Speaker 1: Many of you have been emailing me about the Pandora papers, and I want to
start and do sort of like a brief overview of what the Pandora papers are and kind of
show you how I would go through learning about what is here now.
One completely reasonable way to start would be go directly to the source material, which
we're going to do.
I'm actually for this particular segment.
I'm going to start with the Wiki article about the Pandora papers.
Now a lot of people will say, David, anybody can edit Wikipedia.
It's not actually a source.
And Wikipedia would admit that Wikipedia, you have to source the things that are there,
although there are inaccuracies in Wikipedia in this particular article, I actually think
that it's a good place to start to get an overview of what this is about.
Then we go to primary sources, then we go to articles about it.
So what are the Pandora papers?
The Pandora papers are eleven point nine million leaked documents that were published by the
ICJ, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, starting on October 3rd.
Two days ago, the leak exposed the secret offshore accounts of 35 world leaders, including
current and former presidents, prime ministers and heads of state, as well as more than 100
billionaires, celebrities and business leaders.
The news organizations of the ICJ described the document leak as their most expansive
exposé of financial secrecy yet, containing documents, images, emails and spreadsheets
from 14 financial service companies in nations including Panama, Switzerland and the Arab
Emirates, surpassing their previous release of the Panama Papers in 2016.
At the time of the release of the papers, the ICJ said it is not identifying its source.
Up to an estimated thirty two trillion U.S. dollars, excluding non-monetary valuables
such as real estate, art and jewelry, may be hidden from being taxed, according to news
reports.
Now just to hear.
There are 12 different citations that we could look at.
OK, the next part is about disclosures.
There is a sub article, a list of people named in the Pandora papers, which you can look
at separately.
It lists heads of state and it goes from the king of Jordan Abdullah, the second through,
you know, the Chilean president, the Kenyan president.
It includes former heads of state as well heads of government, including Patrick Achi,
the prime minister of Cote d'Ivoire, and many others.
Heads of organizations, ministers, bankers.
Some of these individual names will be meaningful to people, some less so royalty, including
the former King of Spain, Juan Carlos, business people on and on and on.
So we now have sort of like an initial understanding of what this is.
These are disclosures about the financial holdings, assets and accounts of important
or elite individuals.
Where do we go next?
Next, we go to the actual disclosures on the website of the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists.
This is filled with various articles and different documents.
Many of these start to be sort of commentaries on the Pandora papers, but one thing you can
go to is the key findings section from the organization that put this together itself.
The key findings are and again, we're just we're building our understanding of what this
is.
An investigation by more than 600 journalists from hundred and fifty news outlets has unearthed
offshore dealings of 35 current and former world leaders and more than 300 other current
and former public officials and politicians.
The offshore system continues to thrive despite decades of legislation, investigations and
international agreements aimed at combating money laundering and tax dodging.
South Dakota and more than a dozen U.S. states have become leaders in the business of selling
financial secrecy, even as the U.S. blames smaller nations for enabling tax avoidance
and dirty money flows.
That's important, you know, very often it's believed that if you want to do tax avoidance
and shield assets, you go to the Caribbean, you go to Switzerland, et cetera.
But actually, South Dakota and some other states have become really nexuses or neck
ci in this apparatus.
The Pandora papers unmask the hidden owners of offshore companies secret bank accounts,
private jets, yachts, mansions and artworks by Picasso banks and other masters.
The biggest lick of the biggest lick the biggest leak in ICJ history contains almost three
terabytes of information from 14 offshore service providers.
So then you could go and look at the actual data if you wanted.
This is another part of the website, which at this immediate moment.
Is not loading.
Once we've done this, then you can certainly look at other commentaries and summations
of the Pandora paper.
So for example, BBC has put out a guide to the leak that focuses on the UK, right?
The owners of more than 1500 UK properties bought using offshore firms, the Qatari ruling
family who avoided 18 and a half million pounds tax on a London super mansion.
The prominent Tory donor involved in a European corruption scandal and it goes on and on from
there.
So this is how I would get myself informed and obviously I would probably spend an hour
looking at this stuff.
We don't we're not going to do an hour because that would be the whole show, but that's how
I would start.
Take a glance at the wiki to understand what this is generally about.
Look at those citations, go to the primary reporting and then expand into commentaries
about the social implications, the cultural implications, the economic implications.
We'll dove deeper on specific aspects of this over the coming week, but that can serve as
a sort of initial introduction to what these leaks are.