Page 33 - AWEMAINTA 22 MARCH

AWEMainta Diaranson, 22 Maart 2017
< Continua di pagina 32
Teleco investigation launched after former Haitian President Jean-Ber-
trand Aristide was forced to leave office in 2004. Eight years later, a former firm Mossack Fonseca.
top official of Haiti’s state-owned telecommunications was convicted at
trial of accepting bribes from Miami vendors that sold phone minutes for
mobile phone customers in Haiti. Other defendants were also convicted
in related cases.
One of the Miami-based defendants in the Aruba case, Chung-Wen
“Benny” Wu, denied any connection to illegal activity after being reached
on his cellphone.
“We were just doing business,” said Wu, who runs Doral-based Bengo
Mobile and is a principal of Fellow Trading. “I don’t know why they sue
me. We were just a vendor for Setar. None of this is true. It is ridiculous.”
None of this is true. It is ridiculous.
Chung-Wen ‘Benny’ Wu he said he mainly spoke to Koolman on the
phone, had only met him a few times at trade shows in Las Vegas and
was never offered any under-the-table deals. Wu’s company imports
cell phones from Europe, China and Hong Kong and then sells them to
providers in the Caribbean.
Another defendant in the lawsuit, Max Rivadeneira, did not return mes-
sages sent via social media. Rivadeneira is an officer and principal of
two of Setar’s former suppliers, ITech and TTX. He also had affiliations
with three other Miami-based vendors that collectively sold more than
$23 million in mobile phone equipment to Setar, according to the suit.
Rivadeneira now operates a South Florida company called Soul Obses-
sion that produces custom-made, eco-friendly yoga mats, according to
its website. (Prices start at $69.)
A third defendant, Larry Parker, could not be reached. Parker is the
registered agent and officer of ISky, Quantum and I-GSM and was af-
filiated through his mother with ITech, the suit said. They are all former
vendors for Setar.
Mossack Fonseca documents included in the Panama Papers’ leak confirm
Koolman was a player in the offshore world.
In 2006, Koolman hired MF to set up an offshore company called 3DK
Consultant Corp. in the British Virgin Islands. The idyllic island chain
is known as one of the world’s least transparent offshore havens. It is
impossible to tell who owns a BVI company without access to confiden-
tial, internal documents.
The other shareholders of the company were Koolman’s ex-wife, Evarina
Xiomara Deborah Koolman, and their two children. Koolman and his
wife, who was formerly employed by the Central Bank of Aruba, divorced
last summer.
Koolman, as is common in the offshore world, was extremely vague
about the purpose of the company. In an application form to MF, he
wrote simply: “The corporation’s object shall be to perform any and all
activities in the broadest sense of a professional consultant services, such
as technical support, product sales and marketing consultant, trading
consultant, business coaching consultant etc.” MF employees did not
ask him to elaborate, according to the leaked documents.
The firm generally did not appear to ask many questions about clients,
despite know-your-customer, anti-money laundering rules, according to
a review of its massive internal documentation conducted by nearly 400
journalists worldwide and led by ICIJ. Mossack has defended its due
diligence practices since the Panama Papers stories broke in April 2016,
saying the firm follows all laws and regulations required of offshore ser-
vice providers.
Eventually, Koolman’s company used 3DK Consultant to open a corpo-
rate checking account at the Panama branch of Lima-based Credicorp
Bank, emails show.
The Panama Papers were a global collaboration of nearly 400 journalists
33
around the world led by the International Consortium of Investigative
Journalists. They analyzed 11.5 million leaked documents from the law
In 2008, 3DK was able to open a savings account with Credicorp that
required a minimum $10,000 deposit. Later that year, the company re-
ceived a corporate credit card from Credicorp. Koolman also sought to
open a third account with the bank but it’s not clear if that happened.
The documents do not show whether Koolman moved money into those
accounts.
Koolman also traveled the world during this time, according to a copy
of his passport requested by MF in 2012 as part of a background check.
Entry stamps and visas show frequent trips to Hong Kong and the Dutch
Caribbean island of Curaçao, with other stops in Miami, Panama City,
Singapore and China.
In 2015, after receiving an invoice, Koolman’s ex-wife emailed an MF
employee saying 3DK Consultant had not been used in several years.
She requested to meet with MF in Panama City to discuss shutting the
company down. While in Panama, she made time to take in a Marc
Antony concert, emails show.
However, the company remained active, according to MF internal records.
(The Herald could not locate Evarina Koolman for comment.)
The Panama Papers leak has been crucial to the public’s understanding
of the murky offshore world, said Shruti Shah, a forensic accountant and
vice president of Transparency International USA, an anti-corruption
nonprofit group.
Law enforcement officials and creditors can rarely peer behind the veil
to see who really controls offshore companies, making them ripe for use
in political corruption, embezzlement and corporate bribery schemes.
“The Panama Papers highlight how easy it is for criminals and fraudsters
to manipulate the global financial system and use the secrecy afforded by
these anonymous companies to benefit from their ill-gotten gains,” Shah
said. “The whole concept behind a shell company is you cannot figure
out who ultimately controls the company or who is deriving economic
benefits from it.”
The Panama Papers highlight how easy it is for criminals and fraudsters
to manipulate the global financial system. Shruti Shah, Transparency
International USA
She pointed to the discoveries made by journalists investigating the
papers, which led to the resignation of the Prime Minister of Iceland, as
well as government inquiries around the world, as evidence of the need
for offshore havens to adopt more transparent corporate laws.
Another result of the leak: Mossack Fonseca founders Ramon Fonseca
and Jurgen Mossack were arrested and refused bail in Panama City in
February. Their firm, one of the world’s largest providers of offshore
corporate services, has consistently denied wrongdoing.
Panamanian prosecutors charged the pair with money laundering in rela-
tion to the international corruption scandal known as Lava Jato that is
sweeping Brazil and other Latin American countries, according to Panama-
nian newspaper La Prensa. The allegations concern bribes allegedly paid
by multinational engineering firm Odebrecht to politicians in the region.
“The money originating from [the corruption] circulated among different
companies to then return laundered to Panama,” the nation’s attorney
general Kenia Porcell said in a statement about the arrests posted online.
Last week, MF’s attorneys submitted a habeas corpus motion to a Pana-
manian judge asking for the release of Mossack, Fonseca and a third
jailed employee of the firm.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/
miami-dade/article139720003.html#storylink=cpy