Marinkovic, in Panama alone, was linked to 14 cases of tax havens. | Photo: Ahora El Pueblo
La Paz, October 6 (RHC)-- Former Bolivian officials of the de facto government, Branko Marinkovic (former de facto Minister of Economy), Pedro Jaime Valdivia (former de facto consul), and the late Minister Fernando Illanes, are implicated in the scandal called Pandora Papers, for having accounts or business investments in tax havens.
It is a list of 293 Bolivian citizens linked to 130 offshore accounts in five different tax havens, mainly in the Virgin Islands and Panama, according to what was revealed in the Bolivian chapter by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and which involved the review of 15,000 files, among the 12 million leaked to the Pandora Papers team.
Marinkovic, businessman and politician, who was de facto Minister of Development Planning and also Minister of Economy and Finance during the regime of Áñez; was involved in the Terrorism case and was a fugitive from justice for several years before his return to Bolivia shortly after the forced resignation of former President Evo Morales in 2019.
Linked to the oil industry in 2000 he created in Panama, along with four members of his family, the offshore Granol S.A., and later in 2016 Teresa Morales, former director of the Financial Investigations Unit (UIF), remarked that Marinkovic was involved in 14 cases of tax havens in Panama alone, in addition to others in other countries.
For his part, Valdivia served as consul of Bolivia in Sao Paulo, Brazil, during the mandate of Evo Morales, registered in Panama, Hines Finance Corporation two years after assuming functions as consul in 2006, and closed it in 2014, two years before being replaced from his position.
While Illanes, minister between 1993 and 2003 and who died last May, allegedly opened two offshore, The Chimera Trust and Chimera Investment Holding Corp. in Virgin Islands with the purpose of using them in a trust of almost 3 million destined to his children. In addition, the investigation showed that he previously owned another offshore in Panama, advised by the law firm Alemán, Cordero, Galindo & Lee (Alcogal).
The Pandora Papers report adds that 78 percent of the firms linked to Bolivians were created through direct contact with the law firms Alcogal, Trident Trust, SFM Group, and OMC Group.
The investigation details that 60 percent of the beneficiaries behind the 130 Bolivian offshore companies are family groups, which reveals the generalized behavior of parents creating trusts for their children or naming them as final beneficiaries of such companies.
