WASHINGTON _ A new leak of data from the beleaguered law firm Mossack Fonseca shows it scrambling to contain the crisis triggered by the April 2016 leak of the Panama Papers and attempting to field demands for information from authorities in numerous countries _ with the glaring exception of the United States.
The publication more than two years ago of more than 11.5 million documents from the law firm trained a spotlight on the practice of hiding fortunes away in secretive offshore companies _ a world familiar to corrupt politicians and criminals across the globe but alien to average citizens.
For Panama's Mossack Fonseca, it meant international infamy, and this new leak of another 1 million-plus documents gives a real-time sense of the fallout. Lawyers and other Mossack Fonseca employees struggled to find true owners of mysterious companies the firm had helped set up, dealt with angry clients trying to quickly transfer their business and cut a deal to earn referral fees even as it offloaded its U.S. clientele to a Delaware-based company.
