ICIJ links for readers interested in offshore finance:
ICIJ - PANDORA PAPERS
The largest investigation in journalism history exposes a shadow financial system that benefits the world’s most rich and powerful.
https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/
Summary: ICIJ obtained more than 11.9 million financial records, containing 2.94 terabytes of confidential information from 14 offshore service providers, enterprises that set up and manage shell companies and trusts in tax havens around the globe. ICIJ shared the files with 150 media partners, launching the broadest collaboration in journalism history. For nearly two years, ICIJ organized and led an investigation that grew to encompass more than 600 journalists in 117 countries and territories. The secret documents expose offshore dealings of the King of Jordan, the presidents of Ukraine, Kenya and Ecuador, the prime minister of the Czech Republic and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The files also detail financial activities of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “unofficial minister of propaganda” and more than 130 billionaires from Russia, the United States, Turkey and other nations. Ambassadors, mayors and ministers, presidential advisers, generals and a central bank governor appear in the files.
Pandora Papers: An offshore data tsunami
The Pandora Papers’s 11.9 million records arrived from 14 different offshore services firms in a jumble of files and formats – even ink-on-paper – presenting a massive data-management challenge
By Emilia Díaz-Struck, Delphine Reuter, Agustin Armendariz, Jelena Cosic, Jesús Escudero, Miguel Fiandor Gutiérrez, Mago Torres, Karrie Kehoe, Margot Williams, Denise Hassanzade Ajiri and Sean McGoey
October 3, 2021
https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/about-pandora-papers-leak-dataset/
Offshore havens and hidden riches of world leaders and billionaires exposed in unprecedented leak.
The Pandora Papers reveal the inner workings of a shadow economy that benefits the wealthy and well-connected at the expense of everyone else.
https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/global-investigation-tax-havens-offshore/
The power players
The trove of more than 11.9 million confidential files shows how presidents, prime ministers, royals, elected officials — and some of their family members and closest associates — stash assets in a covert financial system with the help of firms who establish companies in secrecy jurisdictions. Explore the biggest political names uncovered in the data.
Hong Kong
Former Chief Executive
Tung Chee-hwa
Extract: Tung’s billionaire brother, Chee-chen, was Orient Overseas’ chairman and CEO. In 2018, the Tungs sold their stake to COSCO, a Chinese state-owned shipping firm. In 2017, the Tung brothers bought Rockington Ltd., a company registered in the British Virgin Islands, to open a bank account holding for $1 million in “liquid funds,” according to leaked files. The application form noted Tung Chee-hwa’s political position. The company is one of nearly 30 offshore companies that the Tungs have registered in jurisdictions such as the BVI and Nevis, another Caribbean island. Some of those companies were created for the shipping business, according to an ICIJ review of leaked files and Orient Overseas company records. Both Tung Chee-hwa and Tung Chee-chen did not respond to ICIJ’s repeated requests for comment.
Hong Kong
Former Chief Executive
CY Leung
Extract: Leaked records show that Leung used shell companies to own shares in EuroAsia Properties, a DTZ subsidiary operating in Japan. The records show that in late 2015, one of those shell companies transferred its stake in EuroAsia Properties, valued at $302,500, to DTZ. The transfer occurred while Leung was under investigation by the anti-corruption agency. It is not clear whether he was compensated for disposing of the shares. In April 2017, while still Hong Kong’s top leader, Leung was listed as the owner of two British Virgin Islands companies, Wintrack Worldwide and Ace Link Property Ltd., the company that had held the stake in EuroAsia Properties. According to BVI registry documents, both companies were still active in November 2020. Leung didn’t respond to ICIJ’s repeated requests for comment.
China
Delegate, Henan province
Qiya Feng
Russia
President Vladimir Putin's inner circle
Gennady Timchenko
Oil magnate
Russia
President Vladimir Putin's inner circle
Konstantin Ernst
CEO of Channel One Russia
Putin image-maker’s role in billion-dollar cinema deal hidden offshore
Leaked documents reveal Konstantin Ernst’s secret stake in massive, state-funded privatization deal.
By Margot Gibbs, Kathryn Kranhold and Jelena Cosic
October 3, 2021
Great Britain
Former Prime Minister
Tony Blair
Governments vow investigations within hours of Pandora Papers revelations
As the first wave of stories on a massive leak detailing the financial secrets of the global elite and enablers of a shadow economy is published, reactions roll in around the world.
By Spencer Woodman and Brenda Medina
October 4, 2021
Suspect foreign money flows into booming American tax havens on promise of eternal secrecy
Confidential documents lay bare the inner workings of U.S. trust industry that serves global leaders and the super rich.
By Will Fitzgibbon, Salwan Georges and Debbie Cenziper
October 4, 2021
How America’s biggest law firm drives global wealth into tax havens
Baker McKenzie has been a pioneer in corporate tax dodging. It now acts for notorious tycoons, arms makers and authoritarian regimes operating in the shadow economy.
By Sydney P. Freedberg, Agustin Armendariz and Jesús Escudero
October 4, 2021
Extract: Although internal Baker McKenzie records are not among the leaked files, the firm is mentioned in more than 7,500 documents, far more than any other big U.S. law firm. Many of the documents mentioning Baker McKenzie come from three offshore providers to which the firm or its clients delegated work: Trident Trust, with offices in the British Virgin Islands; Alemán, Cordero, Galindo & Lee (Alcogal), a law firm based in Panama and Asiaciti Trust, based in Singapore.
HONG KONG: Confecting a city of secrets. Hong Kong is a city of traders and shippers that has repeatedly transformed itself, expanding from shipping to manufacturing after World War II and then reinventing itself again. With the U.K.’s Caribbean dependencies already flourishing as tax havens in the 1970s, Hong Kong, on the other side of the offshore map, blossomed into Asia’s premier tax and secrecy haven. Also under the U.K.’s guiding hand, the island was shifting from trading to banking, from colonnades to shining towers, a playground for Wall Street and the wealthy that never allowed sentiment to stand in the way of profit. Enter Baker McKenzie. Its move onto the island in 1974 coincided with Hong Kong’s metamorphosis and paved the way for the firm to benefit later from China’s emergence as a global power. Through innovation, local alliances and lobbying, Baker McKenzie helped transform Hong Kong into a global financial hub, famous for low taxes, high secrecy and minimal rules. Milton Cheng, Baker McKenzie’s global chairman, based in Hong Kong, declined an interview. The firm declined to comment about client matters, citing “confidentiality obligations and legal privilege.”
Frequently asked questions about the Pandora Papers and ICIJ
Extract: Is ICIJ an arm of the American government? Do funders like George Soros influence ICIJ’s reporting? ICIJ is not funded by, or affiliated with, the U.S. government. Our work is funded strictly through grants and generous donations. Donors support ICIJ’s general operations, technology and tools and investigative projects. ICIJ maintains a strict firewall between our editorial judgement and fundraising. The Open Society Foundations, founded by financier George Soros, donates generously to ICIJ but his contribution is a fraction of our overall budget. All editorial decisions are made independently, and no donor or institution influences ICIJ’s coverage.
Further readings:
Let the light in: why the Guardian is publishing the Pandora papers
Leaks raise questions about the balance between confidentiality, privacy and the public interest
Paul Lewis
The Guardian (3 Oct 2021)
Extract: What exactly is in the Pandora papers? Why did the Guardian decide to explore the leaked data? And how did we decide what to publish?
In terms of volume, this is the largest trove of leaked offshore data in history. It comes from offshore service providers operating in Anguilla, Belize, Singapore, Switzerland, Panama, Barbados, Cyprus, Dubai, the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, Seychelles and Vietnam.
The files were leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which is not identifying its source. The ICIJ gave 600 journalists around the world remote access to the leaked data to facilitate the largest journalistic collaboration in history. They include reporters from the Guardian, BBC, Le Monde and Washington Post.
Mining a leak of this size is a huge and complex task. It includes banking records, incorporation documents, correspondence and records showing the true ownership of shell companies. The 6.4m documents and 1.2m emails in the trove are written in English, Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, Russian and Greek.
The Pandora papers follow in the footsteps of two previous seismic leaks facilitated by the ICIJ. The Panama and Paradise papers, in 2016 and 2017, prompted global debates about the ethics of offshore finance and helped bring about some genuine reforms in places such as the British Virgin Islands.
Massive Leak Exposes the Hidden Fortunes of World’s Elite and Crooks
Credit: James O’Brien/OCCRP
October 3, 2021
Extract: The files illustrate the truly global nature of the offshore business. It’s a hidden world in which a reported secret mistress of Russian President Vladimir Putin can get a luxury apartment in Monaco via an offshore shell company, and where the King of Jordan is able to secretly snap up real estate in London and Malibu. Again and again, the files show the ease with which money can be quietly moved around the world — including by politicians and others in positions of public trust.
From missing taxes to stolen artworks and smuggled antiquities, the Pandora Papers lays bare exactly how the offshore industry hides the fortunes of the world’s rich and infamous alike. In many cases, it has also facilitated the transfer of vast wealth from poor and developing countries to tax havens and wealthy enclaves in cities like London, where fashionable central areas have been gobbled up by politicians, officials, and their relatives. Trillions of dollars, mostly from the earnings of large corporations are believed to be stashed in offshore tax havens. Each year, tax avoidance alone is estimated to cost the world’s poorest countries $200 billion a year — far in excess of what they receive in development assistance. The vast, secret flow of offshore cash isn’t just hurting the budget bottom line. Across the world, it’s also feeding discontent and undermining governments’ legitimacy.
ICIJ 曝多國政要隱匿資產！
香港前特首董建華家族涉 72 境外公司
（台灣）自由財經 2021/10/04
https://ec.ltn.com.tw/article/breakingnews/3692261
節錄：國際調查記者聯盟（ICIJ）3 日公布調查報告，指多位政府領導人與國家元首，在境外的避稅天堂隱匿為數可觀資產，這份名為「潘朵拉文件」（Pandora Papers）的調查報告披露的人員包含 336 位高層政要和官員，其中中國全國政協副主席董建華家族涉及 72 間境外公司。《法廣》報導則指出，身為香港前特首、中國全國政協副主席的董建華及其家族成員，也涉及至少 72 間境外公司，其中董建華本人擁有當中 7 間境外公司，董建華胞弟董建成也涉及透過 4 間境外公司持有銀行帳戶，並以另外兩間持有山頂及淺水灣的兩處豪宅。董建華的幼子董立新也有透過一間境外公司開設銀行帳戶。同樣有參與調查的港媒《立場新聞》報導則指出，董建華及其家族成員，包括其妻子董趙洪娉、長子董立均、幼子董立新、胞弟董建成、胞妹彭董小萍、侄女周董立茂及金昌玲等，於 1999 年至 2019 年分別為至少 72 間離岸公司的股東或董事。洩密文件顯示，董建華以個人或公司名義持有當中 7 間離岸公司的全部或部分股權。
潘朵拉文件揭隱匿資產
梁振英任特首時秘密賣股獲 754 萬台幣（20 萬英鎊）
（台灣）自由財經 2021/10/04
https://ec.ltn.com.tw/article/breakingnews/3692322
節錄：國際調查記者聯盟（ICIJ）3 日公布 600 多名國際記者合作的調查報告，揭露多位正要在境外隱匿可觀資產，參與調查的港媒消息指出，香港前特首梁振英也曾透過境外公司，迂迴持有境外公司股權，在其擔任特首期間，更曾出售一份股權並獲益 20 萬英鎊（約 754 萬台幣）。根據同樣有參與調查的港媒《立場新聞》報導指出，中國全國政協副主席梁振英昔日在擔任香港特首期間，曾以以信託形式持有戴德梁行外國分公司的 3 成股權，在 2015 年 12 月、梁振英還在擔任特首期間，該批股份被以 20 萬英鎊（約 754 萬台幣）出售。不過翻查行政會議利益申報，梁從未申報持有該公司股權、也沒有申報在任特首期間出售股權，因此外界無從得知他賣股獲益。
報導指出，當時負責賣出股份的是「Ace Link Property Limited」，是梁振英間接持有的境外公司，代表簽署的則是「LAM KWOK WING」。根據調查，林國榮會計師行的負責人林國榮，是梁振英的中學同窗，在該公司的公開文件中的英文姓名及簽名，與股權轉讓書的英文姓名相同，簽名也相似。報導提到，除了「Ace Link Property Limited」，梁振英也與「Wintrack Worldwide Ltd」及「 EuroAsia Properties Limited」這兩間境外公司有關，其中「Wintrack Worldwide Ltd」梁持有 99.9%股權，另外兩間則是全資持有。《立場新聞》為此分別詢問梁振英及林國榮，包含梁振英事前是否知悉出售股權一事、梁是否指示林賣股權等問題，不過到報導截稿前並未接獲回覆。國際調查記者聯盟於 9 月間詢問也曾詢問梁，一樣未獲回覆。
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https://xiaoshousha.blogspot.com/2021/08/kleptocracy.html
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https://xiaoshousha.blogspot.com/2019/09/blog-post_27.html
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http://xiaoshousha.blogspot.hk/2016/04/blog-post_22.html
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Revised 24/10/2021
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