Süddeutsche Zeitung, in collaboration with The Consortium For Investigative Journalists, revealed 11.5 million leaked confidential documents from a Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca. The documents reveal a shadowy network of politicians, celebrities and other powerful people concealing their wealth.
While Bitcoin is not directly mentioned in the documents, there are connections between the Papers and the digital currency. Here are some of the individuals named in the documents, and their sometimes loose, sometimes major, connections to Bitcoin. I’ll start with the major connection.
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s “favorite contractor” was mentioned in the documents, which revealed “a complex offshore network” spread across the world.
At the beginning of April, AndrésSepúlveda claimed to rig the Mexican election which brought Nieto to power for $600,000. While doing this, he claims to have rented servers in Russia and the Ukraine with bitcoins. He calls the Nieto campaigns “one of the dirtiest Latin American campaigns in recent memory” and “one of his most complex” rigging operations.
Listed in the Papers is Argentine President Mauricio , who met with Richard Branson and spoke with him about Bitcoin, drug control and space flight.
According to the president’s Facebook page, the president “was very interested in the talk as Branson, plus entrepreneur in areas related to new technologies, such as space flight and use bitcoin is entrepreneurial in humanitarian issues.”
On to Russia, where Bitcoin’s have perhaps come most close to being banned. An associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Bank Rossiya reportedly laundered hundreds of millions of dollars, allege the Panama Papers.
Russia has a tenuous relationship to Bitcoin. At first, in 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported Russia’s stance was rather benign: “At this stage we need to watch how the situation develops with these kinds of currencies. These instruments should not be rejected,” the Bank of Russia […]
