Panama Papers trial limps into court in 2024

The Panama Papers, scheduled for December, did not take place and a court set it for the first quarter of 2024, in another setback for this long process branded by some as part of an “armed” scandal to discredit the country.

There are already several prolonged delays in the case for which lawyers Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca Mora, founders of the extinct law firm at the heart of the scandal known worldwide as the Panama Papers, will be brought to trial, accused of money laundering.

This money laundering process began with the worldwide publications of a journalistic investigation that leaked in 2016 details about financial transactions made through thousands of offshore corporations created by the Mossack Fonseca firm and linked to people in 200 countries and 21 financial jurisdictions.

 through corporate and financial schemes, “illicit assets and their real beneficiaries were hidden, promoting the laundering of billions of dollars.

44 face trial
In Panama, the investigation into the case lasted until September 2019, when in a tax hearing the MP asked the court in the case to call 44 people to trial for money laundering and to dismiss eleven others.

Although the start of the preliminary hearing was set for no later than November 2020, it was set up a year later and 32 people were called to trial for money laundering, including the two founding partners of the Mossack Fonseca firm.

Due to the management of international assistance, the start of the trial scheduled for December 2021 at the latest was postponed to the beginning of this month, but it was not carried out either “due to notifications that have to be made through international assistance,” as reported. the Judicial Branch (OJ).

Thus, the court established the new main hearing date, from February 19 to March 8, 2024, and the alternate date from April 8 to April 26, 2024.

The leak of the Panama Papers filled 2.6 terabytes and more than 11.5 million documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, affecting more than 140 politicians and senior officials around the world and exceeding the 1.7 million files that technology consultant and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee Edward Snowden leaked in 2013.

In subsequent years after the scandal, Panama was included in the gray lists of France, the EU and also, for the second time, in the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), from which it was excluded last October.

The Government of Cortizo, which took office for the 2019-2024 five-year period, has highlighted “the effort” it has made to comply with international standards in tax matters, and at the time, asked the EU for “equal treatment”, as occurs in Panama to European companies.

“Europe, especially France, using its force seeks to subdue, control, impose its interests on the rest of the world,” Adolfo Linares, a Panamanian lawyer with more than 30 years experience in commercial, maritime, copyright law, told EFE.

Linares regretted that a few years ago “it seems that our political class has decided to simply lower its head,” a situation whose result has been that the country has “been changing laws and codes for more than 10 years, under the pretext of complying, and each time “When we do something, they raise the bar for us, and that will continue like this.”