An anonymous source has handed 2.6TB worth of records from Mossack Fonseca, one of the world’s largest offshore law firms, to a consortium of news outlets, including The Guardian.
The dump includes 11.5M files, whose contents reveal a complex system of tax evasion that implicates some of the richest, most powerful people in the world, from Vladimir Putin to former members of the UK Tory government and the father of UK Tory prime minister David Cameron.
Putin is implicated in $2B worth of offshore accounts, in a scheme that also implicates his top cronies. Also implicated are Nawaz Sharif, the PM of Pakistan; Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko; Icelandic prime minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, and former Iraqi PM Ayad Allaw, as well as current and former members of China’s politburo. There’s even a member of Fifa’s ethics committee!
The company’s internal documents reveal that they view 95% of their work “consists in selling vehicles to avoid taxes.”
The Prime Minister of Iceland stormed out of an interview where he was questioned about his offshore holdings. Opposition leaders are calling for a snap election, which could bring the Pirate Party to power, a remarkable circumstance that would have major political implications around the world – for one thing, the Icelandic Pirates have previously lobbied for their government to extend an Icelandic passport and asylum to Edward Snowden.
As Snowden himself wrote, “Biggest leak in the history of data journalism just went live, and it’s about corruption.”
