PARIS: A massive leak of 11.5 million tax documents on Sunday exposed the secret offshore dealings of aides to Russian president Vladimir Putin, Sharif family, world leaders and celebrities including Barcelona forward Lionel Messi.
An investigation into the documents by more than 100 media groups, described as one of the largest such probes in history, revealed the hidden offshore dealings in the assets of around 140 political figures, including 12 current or former heads of state.
The vast stash of records was obtained from an anonymous source by German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and shared with media worldwide by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
The documents, from around 214,000 offshore entities, came from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm with offices in more than 35 countries.
Though most of the alleged dealings are said by the ICIJ to be legal, they are likely to have a serious political impact on many of those named.
ICIJ director Gerard Ryle said the documents covered the day-to-day business at Mossack Fonseca over the past 40 years.
“I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents,” he said.
Among the main claims of the ICIJ investigations:
The sons and daughter of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif reportedly set up at least four offshore companies in British Virgin Islands (BVI). These companies owned at least six upmarket properties overlooking London’s Hyde Park. Sharif family mortgaged four of these properties to the Deutsche Bank (Suisse) SA for a loan of GBP 7 million and the Bank of Scotland part financed the purchase of two other apartments.
The ICIJ reports said that, “Three children of former and current Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif Mariam, Hasan and Hussain were owners or had the right to authorise transactions for several companies.”
“Mariam Safdar was the owner of British Virgin Islands-based firms Nielsen Enterprises Limited and Nescoll Limited, incorporated in 1994 and 1993,” it reads.
Close associates of Putin, who is not himself named in the documents, “secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow companies,” the ICIJ said.
The files identified offshore companies linked to the family of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has led a tough anti-corruption campaign in his country, the ICIJ said.
In Iceland, the files show Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and his wife secretly owned millions of dollars of investment in his country’s banks during the financial crisis through an offshore company.
The law firm of a member of FIFA’s ethics committee, Juan Pedro Damiani, had business ties with three men indicted in corruption scandal: former FIFA vice president Eugenio Figueredo, as well as Hugo Jinkis and his son Mariano, who were accused of paying bribes to win soccer broadcast rights in Latin America.
Argentine football great Messi and his father owned a Panama company, Mega Star Enterprises Inc., a shell company that had previously not come up in Spanish investigations into the father and son’s tax affairs.
Also in the world of football, Francetv Info named UEFA president Michel Platini as the beneficiary of a Panama-based tax company, adding however that no illegal activity was alleged.
