The scandal which involves a report exposing the secret bank details and investments of top global leaders has already claimed the prime minister of Iceland and PP chairman Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, who resigned earlier in the week, after been implicated in the report.
ANEEJ in a statement signed by its Executive Director, Rev. David Ugolor said the Panama Papers expose has further showed how Politically Exposed Persons in the country have over the years been frittering the nation’s wealth to offshore safe havens to the detriment of the common Nigerians and wants the Federal Government to respond without any further delay in line with President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption stance.
The statement said, “We are concerned about the silence of our government to this mind-boggling report. Since governments all over the world including the US, UK and India have started to respond to this monumental fraud, it would not be out of place to ask President Buhari to order the EFCC to investigate Nigerians whose names have featured in the Panama Paper Leak.
“It is expected that such an investigation would reveal the true identity of all those involved and how much they stashed in Panama. Such monies are direly needed to finance development now that the country’s economy is in shambles.”
This ANEEJ position comes after the naming of a fourth Nigerian in the report accused of engaging in fraudulent lodgement of heavy sums of money in secret accounts in tax havens across the globe.
Already, wife of the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, his predecessor in office, David Mark and former Delta State governor, James Ibori and chairman of the Presidential committee for the Reconstruction of the North East, General Theophilus Danjuma , have been linked to the report.
A huge leak of confidential documents has revealed how the rich and powerful use the tax havens provided by Panama to hide their wealth, using the assistance of a law firm, Mossack Fonseca which offered financial services designed to help business clients hide their wealth., and whose leaked files have now become a scandal..
Meanwhile Pascal Saint-Amans, head of tax for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), has attacked Panama for failing to clean up its tax system.
“Panama has refused to commit to automatic exchange of information [between countries],” he said.
Eleven million documents were leaked from the secretive Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.
They show how the company has helped some clients launder money, dodge sanctions and avoid tax.
The company says it has operated beyond reproach for 40 years and has never been charged with criminal wrong-doing.
Since the first revelations late on Sunday a number of investigations have been launched by French, Austrian, Dutch and Australian authorities, among others.
The documents feature 12 current or former heads of state, and at least 60 people linked to current or former world leaders.
The files reveal a suspected billion-dollar money laundering ring involving close associates of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
The leaked documents also show that Ian Cameron, the late father of UK Prime Minister David Cameron, was a Mossack Fonseca client.
Family members of China’s President Xi Jinping, and two other members of the country’s elite Standing Committee are also named in the leaked documents as having links to offshore firms.
The Chinese government has not responded to requests for comment. China appears to be censoring social media posts on the topic.
Meanwhile, exposed Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko has said he has done nothing wrong, after documents suggested he had set up an offshore company, while Hussain Nawaz Sharif, the son of Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, and one of three siblings shown to own real estate through offshore entities, says “there is nothing wrong with it.”
Also, Australia’s tax office says it is investigating 800 individuals named in the leaks, while Austria’s financial markets regulator says it is investigating whether two banks breached rules on money laundering after being named in the leaks.
France has opened a preliminary investigation into money laundering and tax fraud just as Argentina’s presidency has denied that President Mauricio Macri owned shares in an offshore company called Fleg Trading Ltd.
A spokesman for Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev, whose children are named as owners of offshore companies, says such practice “is not banned by any law”, adding that they “are grown up Azerbaijani citizens.”
The documents reveal for the first time details of an operation run by a Russian bank and which involves close associates of President Putin.
The operation was run by Bank Rossiya, which is subject to US and EU sanctions following Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
Money has been channelled through offshore companies, two of which were officially owned by one of the Russian president’s closest friends, cellist Sergei Roldugin.
The Kremlin spokesman said it was clear the main target of the reports was Mr Putin, as well as Russia’s political stability ahead of parliamentary elections.
Dmitry Peskov dismissed the investigation as insinuation and speculation, and suggested many of the team of journalists behind it were actually former US state department and CIA officials.
