3,000 companies with U.S. addresses, or that have U.S. based shareholders or true owners as part of the massive leak of offshore company data. The chairman of Dallas-area company Hallwood Group, he settled with regulators in the 1990's for insider trading. More recently his Hallwood Energy filed for bankruptcy protection.
By Kevin G. Hall and Marisa Taylor
WASHINGTON
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Determining a precise number of Americans in the data is difficult. There are at least 200 scanned individual U.S. passports. Some appear to be American retirees purchasing real estate in places like Costa Rica and Panama. Also in the database, about 3,500 shareholders of offshore companies who list U.S. addresses. And almost 3,100 companies are tied to offshore professionals based in Miami, New York, and other parts of the United States.
Further complicating matters, some U.S. citizens enjoy dual citizenship and open accounts under foreign passports. Others appeared to be American retirees purchasing real estate in places like Costa Rica and Panama.
Among the cases McClatchy and its partners found:
Miracle’s company was called Mcube Petroleum, and it remained an active shareholder in several offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands up until he pleaded guilty. The offshores were created by Mossack Fonseca.
Offshore corporations have one main purpose - to create anonymity. Recently leaked documents reveal that some of these shell companies, cloaked in secrecy, provide cover for dictators, politicians and tax evaders.
▪ Benjamin Wey is a U.S. citizen and president of New York Global Group. He was indicted last year, along with his Swiss banker, Seref Dogan Erbek, on securities fraud charges. Wey’s alleged scheme to conceal a true ownership interest in publicly traded companies was at the heart of the charges. Wey is accused of using offshores set up with Mossack Fonseca to disguise complicated transactions between Chinese operating companies and publicly traded U.S. shell companies.
The two “are believed to have profited in the tens of millions, while victim shareholders were left holding the bill,” Diego Rodriguez, an FBI official involved in the case, said in a statement at the time of indictment.
▪ Florida billionaire Igor Olenicoff, a commercial real estate mogul, appears in the data as a shareholder of Olen Oil Management Limited. He raised a national stir in 2007 after being sentenced to just two years of probation for tax evasion. He paid a $52 million fine after not declaring more than $200 million in offshore shell companies. More recently, he was found guilty in 2014 for making replicas of a pricey sculpture and was ordered to make restitution to the sculptors whose work he had copied.
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