The pertinent question is what foreign musician Shakira and Peter Obi, ex-governor of Anambra state, have in common.
In what is one of the most scandalous leaks of the century, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a group of journalists with a base in Washington DC, have in a precedented move exposed information implicating 35 world leaders, 330 politicians, significant personalities, celebrities and convicts from over 90 countries.
Shakira and Peter Obi, the former a global musician, the latter an ex-Governor of Anambra State, and other notable personalities have been mentioned in the investigation The leak has been termed the Pandora papers investigation (an allegory to the mythical pandora box is stark). Governors, a pastor and past leaders, are not left out in the revealing.
The investigation pertained to almost 12million financial documents originating from 14 offshore financial service providers that managed a home for tax evasion for the global bourgeoisie. The reveal exposed the real owners of 29000 shell companies with various nominee directors to act as fronts.
The Pandora papers listed Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and some of his family members as benefitting from offshore accounts with assets of over $30million, the Columbian singer Shakira, German supermodel Claudia Schiffer, former Indian cricket captain Sachin Tendulkar and a torrential list of billionaires, political leaders and other public personalities as being beneficiaries of offshore accounts in tax havens. A few of these personalities have commented on the issue, with Shakira’s lawyer stating that the singer previously declared her companies and correctly pay taxes.
Peter Obi, a former Vice Presidential candidate is reported to have incorporated an offshore company named after his daughter, Gabriella. Premium Times reported that in 2010 he enlisted a Monaco-based foreign company, Acces International, to create nominee directors (Antony Janse Van Vuuren and Lance Lawson) for Gabriella Investments Limited.
When called to comment, Premium Times reported Peter Obi’s statement, “I don’t declare what is owned with others. If my family owns something I won’t declare it. I didn’t declare anything I jointly owed with anyone.”
In exposing this scandal, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists distributed the information gleaned from the offshore service providers with 600 journalists from 150 media houses stemming from 117 countries, including the Premium Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the BBC and others. This move marks the most extensive journalism collaboration in history. The investigation took place over two years and involved documents spanning from a period of 5 decades.
The ICIJ is no stranger to ‘table shaking’ and has previously revealed the Luxleaks in 2014, the Panama papers investigation in 2016, the Paradise Papers in 2017 and the FinCen files in 2020. The pandora paper investigation is particularly striking because the culprits exposed exceed those of prior investigations.
Countries as Ghana, South Africa, Ecuador, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Chad, Gabon, Paraguay, Czech Republic, and the United States (South Dakota as a primary state) were not spared in the debacle. The investigations revealed that the primary beneficiaries of the exposed offshore accounts hail from Russia, the United Kingdom, Argentina, and China.
It is worthy to note that although the possession of offshore accounts is not illegal in many jurisdictions, the source of the funds may be questionable. After all, the covert tax evasion from the elite may give room to or encourage Money laundering, rampant looting of public funds and terrorism. It is cited that the enablers of the individuals in the investigations include law firms, accounting firms, and other corporate offices. Governments have apparently been complicit in the schemes or altogether turned a blind eye to the occurrences.
One can only wait to see if thorough investigations of all individual persons in complicit countries will be conducted.