Panamanian
prosecutors raided the offices of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the center
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.
The Panama
Papers, which consist of millions of documents stolen from Mossack Fonseca and
leaked to the media in April 2016, provoked a global scandal after showing how
the rich and powerful used offshore corporations to evade taxes.
Ramon Fonseca,
a partner at Mossack Fonseca, denied that his firm had a connection to
Odebrecht [ODBES.UL], 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 centered on Brazil's state-run oil company Petróleo
Brasileiro SA.
"They're
using me to divert attention," he said.
Fonseca also
accused Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela of directly receiving money
from Odebrecht, Latin America's largest engineering company.
"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.
Odebrecht did
not respond immediately to requests for comment.
REUTERS
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