How Pandora Papers Can Take Down the Global Wealthy 2021

How Pandora Papers Can Take Down the Global Wealthy 2021

Pandora Papers Can Take Down the Global Wealthy

How the Pandora Papers Can Take Down the Global Wealth: A few years back, the Panama Papers uncovered how wealthy investors across the globe use offshore accounts held in various banks and Financial Institutions within Panama to hide money and shield assets from the IRS and other US tax authorities. Recently, after several years of research and analysis by various investigative reporters and journalists across the globe have uncovered the depths of the offshore maze that is still used by international banking conduits in oder to hide and shield assets from the US Government. The investigation reaches to the higher upper echelons of wealth in countries across the globe, and involves many politicians — it has been termed the Pandora papers.

What are the Pandora Papers?

As provided by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

• • • “The Pandora Papers investigation is the world’s largest-ever journalistic collaboration, involving more than 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries.

    • The investigation is based on a leak of confidential records of 14 offshore service providers that give professional services to wealthy individuals and corporations seeking to incorporate shell companies, trusts, foundations and other entities in low- or no-tax jurisdictions. The entities enable owners to conceal their identities from the public and sometimes from regulators. Often, the providers help them open bank accounts in countries with light financial regulation.

    • The 2.94 terabytes of data,  leaked to ICIJ and shared with media partners around the world, arrived in various formats: as documents, images, emails, spreadsheets, and more.

    • The records include an unprecedented amount of information on so-called beneficial owners of entities registered in the British Virgin Islands, Seychelles, Hong Kong, Belize, Panama, South Dakota and other secrecy jurisdictions. They also contain information on the shareholders, directors and officers. In addition to the rich, the famous and the infamous, those exposed by the leak include people who don’t represent a public interest and who don’t appear in our reporting, such as small business owners, doctors and other, usually affluent, individuals  away from the public spotlight.

    • While some of the files date to the 1970s, most of those reviewed by ICIJ were created between 1996 and 2020. They cover a wide range of matters: the creation of shell companies, foundations and trusts; the use of such entities to purchase real estate, yachts, jets and life insurance; their use to make investments and to move money between bank accounts; estate planning and other inheritance issues; and the avoidance of  taxes through complex financial schemes. Some documents are tied to financial crimes, including money laundering.”

What’s in the Pandora Papers?

• • • The more than 330 politicians exposed by the leak were from more than 90 countries and territories. They used entities in secrecy jurisdictions to buy real estate, hold money in trust, own other companies and other assets, sometimes anonymously.

    • The Pandora Papers investigation also reveals how banks and law firms work closely with offshore service providers to design complex corporate structures. The files show that providers don’t always know their customers, despite their legal obligation to take care not to do business with people who engage in questionable dealings.

    • The investigation also reports on how U.S. trust providers have taken advantage of some states’ laws that promote secrecy and help wealthy overseas clients hide wealth to avoid taxes in their home countries.

    • The leaked files come from 14 offshore service providers that help clients establish companies in secrecy jurisdictions.

Who are the firms at the heart of the Pandora Papers?

Where are the U.S. Citizens and Multinational corporations?

• • • When it comes to creating offshore companies, foundations and trusts, parties from different parts of the world and with different needs select different providers and jurisdictions for their shell companies.

    • Pandora Papers documents cover a large number of providers, but obviously not all, or even most, of them, and many jurisdictions are not represented in the data.

    • In previous ICIJ investigations, including 2017’s  Paradise Papers, the leak came from a prestigious law firm with a larger corporate practice, Appleby. As a result, the data  included more documents about multinationals. Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, which are popular havens for corporations, were among the jurisdictions with a large presence in that leak.

    • As for U.S. nationals, ICIJ identified more than 700 companies with beneficial owners connected to the U.S. in the Pandora Papers;  Americans were also among the top 20 nationalities represented in the data. In the Pandora Papers, Russia, the United Kingdom, Argentina, China and Brazil, are among the countries with the largest representation of beneficial owners.

    • In the Paradise Papers, U.S. citizens had a larger relative presence.”

Golding & Golding: About Our International Tax Law Firm

Golding & Golding specializes exclusively in international tax, and specifically IRS offshore disclosure. 

Contact our firm today for assistance with getting compliant.