The biggest leak of the century just got bigger. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has published a massive trove of Panama Papers information on the detailed offshore holding of companies in various tax haven nations including thousands of documents related to India linking close to 2,000 individuals, entities and addresses from the country.
Until now, access to the total cache of 11.5 million documents was restricted to the ICIJ and a select group of international media.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published on Monday a searchable database that strips away the secrecy of nearly 214,000 offshore entities created in 21 jurisdictions, from Nevada to Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands.
A random check of the database for India displays about 22 offshore entities, 1,046 officers or individual links, 42 intermediaries and as many as 828 addresses within the country ranging from the tony and posh locations of metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai to mofussil locations like that in Haryana’s Sirsa, Bihar’s Muzaffarpur and Madhya Pradesh’s Mandasaur and state capital Bhopal.
The searchable database is built on a portion of the documents leaked from the Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca and reveals more than 360,000 names of individuals and companies behind the anonymous shell firms, including prominent Indian names like Aishwarya Rai and Binani Cement.
However, the raw records of the firm have not been made available online, and neither all the information from the records has been put out. This has been done to prevent access to some personal data and bank account details of those mentioned.
In India, prominent names have been reported to be a part of the Panama papers. The names range from Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgn, Supreme Court lawyer Harish Salve and real estate major DLF’s chairman KP Singh. Following the leak, the Reserve Bank of India has asked for details of outward remittances of bank accounts of people featured in the Panama Papers. Furthermore, the Income Tax department has also raided businesses of three Delhi residents who have been implicated in the leak.
Internationally, the leak has linked some of the world’s most powerful leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, British Prime Minister David Cameron and others to unreported offshore companies. In fact, the data forced the resignations of Iceland’s prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, and Spain’s industry minister Jose Manuel Soria.
With the entire explosive database out in the public domain for the first time, its is expected that more heads will roll. The chase has just started, as they say.
(With inputs from PTI.)
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