Inside the global offshore money maze

Introduction

A cache of 2.5 million files has cracked open the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts, exposing hidden dealings of politicians, con men and the mega-rich the world over.

The secret records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists lay bare the names behind covert companies and private trusts in the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and other offshore hideaways.

They include American doctors and dentists and middle-class Greek villagers as well as families and associates of long-time despots, Wall Street swindlers, Eastern European and Indonesian billionaires, Russian corporate executives, international arms dealers and a sham-director-fronted company that the European Union has labeled as a cog in Iran’s nuclear-development program.

The leaked files provide facts and figures — cash transfers, incorporation dates, links between companies and individuals — that illustrate how offshore financial secrecy has spread aggressively around the globe, allowing the wealthy and the well-connected to dodge taxes and fueling corruption and economic woes in rich and poor nations alike. The records detail the offshore holdings of people and companies in more than 170 countries and territories.

The hoard of documents represents the biggest stockpile of inside information about the offshore system ever obtained by a media organization. The total size of the files, measured in gigabytes, is more than 160 times larger than the leak of U.S. State Department documents by Wikileaks in 2010.

To analyze the documents, ICIJ collaborated with reporters from The Guardian and the BBC in the U.K., Le Monde in France, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Germany, The Washington Post, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and 31 other media partners around the world.

Eighty-six journalists from 46 countries used high-tech data crunching and shoe-leather reporting to sift through emails, account ledgers and other files covering nearly 30 years.

“I’ve never seen anything like this. This secret world has finally been revealed,” said Arthur Cockfield, a law professor and tax expert at Queen’s University in Canada, who reviewed some of the documents during an interview with the CBC. He said the documents remind him of the scene in the movie classic The Wizard of Oz in which “they pull back the curtain and you see the wizard operating this secret machine.”

Click through to ICIJ.org to continue reading.

MORE IN THIS SERIES

• François Hollande’s Campaign Treasurer’s Investments in the Cayman Islands
• Caribbean Go-Between Provided Shelter for Far-Away Frauds, Documents Show
• Philippine Government to Probe Marcos Daughter’s Offshore Trust
• Deutsche Bank Helped Customers Maintain Hundreds of Offshore Entities
• Who Uses the Offshore World
• Elites Undermine Putin Rail Against Tax Havens
• Ponzi Scheme Used Offshore Hideaways To Shuffle Investors’ Money
• Taxmen Have Little Clue of Offshore Companies Owned by Greeks
• Map: Key Tax Haven Clients In the World
• Ferdinand Marcos’ Daughter Tied to Offshore Trust in Caribbean
• Disclosure of secret offshore documents may force top Mongolian lawmaker to resign
• How ICIJ’s Project Team Analyzed the Offshore Files
• Canadian Senator’s Husband Shifted Money Into Offshore Tax Havens
• Offshore companies provide link between corporate mogul and Azerbaijan’s president
• Interactive: Gunter Sachs’ Offshore Network
• ‘Crony’ of African Strongman Among Thai Names in Secret Offshore Files
• Interactive: Stash Your Cash
• Mega-Rich Use Tax Havens to Buy and Sell Masterpieces
• Key Findings
• Secret Files Expose Offshore’s Global Impact
• About This Project: Secrecy For Sale
• Nominee Directors Linked to Intelligence, Military
• Cosmetic surgery tycoon had secret offshore company
• Britons Snapped Up Luxury Villas on Thai Island
• Post-Soviet Billionaires Invade UK … Via British Virgin Islands
• Interactive: We Reveal Who’s Buying Up Britain
• Who’s Buying Britain? Probe Reveals Real Estate Speculators Hidden By Offshore Alchemy
• One Block in London, Many Secret Owners
• Video: How To Dodge Tax
• Front Men Disguise the Offshore Game’s Real Players
• ‘Fatal Blow’ Against Sham Corporate Directors Not So Fatal After All
• Meet the Queen of Nevis
• British Virgin Islands Well-Known for Sunny Beaches – and Strict Secrecy
• How the nominee trick works
• Inside the shell: Drugs, arms and tax scams