Pandora’s Papers reveal the wealth of world leaders

This was reported by the BBC, among other things. For example, the Pandora Papers, named after the famous fund full of surprises, reveal that King Abdullah of Jordan has secretly amassed British and American properties worth more than 81 million euros, mainly in real estate.

They also explain how former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife saved more than 364,000 euros when they bought an office worth 7.53 million euros through an offshore company.

put it in

The leak also links Russian President Vladimir Putin to secret assets in Monaco. It also appears that Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who faces elections later this week, owns an offshore investment firm that has bought two villas in southern France for 14 million euros.

Many of the transactions in the leaked documents do not involve legal violations. But the documents reveal the owners of the 95,000 offshore companies behind those transactions.

Kenya and Iran

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his family are an example of this. The investigation revealed that the Aliyevs and their closest associates were secretly involved in real estate transactions in the United Kingdom worth more than 467 million euros.

Other information was disclosed in the Bandura papers regarding Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, including ministers, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The latter appears to have transferred his interest to a secret offshore company prior to his victory in the 2019 elections.

hundreds of millions

The files were investigated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), and more than 650 investigative journalists participated in it. “There has never been anything this big,” Fergus Schell of the Federation of International Journalists told the BBC. “It really shows what offshore companies can do to help people hide untrustworthy money or avoid taxes.”

“They use those offshore accounts, those offshore trusts, to buy hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate in other countries and to enrich their families at the expense of their own citizens,” Schell added.

The Pandora Papers fit into a series of leaks that have been published over the past seven years, following the FinCen Files, Paradise Papers, Panama Papers, and LuxLeaks. Several international media, including the BBC and Washington Post, have had access to 12 million documents from 14 financial services companies in the British Virgin Islands, Panama, Belize, Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Switzerland and others. Trouw, Heat Financial Dagblad, and research platform Investico have access to the files.