Inside a House Candidate’s Panama Papers Connection
A New York congressional candidate’s father played a small part in the biggest financial scandal of the past decade—at a time when the candidate herself was managing the family’s assets.
The massive Panama Papers leak of 2016 exposed more than 214,000 once-opaque firms and triggered prosecutions and political meltdowns across the planet. The trove of shady businesses reported by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists included an entity called Tri-Stone Ltd., which, like the other covert companies uncovered, had as its agent the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca—an outfit that the Central American nation’s attorney general labeled “a criminal organization that is dedicated to hiding money assets from suspicious origins.”
Like almost a third of the entities revealed, Tri-Stone Ltd. had its roots in China and Hong Kong. And, like almost half of Mossack Fonseca concerns, it was organized in the British Virgin Islands—an infamous tax haven and lockbox for corporate secrets.