Meeting of the Committee of Inquiry into Money Laundering, Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion (PANA)&nbsp;on the Panama papers, in the EP in Brussels.&nbsp;Statements by Werner LANGEN, Chair TAXE Committee, Bastian OBERMAYER, S&uuml;ddeutsche Zeitung [based in Washington DC], Kristof CLERIX, Knack magazine, Belgium, Oliver ZIHLMANN, Sonntagszeitung | Le Matin Dimanche, Switzerland, Jan STROZYK, Norddeutscher Rundfunk/ NDR, Germany,&nbsp; Petr JEŽEK (ALDE, CZ), Co-rapporteur, and Julia STEIN, Norddeutscher Rundfunk/ NDR, Germany.

Brussels

meeting

fight against tax fraud and evasion (T)

Panama Papers inquiry committee

LANGEN, Werner (EPP, DE)

JEŽEK, Petr (ALDE, CZ)

The Panama papers – Discussion with the investigative journalists behind the revelations: extracts from the Public Hearing at the Committee of Inquiry into Money Laundering, Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion (PANA)

SOUNDBITE (English), Werner LANGEN, Chair Committee of Inquiry into Money Laundering, Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion (PANA), I remember very well of the hearing of Neelie KROES in 2004 when she wanted to become a Competition Commissioner. She then presented a list of 37 companies in which she had been involved in the preceding 10 years, saying she had disengaged from them. Did she then lie to the parliament?

SOUNDBITE (English), Bastian  OBERMAYER, S&#252;ddeutsche Zeitung [based in Washington DC], (to whom the documents were first leaked by John Doe) The rules, which we all have agreed upon, have to apply to everybody. To the superrich 1 percent, as well for the rest, the 99 percent. Otherwise our democracy is at stake.Because people loose faith in democracy, and we all know what happens when the faith in democracy is gone. People vote for the ones who offer simple solutions. The vote for populists, for racists, for fascists.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kristof CLERIX, Knack magazine, Belgium, So these 65 diamond people, people working in the diamond industry that weer connected to the offshores. Interesting is that they set up the offshores after the years of 2000, mainly with a peak in 2004, and if you look at how did they get into touch with Mossack Fonseca and Panama, then very often this happened through Swiss banks. If you look at the intermediaries that payed a role in facilitating Belgian customers, we always saw a double track. One track went through Luxembourg another through Switzerland.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kristof CLERIX, Knack magazine, Belgium, Experta is also playing a role in the Bahama Leaks. As I told you Experta used be part of the Dexia group through the Banque Internationale a Luxembourg, what is not unimportant to know is that the Dexia group was saved by tax payers money in Belgium, so that it was quite interesting to see that exactly this bank played such a big role in setting up offshore companies.

SOUNDBITE (English), Oliver ZIHLMANN,  Sonntagszeitung | Le Matin Dimanche, Switzerland, The Panama Papers revealed throughout the data, in several cases, lack of transparency with the offshore industry of Cyprus, actually. We saw that many times. We found lawyers in Cyprus who acted as beneficial owners of offshore companies and probably hiding the identity of the true owners, we found bank accounts in Cyprus held by obvious proxies, there were aided in that by Swiss lawyers that were using a regulatory loopholes.

SOUNDBITE (English), Oliver ZIHLMANN, Sonntagszeitung | Le Matin Dimanche, Switzerland, This is a huge setup, the biggest one we found in the Panama Papers. And you are looking for regulatory loopholes and things to do and I would look in this direction because what we see here is that with this  scheme it was possible for the closest entourage of Putin to bring hundreds of millions of loans through the EU, avoiding practically every control.

SOUNDBITE (German), Jan STROZYK, Norddeutscher Rundfunk/ NDR, Germany, We have to understand first of all how the system works. Mossack Fonseca, like many other providers to offshore companies does not work directly with the final customer, that's something we've seen from the documents. There's a system of intermediaries. As the name suggests, that they're basically a kind of missing link between Mossack Fonseca and the final customer. Why do they do that? Well it is quite clear in the documents from Mossack Fonseca. Mossack Fonseca can simply say, we have never worked with that customer.

SOUNDBITE (German), Jan STROZYK, Norddeutscher Rundfunk/ NDR, Germany, Alone in the Panama Papers we have found the names of over 500 banks around the world. Around 30 of those were directly linked to Germany.That is to say there are German banks, or foreign bansk that were very active through Germany. Of the top ten intermediary banks, 4 were from Luxembourg, 3 from the Channel islands, 2 from Switzerland and one from Monaco. So we are not talking about Panama, these are things that are going on right here.

SOUNDBITE (English), Petr JE&#381;EK (ALDE, CZ), Co-rapporteur, Are the Panama Papers and other revelations just the tip of a large iceberg?What in fact is the volume of the problem?

SOUNDBITE (German), Julia STEIN, Norddeutscher Rundfunk/ NDR, Germany, , It is very difficult to tackle letter box companies,it is vey difficult to get all countries to participate, I think that would be the next step, more collaboration.

A compilation video of breaking news headlines (France 24, BBC, NBC, ABC) and graphics on Panama Papers made by ICIJ.