NOS News•today, 4:00 PM
Ramon Fonseca, co-founder of the Panamanian consultancy firm that became known through the ‘Panama Papers’, has died. His lawyer announced that the 71-year-old businessman died yesterday in a hospital. She says nothing about the cause of death.
For years, the Mossack Fonseca company helped thousands of companies and individuals to siphon money through letterbox companies to tax havens. In 2016, these practices were leaked via millions of documents, the Panama Papers, to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. Dutch companies also siphoned off money in this way, the documents showed.
Court case
Fonseca and its other founder, Jurgen Mossack, were prosecuted by Panamanian authorities for money laundering. The trial started last month and the Public Prosecution Service demanded a prison sentence of twelve years. Fonseca was not in court, according to one of his legal advisers because he was in hospital with health problems.
Mossack and Fonseca have always maintained that they did nothing illegal. In 2017, they said they had been victims of a hack and they also felt that the leaked information had been misinterpreted. Their consultancy firm was closed in 2018.
