Swiss lawyer from Panama Papers firm to face court on tax evasion charges
Christoph Zollinger was once one of Mossack Fonseca’s most senior employees. Now, he’s due to face trial in Germany.
A Swiss lawyer and former executive of Mossack Fonseca, the embattled Panamanian law firm at the center of ICIJ’s Panama Papers investigation, will face court in Germany next year, according to news outlets ZDF, Tamedia and Der Standard.
Christoph Zollinger, 56, will stand trial in March 2026 in the regional court of Cologne for allegedly “forming criminal organizations and aiding and abetting tax evasion in two cases,” a court statement obtained by the media outlets said.
Prosecutors allege a tax loss of about 13 million euros, or roughly $15 million, linked to 50 offshore companies.
Through his lawyer, Zollinger declined to comment on the ongoing case.
Zollinger was one of the three most senior employees at Mossack Fonseca for years. In 2016, ICIJ, Süddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 news outlets revealed how the firm helped politicians, celebrities, fraudsters and others set up shell companies in secrecy jurisdictions, based on a leak of 11.5 million confidential files.
Controversial decisions
Zollinger joined Mossack Fonseca in 1997 and later became partner, according to media reports. The attorney, a former member of Panama’s bobsled team, became a citizen of the Central American country, married a Panamanian woman and was appointed “special ambassador,” Süddeutsche Zeitung and others reported.
Although Zollinger left the firm years before the Panama Papers investigation, leaked records showed he was involved in some of Mossack Fonseca’s most controversial decisions, including its work for sanctioned Syrian businessman Rami Makhlouf.
In 2011, as Syria’s civil war began, Zollinger defended the firm’s business with Makhlouf, a cousin of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, despite a freezing order by the United States Treasury Department accusing Makhlouf of corruption. He later told German reporters the comments he made internally were “an error.”
In 2020, German investigators issued an international arrest warrant for him, Der Standard reported. At the time, Zollinger was living in Switzerland, where he was renovating old farmhouses and writing a thriller under the pseudonym “Christoph Martin.” The arrest warrant against Zollinger was suspended in 2024, the report said.
According to the court, German authorities allege that Zollinger was “a member of a group of companies, along with other individuals who are being prosecuted separately, which, in return for payment, arranged for private individuals worldwide to set up so-called ‘offshore companies’ based in Panama or other countries known as ‘tax havens.’ ”
If convicted, he faces up to seven and a half years in prison.
Mossack Fonseca ceased operations in 2018, citing media pressure and amid office raids, fines and other investigations around the world.
Last year, Panama’s courts closed out a high-profile money laundering trial linked to the Panama Papers, acquitting all defendants, including Jürgen Mossack, one of the founders of the law firm. Charges against the other founder, Ramón Fonseca, were dismissed after his death.
Contributing reporters: Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer (paper trail media/Standard, ZDF and Tamedia)