Pandora Papers, the rich people and hidden wealth. Report Ft
What the Financial Times wrote about the Pandora Papers
The hidden wealth of hundreds of wealthy and powerful people around the world has been revealed in one of the largest financial leaks. The Financial Times writes.
The financial transactions of dozens of world leaders, from King Abdullah of Jordan to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, were detailed in the revelations, which showed how the world's richest people use offshore tax havens to hold and move the their money.
The documents, leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and shared with a number of newspapers – the Financial Times was not among them – have been dubbed the "Pandora Papers". They come from 14 offshore organizations and contain more data than the Panama Papers, which came to light in 2016 by the law firm Mossack Fonseca.
According to the media, the documents show that King Abdullah II secretly bought properties worth more than $ 100 million in London, Washington and Malibu, California.
The king allegedly used a network of offshore accounts to buy three adjacent Malibu properties for nearly $ 70 million between 2014 and 2017. The second, the newspaper said, consists of seven bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a gym. , a cinema and a swimming pool.
The United States provided more than $ 1.5 billion in aid to Jordan in 2020 – although the king's lawyers told reporters that Abdullah II received neither aid nor public money.
Tony and Cherie Blair, meanwhile, took ownership of a £ 6.5 million office in Marylebone in 2017 by buying a British Virgin Islands company owned by Zayed bin Rashid Alzayani, a Bahraini minister. The transaction saved them a claimed £ 312,000 in property taxes.
Cherie Blair told the Guardian that there was "nothing unusual or sneaky about any of this," adding that she did not know the identities of the sellers prior to purchasing the property.
According to the documents, a Russian woman who allegedly had an affair with President Vladimir Putin, within weeks of giving birth, became the owner of a luxury apartment in Monte Carlo in 2003. The property, which cost 3.6 million euros and included two parking spaces and the use of a swimming pool, it was purchased using a company in the British Virgin Islands.
Neither the Kremlin nor the woman, Svetlana Krivonogikh, responded to requests for comment from the media.
Ilham Aliyev, president of Azerbaijan for 13 years, was also mentioned in the documents, which reported in detail how a network of offshore companies linked to his family and associates have dealt with around £ 400 million of UK property. . The family bought 17 properties, including a £ 33 million office block in London for the president's 11-year-old son.
No comment even from the Aliyev family.
Others have shown they own offshore companies such as Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who is running for re-election just this week. ICIJ said Babis spent $ 22 million through shell companies for a sprawling property known as Chateau Bigaud in southern France.
Babis refused to answer questions about the purchase posed by a BBC reporter.
According to the ICIJ, more than 330 politicians and senior officials have been named in the documents – including 35 heads of government.
The data came from 14 offshore service providers based in Panama, Seychelles, Hong Kong, the British Virgin Islands, Belize, Cyprus, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates.
The documents also included information on trusts in a number of US states – including South Dakota, Florida and Delaware – which have become increasingly popular places for billionaires looking to deposit their wealth.
South Dakota allows you not only to evade taxes by putting money into trust funds, but also to remain hidden from almost everyone – including the possible beneficiary. According to the state's Department of Labor and Regulation, the South Dakota trust funds were worth more than $ 367 billion at the end of last year.
(Extract from the foreign press review by Epr Comunicazione)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/pandora-papers-i-ricconi-e-la-ricchezza-occultata-report-ft/ on Sat, 09 Oct 2021 06:11:49 +0000.