Heads of State, rulers, millionaires, artists and athletes hid assets in ‘offshore’ companies, even for tax evasion purposes, according to an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) of the so-called ‘Pandora Papers’ (Pandora Papers). Pandora) – which involved some 600 journalists from dozens of outlets, including The Washington Post and The Guardian. The work came after the leak of some 11.9 million documents from fourteen financial services companies around the world. Among the names that appear in the investigation are Julio Iglesias, Corinna Larsen, Pep Guardiola, Vladimir Putin or Abdullah of Jordan,
According to these documents, the examiner of Juan Carlos I, Corinna Larsen, planned in 2007 that the managers of a trust called Peregrine, from New Zealand, would deliver 30 percent of the income from a Hispanic-Saudi fund to the king emeritus. in the event that she died. According to the letter, which is unsigned, the German consulting firm expressed its wish that after his death the assets of the Peregrine Trust fund would be distributed “equally” between his two children. In addition, among the beneficiaries, he then added to “His Majesty King Juan Carlos I Borbón de Borbón, born on January 5, 1938, resident in the Palacio de la Zarzuela in Madrid.”
“I want the trustees to consider distributing to His Majesty King Juan Carlos I Borbón de Borbón 30% of all income from the Saudi Hispanic Investment Fund alone. After the liquidation of the Saudi Hispanic Investment Fund, His Majesty King Juan Carlos I Borbón de Borbón should no longer be considered the beneficiary of the trust, “explained Corinna.
The unsigned documents were created on March 27, 2007, fourteen days before the Spanish-Saudi fund promoted by both countries was registered in Guernsey, a tax haven of the Channel Islands. For his part, Larsen’s lawyer assures that those documents are false.
Julio Iglesias and Guardiola
The papers reveal that singer Julio Iglesias has used five companies located in the British Virgin Islands tax haven and fifteen other companies, all managed by Trident Trust. In total, he is the beneficiary of twenty companies, in 16 of them he appears with his wife, Miranda Rijnsburger; another 4 are only in his name.
The Manchester City coach, Pep Guardiola, was the holder, according to this investigation, of an account in an Andorran bank while he directed FC Barcelona and until 2012, when he decided to take advantage of the tax amnesty promoted by the Government of Mariano Rajoy. According to sources around the former Barça player, he received his fees as a player for Al Alhi, where he played from 2003 to 2005. Guardiola regularized around half a million euros, of which he paid 10%, as set by then Minister of Finance, Cristóbal Montoro.
According to one of the people closest to the coach, Guardiola decided to collect the salary of the Qatari club in the Andorran account due to the impossibility of obtaining the residence certificate in Qatar, where he earned just over two million per season.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has published this Sunday the Pandora Papers, a series of documents that would show how prominent public figures, leaders and former world leaders such as Vladimir Putin, Abdullah of Jordan, Andrej Babis or Guillermo Lasso have assets in tax havens. The leaked documents could prompt cases for crimes of corruption, money laundering or tax evasion, although for the most part they are evidence of totally legal operations that the rich and powerful resort to to create companies to buy property.
Among the names cited is King Abdullah of Jordan, who has acquired important properties in the United Kingdom and the United States worth more than 80 million euros. Since he came to the throne in 1999 he would have bought 15 houses in Malibó (California, United States) or London. The monarch’s lawyers assure that these properties were acquired with private funds and that they are also used for projects for citizenship. Thus, they have defended the purchase of properties through front companies for privacy and security reasons.
There is also the president of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, and six relatives who own a network of companies in tax havens or the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, whose environment owns companies worth millions of euros in tax havens.
In the case of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Pandora Papers reveal properties in Monaco while Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, a billionaire, has not declared a company that owns two $ 12 million mansions in southern France. . In Babis’s case, the revelation could have immediate political consequences, as his party, Alliance of Disgruntled Citizens (ANO, “Yes” in Czech) is the favorite for the legislative elections on October 8 and 9.
Also the Cypriot president, Nicos Anastasiades, has front men who own companies in tax havens, as does the president of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, who has a foundation in Panama that makes monthly payments to his family.
Another name that appears is that of the Azeri president, Ilham Aliyev, and his family, accused of plundering the wealth of their own country. According to the investigation, Aliyev’s environment has bought properties in a united meeting for more than 400 million pounds (about 467 million euros). One of Aliyev’s properties was sold to the British Royal Household for a profit of £ 31 million.
Pandora’s box
The ‘Pandora Papers’ follow in the wake of leaks of documents such as the FinCen Archives, the Paradise Papers, the Panama Papers and LuxLeaks, but the ICIJ assures that the latter is the largest leak, with 14 sources, almost 12 million files and nearly 3 terabytes of data.
The documents are from 14 financial services companies from tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands, Panama, Belize, Cyprus, United Arab Emirates, Singapore or Switzerland. ‘There has never been anything on this scale. It shows the reality of companies in land havens used to hide money and avoid paying taxes ”, highlighted an ICIJ spokesperson, Fergus Shiel.
“They use the accounts and companies in tax havens to buy hundreds of millions of dollars in property in their own countries, to enrich their families at the expense of their citizens,” he added. The investigation “opens a box of many things,” which gives the leak its name.
More than 600 journalists from 117 countries and well-known media around the world have participated in this latest ICIJ leak.
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