Ramón Fonseca, co-founder of a Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, that helped the famous and infamous shelter their riches, and who then presided over the firm’s collapse after the dealings were made public in the massive 2016 “Panama Papers” leaks, died May 8 in a hospital in Panama City. He was 71.
Mr. Fonseca’s attorney, Guillermina McDonald, confirmed the death but gave no specific cause. The Spanish news agency EFE quoted Mr. Fonseca’s daughter, Raquel Fonseca, saying he died of pneumonia.
Mr. Fonseca had been hospitalized since early April, McDonald added, and did not attend a trial last month on alleged money laundering. Prosecutors in Panama claim that Mr. Fonseca, his former legal partner Jürgen Mossack and nearly 30 others created shell companies that were used by clients to hide money from illicit activities. Mr. Fonseca had denied the charges.
The firm Mossack Fonseca built its reputation over four decades as an expert guide into the worlds of offshore accounts, tax havens, front companies and other avenues to potentially give clients options to shield their assets and identities.
Mr. Fonseca and his colleagues insisted they always operated within the law and were not responsible for what clients did with the companies or accounts the firm helped create.
“We are like a car factory who sells its car to a dealer (a lawyer for example), and he sells it to a lady that hits someone,” Mr. Fonseca wrote in an exchange of messages with the New York Times in 2016. “The factory is not responsible for what is done with the car.”
As the clients poured in, Mr. Fonseca and Mossack became kingpins in their own right — but with very different styles.
The German-born Mossack guarded his privacy and details of his family’s past, which included his father’s service in the Waffen-SS during World War II, according to U.S. Army intelligence files. Mr. Fonseca sought the spotlight.
He wrote popular novels and twice won Panama’s top literary prize. He hosted lavish soirees at his villa in Panama City. He was a top official in a political party and confidant to Panamanian presidents, describing public service as a way to give back.
“I believe in sharing the pizza,” he wrote. “At least to give others one slice.”
Yet Mossack Fonseca was little known outside the offshore banking networks and the constellation of so-called tax haven countries around the world. That changed in April 2016 with the “Panama Papers” leaks, obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a global investigative journalism organization that pioneered collaborative cross-border reporting.
The trove of 11.5 million documents from Mossack Fonseca revealed money trails and legal arrangements made for thousands of clients. “The cat’s out of the bag,” Mr. Fonseca told Bloomberg News, “so now we have to deal with the aftermath.”
The disclosures offered a road map into how billions of dollars — and apparent tax benefits — flow across borders, and how firms such as Mossack Fonseca make it happen.
The client list included political leaders such as Argentine President Mauricio Macri, as well as stars such as Argentine football great Lionel Messi and actor Jackie Chan. There also was an array of figures doing business with Mossack Fonseca who were lesser known but had powerful ties — a cousin of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad; members of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle; and an in-law of Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Iceland’s prime minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, resigned after it emerged he once had a stake in an offshore firm holding investments in Icelandic banks, and then sold the shares to his wife. Investigations into offshore accounts and tax avoidance were opened in dozens of countries.
In Brazil, the law firm was alleged to have created shell companies used to hide money linked to an economically crippling scandal known as Car Wash, stemming from bribes paid by the giant construction firm Odebrecht in return for government contracts.
ICIJ, McClatchy and the Miami Herald — which were among the more than 100 media partners on the Panama Papers investigation — received the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting for stories based on the leak. Governments around the world have now recouped more than $1.36 billion in back taxes and penalties as a direct result of the Panama Papers, according to the ICIJ.
Even as Mr. Fonseca’s 500-employee law firm crumbled in 2018 and he went from power broker to pariah — losing his stature in the conservative Panameñista Party and his role as a presidential adviser — he insisted that he was blameless.
The law firm, Mr. Fonseca asserted, stayed within the legal lines drawn by Panama and other jurisdictions — the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands and others — as it sought a share of the growing market in offshore banking.
“At the end of this storm the sky will be blue again,” Mr. Fonseca wrote, “and people will find that the only crime is the hacking” of the firm’s records.
‘A monster’
Ramón Fonseca Mora was born in Panama City on July 14, 1952. He said he contemplated joining the priesthood as a young man but instead studied at the London School of Economics and received a law degree from Panama University.
He later worked six years at the United Nations in Geneva in an attempt, he told the Times, “to save the world.” At the same time, another path beckoned. Panama was emerging among the countries seeking footholds as offshore banking centers and flags of convenience in shipping, using corporate rules and tax codes friendly to maritime commerce.
After returning from Geneva, Mr. Fonseca opened a solo law practice in 1977 with a single secretary. He saw the potential to advise wealthy clients on where to park their money. He became a one-man sales force, pitching his firm in Europe, Asia and across Latin America. Mossack was also in the same hunt.
They joined forces to form Mossack Fonseca. They had the right legal skills at the right time. Money and clients flowed their way. After the U.S. military invaded Panama in 1989 to topple a former ally, Manuel Antonio Noriega, investor confidence in Panama was shaken. Mossack Fonseca began to shift its clients from Panama holdings to the British Virgin Islands and elsewhere.
What Mossack Fonseca guaranteed was ironclad privacy. As the internet age arrived, the firm offered a service to set up email accounts in any name as a conduit for clients. Some of the aliases picked: Harry Potter, Winnie Pooh and Isaac Asimov, the science-fiction writer.
In a 2008 interview, Mr. Fonseca said: “Together, we created a monster.” What he meant was the firm’s size and power. As other locales, such as the Caymans, shed some of their secrecy statues under international pressure, Panama was slow to offer transparency.
The magazine Vice, in a 2014 profile of Mossack Fonseca, described the operations as “the law firm that works with oligarchs, money launderers, and dictators.” Mr. Fonseca’s niece, Carolina, posted an angry response saying that she lived “guilt-free” and that Panama had the last laugh because it benefited from the outside money looking for a home.
Mr. Fonseca, meanwhile, eased into politics. “My father told me: It’s not fair to criticize the bullfighter from your seat,” he wrote in his interview with the Times. “Enter the ring!” Mr. Fonseca began as adviser in 2009 to Panama’s president, Ricardo Martinelli, and then stayed on with Martinelli’s successor, Juan Carlos Varela.
“There is more dirty money in New York and London and Miami than in Panama,” Mr. Fonseca once told the Financial Times.
His literary plots, however, were often full of corrupt officials and shady dealings. His novel “Mister Politicus” (2012) portrays a businessman who manipulates political figures and takes advantage of globalization to further his own interests. Two other books that lean into dirty politics, “Dance of the Butterflies” (1994) and “Dream City” (1998), won Panama’s national literary award, the Ricardo Miró Prize.
In 2019, Mr. Fonseca was played by Antonio Banderas in a film based on the Panama Papers, “The Laundromat,” which also starred Meryl Streep and Gary Oldman (as Mossack). Mr. Fonseca and Mossack tried to block the film’s release on Netflix.
His marriage to Panamanian diplomat Elizabeth Ward Neiman ended in divorce. Survivors include six children.
In a 2008 television interview, Mr. Fonseca looked back on his youthful dreams of making a mark on the world.
“I didn’t save anything. I didn’t make any change,” he said. “I decided then, as I was a little more mature, to dedicate myself to my profession, to have a family, to get married and have a regular life. … As one gets older, you turn more materialistic.”
