Denmark announced Wednesday it plans to purchase data from the recent “Panama Papers” leak in order to investigate Danish citizens who may have used the infamous offshore law firm to evade taxes.
Karsten Lauritzen, the nation’s tax minister, said government officials were approached over the summer by an anonymous source who offered to sell information linking hundreds of Danes to Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian firm who suffered the largest breach in corporate history when an archive of roughly 12 million internal documents was supplied to the media.
Denmark agreed to buy the data after determining that the details were legitimate, said Mr. Lauritzen, who currently sits on the Danish Parliament in tandem to holding the tax minister role.
“Everything suggests that it is useful information. We owe it to all Danish taxpayers who faithfully pay their taxes,” he said in a statement. “We must take the necessary measures in order to catch tax evaders who hide fortunes in, for instance, Panama. Therefore, we agreed that it is wise to buy the material.”
The deal has not gone through yet, but it stands to mark the first time a nation has publicly admitted to purchasing data from the Panama Papers leak.
Members of Denmark’s 179-seat Parliament discussed the offer in secret before make the split decision to cut a deal, the tax minister acknowledged.
A spokesman for one of the opposition parties denounced the purchase as “deeply reprehensible,” BBC reported Wednesday. Dennis Flydtkjær, an member of Parliament with the Danish People’s party, said he was skeptical of the deal but that “in this case we can be prepared to bend our principles.”
“This is a golden opportunity to show that we are actually going after people who cheat,” he told Politiken newspaper.
Jim Sørensen, a divisional tax chief, said the data involved roughly 320 Danish tax evasion cases and contains “super-interesting” information that may give investigators a “breakthrough” in getting to the bottom of illegal tax havens, The Guardian reported.
The cost of the documents will run Denmark a single-digit million kroner, the tax minister said — or anywhere from around $150,000 to $1.35 million.
The trove of Panama Papers documents were originally leaked by an anonymous source to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitun before access was provided to an international consortium of journalists. Investigative reports have since implicated wealthy individuals and public officials the world over with the offshore law firm and its contentious practices, and have been directly attributed with leading to the resignation in April of Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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