The European anti-fraud office (OLAF) has opened four investigations following the Panama Papers scandal, its Director General, Giovanni Kessler, announced at a hearing of the committee of investigation of the European Parliament into this scandal, on Monday 15 November.
Kessler said that OLAF was interested in three categories of people named in Panama Papers: the staff and members of the European institutions, experts providing services in the framework of European projects or beneficiaries of European funds and people already involved in OLAF investigations (concluded or underway).
The names of all Commissioners, past and present, Directors General and members of the European Parliament were also checked. Seventeen names cropped up, half of whom were already under investigation by the office. OLAF has opened four investigations on this basis, only one of which concerns a member of staff of the European institutions.
Philippe de Koster of the Belgian financial intelligence cell said that money laundering was not a taxation matter, but a criminal one. There is always a crime behind money laundering and tax evasion. Under the Belgian criminal code, money laundering is deemed just as serious as the crime it hides, he stressed. In the wake of Panama Papers, his cell has opened 97 cases, he added.
With plans in place to create centralised registers of bank accounts, this information should be accessible to all European agencies to allow investigations into all financial crimes, but also acts of corruption, Kessler said.
At the Council of the EU, the member states recalled that they hope to reach an agreement in December on the revision of the 4th anti-money laundering directive. This was initially re-opened in order to step up the fight against the financing of terrorism, but provisions aiming to reinforce tax transparency in response to the scandal were subsequently added to the list. Last week, the legal services of the Council expressed doubts as to the legality of publishing information on the beneficial owners of trusts and shell companies (see EUROPE 11664).
The experts in attendance at the European Parliament on Monday also called for registers of information on the beneficial owners to be kept.
On Wednesday 16 November, the EP's committee of investigation will hear from the economist Joseph Stiglitz, who stepped down from his role as adviser to the government of Panama in August. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)