'Lock up the crooks' protest at Panama Papers law firm

[PANAMA CITY] Protesters calling to "Lock up the crooks" demonstrated on Wednesday outside the Panamanian law firm at the heart of the Panama Papers revelations and threw fake banknotes at the mirrored building.

Dozens of people held up slogans against the firm, Mossack Fonseca, and the offshore companies it created for wealthy clients.

The small protest was a sign of the unease in Panama triggered by the revelations, as other nations look to join forces to make the Central American country divulge more tax information and further curb opportunities for money laundering.

Mossack Fonseca maintains its offshoring activities were legal and says the only crime committed was a massive hack from foreign servers of its digital records.

"They have to investigate all the corrupt people and imprison them," one of the demonstrators, Luis Gonzalez Marin, said.

"We want proper investigations and punishment making examples of people because they are damaging the country by bringing in economic problems," the leader of the militant SUNTRACS construction union, Genaro Lopez, told AFP.

"These sorts of firms are a problem in the system, which uses them for money laundering." The protest was held a day after police launched a search of the law offices, looking for any evidence of a crime.

AFP