05/04/21

EUROPE: Tax authorities have recovered over a billion euros since Panama Papers leak.

As published on brusselstimes.com, Monday 5 April, 2021.

Tax authorities have recovered about 1.16 billion euros worldwide following the Panama Papers’ revelations, according to calculations by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), based on data from 24 countries, Le Soir reports.

On 3 April 2016, the ICIJ published 11.5 million financial and legal records leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca to journalists at Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

This allowed the ICIJ’s Belgian partners, Le Soir, Knack and De Tijd, to expose the way the creation of rogue offshore companies enabled crime, corruption and other forms of wrongdoing, in which at least 732 Belgian citizens and residents were involved.

Globally, more than 214,000 offshore entities appeared in the leaked papers, connected to people in more than 200 countries and territories, according to the ICIJ.

In August 2020, Belgium’s tax authorities obtained a copy of the documents from the German authorities. As a result, the Special Tax Inspection Service has unearthed 29,975,434 euros, according to the Belgian Finance Department.

“Of this amount, 15,382,992 has already been paid,” the Finance Department said, adding that “242 of the 266 files opened are today closed.”

Australia, France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom have each collected over 100 million euros in fines.