PANAMA PAPERS: (Cdn. connection) Secret Offshore Deals

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Secret Offshore Deals Deprive Africa of Billions in Natural Resource Dollars

[ https://panamapapers.icij.org/20160725- ... 1422360488 ]

The Panama Papers show politicians and mining, oil and gas interests benefit from secrecy and dubious multimillion dollar transfers

By Will Fitzgibbon Jul 25, 2016

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In this story

◾Twelve of 17 companies under investigation by authorities in Italy in relation to a $10 billion oil and gas deal in Algeria were created by Mossack Fonseca
◾Italian authorities called one offshore company “a crossroads of illicit financial flows”
◾Dozens of companies created by Mossack Fonseca have been involved in law suits or public allegations of wrongdoing, according to an ICIJ analysis

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When he wasn’t aboard his yacht, Farid Bedjaoui held court in the Bulgari Hotel in Milan, a renovated 18th-century palace nestled between the botanical gardens and the La Scala theater. Over five years, Bedjaoui’s hotel tab there exceeded $100,000.

In the plush rooms and the granite-lined lobby, Bedjaoui met with Algerian government officials and executives from Saipem, the Italian energy giant. Their agenda, according to witnesses later interviewed by Italian prosecutors: arranging some $275 million in bribes to help the energy company win more than $10 billion in contracts to build oil and gas pipelines from the North African desert to the shores of the Mediterranean.

To shift the bribe money between countries, Bedjaoui used a cluster of offshore companies that helped him shield the transactions from scrutiny, Italian prosecutors claim. Twelve of the 17 shell companies linked to Bedjaoui were created by Mossack Fonseca, the Panama-based law firm that is at the center of the Panama Papers scandal, a review of the law firm’s internal records by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media partners has found.

Italian investigators described one of those companies, Minkle Consultants S.A. [ https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/10 ... 1469453258 ], as a “crossroads of illicit financial flows” that channeled millions of dollars from subcontractors to an array of recipients whose identities are still being untangled. Prosecutors allege Bedjaoui used one company set up through the law firm to funnel as much as $15 million to associates and family members of Algeria’s then-energy minister.

The cross-border bribery scandal is one of dozens of cases in Africa in which companies created or administered by Mossack Fonseca have played a role in oil, gas and mining deals that have spawned public allegations of tax dodging, corruption, environmental destruction or other misconduct. In all, ICIJ’s review identified 37 companies within the Panama Papers that have been named in court actions or government investigations involving natural resources in Africa.

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Bedjaoui, who is French, Canadian and Algerian, earned his business management degree in Montreal, then worked in his family’s coffee-importing venture before landing at a Dubai-based oil and gas investment firm with a valuable North African client list.

By 2002, Bedjaoui had used Mossack Fonseca to open a Swiss bank account for his company Rayan Asset Management [ https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/10 ... 1469453258 ]. A Swiss tax lawyer then went on a buying spree on the Algerian’s behalf, ordering pre-existing “shelf” companies in Panama and the British Virgin Islands.

Mossack Fonseca’s background checks on Bedjaoui in 2008 and 2009 revealed nothing suspicious, the law firm’s internal files show. Bedjaoui didn’t make it easy; he used his Canadian passport to open some bank accounts and his Algerian ID to open others.

For 11 years, Mossack Fonseca worked for Bedjaoui and half a dozen of his family members, friends and associates. Into this world Bedjaoui brought his wife and brother-in-law, relatives of Algeria’s energy and water ministers, the CEO of Algeria’s government-controlled oil and gas company and Saipem’s in-country Algeria manager. Italian prosecutors later said the close-knit web of kinship led them to suspect that many of the companies created though Mossack Fonseca were used “for corrupt payments or for improper personal enrichment.”

It was, according to investigators, a network of graft and slush funds organized in hotel lobbies and coffee bars in Paris and Milan and on yachts in the Mediterranean. Outside the Bulgari Hotel, attendees exchanged secret cell phone numbers to keep in touch; it wasn’t to “exchange Christmas wishes”, an Italian judge wryly suggested years later.

In setting up his offshore companies, prosecutors allege, Bedjaoui chose countries with secrecy rules “that ensure the anonymity of the shareholders” and further obscured the paper trail by scattering money into 16 bank accounts in Dubai, Algeria, Singapore, London, Hong Kong, Switzerland and Lebanon.

MORE:

[ https://panamapapers.icij.org/20160725- ... 1422360488 ]

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Panama Papers: [ http://www.bing.com/news/search?q=Panam ... &FORM=EWRE ]

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Nobel economist Stiglitz quits Panama Papers probe over 'lack of transparency'

[ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08 ... r-lack-of/ ]

Reuters 6 August 2016 • 1:36am

The committee set up to investigate lack of transparency in Panama's financial system itself lacks transparency, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said on Friday after resigning from the "Panama Papers" commission.

The leak in April of more than 11.5 million documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, dubbed the "Panama Papers," detailed financial information from offshore accounts and potential tax evasion by the rich and powerful.

Mr Stiglitz and Mark Pieth, a Swiss anti-corruption expert, joined a seven-member commission tasked with probing Panama's notoriously opaque financial system, but they say they found the government unwilling to back an open investigation.

Both quit the group on Friday after they say Panama refused to guarantee the committee's report would be made public.

"I thought the government was more committed, but obviously they're not," Mr Stiglitz said. "It's amazing how they tried to undermine us."

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