Modern Crime: The “Panama Papers” Scandal Keeps Getting Stranger

The man behind a Panama ‘tax scam’ that guards the clandestine wealth of the global elite is the son of a Nazi SS officer from a unit known as the ‘Death’s Head division’.

Jürgen Mossack is at the heart of the biggest financial data leak in history, and has allegedly been helping world leaders, politicians and celebrities launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax from his base in Panama.

It has now been revealed that his father, Erhard Mossack, was a member of the Nazi fighting unit known as the ‘Death’s Head division’, a dreaded force during the Second World War.

Today, his half-brother Horst, has spoken of his ‘shock and bewilderment’ at the news of the unmasking of his half-brother.

He described the twisted family history that led to the estrangement of the siblings, both of whom raised by a man who not only fought with the Nazis but later joined the CIA to carry out espionage on Cuba.

The 68-year-old Horst last saw his sibling Jürgen 60 years ago when he left the town of Fürth in Bavaria bearing the name of his father Erhard.

Now living in the Black Forest region of Germany, Horst was born out of wedlock to a woman called Luisa Herzog.

‘This was shameful in those days so I was put up for adoption,’ he told MailOnline. ‘My mother later went on to marry Erhard Mossack. I took that name later.

‘What has come out of Panama is shocking news, astounding, bewildering even, but I can’t say I feel shame because I have no connection in reality with him.

‘I left all those years ago and we never had contact again. He was just a child, so how can I say what I remember of him? All I know is that I heard that he went to London and lived there for quite some time.

‘He has a brother called Peter and a sister called Marion in Germany. Both my mother and their father are now dead.

‘I remember that Erhard Mossack, their father, was in the S.S. I believe after the war he became a journalist.’

German media have reported that Erhard served as a Rottenfuehrer – roughly corresponding to a senior corporal – in the Waffen, or fighting arm, of the dreaded S.S.

These were the units which ran the concentration camps. But if he was in the Waffen S.S. it probably meant he served in the Third Waffen S.S. Panzer Division Totenkopf.

Most of the division’s initial enlisted men were recruited from concentration camp guards and others were members of militias that had committed war crimes in Poland.

Due to its insignia, it was sometimes referred to as the ‘Death’s Head Division’. Members of the division committed war crimes – one of them against British soldiers.

The Le Paradis massacre was carried out by members of the 14th Company of the division.

It took place on May 27 1940, during the Battle of France, at a time when the British Expeditionary Force was attempting to retreat through the Pas-de-Calais region during the Battle of Dunkirk.

Soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Norfolk Regiment, had become isolated from their regiment. They occupied and defended a farmhouse against an attack by Waffen S.S. forces in the village of Le Paradis. After running out of ammunition, the defenders surrendered to the German troops.

Read the Remainder at Daily Mail