An 11-year-old boy from Azerbaijan who owned nearly $49 million of prime commercial real estate in London. A Czech prime minister who loaned himself 15 million euros to buy a French chateau. The unofficial wife of a Kazakh president who received a mysterious $30 million payment. A Serbian politician who swore he didn’t own 24 seaside apartments, but really did.
What do all these stories have in common? We found them hidden deep within the files of the global offshore service industry: a coterie of bankers, lawyers, accountants, and registration agents who help hundreds of billions of dollars move undetected around the world every year.
These financial flows connect corrupt and authoritarian regimes with secretive jurisdictions around the world, from Caribbean islands to commercial hubs like London and Dubai. International crime and corruption wouldn’t work without them.
Now, a massive new leak of documents is pulling back the curtain on the offshore industry like never before. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists obtained nearly 12 million files from 14 of these service providers and shared them with more than 600 journalists around the world, including us. We spent more than a year sifting through them to learn how the world’s most powerful people hide their money.
Read on to learn what we found.
The Pandora Papers is a global investigation into the global offshore industry, examining nearly 12 million leaked files from 14 service providers. The project was coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), in collaboration with over 600 journalists — more than 70 of them from OCCRP’s network — in 117 countries.
Contributors from OCCRP
Reporting and editing: Julia Wallace, Kira Zalan, Aubrey Belford, Pete Jones, Ilya Lozovsky, Miranda Patrucic, Drew Sullivan, Kelly Bloss, Anuška Delić, Alex Dziadosz, Ana Poenariu, Pavla Holcová, Khadija Sharife, Stelios Orphanides, Elena Loginova, Brian Fitzpatrick, Šarūnas Černiauskas, Paul Radu, Anna Babinets, Miglė Krancevičiūtė, Dejan Milovac, Katya Arenina, Katya Fomina, Alesya Marohovskaya, Sonya Savina, Jared Ferrie, Matthew Kupfer, Alexandra Li, Metin Dzhumagulov, Graham Stack, Caroline Henshaw, Martin Young, Attila Biro, Iuri Sanduta, Nicolae Cuschevici, Ion Preasca, Marcela Zamosteanu, Stevan Dojčinović, Vesna Radojević, Bojana Pavlović, Milica Vojinović, Marija Vučić, Sara Smolović, Dragana Pećo, Bojana Jovanović, Edik Baghdasaryan, Vahe Sarukhanyan, Stas Ivashkevich, Ales Yarashevich, Atanas Tchobanov , Ante Pavić, Anja Vladisavljević, Dimitar Stoyanov, Ia Asatiani, Nino Bakradze, Nanuka Bregadze, Manana Ghoghoberidze, Aidan Yusif, Andras Petho, Blanka Zoldi, Vyacheslav Abramov, Eldiyar Arykbaev, Matej Zwitter, Maja Čakarić, Mašenjka Bačić
Fact-Checking: Birgit Brauer, Dima Stoianov, Olena LaFoy, Sergiu Ipatii, Inna Civirjic, Ivana Jeremić, Bojana Pavlović, Rebekah Ward
Research: OCCRP ID
Graphics and Illustrations: James O’Brien, Edin Pašović
Photo and Video: Will Jordan, Tom Stocks, Aubrey Belford
Promotion: Charles Turner
Web and Interactive: Mark Nightingale, Tamas Szemann, Joris Heijkant
OCCRP Partner Organizations in the Project:
- Hetq (Armenia)
- Daraj (Lebanon)
- Oštro (Croatia)
- Oštro (Slovenia)
- Czech Center for Investigative Journalism (Czechia)
- Belsat (Belarus)
- Siena.lt (Lithuania)
- MANS (Montenegro)
- RISE (Romania)
- RISE Moldova
- iStories (Russia)
- KRIK (Serbia)
- Slidstvo.Info (Ukraine)
- Direkt36 (Hungary)
- iFact.ge (Georgia)
- BIRD (Bulgaria)