The country of choice for secret offshore accounts opened by Panamanian lawyers is a small island nation, the British Virgin Islands. That information comes from a new report Monday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. A consortium is a group of people who work together on a project. The consortium looked into documents that showed about 200,000 offshore businesses created for wealthy people by the Mossack Fonseca law firm in Panama. Some information was released last month. The documents, obtained from the law firm by a person known as “John Doe,” is called the “Panama Papers.” Panama is the home of Mossack Fonseca. John Doe is a name used by people who don’t want others to know who they are. Is is called an alias, or another name a person uses. The consortium said the Panamanian law firm set up shell companies, or companies for which there is very little information. There is very little business activity in a shell company. These were set up for wealthy people in countries to hide their money. More than 50 percent of the offshore businesses in the consortium’s large database were registered in the British Virgin Islands.
