The Public Ministry’s handling of the office raid of law firm Mossack Fonseca has allegedly violated due process, according to multiple legal sources.
This would be no accident, but would instead form part of a strategy on the part of the executive to muddle the waters and create the conditions to avoid carrying out a proper investigation of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the centre of an international scandal on the use of offshore companies in money laundering activities.
The government has been accused of scheming to invalidate the process against the firm whose founding members are close personal friends and allies of President Juan Carlos Varela.
Former Security Minister, Jose Raul Mulino, is for one convinced that the current administration will do all in its power to avoid addressing the real issues that have been brought to light at the scandal-hit firm. “I hope I am wrong, but I really do fear that nothing will happen on this subject until 2019.
The action of the PM so far seem more of a media spectacle than a proper investigation”, he declared in an interview on NexTV, lamenting that the current government appears to be in denial about the gravity of the damage that the scandal has inflicted on the image of the country.
Mr. Mulino added his voice to those “expressing grave concerns over the legality of the physical raids of the law firm’s offices”, adding that “the evidence collected is pretty useless anyway” since it took 10 days for the PM to lift a finger after the scandal came to light. “The country deserves serious action on the part of the administration”, he warned, saying that the PM was projecting a terrible image of the country internationally.
According to Silvio Guerra, a lawyer, the government is sending very mixed signals. “First they create the figure of a specialized public prosecutor; then the Attorney General goes on TV to state that there is no criminal investigation going on. So what are they investigating in the end? The authorities cannot raid corporate offices for the sake of it, they must have a legal mandate to do so legitimately”, he explained.
Mr. Guerra went on to advocate clear and unequivocal actions on the part of the relevant authorities, and an investigation into whether law firm Mossack Fonseca did indeed incur into money laundering and financing of terrorism crimes. Culpability does not require direct participation in said activities, as is also the case in “child trafficking for pedophiles networks”, according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Aiding and abetting such heinous activities is in itself a crime.
Ombudsman Italo Antinori added his voice to those claiming disbelief of the manner in which the investigation has been conducted thus far.“Having first publicly declared that all relevant information had been retrieved in the initial office raid, the authorities then had to order a second raid to collect sacks of shredded documents that the firm had shiftily moved to secondary premises, allegedly for recycling”.
Adding that it beggars belief just how negligent Kenia Porcell, the Attorney Genral, has been, Mr. Antinori challenged the authorities to address a number of questions in an open letter: “why has the PM not acted in the Mossack Fonseca case with the same speed as it has done in other cases? Why such different treatments? Why are Ramon Fonseca Mora and his firm being treated with white gloves by the PM, why are they so special?” he asked.
It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that upon completing the office raid, Javier Caraballo, the prosecutor in charge of the Mossack Fonseca investigation, should declare that “no incriminating evidence had been found”.
Bonds that tie
It is thanks to this surprising lack of incriminating evidence that the law firm’s co-founders – Jürgen Mossack and Ramon Fonseca Mora – have faced no restrictions whatsoever on either their personal freedom or their assets.
Mr. Fonseca Mora has a very close relationship with President Juan Carlos Varela, having been one of his principal campaign donors, his PR guru, president of the ruling panameñista party as well as trusted mentor and ministerial advisor to the president.
That the latter has gone to great lengths to avoid as much as mentioning his friend’s firm by name in his public declarations on the affair, should arguably surprise no one at all.
