aNewDomain — Mossack Fonseca, the multinational law firm at the center of the multi billion dollar Panama Papers money laundering scheme revealed by hackers last week, did a lot more for its clients than just create offshore shell companies for them.
The firm also offers, or offered, extensive document storage, retrieval and “money-laundering protection” services to MF and its clients through a wholly-owned sub called Evolusoft (or E-volusoft).
Whether the customer data stored by Evolusoft’s data management and archiving services was among data compromised in the hack is as yet unknown.
But corporate registration docs around Evolusoft and E-volusoft UK Ltd. are revealing.
Its CEO Emmanual “Manny” Cohen (pictured below) was or is the head of Mossack Fonseca UK, and director of a handful of other companies owned outright or jointly by the firm. These companies offered clients a range of other tech services including, though not limited to, “money laundering protection,” corporate records suggest.
We took a closer look.
What is Evolusoft?
According to documents we found on the Internet and via the Wayback Machine Internet archive, E-volusoft provides a cloud-based service to Mossack Fonseca clients called Secure Archives.
Evolusoft’s site, still up, also claims it provides clients with a document scanning, management and mobile-ready retrieval service called Documanager, which is apparently now in version 4.0.
[Watch a 90 second flash demo of the technology here.]
And that’s not all. The firm also claims to offer extensive “money laundering protection services” and an online training course, which as you can see from this link and this one, is no longer up.
The Paper Trail
Here’s a customer doc documenting a work relationship between Evolusoft and the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica.
Evolusoft Customer: U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica
Here’s a page on Mossack Fonseca’s main site, which explains why customers might want to redistribute the various services Evolusoft offers — and for whom.
And here are some of the registration docs for the company, which we retrieved from the UK’s Companies House corporate listings database.
E-Volusoft – Companies House listing
Here is a press release we found on PRLeap.com about Cohen’s other company, which appears all but owned by Mossack Fonseca. In it, Cohen is quoted explaining the benefits of setting up a trust over setting up a foundation. The RM Group, says the release, has been setting up trusts and foundations for 30 years, after all.
“A trust should provide a solid mechanism to prevent erosion of wealth and ensure smooth distribution of inherited assets,” Cohen says in the release, using the title RM CEO. In the release, it’s noted that RM works “closely” with Mossack Fonseca, but it doesn’t mention that Cohen is its top guy in the UK or that he runs the Evolusoft data division.
“RM’s strong association with legal specialist, Mossack Fonseca and Co allows us to provide advice and support from a range of experts,” it adds, “including international lawyers, accountants, trust managers and investment advisors.”
E-Volusoft – Mosfon Doc Storage — Info
Here’s a breakdown of Evolusoft shareholders, which include Mossack Fonseca UK director Manny Cohen as well as his company, the Raymond Morris Group, which offers “business services” and money laundering “protection” to MF client individuals and companies.
E-Volusoft – Companies House 2
On corporate docs and on its own website, Evolusoft Ltd. lists its office as being on the second floor of 80 Great Eastern St., London, EC213RX, United Kingdom.
Is there a there there? Here’s a picture of that address from Google Earth.
Industry: Information & Document Management , Business Services
Company Description: We offer products focused on managing both paper and digital documents. Its full web interface is easy to use and accessible from anywhere in the world. e-volusoft is a company created to fulfill the growing needs of most companies today, which are spending more time and money everyday on managing, storing and searching paper based documents. e-volusoft solves these needs by providing a state of the art, computer application that allows it’s clients to store their paper documents as electronic images, and then manage them faster, easier and more efficiently than ever before …… Our mission is to provide our clients with the best solutions to transform printed documents into digital files, in order to allow the effective management in an efficient way to handle corporate documents …… Our vision is to offer our clients a complete solution to manage your documents in a short and long term periods, providing security and an excellent technical support when you install the application. e -volusoft is not just a company that provides a software application; we provide the full range of services that will help the client take full advantage of the application …… We are aware that our clients need a solution to their storage problems, and that is what we provide a full solution to all their needs, including consulting, development, training, scanning, etc. Our two lines of products allows companies of any size to take advantage of the costs savings, and improvement in efficiency. These benefits are no longer destined only to the select few companies that could afford them in the past, with DocuManager and Secure-Archives, companies from as little as three employees, to ones with thousands of employees can take advantage of these benefits. Because our solutions are based on web applications, access to the information is just a click away, from anywhere in the world …… We also have representative offices all over the world, among them, the most important are in Switzerland, United Kingdom, Mexico, Brasil, Chile, Peru and Central America. E -volusoft is a Panamanian company with headquartes (sic) located at the Arango-Orillac Building, 3rd floor, 50 & 54 East St.
For aNewDomain, I’m Gina Smith.
