The Panama Papers

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2016

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

This week's massive leak of confidential documents from the Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca, has given unprecedented access to the way the rich and powerful have used tax havens to hide their wealth. But within the eleven and a half million documents, there is also evidence of how some of the shell companies set up by the firm, or the individuals that owned them, have been the subject of international sanctions and have been used by rogue states and oppressive regimes including North Korea and Syria. Simon Cox reveals details from the leaked papers and travels to the British Virgin Islands where a small office run by Mossack Fonseca was used to create more than 100,000 companies. One of them was a front for a North Korean Bank that was later sanctioned by the United States for supporting the regime's illicit nuclear and ballistic missile programme. According to the US, the BVI based front company managed millions of dollars in transactions in support of North Korea. Other companies set up by on the island were used by a billionaire businessman who is a cousin of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad and who was sanctioned by the US for using "intimidation and his close ties to the Assad regime at the expense of ordinary Syrians." Mossack Fonseca has said it never knowingly allowed the use of its companies by individuals with any relationship with North Korea or Syria and says it has operated beyond reproach for 40 years and has never been charged with criminal wrong-doing. Reporter: Simon Cox Producer: James Melley

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a BBC podcast.
0:02.0	You can get all our podcasts and our terms of use at BBCWorld Service.com slash podcasts.
0:08.0	Welcome to the BBC World Service. You're listening to assignment with me Simon Cox.
0:17.0	I'm on a boat heading across the choppy Aquamarine Caribbean Sea towards Roadtown, the capital of the British Virgin Islands,
0:26.4	one of the centres of offshore finance.
0:30.9	These places are the engine rooms of the global money laundering system.
0:40.0	They grease the wheels, the secrecy provided in somewhere like the British Virgin Islands,
0:46.0	allows money laundering, terrorist financing, nuclear proliferation, all of this sort of behavior.
0:54.0	You've been hearing a lot about this in the past few days, the millions of documents obtained
0:58.5	from the Panama law firm Mosak Fonseca, given to the German newspaper Sudensheitung and shared with the
1:05.0	international consortium of investigative journalists and a hundred media
1:08.9	organizations including the BBC. Much of what's emerged has been about tax avoidance and money laundering,
1:15.2	but we've uncovered evidence about how Mosak Fonseca helped people subject to
1:20.0	international sanctions. Clearly stated as North Korea under-register.
1:25.0	Also, a sanctioned individual...
1:27.0	It does not look like we have anything to worry about. We're going to look at three cases in detail. The first is a company called DCB Finance.
1:42.4	It was created here in Road Town in the capital of the British Virgin Islands in 2006,
1:48.0	but later sanctioned by the United States for links to the North Korean regime and to a bank funding their
1:54.9	nuclear weapons program. So how the hell did it get set up in the first place?
2:00.4	Morning rush hour in Road Town and I'm on my way to the BVI Company Registry to see what I can find out is publicly available about DCB Finance Limited.
2:17.0	So I've just come out of the offices of the company registry and I got the documents about DCB finance and they don't
2:26.7	really tell me very much it just says when it was incorporated in 2006 and the
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