Panama Papers: Prosecutors raid Mossack Fonseca HQ

Authorities in Panama on Wednesday raided the offices of law firm Mossack Fonseca, the company at the heart of the documents leak that has led to allegations of worldwide money laundering and tax evasion.

Backed up by officials from an organised crime unit, Panamanian police secured the company's headquarters before prosecutors entered the building.

It comes as world tax authorities gather in Paris to start a massive inquiry into money laundering.

Senior officials from the Joint International Tax Shelter Information and Collaboration (JITSIC) network are to look at the 11 million documents leaked from Mossak Fonseca that have already sent shockwaves through the financial world.

Answering critics, Mossack founder Roman Fonseca, said his firm had done nothing illegal and was itself the victim of a hacking crime.

The Panamanian government has created an international panel to review its financial and legal sector in the wake of the scandal.

Within hours of the raid on Mossack, the attorney general's office said the prosecutor's goal had been "to obtain documentation linked to the information published in news articles that establish the use of the firm in illicit activities".

Unprecedented in scale, the documents have revealed secret offshore banking arrangements that have implicated countries including Britain, which oversees many tax havens.

No illegality has been found so far, but the repurcussions over the secret behaviour of the super-rich and political elites has led to outrage over the scale of tax avoidance globally.

The Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson was forced to resign over the matter when it was revealed he once owned a company that held bonds in three of the country's banks that collapse in the 2008 financial crisis. He sold the company to his wife.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron has faced intense scrutiny when it emerged that he had an investment in an offshore investment vehicle his late father had established via Mossack.

On Wednesday he cam under fire once again from the opposition Labour and Scottish Nationalist parties, which both attacked him over staffing levels at Revenue & Customs, the department responsible for tax collection and investigation.

SNP leader Angus Robertson said more than 3,000 staff at the Department for Work and pensions were conducting investigations into benefit fraud, while only 300 were looking at tax evasion.

"Why have this government had 10 times more staff dealing often with the poorest in society abusing benefits than with the super-rich evading their taxes?" he asked Cameron during parliament's weekly Prime Minister's Questions session.

Cameron dismissed the claims as "entirely bogus", having said earlier that staffing levels had risen at R&C.