Aides to French far-right leader Marine Le Pen put in place a "sophisticated offshore system" to hide money, according to Le Monde newspaper in the latest disclosures from the Panama Papers on Tuesday, reports teleSUR.
The aim of the system, which sent funds to Hong Kong, Singapore, the British Virgin Islands and Panama, was "to get money out of France, through shell companies and false invoices, to evade French anti-money-laundering authorities," the paper reported.
One of the key figures in the system set up by the Front National (FN) is Frederic Chatillon, head of a company called Riwal which carried out communications work for some of the party's candidates, the report said. "In 2012, just after the presidential election, Frederic Chatillon... made arrangements to withdraw 316,000 euros (S$487,277) from Riwal and to move it out of France," Le Monde said.
The money then took a complex route, involving the acquisition of a Hong Kong-based shell company called Time Dragon, whose parent company is in the British Virgin Islands and overseen by Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers.
Chatillon said late Monday the system was "perfectly legal".
The FN itself had said on Monday it was "not implicated in the Panama Papers."