The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published a new report Sunday looking into the money of world’s rich and powerful. According to the report, powerful politicians, billionaires and criminals have used offshore accounts to shield assets collectively worth trillions of dollars over the past 25 years.
Now, some are calling for an end to the financial secrecy and shell companies that have allowed many of the world’s richest and most powerful people to hide their wealth from tax collectors.
The video above shows the European Commission’s reaction to the papers.
The outcry came after the report revealed the way these accounts are used to keep trillions of dollars out of government treasuries limiting the resources that could be put to work helping the poor or combating climate change.
The report brought promises of tax reform and demands for resignations and investigations, as well as explanations and denials from those targeted.
“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 ICIJ said in its report. It’s based on “on a leak of confidential records of 14 offshore service providers that give professional services to wealthy individuals and corporations”.
“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 ICIJ said.
According to the ICIJ, the report goes into how the rich and powerful use shell companies, foundations and trusts to buy real estate, yachts, jets and life insurance, as well as to make investments and move money between bank accounts. It also looks at estate planning and other inheritance issues, as well as the avoidance of taxes through complex financial schemes.
“Some documents are tied to financial crimes, including money laundering,” the ICIJ said.
The report includes data from 336 politicians in 90 different countries and territories. Notable names include Jordan’s King Abdullah II, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, and associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“They used entities in secrecy jurisdictions to buy real estate, hold money in trust, own other companies and other assets, sometimes anonymously,” the report said. However, it went on to say that much of the activity did not appear to be illegal.
The billionaires called out in the report include Turkish construction mogul Erman Ilicak and former Reynolds & Reynolds CEO Robert Brockman.
Some of the rich and powerful targeted in the report have ties to the United States. “ICIJ identified more than 700 companies with beneficial owners connected to the U.S. in the Pandora Papers; Americans were also among the top 20 nationalities represented in the data,” the report said.
Dana Spinant, European Commission spokesperson: “It is a measure of fairness for everybody to pay taxes, especially at difficult budgetary times such as those where we are, where everybody at all levels, from the individual to the national incurs the costs of a very widespread health and economic crisis that the world is going through. So for us, it is a matter of fairness that people pay taxes. However, this doesn’t put us in any position to take a stance on individual cases which have been revealed by the articles that you referred to.”
Dan Ferrie, European Commission spokesperson: “The EU in many respects has been a flagbearer in the fight against aggressive tax planning and tax evasion. Over the past five years, we’ve come forward with a whole range of different rules and requirements within the European Union. I’d also make the points that tax evasion and avoidance are global problems which need to be tackled globally. So this is not just in the European Union or outside the European Union. And in that regard, we’ve invested heavily in international tax reform, leading, of course, through the OECD, for example, and ensuring those tax rules are fairer and more transparent not only in the European Union, but globally.”
