Twenty-seven people face money laundering charges in the long-delayed hearing at a courtroom in Panama’s Gil Ponce Palace of Justice.
Eight years after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and more than 100 media partners worldwide broke the first Panama Papers revelations, a landmark money laundering trial stemming from it has commenced in a Panamanian criminal court.
Twenty-seven people are being tried, including Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca Mora, the founders of the now-shuttered local law firm at the center of the scandal.
The 2016 Panama Papers investigation remains one of the largest cross-border journalistic collaborations in history and has become shorthand for financial chicanery and political corruption in the public imagination.
Based on a trove of 11.5 million files leaked to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with ICIJ, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation exposed the offshore financial secrets of world leaders and other powerful public figures, triggering protests, government probes and the resignation of Iceland’s prime minister.
Both Mossack and Fonseca have repeatedly denied any involvement in illegal activities. In 2022, both were acquitted in a separate Panamanian money laundering case after a judge ruled the prosecution failed to prove the law firm handled or tried to hide illicit funds by setting up offshore accounts for Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.
Mossack was present in the courtroom when the new trial began on Monday, AP reported, while lawyers for Fonseca said their client was in hospital. Mossack told reporters outside the Gil Ponce Palace of Justice that he felt “very optimistic.” “If there is true justice, we will get out of this,” he said.
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