Panama law firm says data hack was external, files complaint

Panamanian lawyer at the centre of a data leak scandal that has embarrassed a clutch of world leaders said his firm was a victim of a hack from outside the company and has filed a complaint with state prosecutors.

Founding partner Ramon Fonseca said the firm, Mossack Fonseca, which specialises in setting up offshore companies had broken no laws and that all its operations were legal. Nor had it ever destroyed any documents or helped anyone evade taxes or launder money, he added in an interview with Reuters.

He said the company had been illegally hacked from an outside party saying a crime had been committed.

Fonseca said he was shocked that the news media were not talking about the hacking crime.

“New news would be ‘who is investigating the hack?’ We are amazed that nobody has said, ‘hey, a crime has been committed here’,” said Ramon Fonseca.

Company e-mails, extracts of which were published in an investigation by the U.S.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media organisations, were “taken out of context” and misinterpreted, he added.

“The e-mails have been taken entirely out of context. For example, from Brazil it’s an e-mail from 2005 and I believe we were changing to a digital system at the time. We were changing the digital system and they had a large number of papers in the office and somebody said that we should arrange those papers. But that was in 2005. It has nothing to do with anything going on today or with the Lava Jato (money laundering) case,” Fonseca, 63, said at the company’s headquarters in Panama City’s business district.

Governments across the world have begun investigating possible financial wrongdoing by the rich and powerful after the leak of more than 11.5 million documents, dubbed the “Panama Papers,” from the law firm that span four decades.

Fonseca told Reuters he has a theory of who hacked the files and is pursuing the case with authorities.

“We have a theory which we’re following. We have already lodged the corresponding complaint with the Attorney General’s office (official in background: for intellectual property.) That’s right. We have already lodged a complaint and there is a government institution looking at the issue and helping us,” Fonseca said.

“There is nothing concrete. We have a theory, but no proof. We’ve just started investigating the issue,” he added.

The papers have revealed financial arrangements of prominent figures, including friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of the prime ministers of Britain and Pakistan and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and the president of Ukraine.

On Tuesday (April 05), Iceland’s prime minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, resigned, becoming the first casualty of the leak.

Fonseca lamented what he called journalistic activism and sensationalism, extolling his own investigative research credentials as a published novelist in Panama.

“I’m a writer also, I’m a novelist and I also like to investigate. I feel disappointed by modern investigative journalism, the new youth. I’m very disappointed. It is not the investigative journalism that I read in my time which took place impartially,” he said.

France announced on Tuesday (April 5) it would put the Central American nation back on its blacklist of uncooperative tax jurisdictions.

Alvaro Aleman, chief of staff to President Juan Carlos Varela, told a news conference the government could respond with similar measures against France, or any other country that followed France’s lead.