Panama Papers: Macri cleared of wrongdoing

President Mauricio Macri received a boost this week after Judge Andrés Fraga finally closed the socalled “Panama Papers” case against him and ended over a year of investigation by confirming previous acquittals.

Macri was neither a partner nor a shareholder in two offshore companies based in the Bahamas and Panama, Fraga ruled, nor did he make any profit despite figuring on their boards of directors until 2009 (in which year he skipped that detail in his sworn statement of assets as Buenos Aires mayor).

Mauricio Macri was only on the board of Fleg Trading and Kagemusha at the request of his tycoon father Franco and in a substitute function with no part in the decision-making, Fraga concluded, naming Franco Macri as the only person responsible for these firms (as his presidential son had insisted and Franco himself had admitted).

The Panama Papers scandal broke in May last year when an international journalistic investigation on the basis of leaks from the Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca exposed tax evasion and money-laundering on a worldwide scale.