Panama Papers: Argentina's Macri to put assets in blind trust to "dispel doubts." [View all]

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Argentine President Mauricio Macri said he will put all his assets in a blind trust to help reassure critics after recent leaks showed he was named a director of two companies listed in Panama.

A civil court will hear a petition to certify his declaration of assets on Friday, he said in a speech at the presidential palace on Thursday. “I have nothing to hide,” he said. “I am ready for any other judge that may require information about what I am saying. I want there to be no doubts.”

Since being named in a widespread leak of documents about shell companies known as the Panama Papers, Macri’s government has defended his reputation as he seeks to consolidate power and carry out a series of economic reforms in Argentina four months after taking office. Macri has denied any wrongdoing, saying the shell company Fleg Trading Ltd. was legal and created with funds by his father, who appointed him as a director.

On Thursday, prosecutor Federico Delgado said that there are sufficient grounds to begin a probe after Macri was formally accused by opposition Congressman Norman Martínez. Macri will be investigated for tax irregularities for his participation as director in Fleg Trading and a second firm, Kagemusha SA, Delgado said in an interview on Radio Continental. The information about Macri was originally published Sunday in a leak of documents from a Panamanian law firm that helped people and companies set up companies offshore.

“We want to determine if President Macri omitted his participation in his tax declarations before the tax agency and before the Anti-Corruption Office and then to determine whether that omission was malicious and if he should have included it,” Delgado said.

Fleg Trading was created in 1998 to invest in Brazil and was dissolved in 2008 "without ever having operated," Macri told Canal C. Asked about the alleged existence of a second company known as Kagemusha, Cabinet Chief Marcos Peña didn’t confirm or deny the existence of the company; but reiterated that Macri has nothing to hide.

Numerous other Macri administration officials and close associates were also discovered to taken part in the leaked Panama offshore schemes, including Boca Juniors football club President Daniel Angelici, Human Rights Secretary Claudio Avruj, Lanús Mayor Néstor Grindetti, Congressman Daniel Ivoskus, Vicente López Mayor Jorge Macri (his cousin), and Francisco Macri (his father).

At: http://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-O59VI76JTSEG01-7IJDPJ0LEF8OFH9QVN2C791ABA
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Politicians of all nations and stripes and long resorted to blind trusts as a favorite legal gimmick by which they can give voters the "impression" they won't profit from their posts.

Some of the best known such cases here in the U.S. include Obama, LBJ, Ted Kennedy, Mitt Romney, and of course George H.W. Bush, who placed his inherited UBC proceeds (the Nazi money laundry) in a blind trust when Reagan won in 1980. The trust was managed by his old friend, William Farish III, who was president of Standard Oil of New Jersey when it invested millions in IG Farben (the makers of Xyklon B).