"Panama Papers"

All defendants in the financial scandal acquitted!

The "Panama Papers" trial took place in this courthouse in Panama City.(Bild: APA/AFP/MARTIN BERNETTI)

Big surprise: eight years after the revelation of the huge global financial scandal of the "Panama Papers", the 28 defendants have been surprisingly acquitted - including the German-born lawyer Jürgen Mossack ...

Top politicians, billionaires, arms dealers, sports stars and criminals were accused of being involved in business with shell companies in several tax havens around the world, according to extensive research by the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" and other media. The whistleblower of the NSA scandal, Edward Snowden, even spoke of the "biggest leak in the history of data journalism" on Twitter (today X, note).

However, the defendants have now been acquitted, as the court in Panama City announced on Friday (local time). The judge in charge, Baloísa Marquínez, also ordered the criminal proceedings against Ramón Fonseca Mora, who has since died, to be dropped.

The lawyer and one of the main defendants in the "Panama Papers" case Jürgen Mossack(Bild: APA/AFP/MARTIN BERNETTI)

Chain of custody not traceable
The chain of custody was not traceable in the collection of evidence from the servers of the now defunct law firm Mossack Fonseca. The judge also ruled that the other evidence was insufficient and inconclusive. The defendants had been accused of money laundering through the establishment of 215,000 letterbox companies in tax havens, in which politicians, celebrities and athletes are said to have concealed their assets.

In spring 2016, the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" and other media outlets of the Investigative Journalists' Network (ICIJ) revealed the transactions of the shell companies set up in Panama. A huge data leak resulted in 11.5 million documents being leaked to the newspaper. Almost 400 reporters from more than 80 countries took part in the research.