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Pandora Papers: An offshore data tsunami
icij.org ^ | October 3, 2021 | Emilia Díaz-Struck, Delphine Reuter, Agustin Armendariz, Jelena Cosic, Jesús Escudero, Miguel Fiando

Posted on 10/03/2021 3:50:11 PM PDT by ransomnote

By  and 
 

EXCERPT

SNIP

2.94 terabyte data trove exposes the offshore secrets of wealthy elites from more than 200 countries and territories. These are people who use tax and secrecy havens to buy property and hide assets; many avoid taxes and worse. They include more than 330 politicians and 130 Forbes billionaires, as well as celebrities, fraudsters, drug dealers, royal family members and leaders of religious groups around the world.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists spent more than a year structuring, researching and analyzing the more than 11.9 million records in the Pandora Papers leak. The task involved three main elements: journalists, technology and time.

What is the Pandora Papers?

The Pandora Papers investigation is the world’s largest-ever journalistic collaboration, involving more than 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries.

The investigation is based on a leak of confidential records of 14 offshore service providers that give professional services to wealthy individuals and corporations seeking to incorporate shell companies, trusts, foundations and other entities in low- or no-tax jurisdictions. The entities enable owners to conceal their identities from the public and sometimes from regulators. Often, the providers help them open bank accounts in countries with light financial regulation.

The 2.94 terabytes of data,  leaked to ICIJ and shared with media partners around the world, arrived in various formats: as documents, images, emails, spreadsheets, and more.

The records include an unprecedented amount of information on so-called beneficial owners of entities registered in the British Virgin Islands, Seychelles, Hong Kong, Belize, Panama, South Dakota and other secrecy jurisdictions. They also contain information on the shareholders, directors and officers. In addition to the rich, the famous and the infamous, those exposed by the leak include people who don’t represent a public interest and who don’t appear in our reporting, such as small business owners, doctors and other, usually affluent, individuals  away from the public spotlight.

While some of the files date to the 1970s, most of those reviewed by ICIJ were created between 1996 and 2020. They cover a wide range of matters: the creation of shell companies, foundations and trusts; the use of such entities to purchase real estate, yachts, jets and life insurance; their use to make investments and to move money between bank accounts; estate planning and other inheritance issues; and the avoidance of  taxes through complex financial schemes. Some documents are tied to financial crimes, including money laundering.

 

What’s in the Pandora Papers?

The more than 330 politicians exposed by the leak were from more than 90 countries and territories. They used entities in secrecy jurisdictions to buy real estate, hold money in trust, own other companies and other assets, sometimes anonymously.

The Pandora Papers investigation also reveals how banks and law firms work closely with offshore service providers to design complex corporate structures. The files show that providers don’t always know their customers, despite their legal obligation to take care not to do business with people who engage in questionable dealings.

The investigation also reports on how U.S. trust providers have taken advantage of some states’ laws that promote secrecy and help wealthy overseas clients hide wealth to avoid taxes in their home countries.

What form did the data come in?

The 11.9 million-plus records were largely unstructured. More than half of the files (6.4 million) were text documents, including more than 4 million PDFs, some of which ran to more than 10,000-pages. The documents included passports, bank statements, tax declarations, company incorporation records, real estate contracts and due diligence questionnaires. There were also more than 4.1 million images and emails in the leak.

Spreadsheets made up 4% of the documents, or more than 467,000. The records also included slide shows and audio and video files.

 

What’s different about this leak from others we’ve heard about?

The Pandora Papers information – the 2.94 terabytes in more than 11.9 million records – comes from 14 providers that offer services in at least 38 jurisdictions. The 2016 Panama Papers investigation was based on 2.6 terabytes of data in 11.5 million documents from a single provider, the now-defunct Mossack Fonseca law firm. The 2017 Paradise Papers investigation was based on a leak of 1.4 terabytes in more than 13.4 million files from one offshore law firm, Appleby,  as well as Asiaciti Trust, a Singapore-based provider, and government corporate registries in 19 secrecy jurisdictions.

The Pandora Papers presented a new challenge because the 14 providers had different ways of presenting and organizing information. Some organized documents by client, some by various offices, and others had no apparent system at all.  A single document sometimes contained  years’ worth of emails and attachments. Some providers digitized their records and structured them in spreadsheets; others kept paper files that were scanned. Some PDFs contained spreadsheets that had to be reconstructed into spreadsheets. The documents arrived in English, Spanish, Russian, French, Arabic, Korean and other languages, requiring extensive coordination among ICIJ partners.

The Pandora Papers gathered information on more than 27,000 companies and 29,000 so-called ultimate beneficial owners from 11 of the providers, or more than twice the number of beneficial owners identified in the Panama Papers.

The Pandora Papers connected offshore activity to more than twice as many politicians and public officials as did the Panama Papers. And the Pandora Papers’ more than 330 politicians and public officials, from more than 90 countries and territories , included 35 current and former country leaders.

SNIP
 
EXCERPT:
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TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: ransomnut
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1 posted on 10/03/2021 3:50:11 PM PDT by ransomnote
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To: ransomnote

This is what those jerkwads at Anonymous should be doing.

L


2 posted on 10/03/2021 3:50:45 PM PDT by Lurker (Peaceful coexistence with the Left is not possible. Stop pretending that it is. )
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To: ransomnote

Bet Romney’s name is in the list.


3 posted on 10/03/2021 3:53:31 PM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings )
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To: ransomnote

Isn’t ths old news? Like 2-3 years old news?


4 posted on 10/03/2021 4:01:52 PM PDT by Chad C. Mulligan
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To: ransomnote; Lurker

Please let me know what US Senators, past and present, US House members(past and present), the names Clinton-Obama-Bush, all the liberal actors and actresses, ALL the Wall St hedge fund and equity fund bosses are, and of course, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Dorsey, Gates, Walton, Soros, Powell show up.

As for Anonymous, how about they get into the Congressional database and get the list of Congress-scum that used taxpayer money to buy people off?


5 posted on 10/03/2021 4:02:28 PM PDT by qaz123
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To: tired&retired

Bet Romney’s name is in the list.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Yeah. Prolly found in an expense line item in the Soroz account


6 posted on 10/03/2021 4:04:51 PM PDT by thinden
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To: ransomnote

Hopefully they skipped over Anquilla.


7 posted on 10/03/2021 4:17:41 PM PDT by kvanbrunt2
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To: Chad C. Mulligan

A number of years ago there was a trove called the Panama Papers. This is new.


8 posted on 10/03/2021 4:19:43 PM PDT by untenured
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To: All

i suppose florida, delaware and nevada are not so surprising, but i wonder what is up with south dakota... something specific to south dakota irrevocable trusts, perhaps?


9 posted on 10/03/2021 4:20:55 PM PDT by SteveH
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To: ransomnote

Global media can immediately verify 2.94 terabytes of data on Putin and other leaders America’s deep state doesn’t like - but still can’t get around to verifying Hunter Biden’s laptop.


10 posted on 10/03/2021 4:25:53 PM PDT by PGR88
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To: ransomnote

11 posted on 10/03/2021 4:26:47 PM PDT by Repeal The 17th (Get out of the matrix and get a real life.)
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To: ransomnote

Trump - Russia rears its head again.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/


12 posted on 10/03/2021 4:28:54 PM PDT by Dragonfly
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To: ransomnote
Rut Roh. This data release may be coming to us courtesy funding from people like George Soros (Little Jeremiah's post below) and others I don't trust. WHich may mean he's punishing certain people or setting it up to frame President Trump (giving up some corrupt lefties to 'validate' false claims against President Trump or those who support him)

In the General/Chat forum, on a thread titled Q ~ Trust Trump's Plan ~ 10/01/21 Vol.373, Q Day 1435little jeremiah wrote:

Interesting factoid (no source at the moment) about the ICIJ who apparently put together the Pandora Papers. The ICIJ is funded by George Soros’ Open Society foundation, would be interesting to delve into these other donors. So...seems any info needs to be double checked. Soros trying to get rid of rivals?

https://www.icij.org/about/our-supporters/

Our Supporters
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is a nonprofit organization. We give our work away for free.

But cross-border investigative journalism is among the most expensive and riskiest in the world. We rely heavily on charitable foundations and on financial support from the public. Without your help, we cannot exist.

We welcome individual donations in support of our work. You can make a gift online here. Any help, no matter how small, is most welcome.

We are incredibly grateful to our supporters who make this work possible. The following list (current as of June 2021) includes institutional and major individual donors who provided support in 2019-2021:

Adessium Foundation
Arnold Ventures
Bay and Paul Foundations
Barbara Streisand
Bertha Foundation
Ford Foundation
Franklin Philanthropic Foundation
Fritt Ord Foundation
Fund for Nonprofit News at The Miami Foundation (NewsMatch)
Green Park Foundation
Hollywood Foreign Press Association
Hurd Foundation
John and Florence Newman Foundation
Jonathan Logan Family Foundation
Luminate
KCIJ Newstapa
Meryl Streep
Nationale Postcode Loterij
Norad
Open Society Foundations
Swedish Postcode Foundation
Tinius Trust
Wellspring Philanthropic Fund
We are also grateful to have received in-kind support from Australian philanthropist and businessman Graeme Wood.


13 posted on 10/03/2021 4:40:45 PM PDT by ransomnote (IN GOD WE TRUST)
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To: ransomnote

There are only minor low-fruit names being named. None of the real powers are being named.


14 posted on 10/03/2021 5:09:55 PM PDT by Jonty30 (My superpower is setting people up for failure, without meaning to. )
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336 politicians, and none are from the US. Not even remotely interesting.


15 posted on 10/03/2021 5:21:10 PM PDT by proust (All posts made under this handle are, for the intents and purposes of the author, considered satire.)
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To: thinden

Or under “Pierre Dilecto”


16 posted on 10/03/2021 5:36:00 PM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings )
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To: ransomnote

Norad?


17 posted on 10/03/2021 5:38:39 PM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings )
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To: ransomnote

Wiki has a good listing, Wesley Clark, John Huntsman, Jr., Rex Tillerson, Penny Pritzker, Jeffrey Epstein, etc. This isn’t a list of wrongdoers necessarily, Queen Elizabeth is on it.


18 posted on 10/03/2021 6:24:11 PM PDT by BlackAdderess (Welcome to the libertarian fire sale, here’s your accordion)
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To: Chad C. Mulligan

No, theres been like four leaks


19 posted on 10/03/2021 6:24:47 PM PDT by BlackAdderess (Welcome to the libertarian fire sale, here’s your accordion)
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To: Chad C. Mulligan

But what is interesting is that all of our news has been laser focused on stupid crap instead of actual news, like this.


20 posted on 10/03/2021 6:26:29 PM PDT by BlackAdderess (Welcome to the libertarian fire sale, here’s your accordion)
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