Panamá Papers: Argentine President Mauricio Macri one of 5 current world leaders listed as a client.

Last edited Sun Apr 3, 2016, 11:58 PM - Edit history (1)

Argentine President Mauricio Macri — who made "fighting corruption" his campaign battle horse last year — is listed as a client in the massive, 11 million page leak of documents from Panamanian corporate law firm Mossack Fonseca. The leak, known as the Panamá Papers, was obtained from an anonymous source by German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with media worldwide by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

Mauricio Macri's name appears with his father Francisco and brother Mariano as a director of Fleg Trading Ltd. The shell company was incorporated in the Bahamas in 1998 and dissolved in 2009, when it was sold to a firm from Uruguay (a country known for its bank secrecy laws where the Macri family also has extensive interests). This was a financial connection Macri didn’t disclose on asset declarations when he was Mayor of Buenos Aires or as a candidate for President, as Argentine law requires.

His official spokesman, Iván Pavlovsky, said that the Argentine president didn't list Fleg Trading Ltd. as an asset because he had no capital participation in the company. The company, used to participate in interests in Brazil, was related to the family business group. "This is why Mauricio Macri was occasionally its director," he said, reiterating that Macri was not a shareholder.

Macri is one of only five current world leaders listed as a client of Mossack Fonseca, which establishes offshore shell companies for clients seeking to launder money and evade taxes. The other current world leaders listed are the Prime Minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson; the King of Saudi Arabia, Salman Al-Saud; the President of the United Arab Emirates, Khalifa Al-Nahyan; and the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko. Others, notably a number of close friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ian Cameron (the father of British Prime Minister David Cameron), are also listed.

Other Argentine nationals listed in the Panamá Papers are Néstor Grindetti, current Mayor of Lanús (a suburb of Buenos Aires) and former municipal Economy Minister while Macri was Mayor of Buenos Aires; Daniel Muñoz, who was former President Néstor Kirchner's private secretary during his 2003-07 administration; and Lionel Messi, the five-time Ballon d'Or winning Barcelona football forward who is currently facing tax evasion charges in Spain. The Boca Juniors football team, which Macri presided between 1995 and 2007, was also listed.

Some Macri administration officials have had similar activities outed in past leaks. President Macri's current Economy Minister, Alfonso Prat-Gay, was revealed by JP Morgan Argentina executive Hernán Arbizu in 2012 to have arranged the illegal transfer of over $1 billion from the sale of the late Amalia Fortabat's cement firm Loma Negra to offshore accounts from 2005 and 2008, as well as his own accounts. This was further corroborated by the 2013 SwissLeaks.

Like Macri himself, Prat-Gay had made a political career out of "fighting corruption."

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