Pandora Papers: The Biggest Global Financial Investigation of The 21st Century

From Panama to Pandora Papers, here are some facts about the biggest global financial investigation of the 21st Century.

Did you know that the Pandora Papers is the biggest cross-border collaboration of journalists by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, ICIJ, which reveals the real owners of more than 29,000 offshore companies that come from more than 200 countries and territories?

The Pandora Papers is the biggest cross-border collaboration of journalists in history. It is an investigation into a vast amount of previously hidden offshore companies, exposing secret assets, covert deals, and hidden fortunes of the super-rich, among them more than 130 billionaires, and the powerful, including more than 30 world leaders and hundreds of former and serving public officials across the world.

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Here are some facts you need to know about the investigation of the 21st century as conducted by the ICIJ.

1. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) obtained the trove of more than 11.9 million confidential files and led a team of more than 600 journalists from 150 news outlets that spent two years sifting through them, tracking down hard-to-find sources and digging into court records and other public documents from dozens of countries.

2. The leaked files were retrieved from some offshore services firms around the world that set up shell companies and other offshore entities for clients, many of them influential politicians, business persons, and criminals, seeking to conceal their financial dealings. A shell corporation is a corporation without active business operations or significant assets.

3. The two-year collaboration has so far revealed the financial secrets of not less than 35 current and former world leaders, more than 330 public officials in more than 91 countries and territories. The confidential documents also feature a global cast of fugitives, convicts, celebrities, football stars, and others, including judges, tax officials, spy chiefs and mayors.

4. The leaked records come from 14 offshore services firms from around the world that set up shell companies and other offshore nooks for clients often seeking to keep their financial activities in the shadows. The records include information about the dealings of nearly three times as many current and former country leaders as any previous leak of documents from offshore havens.

5. The Pandora Papers investigation provides an unequaled perspective on how money and power operate in the 21st century – and how the rule of law has been bent and broken around the world by a system of financial secrecy enabled by the U.S. and other wealthy nations.

6. The findings by ICIJ and its media partners spotlight how deeply secretive finance has infiltrated global politics – and offer insights into why governments and global organizations have made little headway in ending offshore financial abuses.

7. An ICIJ analysis of the secret documents identified 956 companies in offshore havens tied to 336 high-level politicians and public officials, including country leaders, cabinet ministers, ambassadors, and others. More than two-thirds of those companies were set up in the British Virgin Islands, a jurisdiction long known as a key cog in the offshore system.

8. At least $11.3 trillion is held “offshore,” according to a 2020 study by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Because of the complexity and secrecy of the offshore system, it’s not possible to know how much of that wealth is tied to tax evasion and other crimes and how much of it involves funds that come from legitimate sources and have been reported to proper authorities.

9. A document in the Pandora Papers shows that banks around the world helped their customers set up at least 3,926 offshore companies with the assistance of Alemán, Cordero, Galindo & Lee, a Panamanian law firm led by a former ambassador to the U.S. The document shows that the firm – also known as Alcogal – set up at least 312 companies in the British Virgin Islands for clients of the American financial services giant Morgan Stanley.

10. The Pandora Papers provide details about tens of millions of dollars moved from offshore havens in the Caribbean and Europe into South Dakota, a sparsely populated American state that has become a major destination for foreign assets.

11. The Pandora Papers investigation is larger and more global than even ICIJ’s landmark Panama Papers investigation, which rocked the world in 2016, spawning police raids and new laws in dozens of countries and the fall of prime ministers in Iceland and Pakistan.

12. The Panama Papers came from the files of a single offshore services provider: the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. The Pandora Papers shine a light on a far wider cross-section of the lawyers and middlemen who are at the heart of the offshore industry.

13. The Pandora Papers provide more than twice as much information about the ownership of offshore companies. In all, the new leak of documents reveals the real owners of more than 29,000 offshore companies. The owners come from more than 200 countries and territories, with the largest contingents from Russia, the U.K., Argentina and China.

14. The 150 news outlets that joined the investigative partnership include The Washington Post, the BBC, The Guardian, Radio France, Oštro Croatia, the Indian Express, Zimbabwe’s The Standard, Morocco’s Le Desk and Ecuador’s Diario El Universo.

15. A global team was needed because the 14 offshore providers that are the sources of the leaked documents are headquartered around the globe, from the Caribbean to the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea.