As Dorian approached Atlantic Canada, hurricane and tropical storm warnings were issued for Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland. On September 6, the Halifax Regional Municipality encouraged residents living along the eastern shores of Nova Scotia to evacuate, citing expected high winds, heavy rainfall, and waves up to 15 m (49 ft) in height. The Nova Scotia Emergency Management Office implored residents to secure easily dislodged objects to prevent high winds from turning them into projectiles, drawing comparisons to Hurricane Juan in 2003. Nova Scotia Power set up an emergency operations center and mobilized 1,000 personnel, including forestry crews, damage assessors, as well as power line technicians from adjacent provinces, to prepare for Dorian's impacts. WestJet, Air Canada, and Porter Airlines issued travel advisories for the weekend and waived rebooking fees for flights to and from affected areas.
The leaked documents indicate that about US$2 trillion has passed through the firm's hands. Several of the holding companies that appear in the documents did business with sanctioned entities, such as arms merchants and relatives of dictators, while the sanctions were in place. The firm provided services to a Seychelles company named Pangates International, which the US government believes supplied aviation fuel to the Syrian government during the current civil war, and continued to handle its paperwork and certify it as a company in good standing, despite sanctions, until August 2015.
More InfoDavid Sutton was director of AAT Corporation and EHG Corporation when they held mineral licenses in North Korea and did business with Korean Natural Resources Development and Investment Corporation, which is under United Nations sanctions, and North Korea's "primary arms dealer and main exporter of goods and equipment related to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons, responsible for approximately half of the arms exported by North Korea." The geologist, Louis Schurmann, said British billionaire Kevin Leech was key to putting the deal together. Leaked documents also reveal the involvement of another Briton, Gibraltar-based John Lister. According to ABC, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was aware of these mining deals, which had also been brought up in the Australian Senate, but nobody ever referred the matter to the Australian Federal Police.
More InfoMossack Fonseca, required by international banking standards to avoid money-laundering or fraudster clients, is, like all banks, supposed to be particularly alert for signs of corruption with politically exposed persons (PEP), in other words, clients who either are or have close ties to government officials. However they somehow failed to turn up any red flags concerning Tareq Abbas even though he shares a family name with the president of Palestine, and sat on the board of directors of a company with four fellow directors the firm did deem PEP because of their ties to Palestinian politics. Yet Mossack Fonseca actually did and documented due diligence research, including a Google search.
More InfoOn September 1, during a news conference, Governor McMaster announced that mandatory evacuations for Jasper, Beaufort, Colleton, Charleston, Berkeley, Dorchester, Georgetown, and Horry counties will go into effect on Monday, September 2, at noon. State government offices and schools in the counties previously mentioned will be closed until further notice, starting Tuesday. Due to the evacuations, many colleges including College of Charleston and Coastal Carolina University were closed from Tuesday until further notice.
More InfoLaw firms play a central role in offshore financial operations. Mossack Fonseca is one of the biggest in its field and the biggest financial institutions refer customers to it. Its services to clients include incorporating and operating shell companies in friendly jurisdictions on their behalf. They can include creating "complex shell company structures" that, while legal, also allow the firm's clients "to operate behind an often impenetrable wall of secrecy". The leaked papers detail some of their intricate, multilevel, and multinational corporate structures. Mossack Fonseca has acted with global consultancy partners like Emirates Asset Management Ltd, Ryan Mohanlal Ltd, Sun Hedge Invest and Blue Capital Ltd on behalf of more than 300,000 companies, most of them registered in the British Overseas Territories.
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