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“Not unusual nor improper”: Pandora Papers, leaders deny wrongdoing
Following the release of 12 million files exposing the dealings of the world’s elite, several world leaders say they’ve got nothing to hide.
Reports are calling the Pandora Papers the biggest leak in history with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Jordan’s King are among 35 current and former leaders who have links to the papers.
Jordan’s palace says it is “not unusual nor improper” that the nation’s King owns property abroad.
The papers state that the royal spent more than 100 million US dollars on building his property empire abroad throughout Britain and America.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin has questioned the validity of the leaked information with a spokesperson calling it “unsubstantiated” information.
“For now it is just not clear what this information is and what it is about… the Kremlin didn’t see any hidden wealth of Putin’s inner circle in there”.
Further to this, India officials said they will launch a formal investigation into the “data dump”, with Pakistani Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin along with several other leaders named in the documents to be investigated.
The Panama Papers successor
The Pandora Papers were released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) who are based in Washington DC in association with 140 media organisations.
As part of their investigation, more than 11.9 million records were acquired equating to around 2.94 terabytes of data.
Six hundred journalists were involved in the investigation.
It comes five years following the leak of the Panama Papers which exposed wealthy individuals hiding large sums of money from law enforcement.
ICIJ journalist, Scilla Alecci joined ticker earlier, saying the secretive nature of offshore accounts is dangerous, especially when used by politicians.
