US Charges Four for Tax Dodges in Panama Papers Probe
ADAM KLASFEL | Courthouse News Service
December 4, 2018
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MANHATTAN (CN) – Three years after the leak of the Panama Papers exposed a worldwide network of tax-avoiding shell companies, federal prosecutors brought charges Tuesday against four men tied to the law firm Mossack Fonseca.

Obtained by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung from an anonymous source, the 2015 data dump is considered history’s biggest leak, laying bare in 11.5 million files how people around the world, including world leaders of the U.K., Iceland and Russia, shuffled their assets into tax havens.

The nonprofit International Consortium of Investigative Journalists partnered with media companies in more than 70 countries to pick apart the once confidential documents, embarrassing among others the inner circles of Russian President Vladimir Putin and former British Prime Minister David Cameron.

In a tangled 67-page indictment, U.S. prosecutors charged four men tied to the firm. The ones captured by authorities are Dirk Brauer, a 54-year-old German investment advisor for Mossfon Asset Management; Richard Gaffey, a 74-year-old U.S. accountant; and Harald Joachim von der Goltz, an 81-year-old German-born client.

Mossack Fonseca attorney Ramses Owens, a 50-year-old from Panama, remains at large.