Question of the day: who are the characters mentioned in the Pandora Papers?

The Pandora Papers they are not the first evidences of how millionaires and politicians struggle to keep their fortunes secret in order, in some cases, to pay less taxes. In 2016, the Panama Papers, 11 million documents that were leaked from the law firm Mossack Fonseca.

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What was discovered then, accounted for the millions that were hidden from the law, a figure that, by 2017, would have added up to the same as 10% of the world’s GDP.

But the range of Pandora Papers is much greater because it is an investigation based on the leakage of 14 law firms specialized in creating companies or partnerships in tax havens, such as the Bahamas or the British Virgin Islands.

The president of Chile, Sebastián Piñera. REUTERS (RODRIGO GARRIDO /)

To carry out this investigation, it took 2 years and 600 journalists from 117 countries who worked under the leadership of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

And what they found ranges from shareholder records to travel diaries that account for hidden billions of dollars.

TO CONSIDER

The Pandora Papers list highlights the names of more than 40 Russian oligarchs, 133 people who appear among the richest on the Forbes list, and 15 Latin American presidents and former presidents.

For example, the former Peruvian president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, the current Chilean president Sebastián Piñera, and their peers the Ecuadorian Guillermo Lasso and the Dominican Luis Abinader.

Other figures such as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair are also present.

“Eleven are ex-presidents, for example, the Colombians César Gaviria and Andrés Pastrana”, notes “El País”.

But on the list there are not only famous businessmen and politicians. The celebrity and the athletes also appear: Claudia Schiffer, Julio Iglesias, Shakira, ‘Pep’ Guardiola and Carlo Ancelotti.

The president of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso. AP (Dolores Ochoa /)

But just because these people and their companies appear in this investigation does not mean that they are doing something illegal. In this regard, “El País” notes that there are no drawbacks as long as the “Assets and benefits derived from their activity are declared to the authorities of the country where the beneficiary has its tax domicile”.

The problem, and this is what happens in the largest number of cases that appear in the Pandora Papers, is when they are not declared. “Under that layer of opacity there are hidden illicit money flows that open the door to bribery, money laundering, tax evasion or the financing of terrorism,” the media writes.

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