An explosive data of offshore companies under the title “Pandora Papers” is expected to make headlines around the world on Sunday (today) and at the same time, send shockwaves in Pakistan.
According to Geo News, the leaked document will uncover the financial secrets held by high-profile individuals in the world, while naming current and former leaders from different countries, public officials, billionaires, etc.
Pandora Papers is a development to what has earlier been revealed in the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers.
On Saturday, the global powerhouse of investigative journalism announced that it was going to release the ‘most expansive exposé of financial secrecy yet’ containing around 11.9 million documents.
The non-profit newsroom and journalist network based in Washington DC, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), has received more than 11.9 million documents containing 2.94 terabytes of confidential information from service providers who helped set up and manage offshore companies and trusts in tax havens around the world.
The ICIJ shared the data with 150 media organisations and has led the broadest collaboration in journalism history. It took the ICIJ almost two years to organise this investigation that involved more than 600 journalists in 117 countries, making it the biggest-ever journalism partnership.
Meanwhile, Pakistani investigative reporter Umer Cheema said Pakistani people whose names are on Pandora Papers are more than those whose names were on the Panama Paper. He also mentioned that the names are kind of interesting, but you will have to wait for another 24 hours.
For the Panama Papers, almost 400 journalists from 80 countries participated in the investigation. Pakistan’s The News was the only ICIJ partner on both occasions. In addition, it also partnered with the ICIJ in the Bahamas leak and the Paradise Papers.
This leak has uncovered the finances of more leaders and public officials than the Panama Papers did and provided more than twice as much information about the ownership of offshore companies. The Panama Papers were based on the data of a Panama-based law firm called Mossack Fonseca that revealed offshore holdings of 140 politicians, public offshore and sports stars.
Those documents were obtained by the German newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, which contained records dating back 40 years.
The Pandora Papers are bigger in size and revelations about politicians and public officials are also more than what previously came to public attention. From Pakistan, there were more than 400 individuals who surfaced in the Panama Papers. The number of Pakistanis in Pandora Papers are way more than that, say reports. Many interesting names would make headlines.
