Claims Mossack Fonseca set up secret offshore companies from Florida condo which once featured in Miami Vice

The operation serviced powerful and wealthy clients, many accused of links to serious crime

Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas in ‘Miami Vice’. Mossack Fonseca featured in an episode of the television series (Rex)

The secret offshore companies were set up from a condominium which had once featured in the 1980s television series Miami Vice. The clients using them were wealthy and had powerful political connections. Many of them also faced accusations of links to serious crime.

This is Mossack Fonseca’s operation in Florida, according to leaked documents seen by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The state had gained notoriety historically as a conduit for the narcotics trade and money laundering, and is now in the spotlight again following the leak of more than 11.5 million documents from the law firm to the ICIJ.

There are legitimate uses for offshore companies, and the ICIJ has made no direct accusations of illegal activity. But the documents have revealed connections between the firm to figures linked to bribery, drug crime and fraud.

According to the ICIJ, services provided from Miami and Mossack Fonseca branches in South America were used by the governor of a Brazilian state who resigned over bribery allegations; a businessman accused of bribing Brazilian congress members; a woman who was one of Guatemala’s drug lords; and a father and son convicted of a $50m (£35m) tax fraud.

The operation was run by a woman called Olga Santini from the Palace complex of the Bal Harbour Condo where high-end apartments cost around $8m (£5.5m). It had been used in an episode Miami Vice in which a rich pimp and drug dealer is shot dead by the sister of a call girl.

In May last year, a woman who was a real-life drug dealer and Mossack Fonseca client appeared at a Miami court. Marllory Chacon Rossell had run a vast cartel from her home country, Guatemala, spreading to Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Honduras, Mexico and the US. Rossell, nicknamed “The Queen of the South” because of her dominance, had surrendered to the US and provided information.

It has now emerged from the documents, says the ICIJ, that Mossack Fonseca’s Panama office had sold a company, Broadway Commerce Inc, in 2009, to Rossell and associates which was used to transfer huge sums of money.

Other clients of the firm included Giuseppe Donaldo Nicosia, an Italian wanted for tax fraud who is accused of laundering money through an offshore company and Martin Lustgarten, who was acquitted of laundering $100m (£70m) of alleged narcotics money in Miami last year.

Also on the list was Mauricio Cohen Assor who was sentenced to ten years in prison in 2011 for a $50m tax fraud in which ownership of a Miami Beach mansions, a condo, luxury cars and even a helicopter had been hidden from the IRS (Internal Revenue Service). Assor’s son, Leon Cohen-Levy had also been imprisoned for 10 years for the same offence. Leaked documents show that Mossack Fonseca set up 13 shell companies for the two men and continued acting for them for four years after their conviction, according to the ICIJ.

Mossack Fonseca did, however, sever connections with Hector Daniel Munoz, personal secretary to former Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, who had been charged with money laundering, even though the charges had been dropped. According to the ICIJ, leaked emails show that Ms Santini pressed to keep Munoz on as a client but was overruled by her superiors. Mossack Fonseca says it has never been charged with criminal wrongdoing or formally investigated and says it conducts thorough due diligence on all new and prospective clients.

In an email to the Miami Herald Ms Santini insisted: “I am an independent service provider to the Mossack Fonseca law firm. I am not the Miami office of Mossack Fonseca nor am I an employee of that organisation… it is my personal policy to fully comply with the letter and spirit of the law in every jurisdiction.”

However, the newspaper pointed out, a post on the firm’s website described her as “Ms Olga Santini of our Mossack Fonseca Miami office.”