STORY AT-A-GLANCE
The Pandora Papers investigation lays bare the global entanglement of political power and secretive offshore finance. Based upon the most expansive leak of tax haven files in history, the investigation reveals the secret deals and hidden assets of more than 330 politicians and high-level public officials in more than 90 countries and territories, including 35 country leaders. Ambassadors, mayors and ministers, presidential advisers, generals and a central bank governor appear in the files. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a non-profit newsroom and network of journalists centred in Washington, D.C., obtained more than 11.9 million financial records, containing 2.94 terabytes of confidential information from 14 offshore service providers, enterprises that set up and manage shell companies and trusts in tax havens around the globe. The files reveal secret offshore holdings of more than 130 billionaires from 45 countries including 46 Russian oligarchs. In 2021, according to Forbes, 100 of the billionaires had a collective fortune of more than $600 billion. Other clients include bankers, big political donors, arms dealers, international criminals, pop stars, spy chiefs and sporting giants. ICIJ shared the files with 150 media partners, launching the broadest collaboration in journalism history. For nearly two years, ICIJ organized and led an investigation that grew to encompass more than 600 journalists in 117 countries and territories. Reporters followed leads to a cliffside mansion in California, a sugar plantation in the Dominican Republic, a polluting factory in Italy, high-rise towers in Dubai and a Turkish hospital where workers alleged mistreatment. The documents span five decades, with most created between 1996 and 2020. |