Fmr. CGX official, Brazilian investor named in Panama Papers
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) yesterday released a controversial database of the so-called Panama Papers. It names three businessmen. It also identifies three local addresses.
Fmr. CGX official,
Edris Dookie
One of the men named is Guyanese Dr. Edris ‘Kamal’ Dookie, a former official of CGX Resources, a Canadian-based oil exploration company that has offshore concessions in Guyana.
Another official is Yucatan Reis, a Brazilian businessman who reportedly has farming and mining concerns here.
The last is Chetwynd ‘Chet’ R.F, Bowling, a New Amsterdam businessman.
Dookie, according to the Panama Papers, is listed as a shareholder of a company called Oyster Oil and Gas Limited. It was incorporated on September 8, 2010 in the British Virgin Islands.
Reis is a “beneficiary” of Equatorial Project Management and Engineering Enterprises Limited with the address of the business as Caracas, Venezuela.
The company was incorporated on January 18, 2013 in the British Virgin Islands. It is listed as a “bad debt” account.
Bowling is described as a director and shareholder of Alinga Consulting Group Limited with the listed address as Main and St. John Street, New Amsterdam.
Three Addresses
There are also three addresses for Guyana in the Panama Papers. One of them was for someone by the name of Zhang Biao of Bel Air Street, Georgetown.
Zhang Biao is linked to a company called Orient Way Technologies.
The other address is Shamrock Gardens, Ogle. The company is York Stone Investments Limited, which listed Henry Brecher as the contact person.York Stone was incorporated on April 30, 2014 in the British Virgin Islands.
The last address listed for Guyana is for Chet Bowling, the Chet Amsterdam businessman.
Dookie was the co-founder of CGX and had played an instrumental role with the company since its inception in 1998. CGX is facing financial problems after two failed attempts to find, one in collaboration with Spanish-owned Repsol.
In 2013, Reis wais the Managing Director of Brazilian company, New Frontier (NF) Agriculture Inc. which has been given 10,000 acres of land at Ebini to cultivate corn and soybean.
He reportedly has links with Excel Minerals. He became known after a company to which he was linked, Muri Brasil Ventures Incorporated, pulled out after it became known that the previous administration had granted permission for Geographical and Geophysical Surveys (PGGS) for the New River Triangle area, in the Corentyne River area.
The area which is being claimed by Suriname is largely unexplored and the exploratory permit was viewed as a threat to national security.
According to the ICIJ yesterday, by publishing the searchable database, it would strip away the secrecy of nearly 214,000 offshore entities created in 21 jurisdictions, from Nevada to Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands, and Guyana.
Guyana would be interested in the Panama Papers as the officials of the previous Government had been accused of transferring millions of dollars ill-gotten gains from the country during the PPP reign.
The data, part of the Panama Papers investigation, is the largest ever release of information about offshore companies and the people behind them. This includes, when available, the names of the real owners of those opaque structures.
The database also displays information about more than 100,000 additional offshore entities ICIJ had already disclosed in its 2013 Offshore Leaks investigation.
ICIJ said it is publishing the information in the public interest.
The new data that ICIJ is now making public represents a fraction of the Panama Papers, a trove of more than 11.5 million leaked files from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, one of the world’s top creators of hard-to-trace companies, trusts and foundations.
Disclaimer
The ICIJ made it clear that there are legitimate uses for offshore companies and trusts. “We do not intend to suggest or imply that any persons, companies or other entities included in the ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database have broken the law or otherwise acted improperly. Many people and entities have the same or similar names. We suggest you confirm the identities of any individuals or entities located in the database based on addresses or other identifiable information.”
ICIJ said it is not publishing the totality of the leak, and it is not disclosing raw documents or personal information en masse. The database contains a great deal of information about company owners, proxies and intermediaries in secrecy jurisdictions, but it doesn’t disclose bank accounts, email exchanges and financial transactions contained in the documents.
In all, the interactive application reveals more than 360,000 names of people and companies behind secret offshore structures. As the data are from leaked sources and not a standardized registry, there may be some duplication of names.
The data was originally obtained from an anonymous source by reporters at the German newspaper Süeddeustche Zeitung, who asked ICIJ to organize a global reporting collaboration to analyze the files.
More than 370 reporters in nearly 80 countries probed the files for a year. Their investigations uncovered the secret offshore holdings of 12 world leaders, more than 128 other politicians and scores of fraudsters, drug traffickers and other criminals whose companies had been blacklisted in the US and elsewhere.
Their status as outlaws or public officials didn’t prevent them from obtaining shell companies in locales where secrecy laws often make it impossible for prosecutors and other investigators to trace their assets.
The files revealed, for example, that associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin secretly shuffled as much as US$2 billion through banks and shadow companies.
The reaction to the Panama Papers was immediate and viral.
Outraged citizens took to the streets in Reykjavik, Malta and London while the hashtag #panamapapers trended on Twitter for days after the story broke on April 3.
The prime minister of Iceland resigned over the British Virgin Islands Company he co-owned with his wife, while other world leaders scrambled to explain their secret holdings.
It took UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron three days to publicly acknowledge he had profited from an investment fund, created by his father, that was incorporated in Panama and managed in the Bahamas.
In Spain a minister resigned after being caught in a series of lies about his connections to offshore, and in Uruguay police arrested five individuals suspected of laundering money for a powerful Mexican drug cartel.
The data, which includes postal addresses, displays links to more than 200 countries and territories, from China to Chile. Users can filter the information by country and by offshore jurisdiction.
