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Offshore Leaks is a report disclosing details of 130,000 offshore accounts that came out in April 2013. Some observers have called it the biggest hit against international tax fraud of all times (to date), although it has been pointed out that normal businesses may use the offshore legislation to ease formalities in international trade. [1] [2]
The report originated from the Washington D.C.–based investigative journalism nonprofit, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), who collaborated with reporters around the world to produce the series of investigative reports published in connection with ICIJ's The Global Muckraker . [3] The investigation is based on a cache of 2.5 million secret records about the offshore assets of people from 170 countries and territories, obtained by ICIJ's director, Gerard Ryle. [2]
The ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database is headed with the cautionary paragraph: "There are legitimate uses for offshore companies and trusts. We do not intend to suggest or imply that any persons, companies or other entities included in the ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database have broken the law or otherwise acted improperly." More than 100 journalists from more than 60 countries and dozens of news organizations have taken part in the investigation, which has since expanded to include revelations about the offshore holdings of China's business and political elites.
Imee Marcos, daughter of the former Philippine president Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, is on the list. Philippine authorities are investigating if the money is part of the $5 billion of unexplained wealth with which Marcos fled from the country in the 1980s. [2] Also on the list are the family of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, former Prime Minister of Georgia Bidzina Ivanishvili, Olga Shuvalov (the wife of former Russian First Vice Premier Igor Shuvalov), Deputy Director of the Board of Gazprom Valeriy Golubev, and Ukrainian oligarchs Rinat Akhmetov and Dmytro Firtash. [4]
Kazi Zafarullah, a relative of Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and his wife are shareholders of two offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands. [5]
A German politician, Peer Steinbrück, has called for harsh penalties for the banks involved in the scandal, up to revoking their licenses. [6] ICIJ reports that the series of stories has sparked "official investigations, sweeping policy changes and high-profile resignations" around the world, with the European Union's top tax official calling Offshore Leaks “the most significant trigger” behind Europe's new push to crack down on offshore hideaways and global tax dodging. [7] “We're in a completely different context today” because of the Offshore Leaks revelations, Belgium's secretary of state said. “It’s a new world.” [7]
IBC consultant Ryan Mohanlal responded that each enterprise, holding, corporation or entity which is registered has its own reasons for doing so and that there are legitimate reasons to incorporate in this form.[ citation needed ]
In Brazil, ICIJ's criteria for selecting journalists has been criticized for lack of transparency. The journalists chosen by ICIJ are part of media conglomerates that could potentially have connections with offshore account owners. Claims that UOL (a joint venture between Grupo Abril and Folha de S. Paulo) and O Globo (from military dictatorship backers Grupo Globo) journalists might pick and disclose names according to political bias rather than public interest eventually led investigative reporter Amaury Ribeiro Jr. to leave the ICIJ. [8]
As of 15 June 2013 a searchable database which includes part of the data is available under the URL http://offshoreleaks.icij.org/. So far the full primary data set has not been made publicly available.
There is no known connection between the ICIJ "Offshore Leaks" and "WikiLeaks".
By July 2021, the Government of India identified undeclared assets worth of about ₹ 11,010 crore (equivalent to ₹120 billionorUS$1.5 billion in 2023) following the investigation. [9]
The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) is an American nonprofit investigative journalism organization whose stated mission is "to counter the corrosive effects of inequality by holding powerful interests accountable and equipping the public with knowledge to drive change." It won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, and in 2023, the Edward R. Murrow Award for General Excellence.
Gerard Ryle is an Irish-Australian investigative reporter who has written on subjects including politics, financial and medical scandals, and police corruption. From 2011, he has been director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which has published research on international tax evasion and money laundering, citing the leaked Panama Papers, Paradise Papers and Pandora Papers.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) is a global network of investigative journalists with staff on six continents. It was founded in 2006 and specializes in organized crime and corruption.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Inc. (ICIJ), is an independent global network of 280 investigative journalists and over 140 media organizations spanning more than 100 countries. It is based in Washington, D.C., with personnel in Australia, France, Spain, Hungary, Serbia, Belgium and Ireland.
Mossack Fonseca & Co. was a Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider. At one time it was the world's fourth-largest provider of offshore financial services. From its establishment in 1977 until the publication of the Panama Papers in April 2016, the company remained mostly obscured from public attention, even though it was a major firm in the global offshore industry and acted for approximately 300,000 companies. Prior to its dissolution, the company employed roughly 600 staff members spread across 42 countries.
Luxembourg Leaks is the name of a financial scandal revealed in November 2014 by a journalistic investigation conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. It is based on confidential information about Luxembourg's tax rulings set up by PricewaterhouseCoopers from 2002 to 2010 to the benefits of its clients. This investigation resulted in making available to the public tax rulings for over three hundred multinational companies based in Luxembourg.
Swiss Leaks is a journalistic investigation, released in February 2015, of a giant tax evasion scheme allegedly operated with the knowledge and encouragement of the British multinational bank HSBC via its Swiss subsidiary, HSBC Private Bank (Suisse). Triggered by leaked information from French computer analyst Hervé Falciani on accounts held by over 100,000 clients and 20,000 offshore companies with HSBC in Geneva, the disclosed information was then called "the biggest leak in Swiss banking history".
RISE Moldova is an independent, non-governmental and nonprofit organization consisting of investigative journalists, programmers and activists from Moldova and Romania. Investigations made by RISE Moldova journalists were shortlisted for the European Press Prize for two years in a row.
The Panama Papers are 11.5 million leaked documents that were published beginning on April 3, 2016. The papers detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. The documents, some dating back to the 1970s, were created by, and taken from, former Panamanian offshore law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, and compiled with similar leaks into a searchable database.
This article lists some of the reactions and responses from countries and other official bodies regarding the leak of legal documents related to offshore tax havens from the law firm Mossack Fonseca, called the Panama Papers.
Linkurious is a software company specialized in graph-based technology for various use cases such as financial crime, intelligence, cybersecurity, supply chain management or data governance.
The Paradise Papers are a set of over 13.4 million confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investments that were leaked to the German reporters Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, from the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. The newspaper shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and a network of more than 380 journalists. Some of the details were made public on 5 November 2017 and stories are still being released.
The Panama Papers are 11.5 million leaked documents that detail financial and attorney-client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. The documents, some dating back to the 1970s, were created by and taken from, Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, and were leaked in 2015 by an anonymous source.
The Mauritius Leaks were the report of a datajournalistic investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in 2019 about how the former British colony Mauritius has transformed itself into a thriving financial centre and tax haven.
The Panama Papers are 11.5 million leaked documents that detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. The documents, some dating back to the 1970s, were created by, and taken from, Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, and were leaked in 2015 by an anonymous source.
The Panama Papers are 11.5 million leaked documents that detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. The files were uncovered and exposed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and other news organizations. The documents, some dating back to the 1970s, were created by, and taken from, Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, and were leaked in 2015 by an anonymous source.
The Panama Papers are 11.5 million leaked documents that detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. The documents, some dating back to the 1970s, were created by, and taken from, Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, and were leaked in 2015 by an anonymous source.
The Pandora Papers are 11.9 million leaked documents with 2.9 terabytes of data that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published beginning on 3 October 2021. The leak exposed the secret offshore accounts of 35 world leaders, including current and former presidents, prime ministers, and heads of state as well as more than 100 business leaders, billionaires, and celebrities. The news organizations of the ICIJ described the document leak as their most expansive exposé of financial secrecy yet, containing documents, images, emails and spreadsheets from 14 financial service companies, in nations including Panama, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates. The size of the leak surpassed their previous release of the Panama Papers in 2016, which had 11.5 million confidential documents and 2.6 terabytes of data. The ICIJ said it is not identifying its source for the documents.