‘Panama Papers’ Law Firm Helped CIA Operatives, Gun-Runners Set Up Shell Companies

After journalists started naming names in the massive document dump known as the Panama Papers, which details the shadow networks of shell companies and tax havens used by the super-rich, many wondered why Americans went unmentioned in the international scandal. Now, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has implicated the CIA as one of the players of this secret — if technically legal — game of hiding money from tax collectors.

Mossack Fonseca, the law firm that sprung the leak, reportedly works with many intelligence operatives and CIA contractors to set up offshore companies to hold personal funds.

The documents name several intermediaries and gun-runners who helped the CIA supply firearms to anti-communist right-wing fighters in Afghanistan, South America and Saudi Arabia during the Cold War — including a couple of wealthy players suspected to be involved in the Iran-Contra affair, in which the Ronald Reagan administration secretly sold weapons to Iran in an attempt to free American hostages and bankroll right-wing rebels in Nicaragua.

Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi billionaire, popped up in the files starting in 1978. According to ICIJ, he “negotiated billions of dollars in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in the 1970s and played ‘a central role for the U.S. government’ with CIA operatives in selling guns to Iran, according to a 1992 U.S. Senate report co-written by then-Sen. John Kerry.”

The fallout from the Panama Papers has thus far claimed one political career. Iceland’s Prime Minister was forced to resign Tuesday after days of protests by thousands of Icelanders. American names have not yet hit the press, though it’s been well documented that U.S. companies and individuals take advantage of the same tax avoidance strategies as their international counterparts. The U.S. has lost out on an estimated $150 billion in revenue thanks to the use of tax havens.

Secret agents, like other public figures caught in the documents, apparently used shell companies to buy vacation homes, hotels, golf courses, and casinos around the world. Additionally, some clients who were not confirmed to be actual spies used the firm to set up companies named after James Bond movie titles and villains: Goldfinger, SkyFall, GoldenEye, Moonraker, Spectre, Blofeld, and Octopussy.

Original Article
Source: thinkprogress.org/
Author:  Aviva Shen