Seen as the largest collaboration of more than 600 journalists from 150 media organisations in 117 countries, the Pandora Papers project is based on a leak of confidential records of 14 offshore service providers.
These secret entities 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 or 12 million files, leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (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.
What has been exposed?
More than 330 politicians from more than 90 countries and territories have been exposed.
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.
Uhuru Kenyatta
The BBC, which is a partner of the ICIJ, has reported that the family of Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta is exposed in the leaked files for secretly owning a network of offshore companies for decades.
Mr Kenyatta and six members of his family have been linked to 13 offshore companies, according to the exposé.
The Kenyattas' offshore investments, including a company with stocks and bonds worth $30m (£22m), were discovered among hundreds of thousands of pages of administrative paperwork from the archives of 14 law firms and service providers in Panama and the British Virgin Islands (BVI) and other tax havens.
The secret assets were uncovered by an investigation, published earlier on Sunday, by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Finance Uncovered, Finance Uncovered, Africa Uncensored and other news organisations.
Documents show that a foundation called Varies was set up in 2003 in Panama, naming Mr Kenyatta's mother, Ngina, 88, as the first benefactor - and Kenya's leader as the second benefactor, who would inherit it after her death.
The purpose of the foundation and the value of its assets are unknown.