A team of 370 journalists in more than 75 countries researched the 11.5 million documents.

In one of the largest and most far-reaching document leaks in modern history, more than 370 journalists from 76 countries spent over a year plowing through 11.5 million records on offshore accounts and dummy corporations created by a secretive Panamanian law firm.

What the group—which was co-ordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and over 100 media entities around the globe—found was a trove of files that detail the holdings of 140 politicians and public officials, including the prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan and the president of Ukraine.

The documents, which cover more than 40 years worth of offshore companies created by the Mossack Fonseca firm, also exposed the holdings of a dozen other global leaders. According to the ICIJ they show how officials tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin moved as much as $2 billion in Russian currency through a variety of banks and dummy corporations.

The millions of leaked documents were obtained by reporters at the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which shared them with the ICIJ and other media partners. In the U.S., those partners included Univision, the Miami Herald and The McClatchy Co. Univision-owned Fusion has published a look at the documents and their impact.

The leak “provides details of the hidden financial dealings of 128 more politicians and public officials around the world,” the ICIJ says. “The cache of 11.5 million records shows how a global industry of law firms and big banks sells financial secrecy to politicians, fraudsters and drug traffickers as well as billionaires, celebrities and sports stars.”

CfJOVibW4AA-jmx
International Coalition of Investigative Journalists
Although it’s not illegal to have an offshore holding company or assets that are held in foreign accounts, most countries require politicians and other public figures to declare their holdings. It’s not clear how many of the accounts involved were previously unknown.

According to the ICIJ the leaked files show that Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and his wife secretly owned an offshore firm that held millions in Icelandic bank bonds while the country was in financial turmoil. They also show that the family of Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev used offshore corporations to hold secret shares in gold mines and London real estate.

While not all of the accounts are illegal or engaged in shady activities, the ICIJ investigation showed that plenty are: The organization said the documents include “at least 33 people and companies blacklisted by the U.S. government because of evidence that they’d been involved in wrongdoing, such as doing business with Mexican drug lords, terrorist organizations like Hezbollah or rogue nations.”

One of the companies listed among the shell corporations in the Panamanian records apparently supplied fuel for the aircraft that the Syrian government used to bomb and kill thousands of its own citizens, the ICIJ says.

The ICIJ notes that the leaked files show the Panamanian law firm routinely offered to backdate financial and corporate documents to help its clients—a service that became so commonplace that an email exchange shows employees of the firm talking about charging $8.75 for each month farther back in time a document had to be backdated.

The organization also points out that a number of the officials involved in the document leak have campaigned publicly on anti-corruption and anti-tax-avoidance platforms. Offshore companies are linked to the family of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, as well as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and to the father of British Prime Minister David Cameron, who has pushed for tax-haven reform in the United Kingdom.

Murdochs Rags is probably so delirious with joy right now that he can't even :lol:

This like the fappening for Accountants.

I'll be interested to see how many US multinational corporations & politicians are implicated in the findings and whether the world media will actually expose them like they have with the Russian, Chinese [HK], Syrian and Icelandic findings so far.



Edited by socceroo_06: 5/4/2016 10:43:33 AM

There seems to be a certain 'side' or 'demographic' (mixed in with regular joes) these leaks have so far targeted. Pretty dodgy so far.

Edited by tsf: 5/4/2016 07:22:49 PM

Infographic showing the football involvement in the papers:

http://lfcwonk.blogspot.com.au/2016/04/the-panama-papers-visualized-infographic.html

Infographic showing the football involvement in the papers:

http://lfcwonk.blogspot.com.au/2016/04/the-panama-papers-visualized-infographic.html

Minimising tax is not Illegal

1.It was a hacker backed by the Russian government who emailed the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung to offer the leak in early 2015, the initial contact that would eventually lead to the release of the Panama Papers.

2.There's deliberately little information within the Panama Papers that harms Putin: While the $2 billion figure has been reported widely, the link to Putin is relatively obscure, and the Russian president has survived far worse accusations of corruption.

3.Meanwhile, there's plenty of information in the Panama Papers that has already proven extremely embarrassing for other world leaders. At the least, Gaddy argues, this makes Putin and his reputation for corruption seem like less of an outlier and more of standard operating practice.

4.The fact that so few Americans have been linked to the Panama Papers could suggest that their details were deleted from the documents given to Süddeutsche Zeitung and passed on to other media outlets. If this is true, Gaddy suggests that the lack of this information in the release means that it could be being held back for blackmail purposes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/04/09/the-not-completely-crazy-theory-that-russia-leaked-the-panama-papers/

West is really is in a new cold war with Russia,