A huge data leak has unveiled the offshore dealings and hidden assets worth millions of dollars of some of the world’s richest and most powerful people, according to an in-depth investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
The 2.94 terabyte data trove involved over 330 current politicians and 130 Forbes billionaires as well as celebrities, fraudsters, drug dealers, royal family members and leaders of religious groups around the world.
After the release of the investigative piece, the Czech Prime Minister Adrej Babis and former British leader Tony Blair who were named among politicians identified as beneficiaries of secret accounts denied acting improperly.
The ICIJ stressed, it is not illegal to have assets offshore or to use Shell companies to do business across national borders. But these kind of revelations are shocking, especially where these leaders have campaigned publicly against tax avoidance and corruption, or advocated austerity measures in their home countries.
The so-called Pandora Papers leak, worked on by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists spent more than a year structuring, researching and analyzing the more than 11.9 million records.
For Czech’s Adrej Bajis, the investigation allegedly revealed $22 million stashed into Shell companies to buy chateau property in a hilltop village in Mougins, France, in 2009.
Based on investigations by ICIJ’s Czech partner Investigative c.z., they noted that the Shell companies and the chateau property were not disclosed in Babis’ required asset declarations.
It was also found that a real estate group owned indirectly by Babis bought the Monaco Company that owned the chateau property in 2018.
Czech’s Prime Minister and Tony Blair responses
Speaking about his involvement in the leak, Adrej Babis wrote in a tweet: “I was waiting for them to bring something right before the election to harm me and influence the Czech election.
“I have never done anything illegal or wrong, but that does not prevent them from trying to denigrate me again and influence the Czech parliamentary elections.”
Adrej Babis
For Britain’s Tony Blair, the investigation alleged he became the owner of an $8.8 million Victorian building in 2017 by buying a British Virgin Islands company that owned the property. The building now hosts the law firm of his wife, Cherie Blair, the report notes.
Other heads of state and presidents implicated in the leak, include Jordan’s King Abdulla II, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, and Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso.
According to the report, many of the accounts were designed to evade taxes and conceal assets for other dubious reasons.
Reacting to the development, Oxfam International’s Tax Policy Lead, Susana Ruiz, commented:
“This is another shocking exposé of the oceans of money sloshing around the darkness of the world’s tax havens that must prompt immediate action…
“Bravo to the whistleblowers and journalists for shining a light into this secret parallel system of capital, one open only to those with fat amounts of money and the greed to hoard it all untaxed, and those who facilitate it.
“Governments’ promises to end tax havens are still a long way from being realized. We cannot allow tax havens to continue to stretch global inequality to breaking point while the world experiences the largest increase in extreme poverty in decades.”
Susana Ruiz
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