Among the names: Lionel Messi.
The Barcelona star, a five-time world player of the year, is already under indictment in Spain on charges that he and his father, Jorge Horacio Messi, used offshore companies in Belize and Uruguay to stiff the government out of millions of dollars in taxes.
The leaked documents show that Messi and his father owned yet another offshore company in Panama: Mega Star Enterprises.
The first reference to the company in Mossack Fonseca’s files came on June 13, 2013 - one day after Spanish prosecutors first filed tax fraud charges against Messi and his father. An email indicated that responsibility for handling the company’s paperwork was being transferred to Mossack Fonseca from another offshore corporate agent.
The first reference in the files to the Messis owning Mega Star came less than two weeks later, on June 23rd, 2013.
Through his father, Messi declined to comment for this story.
(...)
The soccer players whose names appear in the Mossack Fonseca files hail from Brazil, Uruguay, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Serbia, The Netherlands and Sweden, among other countries. Most seemed to have used the law firm’s services to create offshore companies to hold the money they earned selling their image rights to athletic shoe companies and other advertisers.
Lionel Messi and his father, who served as his son’s agent, are slated to stand trial on tax fraud charges starting May 31st. Accused of shortchanging the government out of nearly $6.5 million in taxes by shielding his image rights in an offshore network, Messi has paid the back taxes the government said he owed for the years 2007-2009.
Messi denies that he deliberately tried to deceive anyone.
Mega Star Enterprises, the offshore company owned by Messi and his father at least as far back as 2013 , is not mentioned in the Spanish government’s 2014 and 2015 indictments against the pair. The leaked records show Messi signed at least one document reflecting his ownership of Mega Star, but that his father, Jorge Messi, took over sole ownership of the company in December 2015. The company remains active in Panama’s company register.
Messi isn’t alone when it comes to using offshore havens.
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/...s-become-enmeshed-in-offshore-world-1.2595555
