After two years of discreet work by investigative journalists around the world, a new global investigation will soon be released that would uncover the offshore hideouts of some of the world’s most powerful personalities.
The project called Pandora Papers is supported by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which has obtained 11.9 million confidential files with more than 600 journalists from 150 news organizations around the world participate in the ongoing reports.
Journalists spent two years studying and classifying files, contextualizing information, tracing sources, and analyzing public records and other documents.
The collaboration has revealed the financial secrets of no less than 35 current and former world leaders, more than 330 public officials in more than 91 countries and territories.
The leaked records were retrieved from 14 offshore services firms around the world show that many of the rulers who could help end the offshore system are profiting from it by storing assets in undercover companies and trusts as their governments do little to stem the global flow of illicit money thereby enriching and impoverishing nations
The ICIJ said, “the Pandora Papers investigation provides an unequalled perspective on how money and power operate in the 21st century — and how the rule of law has been bent and broken around the world by a system of financial secrecy enabled by the U.S. and other wealthy nations.”
Adding that “the secret documents expose offshore dealings of the King of Jordan, the presidents of Ukraine, Kenya and Ecuador, the prime minister of the Czech Republic and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The files also detail financial activities of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “unofficial minister of propaganda” and more than 130 billionaires from Russia, the United States, Turkey and other nations.”
“The offshore system is often seen as a far-flung scattering of palm-shaded islands. The Pandora Papers show that the offshore money machine operates in every corner of the world, including financial capitals of the richest and most powerful economies,” the ICIJ added.
The Pandora Papers investigation will reveal the secret owners of offshore companies, anonymous bank accounts, private jets, yachts, mansions, and artworks by Picasso, Banksy, and other masters.
“It provides more information than what’s usually available to law enforcement agencies and cash-strapped governments,” the ICIJ said.
“Large numbers of public officials and mega-wealthy individuals — who in some cases are one and the same — use the offshore system to manage, move and, often, hide their wealth. They play by different rules from the rest of humanity, in a game of intrigue and privilege that fuels crime and corruption and entrenches the power of the world’s economic and political elites.
“The secret files provide a layer of behind-the-curtain context to public pronouncements this year about wealth and offshore refuges — as governments around the world struggle with revenue crunches, a pandemic, climate change and public distrust.
“The Pandora Papers investigation is larger and more global than even ICIJ’s landmark Panama Papers investigation, which rocked the world in 2016, spawning police raids and new laws in dozens of countries and the fall of prime ministers in Iceland and Pakistan.
“The Panama Papers came from the files of a single offshore services provider: the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. The Pandora Papers shine a light on a far wider cross-section of the lawyers, middlemen and fixers who are at the heart of the offshore industry.
“The Pandora Papers lay bare the finances of many more country leaders and public officials than did the Panama Papers and provide more than twice as much information about the ownership of offshore companies. In all, the new leaks uncover the real owners of more than 29,000 offshore companies the owners come from more than 200 countries, with the largest contingents from Russia, the U.K., Argentina, China and Brazil.”
