GALO CHIRIBOGA

Former Minister of Mining & Petroleum – Ecuador

GALO CHIRIBOGA
Former Minister of Mining & Petroleum – Ecuador

Galo Chiriboga is an Ecuadorian lawyer and politician. Chiriboga is currently Ecuador’s attorney general. He previously served as minister for labour, minister for mines and petroleum and ambassador to Spain. He is a distant relative of Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa.

In 1999, Chiriboga, then a lawyer in private practice, was hired to collect a debt from a couple who owned a house in the exclusive residential area of La Viña. In November that year, Chiriboga created Madrigal Finance Corp. in Panama, and in December, in order to buy the house, the company granted him a power of attorney including “full authorization to set the price of the property.” Madrigal Finance purchased it for less than $2,800. The former owners later sued Chiriboga for fraud, as they estimated it was worth about $1 million. He finally prevailed, with the court ruling that the couple had not proven the property’s actual value. From 2005, when he was appointed labour minister, to now as Ecuador’s attorney general, he has been inconsistent in disclosing his connection to the company when he declared his assets. Weeks before he took office as attorney general in July 2011, his wife María Victoria Espinal asked Mossack Fonseca to remove Chiriboga and other directors of Madrigal and to replace them with nominees supplied by the Panamanian law firm, although her husband remained the sole shareholder.

BJARNI BENEDIKTSSON

Minister of Finance & Economic Affairs and Former Chairman of N1 and BNT – Iceland

BJARNI BENEDIKTSSON
Minister of Finance & Economic Affairs and Former Chairman of N1 and BNT – Iceland

Bjarni Benediktsson is Iceland’s Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs and has been a member of parliament since 2003. Benediktsson has led the Independence Party since 2009 and formed a coalition government with Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson and the Progressive Party after 2013 elections. He comes from a wealthy family and served as chairman of both N1, Iceland’s biggest oil firm and gasoline retailer, and its holding company, BNT, from 2005-2008. Benediktsson weathered a minor scandal in 2015 when it emerged that he had registered on the Ashley Madison cheating website for married men. His great uncle, also named Bjarni Benediktsson, was prime minister of Iceland from 1963 to 1970.

Benediktsson and two Icelandic businessmen owned a Seychelles shell company called Falson & Co, which was purchased through the Luxembourg branch of the Icelandic bank Landsbanki in 2005. Falson issued bearer shares, which confer ownership to whomever holds the physical share certificates. Bearer shares are typically used to provide an extra layer of secrecy for the ownership of an asset. Falson was struck off the register of companies in 2010. “I have not had any assets in tax havens or anything like that,” Benediktsson told a television interviewer in 2015.

ALI ABU AL-RAGHEB

Former Prime Minister – Jordan

Al-Ragheb was the director of offshore companies in British Virgin Islands and owned others in Seychelles.

In July 2003, just months before he resigned as prime minister, Ali Abu al-Ragheb and his wife Yusra became directors of the British Virgin Islands company Jaar Investment Ltd., which held an account with Arab Bank in Geneva, Switzerland. The company was inactivated in August 2008. Earlier in 2008 they became directors of Jay Investment Holdings Ltd also based in the British Virgin Islands. In neither case were the companies’ activities identified. Until December 2014 al-Ragheb also owned three Seychelles companies. His children were involved as directors in several additional BVI companies, including Desertstar Investment Capital Ltd., which also held an account at Arab Bank in Geneva that was used to invest in Jordan.

PAVLO LAZARENKO

Former Prime Minister & Energy Minister – Ukraine

Pavlo Lazarenko, was the Prime Minister of Ukraine from 1996-97. While in office, he exercised control over a large swathe of the economy and influenced the privatisation of Ukraine’s vast natural gas sector.

Most of the allegations of embezzlement of state funds and abuse of office against him are related to the fight for gas revenues between rival political and business groupings in Ukraine in the 1990s. He had also held the post of energy minister.

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