Massive Leak of Data Reveals New Money-Hiding Secrets of Superrich — and This is ‘Only the Beginning’
DESPARDES — “There’s much more work to be done with this data,” Claire Peters, executive director of the Pursuance Project, told Unicorn Riot on Tuesday. “We’re only at the beginning.”
Behind the latest outing of superichs’ worldwide stashed-aways (not necessarily illegal) is dumping of a 100 GB-sized trove of data, documents, and recorded phone calls showing how a British company called “Formations House” works to hide money for the superrich.
The first stories started dropping at midnight on Wednesday, by journalists all over the world.
An unintended sequel though to “Panama Papers” reported first in April 2016, the latest reporting is being done under the name “29 Leaks,” a reference to Formations House’s original address at 29 Harley Street in London.
‘The Panama Papers’ anonymous whistleblower while broking silence had explained the reasons behind dumping 11.5m files from the offices of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca in the public domain.
Fast forward 2019: Pursuance Project has led a team of reporters from around the world to uncover and detail the information stored in the huge, roughly 100 GB-sized trove of data of the “Formations House”.
Reporting from the data will have an international scope, said Unicorn Riot.
The use of Formations House-managed companies to move money around between offshore and private banking centers like Luxembourg and other parts of the world is among the main themes of this dataset.
Dubbed “29 Leaks”, other documents included in the dataset are expected to be covered in detail showing how the African nation of The Gambia is commonly used to create banks and insurance companies on paper for wealthy people in other continents.
On Tuesday The Times of London showed how Formations House sets up shell companies for its clients.
McClatchy reported on how Formations House helped Iran’s national oil company avoid sanctions. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project detailed schemes across Eastern Europe.
