Jurgen Mossack (Gary Oldman) and Ramón Fonseca (Antonio Banderas) introduce themselves and the concept and system of money laundering. Mossack and Fonseca act as narrators for three stories of people around the world that are affected by the company Mossack Fonseca. While the story has been somewhat fictionalized, the names of the law firm at the center of the scandal, along with those of its founders, were not. Neither were the names and roles of individuals involved in the Wang Lijun incident changed. The narrators says that one morning everything changed as their story was on all the media. So, they decided to tell a few stories of their own. All the stories are about money. Fonseca says that before money there was only the barter system, but there were limits to this system. Money was the agreed upon medium of exchange. It could be gold or even a piece of paper. The pieces of paper are the promise of value, and in turn they generated more paper such as credit. Credit meant that one could buy and own things, even if they didn't have the money right then. Credit is the future tense in the language of money. But now, there is more money then ever before and it has many more names such as commodities, stocks, loans, funds, funds of funds, bonds, futures, equity, derivatives, Securitized debt, financial instruments, shorts, margin calls, all invisible words. Ellen Martin (Meryl Streep) and her husband Joe (James Cromwell) are on a pleasure boat at Lake George, New York when it suddenly capsizes due to a rogue wave that took the small boat by surprise, drowning Joe. There were many tourists on the pleasure boat and the accident had 21 casualties. Ellen and Joe celebrated their honeymoon at Niagara Falls, and they were on their way back there on the day they lost Joe. Joe had ruby pendant in his pocket which he wanted to give to Ellen at the falls, on occasion of their 40th anniversary. When Ellen tries to get compensation from the boating company for Joe's death, she is unable to because the reinsurance company that the boat companies' owner and his son Matthew (David Schwimmer) bought their policy from, was sold to another company based out of Nevis (Panama) that is actually a trust to one of Mossack's shell companies and is under investigation by the IRS for fraud. Matthew bought insurance from Global Property Owners Association, who got converted into Monarch. Monarch itself is insured by a firm called United. Initially the response of Mossack's firm United to Matthew is that their insurance policy had lapsed prior to the accident. Manager of the trust Malchus is paid $15 per signature by Mossack to act as the Director, without being involved in the operations of the firm. Matthew is worried that the victims will now come after them for claims. Ellen & Matthew's attempts to contact Mossack and the Nevis-based company are unsuccessful. When the insurance company refuses to pay, Matthew still makes an attempt to provide some financial settlement to the victims, with the limited means at his disposal. Ellen was planning to buy an apartment in Vegas with the settlement money. Her lawyer informs her that the insurance company refused to pay and advises her to take the amount offered by Matthew. Ellen travels to Nevis herself to confront the manager of the trust, Malchus Boncamper (Jeffrey Wright). When Ellen bumps into Malchus, not knowing who he is, she asks questions about his firm's location, but he tricks and evades her and escapes to Miami only to be caught and arrested by IRS Agents at Miami's airport. As soon as Malchus is arrested, Mossack back dates his recent transactions and selects another random employee to become of owner of 25,000 of his group/trust companies. Mossack provides shell services to all Wealth management desks of banks and has basically helped setup 240,000 shell firms globally, including for members of the Mexican drug cartels. The shell companies hold the assets for their owners, but has no employees, no office, and only an email ID and a post office box in a country where the laws are favorable to their client's financial goals. The second story is about Simone (Jessica Allain), the daughter of an African billionaire, Charles (Nonso Anozie), who discovers that her best friend is having an affair with her father. In order to prevent Simone from telling her mother about the affair, Charles offers her shares from one of his investment companies that are supposedly worth $20 million. She accepts his offer, but when she travels to Mossack's offices in Panama City to claim ownership of the shares, they turn out to be worthless as they are actually part of a shell company under Mossack that only existed on paper. The company was owned by another Mossack shell (itself presumably owned by Charles) that had recently emptied the company's bank account. The third story is a dramatization of part of the Wang Lijun incident, specifically the death of Neil Heywood. Neil (renamed "Maywood" (Matthias Schoenaerts)), is an intermediary for wealthy Chinese looking to funnel money abroad. He visits a Chongqing hotel to meet Gu Kailai (Rosalind Chao). He demands and pressures Gu for a much higher price if he is to continue to launder money for her family through one of Mossack's shell companies. Gu retaliates by murdering Maywood through poisoning the drinks that she serves him. She discloses the incident and reports Maywood to a party official Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun (Ming Lo) who secretly records the conversation and reports her. The story ends with Gu and her husband Bo Xilai (Jesse Wang) arrested for corruption and for Maywood's murder. The film ends with the leaks of the Panama Papers and subsequent police raids on Mossack Fonseca, the brief imprisonment of Mossack and Fonseca, and the shutdown of the firm. However, the two, as well as Meryl Streep herself acting out of character, remind viewers that there are still many such companies in existence and the practice of money laundering and corruption through fake trusts and shell companies based in tax havens is still widespread. Streep makes a clear and bold statement about the immediate need for campaign finance reforms in the US before adopting the Statue of Liberty's pose..
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