Europe's Regulators Probe Banks as Shell Company Scandal Spreads
- Panama leak prompts inquiries from Stockholm to Vienna
- Spanish king's aunt to Iceland prime minister implicated
Panama Leak Reports World Leaders' Hidden Billions
Regulators across Europe are looking into the offshore activities of the banks they supervise after documents leaked from a Panama law firm showed how the rich and powerful, including 12 current and former world leaders, use shell companies to conceal assets, according to a report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
Swedish regulators have summoned Nordea Bank AB, Scandinavia’s biggest lender, to answer questions on assistance it allegedly provided to wealthy clients to help them evade taxes. Iceland’s prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson faces a no-confidence vote after the report showed that he and his wife Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir had an offshore investment account created with the aid of Mossack Fonseca, the Panama-based law firm at the center of the scandal, to manage an inheritance. In comments to the ICIJ, the firm said it “does not foster or promote illegal acts,” and called the group’s allegations “unsupported and false.”