Names of intelligence officials, agents, appear in Panama Papers

The massive data leak of documents belonging to Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca has revealed the names of intelligence officials and agents form several countries, who employed front companies to conceal their financial activities. According to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which was the initial recipient of the largest data leak in history last summer, the list of names includes intelligence officials from the Middle East, Latin America and Africa, as well as “close intermediaries of the [United States] Central Intelligence Agency”.

Referred to as ‘the Panama Papers’, the massive leak amounts to over 11.5 million internal files from Mossack Fonseca, one of the world’s most prolific registrars and administrators of shell companies in offshore locations. Throughout its history, the company has created more than 300,000 shell companies, most of them in offshore tax havens like the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, or Guernsey. Its clients are offered the ability to incorporate a generic-sounding company and headquarter it in an offshore tax haven. In exchange for an annual fee, Mossack Fonseca provides the company with a sham director and shareholders, thus concealing the true owner and actual beneficiary of the business.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung said on Monday that senior intelligence officials from Rwanda and Colombia are listed as Mossack Fonseca customers, but did not report the names of the individuals. It did, however, single out the late Sheikh Kamal Adham, who was director of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Directorate in the 1960s and 1970s. During his 14-year directorship of the GID, the agency became a leading intermediary between the CIA and Arab intelligence agencies, notably those of Egypt and Iraq. Sheikh Adham was also a personal friend of CIA Director George Bush, who was later elected US president.

According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Sheikh Adham is one of many individuals with close CIA links whose names appear in the Panama Papers. Another is Farhad Azima, an Iranian-born American businessman, who is rumored to have leased aircraft to the CIA in the 1980s. The American intelligence agency is said to have used the aircraft, which belonged to Azima’s Kansas City, Missouri-headquartered Global International Airways, to transport weapons to Iran. The secret transfers were part of what later became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, in which US officials secretly sold weapons to Iran in return for the release of American hostages held by Iran-linked groups in the Middle East. The funds acquired from these weapons sales were then secretly funneled to the Contras, a medley of anti-communist paramilitary groups fighting the Sandinista-led government of Nicaragua.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 13 April 2016 | Permalink