The information below has been taken from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists website.
The Pandora Papers investigation is the world’s largest-ever journalistic collaboration, involving more than 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries.
The investigation is based on a leak of confidential records of 14 offshore service providers that give professional services to wealthy individuals and corporations seeking to incorporate shell companies, trusts, foundations and other entities in low- or no-tax jurisdictions. The entities enable owners to conceal their identities from the public and sometimes from regulators. Often, the providers help them open bank accounts in countries with light financial regulation.
The 2.94 terabytes of data, leaked to ICIJ and shared with media partners around the world, arrived in various formats: as documents, images, emails, spreadsheets, and more. The records include an unprecedented amount of information on so-called beneficial owners of entities registered in the British Virgin Islands, Seychelles, Hong Kong, Belize, Panama, South Dakota and other secrecy jurisdictions. They also contain information on the shareholders, directors and officers. In addition to the rich, the famous and the infamous, those exposed by the leak include people who don’t represent a public interest and who don’t appear in our reporting, such as small business owners, doctors and other, usually affluent, individuals away from the public spotlight.
While some of the files date to the 1970s, most of those reviewed by ICIJ were created between 1996 and 2020. They cover a wide range of matters: the creation of shell companies, foundations and trusts; the use of such entities to purchase real estate, yachts, jets and life insurance; their use to make investments and to move money between bank accounts; estate planning and other inheritance issues; and the avoidance of taxes through complex financial schemes. Some documents are tied to financial crimes, including money laundering.
The more than 330 politicians exposed by the leak were from more than 90 countries and territories. They used entities in secrecy jurisdictions to buy real estate, hold money in trust, own other companies and other assets, sometimes anonymously.
The Pandora Papers investigation also reveals how banks and law firms work closely with offshore service providers to design complex corporate structures. The files show that providers don’t always know their customers, despite their legal obligation to take care not to do business with people who engage in questionable dealings.
The investigation also reports on how US trust providers have taken advantage of some states’ laws that promote secrecy and help wealthy overseas clients hide wealth to avoid taxes in their home countries.
What form did the data come in?
The 11.9 million-plus records were largely unstructured. More than half of the files (6.4 million) were text documents, including more than 4 million PDFs, some of which ran to more than 10,000-pages. The documents included passports, bank statements, tax declarations, company incorporation records, real estate contracts and due diligence questionnaires. There were also more than 4.1 million images and emails in the leak.
Spreadsheets made up 4% of the documents, or more than 467,000. The records also included slide shows and audio and video files.
What’s in a name
The papers are named after the Greek myth of Pandora’s box. In the tale, Pandora opens a sealed box containing the forces of evil and suffering which, once released, were uncontainable. BBC quoted Gerard Ryle, the director of ICIJ, as saying this leak was given the name because “we’re opening a box on a lot of things”. The report brings promises of tax reform, demands for resignations, investigations and explanations from those targeted.
A look at world leaders named in the Pandora Papers.
A global investigation has revealed how the rich and powerful have been hiding their investments in mansions, exclusive beachfront property, yachts and other assets for the past quarter-century. Collectively these assets are worth trillions of dollars.
The investigation, dubbed the Pandora Papers, was published late on Sunday and involved 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries.
The report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists brought promises of tax reform and demands for resignations and investigations, as well as explanations and denials from those targeted.
Here is a look at some of those named in the investigation.
Jordan:
The investigation found that advisers helped King Abdullah II of Jordan set up at least three dozen shell companies from 1995 to 2017, helping the monarch buy 14 homes worth more than $106 million in the US and the UK. One was a $23m California ocean-view property bought in 2017 through a company in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), a tax haven in the Caribbean. On Monday, Abdullah denied any impropriety in his purchase of luxury homes abroad.
UK:
Tony Blair, UK prime minister from 1997 to 2007, became the owner of an $8.8m Victorian building in 2017 by buying a BVI company that held the property, and the building now hosts the law firm of his wife, Cherie Blair, according to the investigation.
The two bought the company from the family of Bahrain’s industry and tourism minister, Zayed bin Rashid al-Zayani. Buying the company shares instead of the London building saved the Blairs more than $400,000 in property taxes, the investigation found.
The Blairs denied any wrongdoing, with the couple’s spokesperson saying “the Blairs pay full tax on all their earnings. And have never used offshore schemes either to hide transactions or avoid tax.”
PAKIISTAN:
Members of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s inner circle are accused of hiding millions of dollars in wealth in secret companies or trusts, according to the journalists’ findings.
The premier, who is not accused of any wrongdoing, vowed to recover the “ill-gotten gains” and said the government will look into all citizens mentioned in the documents and take action if needed…….
MANY MORE:
Czech Republic, Lebanon, Russia, Brazil, India., Chile, Montenegro,…..
Source:-dawn.com
