On October 3, 2021, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published The Pandora Papers. The archive includes images, emails and other confidential data of 14 financial companies from different countries, including Panama, Switzerland and the UAE. The archive exceeds the volume of the "Panama Archive" (2016), which had 11.5 million confidential documents. At the time of publication of the ICIJ documents, they stated that they did not indicate the source of the documents.
Reference: The International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) is one of the projects of the Center for Public Integrity. It was created in 1997. The ICIJ includes 160 well-known journalists from different countries. For various investigations, ICIJ attracts journalists and experts from all over the world (more than 80 for Offshore leaks). Every two years ICIJ presents the Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding International Investigative Journalism (Daniel Pearl Awards for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting). The Director from 2011 to the present is Gerard Ryle.
A significant part of the archive consists of documents on the acquisition of real estate by world leaders in the UK. In particular, King Abdullah II of Jordan is mentioned — he invested more than $ 100 million in real estate in the UK and the USA, including houses in Malibu, London and Ascot. Tony Blair was also named — it was shown that Blair saved 312,000 pounds in stamp duty when buying a property in London for 6.45 million pounds by buying Romanstone International Limited in the British Virgin Islands.
The ICIJ report refers to the Panamanian law firm Alemán, Cordero, Galindo & Lee or Alcogal, where it is mentioned that it is a "Latin American law firm for elite" that has created at least 14,000 shell companies and trusts in tax havens. In the leaked documents, Alcogal is mentioned more often than any other offshore provider.
In total, more than 100 billionaires, 29,000 offshore accounts, 30 current and former executives and 300 government employees were named in the first leaks on October 3, 2021.
