London is pronounced the significant destination to conceal rich and powerful people’s cash in a recent Pandora Paper 2021 report.
Releasing from October 3 2021, the Pandora Paper is the cache of 12 million files showing some of the world’s wealthy and influential people, aiming towards avoiding tax.
This Paper includes detail about how people set up offshore companies, property and other illegal means to hide their actual wealth.
In the 2021 paper, foreign individuals acclaimed to be beneficiaries with these offshore accounts includes Jordanian King Abdullah II, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Ailey and associates of Pakistani Prime minister Imran Khan.
In reply to these accusations, Jordan King has denied them, and Imran Khan tweeted to take strict actions. The Azerbaijan President reply to these accusations remains to be pending till now.
Apart from pronouncing influential people names, Pandora paper states London to be a hub, making advocates call Britain to tighten its defence against money laundering and tax avoidance. The purchases are legal under UK law.
Still, wealthy individuals hold anonymous financial practices, far removed from the experience of most of the population.
London’s complex ecosystem help their process to carry out with ease, making it a go-to for the rich and powerful. The ecosystem mainly includes creative wealth management firms, high-end lawyers and long-established accounting firms.
The authorities are pushing a light-touch approach towards regulation, spotlighting foreign capital and talent, but instead, it acts as a magnet for tax avoidance and other financial criminal activities.
An analysis dated 2019 issued by transparency group Global Witness stated the registered ownership for 87,000 properties in England and Wales was under several anonymous organisations.
Out of report, around 40% of total properties costing more than 100 billion pounds were in London.
What are the Pandora Papers?
The International Consortium of Investigate Journalists publishes the Pandora papers. Every year, these papers reveal the multi-layered trust structures made by the rich, famous and notorious.
These structures include trusts structures for estate planning, loosely regulated for tax purposes but characterised by air-tight secrecy laws.
Publicly, these trusts aim for genuine purposes, but their fundamental objective is two-fold, showed with scrutiny of papers.
The first fold ensures distancing real identities for making it impossible for tax authorities to reach, whereas the second safeguard their cash, shareholdings, real estate, art, aircraft and yacht from creditors and law enforcers.
Other famed Papers are the Panama Papers, which dealt mainly with offshore entities set up by corporates or individuals.
In comparison, Panorama Papers investigation shows how they have created new ways after their nation has tightened screws with rising concerns of money laundering, tax evasion and terrorism funding.
Indian Names in The Pandora Paper Investigation
Being the highest database storage this time, it exposed around 380 Indians ringfencing their wealth and property through shadowy financial transactions and offshore tax havens.
The Indian Express, the Indian ICIJ’s Indian partner, mentioned famous persons like Sachin Tendulkar, Anil Ambani, Nirav Modi’s sister and Biocon promoter Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw’s husband in the Investigation.
The documents show that Tendulkar and their family members owned an offshore entity in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), liquidated in 2016.
