A Panama-based firm said to have engineered shell companies for the world’s rich to hide their money has an office in Limassol.

In a chart among the data released by a consortium of international journalists Cyprus is also named as a tax haven, countries with no or little personal income taxes for the privileged, although it has a corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent

The leak involves more than 11 million documents from the files of law firm Mossack Fonseca, revealing details of hundreds of thousands of clients in many countries.

The documents are at the centre of an investigation published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other news organisations around the world.

The leaked “Panama Papers” cover a period over almost 40 years, from 1977 until as recently as last December, and allegedly show that some companies domiciled in tax havens were being used for suspected money laundering, arms and drug deals, and tax evasion.