Panama lawyers at center of offshore scandal make odd couple

The lawyers at the center of an uproar over the hidden financial dealings of the world's wealthy are an odd pairing of a German-born immigrant and a prize-winning Panamanian novelist whose books sometimes mirror the seedy world of politics he's come across in his work.

In a nation that for decades has been tainted by allegations of money laundering on behalf of drug traffickers and corrupt oligarchs, the polyglot lawyers who founded the Mossack-Fonseca law firm established themselves as the leaders among a plethora of firms in Panama dedicated to creating shell companies to stash wealth overseas.