Lazarenko was convicted in June 2000 for money laundering in Switzerland and then in the United States in 2004 and then sentenced to 9 years in prison; the sentence was then reduced to 97 months (8 years and 1 month). $250 million from his offshore accounts are still being tracked down by U.S. authorities. He has maintained that his fortune had been amassed through legal business operations.
PANGATES INTERNATIONAL, SYRIA
A long-time Mossack Fonseca customer, UAE-based Pangates International Corp. Ltd. is one of three companies sanctioned by Washington for providing the aviation fuel used by the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad to carry out air strikes against its citizens.
According to ICIJ, Pangates is a subsidiary of the Abdulkarim Group, a Syrian company partly based out of Damascus that also has ties to two other sanctioned Mossack Fonseca clients — Maxima Middle East Trading Co. and Morgan Additives Manufacturing Co. It was established by Mossack Fonseca in 1999 on the Pacific island of Niue, then subsequently moved to Samoa and finally to one of the world’s most popular tax havens, the Seychelles in 2012.
Although the U.S. Treasury issued sanctions against the three companies in June 2014, the leaked documents appear to show that Mossack Fonseca continued to represent Pangates and did not report the company to Seychelles authorities until August 2015.
The law firm has denied wrongdoing, saying that the onus is on intermediaries like banks to check clients’ backgrounds. Pangates also told Reuters in 2013 that it was only “selling to non-Syrian firms” that have not faced international sanctions. “We do not know exactly who is finally using the fuel but according to our information the product is used for civil humanitarian purposes,” it said.
PETROPARS LTD., IRAN
Iranian government-run oil and gas giant Petropars, incorporated by Mossack Fonseca in 1998, was hit with U.S. sanctions in 2010 and dropped by the law firm as a client soon after.
The company was first linked to the Iranian government in 2001, when, according to the ICIJ, its board members were charged with corruption over several deals. Mossack Fonseca continued to represent it for another nine years until co-founder Jürgen Mossack noticed that his firm’s address in the British Virgin Islands had been listed under Petropars’ name in the U.S. Treasury blacklist. Mossack blamed his company’s London office for not adequately scrutinizing its Iran-based clients.
(Images of the individuals have ben sourced from YouTube)
