The Paradise
Papers is a set of 13.4 million confidential electronic documents
relating to offshore investment that were leaked to the German newspaper Süddeutsche
Zeitung. The newspaper shared them with the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists, and some of the details were made public on 5
November 2017. The documents originate from the offshore law firm Appleby, the
corporate services providers Estera and Asiaciti Trust, and business registries
in 19 tax jurisdictions. They contain the names of more than 120,000 people and
companies. Among those whose financial affairs are mentioned are Queen
Elizabeth II, the President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos, and the U.S.
Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. According to the Boston Consulting Group, the amount of money
involved is around $10 trillion.
On 20 October 2017, an anonymous Reddit user hinted at the existence of the Paradise Papers. Later that month, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) approached the offshore law firm Appleby with allegations of wrongdoing. Appleby said that some of its data had been stolen in a cyberattack the previous year, and denied ICIJ's allegations. After the documents were published, the company stated that there was "no evidence of wrongdoing", that they "are a law firm which advises clients on legitimate and lawful ways to conduct their business", and that they "do not tolerate illegal behaviour". Although press reports referred to the documents as being "leaked" Appleby issued a series of public statements insisting that the firm "was not the subject of a leak but of a serious criminal act", and that "[t]his was an illegal computer hack. Our systems were accessed by an intruder who deployed the tactics of a professional hacker".
The documents were acquired by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which had also obtained the Panama Papers in 2016. According to the BBC, the name "Paradise
Papers" reflects the "the idyllic profiles of many of the offshore
jurisdictions whose workings are unveiled"—the so-called tax havens, or
"tax paradises" involved. The BBC also notes that the name
"dovetails nicely with the French term for a tax haven - paradis fiscal".
The data comprises some 13.4 million documents—totaling about 1.4 terabytes—from
two offshore service providers, Appleby and Asiaciti Trust, and from the
company registers of 19 tax havens. Süddeutsche Zeitung journalists
contacted the ICIJ, which has been investigating the documents with 100 media
partners. The consortium made the data available to the media partners using Neo4j,
a graph database platform made for connected data, and Linkurious, graph
visualization software, allowing journalists across the globe to undertake
collaborative investigative work. The documents were released by the consortium
on 5 November 2017.
Gavin St Pier stated that the "coverage was part of a well-orchestrated, ongoing campaign",[15] He also averred that despite having the information since 2016, the timing of the release was deliberately delayed to coincide with the meeting of EU Finance Ministers ahead of the proposed discussion of a tax haven blacklist
According to the papers, Facebook, Apple, Uber, Nike, Walmart, Allianz, Siemens, McDonald's, and Yahoo! are among the corporations that own offshore companies, as well as Allergan, the manufacturer of Botox. According to The Express Tribune, "Apple, Nike, and Facebook avoided billions of dollars in tax using offshore companies."
A Kremlin-owned firm, VTB Bank, put $191 million into DST Global, an investment firm part of Mail.ru Group and founded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, which used it to buy a large share of Twitter in 2011. A subsidiary of the Kremlin-controlled Gazprom funded an investment company that partnered with DST Global to buy shares in Facebook, reaping millions when the social media giant went public in 2012. Twitter similarly went public in 2013. TheUS
government sanctioned VTB in 2014 because of the Russian military intervention
in Crimea , but DST Global had sold its stake
in Twitter by then. Four days after the Facebook IPO, a DST Global subsidiary
sold more than 27 million shares of Facebook for roughly $1 billion.
In 2009, Glencore, an Anglo–Swiss multinational commodity trading and mining company, loaned $45 million to Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler in exchange for his help with officials of the Democratic Republic of Congo in negotiations over a joint venture with state-owned Gécamines at theKatanga Katanga
The Australian branch of Glencore has been demonstrated to have carried out some $25 billion in cross-currency interest rate swaps, complex financial instruments the Australian Taxation Office suspects of being used to avoid paying taxes inAustralia
Background
On 20 October 2017, an anonymous Reddit user hinted at the existence of the Paradise Papers. Later that month, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) approached the offshore law firm Appleby with allegations of wrongdoing. Appleby said that some of its data had been stolen in a cyberattack the previous year, and denied ICIJ's allegations. After the documents were published, the company stated that there was "no evidence of wrongdoing", that they "are a law firm which advises clients on legitimate and lawful ways to conduct their business", and that they "do not tolerate illegal behaviour". Although press reports referred to the documents as being "leaked" Appleby issued a series of public statements insisting that the firm "was not the subject of a leak but of a serious criminal act", and that "[t]his was an illegal computer hack. Our systems were accessed by an intruder who deployed the tactics of a professional hacker".
The documents were acquired by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which had also obtained the Panama Papers in 2016. According to the BBC, the name "
Gavin St Pier stated that the "coverage was part of a well-orchestrated, ongoing campaign",[15] He also averred that despite having the information since 2016, the timing of the release was deliberately delayed to coincide with the meeting of EU Finance Ministers ahead of the proposed discussion of a tax haven blacklist
Companies Named
According to the papers, Facebook, Apple, Uber, Nike, Walmart, Allianz, Siemens, McDonald's, and Yahoo! are among the corporations that own offshore companies, as well as Allergan, the manufacturer of Botox. According to The Express Tribune, "Apple, Nike, and Facebook avoided billions of dollars in tax using offshore companies."
A Kremlin-owned firm, VTB Bank, put $191 million into DST Global, an investment firm part of Mail.ru Group and founded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, which used it to buy a large share of Twitter in 2011. A subsidiary of the Kremlin-controlled Gazprom funded an investment company that partnered with DST Global to buy shares in Facebook, reaping millions when the social media giant went public in 2012. Twitter similarly went public in 2013. The
In 2009, Glencore, an Anglo–Swiss multinational commodity trading and mining company, loaned $45 million to Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler in exchange for his help with officials of the Democratic Republic of Congo in negotiations over a joint venture with state-owned Gécamines at the
The Australian branch of Glencore has been demonstrated to have carried out some $25 billion in cross-currency interest rate swaps, complex financial instruments the Australian Taxation Office suspects of being used to avoid paying taxes in
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