Many big names from the Oil and Gas industry are featured in the Panama Papers Leak. Kavita Nair-Fondekar reports.

The Panama Papers have sent shivers down the spines of some of the world’s richest and extremely powerful personalities cutting across domains of international leadership, politics, sports, business and banking among many others. This global investigation is based on a trove of more than 11 million leaked files or 2.6 terabytes of data and it exposes the extensive, clandestine industry that uses offshore companies in far-flung jurisdictions to assist bribery, arms deals, tax evasion, financial fraud and drug trafficking. It is the largest leak in offshore history with records dating back nearly 40 years and containing details on more than 214,000 offshore entities connected to people in more than 200 countries and territories.

The largest cross-border journalism collaboration ever has uncovered a giant leak of documents from Mossack Fonseca, a global law firm based in Panama. The files reveal that almost 215,000 offshore shell companies and 14,153 clients were tied to Mossack Fonseca. They linked 143 politicians, their families and close associates, including 12 highly placed political leaders from all over the world, who have used tax havens to protect enormous wealth.

Holding money in an offshore company is generally not illegal, although such financial arrangements can be used in illegal ways, like to facilitate tax evasion or money laundering. The Panama Papers story has only just broken and one of the first major casualties was the resignation of the Prime Minister of Iceland.

The oil and gas industry has featured in the Panama Papers with some big names in the red. In Africa, the law firm allegedly helped establish shell companies and offshore accounts for global power players from more than a dozen nations, including at least four business and political leaders with links to oil. This has drawn attention to corruption within the lucrative oil industry across a continent that loses nearly $50 billion every year in illegitimate financial outflows.

Ogronline profiles some of the oil and gas industry giants who have been named in the leaks. The details are based on the data put out by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Responses from most of the personalities under scrutiny, to the media are awaited.

JOSÉ MARIA BOTELHO DE VASCONCELOS

Minister of Petroleum – Angola

JOSÉ MARIA BOTELHO DE VASCONCELOS
Minister of Petroleum – Angola

José Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos has served as Angola’s minister of petroleum since 2008. An engineer by education, Botelho de Vasconcelos worked for years with Angola’s state oil company, Sonangol. He first served as petroleum minister from 1999 to 2002 before becoming minister for energy and water. He was re-appointed minister of petroleum in 2008 and was president of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 2009.

The offshore use goes back to his first time as minister of petroleum. On 6 March 2002, when Jose Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos was minister of petroleum for the first time, he was named as one of two individuals who had power of attorney for Medea Investments Limited, a company that put its own value at $1 million. The company was incorporated on September 13, 2001 in Niue and moved to Samoa in 2006. It was inactivated on February 16, 2009. In both Niue and Samoa, the company was held by “bearer” shares, which belong to the individual who physically holds them, making it easier to obscure ownership. Medea Investments Limited (Samoa) was one of two companies to hold shares in the New York company Blue Nile Consulting LLC in October 2007.

KONRAD MIZZI

Minister of Energy & Health – Republic of Malta

KONRAD MIZZI
Minister of Energy & Health – Republic of Malta

Konrad Mizzi is the minister of energy and health of the Republic of Malta. He was elected to Parliament in 2013 and became the deputy leader of Malta’s ruling Labour Party in February 2016. Mizzi’s quick ascent, earned him the accolade of “one of the most successful politicians in recent history.” Later in February, following media reports, Mizzi announced he would close an offshore company in Panama owned by a New Zealand trust he had created. He claimed that he had declared the company and that he was closing it in the interest of transparency. Malta’s main opposition party has called for an investigation.

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