Pandora Papers: everything we know about ‘biggest ever leak’ of offshore financial records
World leaders, a Tory donor and Tony Blair among figures named in unprecedented insight into tax avoidance
The secret wealth of world leaders, politicians and billionaires has been laid bare in unprecedented detail in one of the biggest leaks of confidential financial data in history.
Around 35 current and former leaders and more than 300 public officials are named in the documents – dubbed the Pandora Papers – including Tony Blair, a Conservative Party donor, the King of Jordan, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis and a woman once alleged to have been Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mistress.
First leaked to the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the almost 12 million documents and files from 14 financial services companies were pored over by more than 650 journalists in 117 countries in “the biggest journalism partnership in history”.
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Inside the Pandora Papers
The documents leaked to the ICIJ came from companies in countries “including the British Virgin Islands, Panama, Belize, Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Switzerland”, the BBC said. It is the latest in a series of leaks in recent years, including the FinCEN Files, the Paradise Papers, the Panama Papers and LuxLeaks.
The Pandora Papers “reveal that many of the power players who could help bring an end to the offshore system instead benefit from it”, the ICIJ added, “stashing assets in covert companies and trusts while their governments do little to slow a global stream of illicit money that enriches criminals and impoverishes nations”.
According to The Guardian, the documents are the “biggest trove of leaked offshore data in history” and “include disclosures about major donors to the Conservative party” that may cause “questions for Boris Johnson as his party meets for its annual conference”.
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Named figures in the Pandora Papers also include “more than 300 other public officials such as government ministers, judges, mayors and military generals in more than 90 countries”, the paper said. It added that “more than 100 billionaires feature in the leaked data, as well as celebrities, rock stars and business leaders”.
Pete Jones, investigations editor at the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), told Sky News that the “leak shows the interconnectedness of the offshore world”, adding that “previous leaks have sometimes been dismissed by the industry”.
“I think it shows that in a lot of cases, the system is not really being abused,” he added. “It’s being used precisely as it was designed to be used and it really pulls back the veil of secrecy that hangs over this offshore world.”
Who’s who?
The most recognisable names in the Pandora Papers to readers in the UK will be Tony and Cherie Blair, who the leak revealed to have “avoided having to pay £312,000 in stamp duty when they bought a £6.45m house in London”, reported The Telegraph.
The couple “purchased the property in Harcourt Street, Marylebone, as an office for Ms Blair’s business by buying the offshore company that owned it”, the paper added. But “there is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by the Blairs”, despite the former prime minister having “previously spoken out against tax loopholes”.
The name that will cause questions for Johnson during the Tory party conference is Mohamed Amersi, who has donated more than £500,000 to the party since 2018. The leak reveals that Amersi, a corporate lawyer, “worked on a series of controversial deals for a Swedish telecoms company that was later fined $965m (£700m) in a US prosecution”, the BBC said.
Amersi, who has also denied any wrongdoing, “was involved in a controversial $220m (£162m) payment to a secretive offshore company in 2010”, BBC Panorama found, a transfer of funds later described by US authorities as a “$220m bribe”.
Political law expert Gavin Millar QC told the broadcaster that the Conservatives should return any donations by Amersi “if serious questions are being asked about the donor”. However, he added: “The bottom line is they don’t have to, and there’s nothing in the law or the regulation of our system that compels them to do that.”
King Abdullah II of Jordan has also come “under heightened scrutiny” after the documents revealed him to have exploited “shell companies registered in the Caribbean to buy 15 properties, collectively worth more than $100m (£73.8m), in southeast England, Washington and Malibu”, The New York Times said.
While “the purchases were not illegal”, the paper added, they “prompted accusations of double standards” after Abdullah announced a 2020 “crackdown on corruption” that targeted “citizens who used shell companies to disguise their overseas investments”.
The disclosure could also have an impact on the ongoing Czech elections after it emerged that Prime Minister Andrej Babis purchased a “$22m (£16.2m) chateau in the French Riviera – replete with a cinema and two swimming pools” through offshore companies, the ICIJ said.
Babis, who the ICIJ noted “has railed against the corruption of economic and political elites”, was quick to deny any impropriety, telling an election debate that “the money left a Czech bank, was taxed, it was my money, and returned to a Czech bank”.
Asked if he had broken the law in relation to the purchase, Reuters reported that he added: “Of course not… It was taxed money.”
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his family, who the BBC said have previously been accused of “looting their own country”, are also featured in the leak.
The disclosure that they “appear to have made a £31m profit after selling one of their London properties to the Crown Estate” – the Queen’s property empire – may prove particularly “embarrassing for the UK government”.
“A vast network of offshore companies” allowed Aliyev to “secretly own vast real estate holdings in the British capital”, reported the OCCRP, including “luxurious penthouses, commercial office space, and even an old tavern in the heart of London” worth nearly $700m (£516m).
Others “linked by the secret documents to offshore assets include India’s cricket superstar Sachin Tendulkar, pop music diva Shakira, supermodel Claudia Schiffer and an Italian mobster”, the ICIJ said.
The latter – Raffaele Amato – is linked to “at least a dozen killings” in Italy and the documents indicate he used a shell company registered in the US to “buy land in Spain, shortly before fleeing there from Italy to set up his own crime gang”, the ICIJ added.
The leak also “links Russian President Vladimir Putin to secret assets in Monaco”, the BBC said, as well as linking “close associates – including his alleged mistress – in amassing secret offshore assets”, The Moscow Times added.
The Washington Post revealed that Svetlana Krivonogikh, a woman “allegedly in secret, years-long relationship with Putin”, acquired property in the sovereign city-state “through an offshore company created just weeks after she gave birth to a girl”.
Little is known about Krivonogikh, who is thought to have grown up “in a crowded communal apartment in St. Petersburg, and held jobs that included cleaning a neighborhood shop”, the paper added. However, there is nothing to “indicate that she had the means to acquire property overlooking this playground for the world’s elite”.
Other prominent figures named in the leak include:
- Kenya President Uhuru Kenyatta and six members of his family, who secretly owned a network of offshore companies
- Members of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s cabinet and their families, who own companies and trusts holding millions of dollars
- A law firm founded by President Nicos Anastasiades of Cyprus, which appears to have provided fake names to disguise the owner of offshore companies
- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who transferred his stake in a secret offshore company just before he won the 2019 election
- Ecuador President Guillermo Lasso, who replaced a Panamanian foundation that made monthly payments to his close family members with a trust based in the US
‘Shadow financial world’
Leaks like this are not new. However, they have previously “focused on material leaked from one corporation”, said Sky News international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn. This one is different in that the data “comprises leaks from 14 different corporations involving 12m documents that it has taken 600 journalists a year to sift through”.
“What this investigation seems to reveal is that the rich, powerful and famous have access to methods the rest of us can only dream of,” he continued. And while it has only revealed “methods of avoiding tax if not actually evading it”, it shows how “billionaires and dictators are using methods to hide away their money that may not be illegal but are certainly morally questionable”, he added.
The findings show “how deeply secretive finance has infiltrated global politics”, the ICIJ said, as well as giving an insight into “why governments and global organisations have made little headway in ending offshore financial abuses”.
With so many prominent figures appearing in the list, the documents offer “an unequaled perspective on how money and power operate in the 21st century”, the consortium added, while evidencing “how the rule of law has been bent and broken around the world by a system of financial secrecy”.
“Not everyone named in the Pandora papers is accused of wrongdoing,” The Guardian noted. However, the files show that “the secrecy offered by tax havens has at times proven attractive to tax evaders, fraudsters and money launderers”.
As well as raising awkward questions for individual political figures, the paper added that the leak “reveals the inner workings of what is a shadow financial world” that currently allows “some of the world’s richest people to hide their wealth and in some cases pay little or no tax”.
The “revelations also raise questions about how public officials have acquired such eye-watering amounts of money”, Sky News’ Waghorn added, as well as “the place they choose to park that money through a whole raft of different methods, more often than not, parking it in London”.