The offshore dealings and hidden assets of some of the world's richest and most powerful people have been revealed, including those of world leaders, politicians, billionaires, celebrities and drug dealers. In a huge data leak being dubbed the 'Pandora Papers', more than 330 current and former politicians are identified as beneficiaries of the secret accounts. These include former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Czech Republic Prime Minister Andrej Babis, and associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The review of nearly 12 million files obtained from 14 firms located around the world - carried out by a consortium of hundreds of journalists - found the rich and powerful have been hiding their investments in mansions, exclusive beachfront property, yachts and other assets for the past quarter of a century. The report released Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists involved 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries. The Pandora Papers are a follow-up to a similar project released in 2016 called the "Panama Papers" compiled by the same journalistic group. Also implicated in the leak, which shows how trillions of dollars have collectively been shielded in hidden dealings, are Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, and Ecuador's President Guillermo Lasso. Many of the accounts were designed to evade taxes and conceal assets for other shady reasons, according to the report. "The new data leak must be a wake-up call," said Sven Giegold, a Green party lawmaker in the European Parliament. "Global tax evasion fuels global inequality. We need to expand and sharpen the countermeasures now." "This is where our missing hospitals are," Oxfam International said in a statement. "This is where the pay-packets sit of all the extra teachers and firefighters and public servants we need. Whenever a politician or business leader claims there is 'no money' to pay for climate damage and innovation, for more and better jobs, for a fair post-COVID recovery, for more overseas aid, they know where to look." The report involves leaks from 14 different service providers doing business in 38 different jurisdictions in the world. The records date back to the 1970s, but most of the files span from 1996 to 2020. The latest investigation dug into accounts registered in familiar offshore havens, including the British Virgin Islands, Seychelles, Hong Kong and Belize. But some of the secret accounts were also scattered around in trusts set up in the US, including 81 in South Dakota and 37 in Florida. The investigation implicates current and former world leaders. It found that Czech prime minister Andrej Babis put $22 million (€19 million) into shell companies to buy a chateau property in a hilltop village in Mougins, France, in 2009. The shell companies and the chateau were not disclosed in Babis's required asset declarations, according to documents obtained by the journalism group's Czech partner, Investigace.cz. A real estate group owned indirectly by Babis bought the Monaco company that owned the chateau in 2018, the probe found. "I was waiting for them to bring something right before the election to harm me and influence the Czech election," Babis tweeted in his first reaction to the report. "I have never done anything illegal or wrong, but that does not prevent them from trying to denigrate me again and influence the Czech parliamentary elections," he added. The Czech Republic parliamentary election is being held on Friday and Saturday. Tony Blair, UK prime minister from 1997 to 2007, became the owner of an $8.8 million (€7.6 million) Victorian building in 2017 by buying a British Virgin Islands company that held the property, and the building now hosts the law firm of his wife, Cherie Blair, according to the investigation. The consortium of journalists also revealed Vladimir Putin's image-maker and chief executive of Russia's leading TV station, Konstantin Ernst, got a discount to buy and develop Soviet-era cinemas and surrounding property in Moscow after he directed the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Ernst told the organisation the deal wasn't secret and denied suggestions he was given special treatment. -- Euronews
