Police raid El Salvador branch of 'Panama Papers' law firm

San Salvador, Apr 9: Police have raided the El Salvador offices of the Panama-based law firm at the heart of the "Panama Papers" scandal that has revealed how the wealthy in many countries stashed their wealth offshore.

The raid on the San Salvador offices of the firm, Mossack Fonseca, netted "a good amount of computer equipment," El Salvador's state prosecutor's office said yesterday on its Twitter account. Authorities in El Salvador on Wednesday had announced they had launched a probe to see if the Salvadorans identified in the Panama Papers reports had broken any law.

Reports said some 33 Salvadorans were named. The state prosecutor, Douglas Melendez, visited the law firm's premises yesterday. He said he would soon talk to reporters about the raid. Mossack Fonseca's employees had left the branch office a day earlier, on Thursday.

"The manager said it was because they were moving offices," the prosecutor's office said. According to El Faro, an online newspaper, the offshore companies used by Mossack Fonseca's Salvadoran clients were used for transactions of hundreds of thousands of dollars, including to buy property in El Salvador, "all under the radar of local authorities."

AFP