According to a survey conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ), 150 media journalists from around the world, hundreds of people from politics, business and the arts are hiding assets from their countries in offshore companies.
Among them are heads of international organizations, government officials, former prime ministers and heads of state on the tax evasion list. Names such as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Jordanian monarch Hussein, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, former IMF Governor Dominique Strauss-Kahn and others. In addition, this list includes the name of the Russian woman, who apparently had a child with Vladimir Putin.
Pandora papers will cause earthquakes, as did FinCen, Paradise Papers, Panama Papers and LuxLeaks. The Pandora Papers feature 35 current and former leaders and more than 300 government officials.
A Deutsche Welle report points out that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has been a staunch advocate of tax evasion for decades, and his wife own an offshore real estate company. Tony Blair and his wife bought, by the family of Zayed Bin Rashid Al Zayani, Minister of Industry and Tourism of Bahrein, through their offshore company a house worth US $ 8.8 million, without paying the corresponding taxes worth US $ 400 thousand. Today this offshore company has been closed.
Czech Prime Minister Andrei Babis, a billionaire elected in 2017 to crack down on tax evasion and corruption, is on the list. In 2009, Babis channeled $ 22 million into a network of companies to buy a mansion near the Cote d’Azur. The Czech website investigace.cz reports that this particular mansion is not included in the assets of Andrei Babis.
The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zhelensky also owned a stake in a company based in the British Virgin Islands. A month before his victory in the 2019 elections, he had sold his stake in the Matrix company owned by Sergey Sefir, a close friend and collaborator.
Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, who was elected to fight corruption, is – along with his mother – the owner of a secret company in Panama.
During the Arab Spring, Jordanian monarch Abdullah bought, through offshore companies, three beach houses in Malibu, USA.
Princess Lala Hasna of Morocco has been found to own a company that has bought a private home worth 11 million euros in London, at Kensington Palace.
Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani controls his fortune and his $ 300 million yacht through offshore companies.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalism has investigated 11.9 million confidential documents over the past ten years. The journalistic team consists of 600 people from 150 different media around the world. The documents they investigated came from 14 service providers for offshore companies.
