An unprecedented leak of financial records known as the Pandora Papers has revealed the offshore financial assets of dozens of current and former world leaders and hundreds of politicians from Asia and the Middle East to Latin America. Rich and powerful deny wrongdoing after dump of purported secrets.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists obtained 11.9 million confidential documents from 14 separate legal and financial services firms, which the group said offered “a sweeping look at an industry that helps the world’s ultrawealthy, powerful government officials and other elites conceal trillions of dollars from tax authorities, prosecutors and others.”
Here are some of the biggest revelations in the release:
Jordan king’s real estate empire
Jordan’s monarch, King Abdullah II, used an English accountant in Switzerland and lawyers in the British Virgin Islands to secretly purchase 14 luxury homes worth $106 million, including a $23 million property in California overlooking Malibu Beach.
French Riviera estate
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who is currently running for re-election, “moved $22 million through offshore companies to buy a lavish estate on the French Riviera in 2009 while keeping his ownership secret.”
South Dakota, Nevada havens
One of the most “troubling revelations” for the U.S. was the role of South Dakota, Nevada and other states that have adopted financial secrecy laws that “rival those of offshore jurisdictions” and demonstrate America’s “expanding complicity in the offshore economy,” said the Washington Post.
“A burgeoning American trust industry is increasingly sheltering the assets of international millionaires and billionaires by promising levels of protection and secrecy that rival or surpass those offered in overseas tax havens. That shield, which is near-absolute, has insulated the industry from meaningful oversight and allowed it to forge new footholds in U.S. states” reports the Washington Post
Pakistan’s political elite
Several members of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s inner circle, including current and former cabinet ministers, “secretly owned an array of companies and trusts holding millions of dollars of hidden wealth.”
Tony Blair property purchase
The documents show former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife saved around $422,000 by using an offshore company to purchase an almost $9 million office in London’s Marylebone area that was partially owned by the family of a Bahraini minister, the Guardian reported.
–
None of this is really news. Most of us understood that the rich and powerful add to their wealth in ways that are marginally legal. They become really unhappy when these kinds of reports appear in the press. Will this exposure change their ways? Uh, they will find new better ways to keep their behavior a secret.
Coast Contact 