Australia and New Zealand already investigating taxpayers named in Panama Papers leak

On Monday, tax authorities in Australia and New Zealand said they are looking into possible tax evasion by hundreds of wealthy taxpayers named in the massive leak of offshore banking documents reported Sunday. The Panama Papers, so named because they originated at Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, cover the use of offshore shell companies by 14,153 clients, reportedly to hide vast sums of wealth, between 1977 and last December.

"Currently we have identified over 800 individual taxpayers and we have now linked over 120 of them to an associate offshore service provider located in Hong Kong," the Australian Tax Office told Reuters. Some of those 800 have already voluntarily reported their offshore holdings under a now-ended amnesty program, and others have already been investigated, but a large number of the people under scrutiny have not disclosed their holdings and may face criminal charges, ATO said. New Zealand's tax agency said it is also looking through the Mossack Fonseca reports to find if anyone has cheated on their taxes.

Ramon Fonseca, the director of Mossack Fonseca and until recently a high-ranking Panamanian government official, said the "vast majority" of the 240,000 offshore companies his firm has set up were used for "legitimate purposes." He called the leak of what he described as hacked documents part of "an international campaign against privacy."

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