Tiny Wyoming office at heart of Panama Papers empire

Cheyenne, Wyo. - The swelling global scandal over leaked data from a Panama law firm can be traced to a quiet street in the capital of the nation's least populated state.

M.F. Corporate Services Wyoming LLC, a Wyoming-based corporation with links to Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, has helped register more than a dozen other corporations in the state behind the cloak of Wyoming's corporate secrecy protections. The leak of more than 11 million documents related to Mossack Fonseca to an international consortium of journalists led to an international outcry in recent days that has embarrassed international power brokers and heads of state.

The official registered address of M.F. Corporate Services Wyoming LLC is an office suite in a housed in the three-story yellow brick Deming Building at the corner of 17th and Central in the heart of Cheyenne's historic downtown.

Within that suite, however, is yet another company: AAA Corporate Services Inc., which serves as M.F. Corporate Services Wyoming LLC's registered agent, according to state records. Under Wyoming law, any business established in the state must have a physical presence to receive legal papers and other documents.

Wednesday, inside AAA Corporate Services' second-floor office, stacks of hand-addressed envelopes sat neatly on general manager Linda Gaynor's desk, awaiting the afternoon mail pickup.

Gaynor acknowledged her company serves as an agent for many out-of-state companies but declined further comment.

Next door at Carnival Antiques, worker Donnette Kahle said she was unfamiliar with AAA Corporate Services, but said she isn't surprised businesses seeking to dodge taxes might have a presence in Cheyenne. Wyoming has no state income tax, which draws many retirees, she said. It also draws out-of-state property investors who buy  downtown buildings and allow them to languish as tax write offs, she said.

"It's a sad thing, she said, gesturing over her shoulder at a vacant four-story building across the street.  "That one is all moldy and vacant. They don't care about rent. It's a tax-write off for them."

The office suite next door houses the vaguely named "BLET," according to the sign downstairs. That office makes more sense when you know there's a massive freight train depot a block away, and the organization is a local branch of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union. Downstairs are the headquarters of the Wyoming Lottery, where bettors can buy tickets.

Across the street, a locally owned movie theater is still showing Star Wars and the Revenant, and dozens of small businesses line the nearby streets. Wednesday, American flags flying in front of many of the businesses snapped in a stiff spring breeze as vehicles flowed down Central, over the freight rail yard and south toward Interstate 80.

In Cheyenne, it is hard to see what would make Wyoming a factory for the kinds of shadowy, secretive shell companies now getting fresh scrutiny because of the Panama Papers’ leak of millions of pages of international finance records.

Many Cheyenne business owners contacted by a USA TODAY reporter said they hadn't been following the news, and didn't feel comfortable commenting.

However, in a brochure advertising its services in the state, Mossack Fonseca is more effusive about the benefits of creating a business in Wyoming.

Among the “features” that Mossack Fonseca touts to potential customers about Wyoming in its marketing materials:

“Ownership is confidential and under state law may only be obtained by court order.”

“Managers and members can either be corporate entities or natural persons,” meaning it’s possible for a shell corporation to be formed in Wyoming without any individual person named in the corporate records.

The story behind the massive Panama Papers leak

“No requirement to file with the Secretary of State the name” of company managers or members, although the company’s registered agent — not the state government — must keep the information on file at its offices, and apparently those offices must be physically located in the state.

On Wednesday, the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office announced that it conducted an audit of M.F. Corporate Services Wyoming LLC in response to the release of information from the Panama Papers.

Auditors found the company “failed to maintain the required statutory information for performing the duties of a registered agent under Wyoming law,” according a news release. While the company has provided the missing information, the state’s investigation is still ongoing.

“We are not naive as to the importance of the release of these ‘Panama Papers,’ but we will not compromise the privacy of our customers,” Wyoming Secretary of State Ed Murray said in a statement.

Nearly all of the 1,000-plus corporations that USA TODAY has so far identified as being created by Mossack Fonseca in the United States are “based” in two states: Nevada and Wyoming, two states with permissive corporate secrecy laws like those advertised by the firm in its promotion of Wyoming.

In both states, the publicly available information about many corporations is extremely limited – and in Wyoming may not necessarily even include reference to the fact that Mossack Fonseca’s Nevada or Wyoming “offices” are the registering representative of the companies. Typically those entities listed as behind each company have addresses in Anguilla, Panama or other foreign countries.

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“There is no information that they’re asking for that tells them who owns, controls, (or) works for … the company,” said Heather Lowe, legal counsel and director of government affairs for Global Financial Integrity, a research group based in Washington. “It’s like a big black box they’ve created.”

Patricia Amunategui, who works for the Mossack Fonseca-linked business registration firms in Nevada and Wyoming, testified in a Nevada court case in 2014 that she operates the Wyoming operation from Mossack Fonseca’s Vegas location, a small office building about 20 miles from the Las Vegas strip. She refers to Wyoming as just another product offering for clients.

“If someone asks (for) a company in Nevada,” she said, “l say why not offer them one in Wyoming.”