HSBC and Thomas Kwok are among the Hong Kong companies and individuals caught up in the massive data leak from Panama law firm, Mossack Fonseca. Photo: AP
HSBC has been caught up in the massive data leak from the Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, which has exposed how some of the world's wealthiest individuals have been hiding their riches.
The Swiss branch of HSBC provided financial services to a firm linked to Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of Syria's President Assad, who had been placed under sanctions by the US Treasury.
The leaked files from the Panamanian legal firm also show it enabled leading regime figures in North Korea to keep their companies trading, despite being blacklisted by the US. One had links to North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.
Mossack Fonseca registers companies as offshore entities operated under its own name, making it hard to trace the identities of the real owners because they are kept out of public documents.
The revelations in the "Panama Papers" – as the leaked documents are now known – are being pored over by government investigators around the world.
The Australian Tax Office says it has linked 120 out of 800 individual Australian taxpayers it found in the Mossack Fonseca data to an unnamed associate offshore services provider in Hong Kong.
It's also been revealed that corrupt Hong Kong billionaire, Thomas Kwok, has links to one of Australia's largest government contractors, Wilson Security.
Kwok and his brother, Raymond, resigned in 2012 as directors from Wilson's holding company, based in the British Virgin Islands, after they were charged in one of the biggest bribery cases in Hong Kong's history.
But two new entities then appeared as directors. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation says the leaked documents show these new directors – Harmony Core and Winsome Sky – were run by the Kwoks, revealing Mossack Fonseca had helped the brothers hide their directorships of the company controlling Wilson Security.
Raymond Kwok was later acquitted of the corruption charged against him, but Thomas was convicted and jailed.
In another part of the leak, the papers reveal that Mossack Fonseca struggled with a decision on whether to report possible irregularities over a shell company owned by SHKP executive Thomas Chan, who had been arrested for bribing a government official.
Mossack Fonseca staff were concerned that reporting SHKP to the British Virgin Island Authorities, where the shell company was based, could lead to the property giant taking its business to another company.
http://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1252534-20160405.htm
