Govt. keen on pursuing secret companies here – Pres. Granger
Within the framework of Guyana’s commitment to prevent money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism, President David Granger says that his Government is keen on combing through the country for secret companies.
President David Granger
In a recent interview with Kaieteur News, Granger said that any matter that is unlawful, such as the smuggling of gold, the removal of large sums of monies – whether they are being brought into Guyana by plane or removed; or overseas /offshore banking, which is in breach of the laws of Guyana, would be investigated.
While media reports signal that there is a Guyanese connection to the Panama Papers saga, Granger said at the moment, he is not aware of this. He has indicated however that he will continue to follow developments in this regard.
The Panama Papers are a set of 11.5 million leaked documents detailing attorney–client information for more than 214,000 offshore companies associated with the Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider, Mossack Fonseca.
The leaked documents contain the identities of company shareholders and directors associated with Mossack Fonseca and illustrate how wealthy individuals, including public officials, hide assets from public scrutiny.
The papers have identified five then-heads of state or government leaders from Argentina, Iceland, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates as well as government officials, close relatives, and close associates of various heads of government of more than forty other countries.
The British Virgin Islands was home to half of the companies exposed and Hong Kong contained the most affiliated banks, law firms, and middlemen.
While the use of offshore business entities is not illegal in the jurisdictions in which they are registered and often not illegal at all, international reporters found that some of the shell corporations seem to have been used for illegal purposes, including fraud, kleptocracy, tax evasion and evading international sanctions.
An anonymous source using the pseudonym “John Doe” made the documents available in batches to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung beginning in early 2015.
The information from this unremunerated whistleblower documents transactions as far back as the 1970s and eventually totaled 2.6 terabytes of data. Given the scale of the leak, the newspaper enlisted the help of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which distributed the documents for investigation and analysis to some 400 journalists at 107 media organizations in 76 countries.
The first news reports based on the papers, and 149 of the documents themselves, were published on April 3, 2016. The ICIJ plans to publish a full list of companies involved in early May 2016.