Some Indian celebrities whose documents have been leaked are Bollywood Legend Amitabh Bachchan, actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, CEO of DLF, KP Singh, Sameer Gehlaut who is the owner of Indiabulls and Vinod Adani, elder brother of businessman Gautam Adani. The list also includes prominent International persons such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, Nawaz Sharif, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Chinese President Xi Jinping with his family and Lionel Messi , the Argentinean footballer.
The name of this law firm is Mossack Fonseca and a total of 11.5 million files have been leaked from its database. This leakage brought out in open the veiled wealth of dozens of donors who made donations to the political parties of UK, three ex-Conservative MPs and sis members of House of Lords. The list also included the families of eight present and former members of Politburo, which is
the supreme ruling body of China.
As per the report, many Indians have paid hefty amounts to this law firm for setting up foreign companies in various countries of the world which don’t have stringent taxation norms. However, this is not good news for these Indians as the law of the country doesn’t allow for it. Some tried to manipulate the law by saying, “companies acquired are not the same as companies incorporated”, while some earned abroad but instead of bringing it back to the country, they decided to keep it in the countries which are tax-friendly and some other opened their accounts in those countries for depositing the bribe earned by them or money earned through any illegal means.
Mossack Fonseca is known for helping people in attaining foreign firms and hiding their shady dealings. The firm not only sells but also manages these foreign firms and charges a yearly fee; and it has being doing it since 1977, its year of establishment. The leakage of documents was done in December 2015 and since then, 370 journalists from nearly 100 media firms have scrutinized and confirmed the documents. However, the law firm has maintained that it has not broken any law and given services to its clients in the limits of the law.