Yle’s MOT journalists found that the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca didn’t normally have any direct contact with the real owners of companies set up in tax havens. Rather all of the dealings with the shell companies took place through intermediaries. The data leaked from Mossack Fonseca in the so-called Panama Papers shows a lively exchange of correspondence between the law firm and several Finnish legal practitioners and businessmen.
The documents indicate that five Finnish men had been active Mossack Fonseca clients at the time, in other words, they acted as intermediaries for third parties. They included lawyers Sami Saarinen, Keijo Ahtiainen, Esa Vuorenpää and entrepreneurs Kimmo Vesander and Hannes Kulvik and their families. The individuals in question had set up and managed several post-box companies for their clients, as well as for themselves.
MOT offered these individuals many opportunities to comment on the information contained in the leaked documents. MOT’s reporting on their actions is based on the information contained in the leaked data. MOT stressed that mere mention of the individuals does not indicate that they were guilty of any criminal offences.
Porsche in hiding, cash to stash
According to the leaked documents one lawyer assisted a client when court bailiffs wanted to seize a Porsche because of outstanding debt. The same attorney also asked Mossack Fonseca to retroactively change the date on a sales agreement for a certain yacht.
In another instance an Espoo businessman asked whether or not Mossack Fonseca would help his Russian client to deposit cash in a western bank at regular intervals. The businessman stressed to the Panamanian law firm that the money in question was not drug money.
"We have some customers from Russia who wants [sic] to export cash dollars to western bank accounts… (not drug money). Can help in this matter [sic]?" the intermediary queried in a fax to Mossack Fonseca during the 1990s.
The Panamanians responded they that did not provide any suitable banking services for that purpose.
Companies behind companies
The documents indicate that between 1992 and 2007 lawyer Sami Saarinen set up a firm known as International Company Lawyers, which in turn established at least 178 other companies in the Bahamas, the tiny island state of Niue in the South Pacific Ocean and another island state, Samoa. All are known tax havens. Saarinen, who now lives in Spain said he could not respond to MOT's questions due to illness.
Lawyer Keijo Ahtiainen was named in an internal Mossack Fonseca report as a VIP client in 2014. Between 2001 and 2010 the Panamanian law firm helped him set up at least 15 companies in tax havens. Some of them were for Ahtiainen’s Finnish clients, some were established on his own behalf. Ahtiainen did not respond to numerous phone calls or emails from MOT.
Tampere resident Esa Vuorenpää was a wealthy lawyer who specialised in tax planning and had been a Mossack Fonseca client since 1992. According to the leaked material, from 1992 to 2006, he set up dozens of shell companies in the British Virgin Islands for his clients.
Vuorenpää’s client register included A-listers like national ice hockey player and coach Kalevi Numminen and his son Teppo Numminen, one of the most successful Finnish players in the NHL. The arrangements date back to the 1990s. Vuorenpää told MOT that the holding company arrangements had been dismantled in the mid 1990’s, when new legislation made it illegal to hold foreign companies in low-tax jurisdictions.
Client wanted by Interpol
Espoo businessman Kimmo Vesander had been a Mossack Fonseca client in the 1990s through his company, Vesmark Ltd. He put up 30 shell companies in the Bahamas. In 1995, he met one of the owners of the Panamanian law firm, Jûrgen Mossack at the Palace Hotel in Helsinki. Vesander received a special offer when he set up his Bahamian companies.
According to the Panama papers, one of Vesander’s clients included a Finnish man on Interpol’s wanted list. The man was eventually held in Torremolinos, Spain in 2001 in the company of an accomplice, an Italian mafia boss. In 1996 Vesander asked Mossack Fonseca to remove the Finnish man’s name from all documents. MOT reached Vesander by phone, however he declined comment on the matter.
Businessman Hannes Kulvik and his family had been loyal Mossack Fonseca clients since 2000. The Panama Papers leak revealed that Kulvik and his family had been shareholders or directors of several tax haven companies, mainly in the British Virgin Islands. Their business matters had been handled primarily from Geneva, Switzerland, by an investment consulting firm, Kulvik and CIE. Although Kulvik is not a lawyer, the documents indicate that he assisted other individuals in setting up shell companies in tax havens. Kulvik declined comment, saying that he was too old.
