The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) , late on Sunday night, released a slew of documents dubbed the ‘Paradise Papers’. The papers “reveal offshore activities of some of the world’s most powerful people and companies,” the ICIJ website said.
The leaked files, of which there more than 13 million, detail investment figures, tax plans, loan agreements and more, of major international figures including United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth, donors of U.S. President Donald Trump, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Jordanian Queen Noor al-Hussein among others. Most of the documents are from offshore law firm Appleby, who have responded to The Guardian saying that there was “no evidence of wrongdoing, either on the part of ourselves or our clients”.
The files lay out Mr. Ross’s links with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s family as well as the investment of Queen Elizabeth’s private estate in a Cayman Islands fund. In addition, the leaked files also detail Russia’s involvement in Twitter and Facebook through an associate of Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President Trump.
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Closer home, Civil Aviation Minister Jayant Sinha and BJP MP R.K. Sinha have been named in the Paradise Papers.
Earlier in April 2016, the ICIJ - and a group of media outlets - published extensive investigation into offshore financial dealings of the rich and famous, based on a vast trove of documents provided by an anonymous source. This leak, dubbed the Panama Papers, was the biggest of its kind, measuring up to 2.6 terabytes of data, out of which 37,000 pertained to India . The Paradise Papers is the second biggest.
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