Mossack Fonseca offices raided over Odebrecht bribery scandal

Panamanian prosecutors raided the offices of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers scandal, seeking possible links to Brazilian engineering company Odebrecht, the attorney general’s office said on Thursday.

“Raid of offices of law firm that created limited liability companies in Brazil linked to #LavaJato #PanamaPapers,” the attorney general’s office said on Twitter, without providing more details.

Odebrecht is a Brazilian construction giant that paid millions of dollars in bribes to land huge public works contracts in Latin America. Several countries in Latin America, among them Panama, Mexico, Argentina, Peru and Uruguay, are carrying out investigations into bribes paid by Odebrecht.

The Panama Papers, which consist of millions of documents stolen from Mossack Fonseca and leaked in April 2016, provoked a global scandal after proving that among others, individuals of political importance used offshore corporations to avoid paying taxes. Among these individuals were then economy minister Konrad Mizzi and Prime Minister Joseph Muscat's chief of staff Keith Schembri.

Ramon Fonseca, a partner at Mossack Fonseca, denied his firm had a connection to Odebrecht, which has admitted to bribing officials in Panama and other countries to obtain government contracts in the region between 2010 and 2014.

“Mossack Fonseca has no relationship with Odebrecht, nor with any other Lava Jato company,” Fonseca told reporters, referring to companies involved in the so-called Lava Jato probe centred on Brazil’s state-run oil company Petróleo Brasileiro SA. “They’re using me to divert attention,” he said.

Fonseca also wrote in his Twitter account that he and his partner at the law firm, Juergen Mossack, had "nothing to do with Odebrecht."

Fonseca accused the president of Panama, Juan Carlos Varela, of directly receiving money from Odebrecht. “He [Varela] told me that he had accepted donations from Odebrecht because he could not fight with everyone,” Fonseca said, without giving more details.

At a media conference, Varela denied he received donations from Odebrecht, saying he would make all donations to his political campaign public on Friday.