By John Donovan
It’s interesting to note that there seem to be parallels between Siemens (mired in the Panama Papers scandal) and Shell.
A few years ago, Siemens was prosecuted for bribery, and some of their senior employees were jailed. It was suspected that some of the funds provided by Siemens for the bribes were kept by the Siemens executives involved, but lack of evidence prevented the executives involved from being prosecuted.
The amounts involved in the Siemens cases were tiny in comparison with Shell’s OPL 245 payments, but were funnelled through Mossack Fonseca.