Pandora Papers: The Most Expansive Leak Of Tax Haven Files In History (Part 2)

Serbia

Minister of Finance Siniša Mali

The Pandora Papers show that Mali created two shell companies in the British Virgin Islands in 2011 and used the companies to purchase apartments.

He previously denied owning those companies.

In July 2011, Mali became a shareholder in Etham Invest & Finance Corp., which held shares in Erul 11 EOOD, a company that offers “holiday houses and villas on Bulgarian seacoast,” according to the leaked documents.

One month later, Mali created and became the shareholder of Brigham Holding and Finance Inc. The company owned shares in another Bulgarian company, Erma 11 EOOD. In August 2014, Mali transferred his shares in Brigham to a Bulgarian lawyer and resigned as director.

Mali was also director of Alessio Investments Ltd. in the BVI and Exetera Overseas SA in Panama, according to records.

Malta

Former minister and EU commissioner John Dalli

In 2006, Dalli set up Westmead Overseas Ltd. in the British Virgin Islands. Dalli’s two daughters replaced him as directors of the shell company in 2008, after he was appointed minister for social policy.

Dalli told ICIJ that he created the company to hold equity in a project that “never materialised, and the company was not used.” He declined to elaborate. He added that his daughters “exited” the company in 2009.

Public records reviewed by ICIJ and the Times of Malta show that Dalli didn’t disclose his interest in the BVI company to the Maltese Parliament,as recommended by the code of ethics for legislators. Dalli said he didn’t disclose the company because it was “inactive.”

Westmead Overseas was closed in 2013, according to BVI registry records.

France

Former Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Former IMF chief

Strauss-Kahn used a Morocco-based company, Parnasse International Sarlau, to take in millions of dollars in consulting fees from such clients as Rosneft (an oil company partly owned by the Russian state) and the Chinese aviation conglomerate HNA Group, according to leaked financial statements from 2016 and 2017. Much of his earnings were tax-free, the news site L’Obs reported.

In 2018, Strauss-Kahn set up another consulting firm, in the United Arab Emirates, after the tax exemptions for his Casablanca company expired, according to Le Monde and Premieres Lignes, ICIJ’s partners in France.

Strauss-Kahn created his UAE firm, Parnasse Global Ltd., with the help of offshore service provider SFM. According to the incorporation papers for Parnasse Global, its focus was on “security technology for private companies” in the Persian Gulf region.

Mozambique

Former Prime Minister Aires Ali

Leaked documents reveal that Ali worked with two firms to help obscure his connection to Stonelake Enterprises Ltd. in the Seychelles.

In September 2012, less than a month before Ali was dismissed as prime minister, he formed the shell company through a tax consultancy based in Switzerland. The consultancy worked with a Panama-based law firm, Alcogal, which provided the shareholder and directors of Stonelake Enterprises Ltd. By using “nominees,” Ali could shield his identity as the shell company’s owner.

Leaked records in the Pandora Papers do not state the company’s purpose.

In 2013, he and his daughter, Judite Tânia Baptista Ali, authorized the company to open a bank account with a Lisbon-based wealth management firm.

Mongolia

Former Prime Minister Martin Rushwaya

In April 2006, when Batbold was Mongolia’s trade minister, he created the Quantum Lake Trust in Guernsey, an island tax haven in the English Channel.

The trust owned the BVI shell company, Premier Edge Ltd. Batbold became the company’s first shareholder in 2005.

In 2006, Premier Edge Ltd bought two luxury apartments in the same London building for more than $8.8 million, according to public records.

In response to ICIJ’s questions, an adviser to Batbold said the former prime minister legally purchased and sold property and complied with Mongolian laws when owning and investing through offshore companies.

“Batbold made no secret of the fact that his family lived in the flats in London during the time when the family members studied and worked there, long before the alleged ‘illegal kickbacks from mining,’” said the adviser, who called those allegations false.

Uganda

Security minister Jim Muhwezi

Muhwezi owned and held shares in two shell companies.

In February 2015, Muhwezi became one of three shareholders of the British Virgin Islands company Audley Holdings Ltd. The company’s directors authorized it to manage bank accounts in Europe.

In 2015, an Israeli businessman sued Muhwezi’s co-shareholders in a Ugandan court, disputing the transfer of shares in a similarly-named company, Audley Ltd, which owns two casinos in Uganda. The lawsuit did not name Muhwezi, and the court later ruled to stop the share transfer. Audley Holding Ltd. is the holding company of Audley Ltd. in Uganda, a company shareholder told ICIJ media partner, The Daily Monitor.

Regulators closed Audley Holdings Ltd. in 2016 for failing to pay registration fees. But in 2018, the Panamanian law firm Alcogal, which set up the company, reported Audley Holdings and its shareholders, including Muhwezi, to BVI regulators in a suspicious activity report after a database search revealed the eleven-year-old embezzlement allegations against him. Alcogal told regulators it resigned as the BVI’s company’s registered agent.

Under BVI law, firms like Alcogal must keep records about their clients for five years after the business relationship ends. It’s unclear what, if any, due diligence Alcogal conducted before accepting Muhwezi as a client in 2015.

Alcogal said that it complies with requirements where it operates and “performs enhanced due diligence on a client who is determined to be a high-risk customer, regardless of the nature of the relationship or service.”

Muhwezi also owned Sukari Loma Investment Holdings Ltd, created in Cyprus in 2013 through the offshore provider SFM. The company provided “financial services,” Muhwezi wrote on a signed beneficial owner statement, adding that its funds came from “salary savings” and his hotel and radio stations. It was closed in 2015.

When contacted by an ICIJ reporter, Muhwezi said, “I don’t know what you are talking about and I can’t make any reply.”

Colombia

Former President César Gaviria

Leaked files show business dealings between companies created by Gaviria and his close relatives in Panama and the British Virgin Islands.

Gaviria and his brother Luis Fernando, former deputy minister of the environment and current rector of the public Technological University of Pereira, are listed in Pandora Papers and in corporate registry records as directors of MC2 Internacional SA, a Panamanian-registered company that has reported share capital of $600,000 since its 2010 founding. At its founding, several Panama-based shell companies served as its shareholders.

In 2006, the two brothers also founded MC2 Limitada, a natural-gas-distribution company registered in Bogota. Gaviria became its president in 2007 and owned 58% of its shares, according to corporate records. In 2010, a Panamanian company, MC2 Internacional, became the sole shareholder of the Colombian corporation. The latest registry documents show that the gas company is now named MC2 SAS ESP and owned by Gaviria and four corporations, including MC2 Internacional.

The leaked files also reveal that in 2012 the shareholders of Hutton Assets Ltd., which was a BVI firm created in 2001, were Gaviria’s brother Luis Fernando Gaviria and the former president’s children. Hutton Assets is the company about which El Espectador and Connectas reported in 2019 that César Gaviria was holding a majority stake. Hutton Assets has the same Bogota business address as MC2 SAS ESP. The Pandora Papers do not state its purpose.

César Gaviria did not respond to repeated requests for comment from ICIJ and its Colombian media partners, CONNECTAS and El Espectador. Gaviria’s brother Luis Fernando Gaviria declined to answer ICIJ’s questions. In an email, he repeated several times that “the confidentiality of the financial and tax information of Colombian citizens is protected by law.”

Simón Gaviria, son of the former president, said the kidnapping of his uncle Juan Carlos Gaviria and the kidnapping and murder of an aunt, Liliana Gaviria, drove the incorporation of Hutton Assets, “with the aim of providing financial security against future kidnappings” of Gaviria family members. In both cases, he said, the kidnappers demanded ransom. “I did not receive any type of economic benefit from the company, neither salaries nor dividends” Simón Gaviria told ICIJ. “The tax payments are in line with Colombian and origin legislations.”

Former president Andrés Pastrana

Andrés Pastrana and his wife became registered owners of the Panamanian company Vanguard Investment Inc. sometime before the end of 2016, according to the Pandora Papers.

Leaked documents from 2016 say the purpose of the Panamanian company was to own a U.S. bank account holding an estimated $600,000. Public records list so-called nominees, or stand-ins, in corporate positions. The company remained active as of 2021.

Andrés Pastrana told ICIJ and its Colombian media partners, CONNECTAS and El Espectador, that the couple had set up the Panamanian company in 2005 and that in 2016, the company’s shares were transferred to another company, Salatina Puyana y Cía S. en C. to comply with post-Panama Papers regulations. Salatina Puyana is a Colombian-registered company owned by the former president, his wife and his three children.

He said that before 2016, Panamanian law allowed the use of so-called bearer shares but that afterward, bearer shares, which can be owned anonymously “had to be converted into registered shares.”

Pastrana said the objective of the Panamanian company “was to make Colombian investments abroad” and that the assets were declared to Colombia’s central bank, the Banco de la República.

“Salatina Puyana y Cía. S. en C. has declared the assets held by the company Vanguard Investment Inc. including the bank account and its returns in investments,” Pastrana said.

Honduras

Former President Porfirio Lobo

The Pandora Papers reveal that Lobo set up three companies in Panama, two of which were created while he was president, with help from the law firm Alemán, Cordero, Galindo and Lee (also known as Alcogal). He set up Fandrow Investments SA in 2005, during the final weeks of his first presidential campaign and while he was the head of the Honduran National Congress. (He lost the presidential race by a narrow margin.)

Fandrow initially held only Lobo’s stock and real estate investments, but later became the owner of two companies that Lobo created in 2010, during the first year of his presidency. The three companies were suspended for nonpayment of fees to Panama’s corporate registry — one in 2019 and the other two in 2021.

Lobo told ICIJ media partner Contracorriente that he created the two companies — Foxearth Investments SA and Tyrell Overseas SA — in 2010, after receiving two $550,000 loans from a Panamanian bank, which he then used to buy two apartments in Tegucigalpa.

“The interest rate here [in Honduras] was 10% and there [in Panama] it was like 5% or 4%, and additionally here they charge taxes on the deposited funds and there they don’t,” Lobo said. “One looks for the opportunity, it is not that I am hiding anything, one seeks to place his assets to obtain some capital gain,” he added.

Lobo said that he doesn’t remember whether he specifically disclosed the Panamanian companies to the Honduran treasury when he held public office.

“I declared everything I had to declare to the Court of Accounts [Tribunal de Cuentas],” he said, but he added that he had nothing to declare that would be of interest to tax authorities.

“What did these companies have? Nothing. One does not declare a company, but the assets it has. If the company has assets, yes, but if it has no assets, they [the tax authorities] are not interested,” he claimed.

Files also show that Lobo’s wife, Rosa Elena Bonilla, owned a Panamanian company and that one of his children, Jorge Dmitrov, a congressman and former agriculture minister, filed paperwork with the offshore provider OMC to set up another Panamanian company, Inversiones Napoc SA, in 2015.

Bonilla’s lawyer said that Bonilla could not answer any questions due to health issues and that he could not respond to such questions, because he was not aware of her involvement in the Panamanian company, Portalegre Overseas SA.

Jorge Dimitrov told ICIJ that he knew nothing about Inversiones Napoc and declined to answer questions.

In 2016, Alcogal tried to transfer Lobo’s companies to OMC, but OMC was not listed as the registered agent in the Panamanian corporate registry until their suspension.

Porfirio Lobo explained in an interview with Contracorriente that after the publication of the Panama Papers, Alcogal decided that it would not serve as his companies’ registered agent. “When the Panama Papers were published, everyone became surly, no one wanted to deal with PEPs [politically exposed persons],” Lobo said.

El Salvador

Former President Alfredo Cristiani

The Pandora Papers reveal that Cristiani was the owner, co-owner, director or president of at least 15 offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands and Panama. The first was set up in 1992, while he was president. Records show that seven companies were active until at least 2018. Several members of his family were co-owners or officers of most of his companies.

From 2005 to 2009, Cristiani was a director of a Panamanian company, Pretoria Capital Corp., along with Mauricio Samayoa, a business partner. In 2014, prosecutors accused Samayoa and three Arena members of diverting $10 million in donations for victims of the country’s 2001 earthquakes to the party’s account at Banco Cuscatlán. At the time, Samayoa was head of the bank and Cristiani’s business partner. Cristiani was never implicated, and Samayoa died in 2015, but a civil case against Samayoa’s estate is pending.

In June 2008, another company in which Cristiani was a shareholder, Marmot Holdings, authorized a payment of $789,012 to Zermatt Trading, a firm that he and his family controlled. Both companies were registered in Panama. The files do not provide additional information about this payment.

Cristiani declined to answer ICIJ’s detailed questions. “He can only assure you that all of his business dealings and everything he has ever done have been in full compliance with the law,” a legal representative for Cristiani said.

Former President Francisco Flores

The Pandora Papers show that Francisco Flores was the beneficial owner of a pair of offshore companies, one created in Panama in 2005 and the other in the British Virgin Islands in 2006 after his presidency ended in 2004.

International Consultants In Trade and Competitiveness SA (ICTC) was registered in Panama in 2005. Representatives of the Panamanian law firm Alemán, Cordero, Galindo & Lee, or Alcogal, served as directors, which had the effect of concealing the company’s ownership. Leaked files show Flores visited Alcogal’s Panama headquarters in June 2012.

In 2015, the Salvadoran media outlet El Faro reported that Salvadoran financial authorities had found transfers of $874,485 from a bank account of ICTC’s at Multibank Inc. in Panama to an account owned by Flores at a different bank. The Pandora Papers show Flores owned an account at Multibank Inc. by November 2011.

Flores was also owner of International Consultants in Economic and Social Research Inc. (ICESR), created in the BVI in 2006. In May 2014, Alcogal sent a suspicious activity report to the BVI’s Financial Investigation Agency alerting it to Flores’s ownership of the company a few days after a Salvadoran judge issued an international arrest warrant against Flores in the Taiwanese donations case. At that point, Alcogal resigned as the registered agent of both ICTC and ICESR.

Juan José Daboub, Flores’ onetime finance minister and chief of staff, was listed as the legal representative of the Panamanian company, and he also appears in the leaked files as acting shareholder of the BVI firm. Daboub served as managing director of the World Bank from 2006 to 2010. In 2004, he and Flores founded the America Libre Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

In a pair of emails responding to ICIJ, Daboub wrote, “I voluntarily resigned from my participation in the entities [ICESR, ICTC and America Libre Institute] before joining the World Bank as managing director in July 2006, and I did so specifically because I was enrolling in the World Bank in that capacity.” Daboub asserted that everything required by the World Bank as part of its due diligence process for his appointment “was reported and provided in a timely way.”

This Panamanian law firm Alcogal assured the representatives of Francisco Flores that the real ownership of his offshore companies would not be publicly aired.

Paraguay

Former President Horacio Cartes

Leaked documents show that while Cartes was president of Paraguay, he and his family owned offshore companies with holdings valued at more than $1 million.

Cartes and his three children owned a company in Panama called Dominicana Acquisition SA. According to documents, the company had an apartment in Miami and a bank account in Paraguay’s Banco Amambay, now called Banco BASA, which is owned by Grupo Cartes. Horacio Cartes’ legal advisor told ICIJ that the company was used to buy a Miami property and said that the company never had bank accounts. The advisor said the company was currently inactive after having sold the real estate.

The legal representative defended the use of this corporate structure as a way “to streamline the sales process” and to facilitate the transfer of assets in the event of death. He added that “all the declarations required by law as well as the payment of taxes linked to his asset are in order”.

On the day that Dominicana was created in 2011, two companies were set up — Manantial Azul Development Corp. and Florale Business Corp. — which, documents show, were owned by Cartes’ sister, Maria Sarah.

According to the leaked documents, all three Cartes family companies were created to invest in real estate and to hold accounts in Banco BASA.

In July 2017, Cartes asked OMC Group to transfer Dominicana’s bearer shares, which don’t show the owner’s name on the certificate, to him and his three children “in order to comply” with transparency regulations that took effect in Panama in 2015.

Dominicana, Manantial Azul and Florale are currently suspended for nonpayment of fees to Panama’s corporate registry. Maria Sarah Cartes did not respond to ICIJ’s repeated request for comment.

Haiti

Former Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe

Before joining the government, Lamothe resigned from companies to avoid conflicts of interest, the Haitian news organization Le Nouvelliste reported in 2012. But leaked documents suggest that he maintained an ownership stake in some offshore ventures while in office, including three companies in the British Virgin Islands that he set up through offshore service provider Trident Trust from 2002 to 2008.

In 2010, Lamothe resigned as director of one of those companies, Lightfoot Ventures Ltd., but remained as beneficial owner. Trident Trust email correspondence describes Lightfoot Ventures as “one of the major telecommunications providers in Haiti … with offices in South Africa, the U.S. and a number of other countries.” The leaked files contain no details on any of his companies’ holdings.

Lamothe told ICIJ via email that the Haitian Senate’s investigation was a response to “a politically motivated complaint registered by a hard core opposition group.” He also said Haiti’s audit court had cleared him of any wrongdoing, but he declined to answer questions about his offshore companies.

Peru

Former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski

The Pandora Papers reveal new details about Dorado Asset Management Ltd., an offshore company that is the focus of corruption allegations against Kuczynski.

Kuczynski set up Dorado in the British Virgin Islands in 2004, while serving his second stint as Peru’s finance minister. He moved the company in 2014 from the BVI to Peru, where, according to court documents, it was active as recently as March 2019.

Kuczynski signed incorporation papers stating that the firm’s purpose was to provide financial advice and investment services, according to leaked records. But in 2018, a week before a second impeachment vote was set to happen, Kuczynski revealed that in 2006, he had sold his Lima home to Dorado for $695,000 to avoid paying U.S. taxes when he renounced his U.S. citizenship.

“I have to offload my property or I die poor,” he told a Peruvian congressional committee in closed session, according to leaked audio obtained by Reuters. “Why would we pay Uncle Sam and Mr. Trump a bunch of money that’s here in Peru?” His attorneys said the sale was legal.

Kuczynski also testified that one of his daughters controlled Dorado. The Pandora Papers do not contain information on the involvement of Kuczynski’s children in the company.

In 2019, Peruvian prosecutors revealed that the money Dorado paid Kuczynski for his house came from another company that Kuczynski owned, Westfield Capital Ltd., according to court records. Westfield Capital was the company that received “advisory fees” from Odebrecht while Kuczynski was finance minister.

The Peruvian government seized two of Kuczynski’s properties — though not the house where he is currently detained — in September 2019.

Panama

Former President Juan Carlos Varela

The Pandora Papers identify Varela as one of the owners of VHS Capital Ltd., a company registered in the British Virgin Islands. Alcogal helped set up the company, and Varela, his father, his brother, and other associates, including two executives of a Panamanian bank, became owners and directors in 2001. Varela remained a director until April 2014, when Alcogal records show that he resigned from the board.

According to those records, VHS owned shares of another BVI company, Western Real Estate Ltd. Varela was a director and vice president of that company. He served on the company’s board from 2001 until 2012, when he resigned from those positions. After Varela’s resignation, another BVI company, Arak Holdings Ltd., merged with Western Real Estate. The documents do not contain information about Arak Holdings.

Three months into Varela’s presidency, leaked documents show, Alcogal conducted a due diligence review of VHS. The review referenced allegations made in April 2014 that Varela’s presidential campaign was funded in part by laundered money from illegal gambling operations. Varela’s campaign had denied those allegations, which were based on media publications rather than any inquiry by authorities, and in its review, Alcogal concluded that those reports did not require further investigation.

Public records from BVI financial authorities show that VHS remains active. Varela confirmed to ICIJ that he is still a shareholder of VHS.

He also said that he disclosed his interest in the company — which owns a farm in Panama — when he was running for president. At the time, Panamanian media reported that he had disclosed his VHS stake.

Former President Ricardo Martinelli

Pandora Papers’ records show that Martinelli was a director of Panagroup Ltd., a company registered by Alcogal in the Bahamas in 1997. The company was closed in 2010. In response to questions from ICIJ, Martinelli said that Panagroup was a holding company for a bank and that he had minimal participation, owning 1% of the shares. Both Martinelli and Alcogal said that Martinelli wasn’t a client of the firm.

The records also show that Alcogal was the registered agent for three offshore companies owned by Mizrachi, Martinelli’s brother-in-law, including Caribbean Holding, which had allegedly been used to pay for the Pegasus spyware, according to news reports. In 2015, Alcogal filed a Suspicious Activity Report to the British Virgin Island (BVI) financial authorities after the Pegasus spyware story was reported. Alcogal resigned as registered agent of Caribbean Holding. Caribbean Holdings is now inactive.

Pandora Papers records show that Alcogal incorporated the companies Pachira Ltd. SA and Mengil International Ltd. in Belize, at the request of Banca Privada d’Andorra — Pachira in 2012 and Mengil in 2013– and moved their registration to Panama in 2014. In 2016, Alcogal filed Suspicious Activity Reports to the Panamanian authorities after news outlets reported that a former Odebrecht executive confessed the companies were used to pay bribes to one of Martinelli’s sons in exchange for public contracts.

Neither of Martinelli’s sons appears in leaked documents related to Pachira or Mengil. In a 2017 letter to authorities, Alcogal said it didn’t have information about the companies’ beneficial owners. Internal Alcogal memos say the firm had assumed the real owners were people who held power of attorney over the companies.

In his response to ICIJ, Martinelli denied any relationship to Pachira and Mengil. “I don’t have information on payments made by or to anybody except myself,” he said. About the two people who held power of attorney to operate the companies, which news reports say authorities later alleged were acting as frontmen, Martinelli confirmed

Former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares

Leaked files expose ties between Ernesto Pérez Balladares and three offshore companies in which he played a direct role.

Two of those companies — Berkland Investments Ltd. and Barlock Investments Ltd. — were created while he was president.

Pérez Balladares was an authorized signatory for a bank account owned by Berkland Investments. Berkland, registered in the British Virgin Islands, was active between 1995 and 2004.

In November 2003, Banco General informed Pérez Balladares that it had frozen $4 million in the bank account of Berkland Investments at the direction of Panamanian prosecutors investigating the bribery allegations.

Two weeks before the freeze order, Berkland Investments transferred $850,000 to another BVI-registered company, Luntrel Investments Ltd., which was set up in 2002. Pérez Balladares’s three daughters were the owners of Luntrel.

Luntrel Investments contributed $50,000 to Pérez Balladares’ 2018 bid to be his party’s presidential candidate, according to La Prensa.

A company registered in Belize, Bradeton Investments Ltd., was the trustee of 50,000 shares of Berkland. This company was set up in June of 1999, six weeks before Pérez Balladares’s presidential term ended. One of his three daughters owned Bradeton.

The BVI company Barlock Investments was registered in 1998. Leaked files show that Pérez Balladares’ wife was its owner.

Seaside Foundation was a shareholder of Barlock Investments and Luntrel Investments, among other companies.

Seaside Foundation is a Panamanian private interest foundation that was created in 2003. Such foundations provide confidentiality for their beneficiaries, and any income generated by their assets — bank accounts, investments or real estate — is not taxed.

Pérez Balladares was the foundation’s protector, a role that would allow him to make decisions about how its assets were distributed, among other things. His three daughters are its beneficiaries.

Leaked files show that Seaside Foundation owned bank accounts in several jurisdictions, including Panama and the Bahamas.

Brasil

Minister of the Economy Paulo Guedes

The Pandora Papers reveal that Guedes has been one of the shareholders and directors of Dreadnoughts International Group, a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands in 2014. Guedes set up the company with the help of Trident Trust. The leaked files list his daughter as a joint shareholder and co-director. In 2015, Guedes added his wife as a shareholder.

Dreadnoughts was active in the British Virgin Islands as of August 2021. It is unclear from company records whether Guedes still has a role in the company.

A spokesperson for Guedes’s office told ICIJ that he declared his ownership of Dreadnoughts to tax authorities and withdrew from private investment activity upon taking office in order to comply with Brazilian law.

Hong Kong

Former Chief Executive CY Leung

Leaked records show that Leung used shell companies to own shares in EuroAsia Properties, a DTZ subsidiary operating in Japan. The records show that in late 2015, one of those shell companies transferred its stake in EuroAsia Properties, valued at $302,500, to DTZ. The transfer occurred while Leung was under investigation by the anti-corruption agency. It is not clear whether he was compensated for disposing of the shares.

In April 2017, while still Hong Kong’s top leader, Leung was listed as the owner of two British Virgin Islands companies, Wintrack Worldwide and Ace Link Property Ltd., the company that had held the stake in EuroAsia Properties. According to BVI registry documents, both companies were still active in November 2020.

Former Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa

In 2017, the Tung brothers bought Rockington Ltd., a company registered in the British Virgin Islands, to open a bank account holding for $1 million in “liquid funds,” according to leaked files. The application form noted Tung Chee-hwa’s political position.

The company is one of nearly 30 offshore companies that the Tungs have registered in jurisdictions such as the BVI and Nevis, another Caribbean island. Some of those companies were created for the shipping business, according to an ICIJ review of leaked files and Orient Overseas company records.

China

Delegate, Henan province Qiya Feng

In 2016, Feng set up a company in the British Virgin Islands called Linkhigh Trading Ltd. with the purpose of investing in U.S. stocks. The company’s assets, valued at $2 million, came from Feng’s real estate business, according to incorporation documents.

At the time her company was incorporated, Feng was a client of the Credit Suisse bank, which provided a reference for her, reporting that “the transactions executed through us have not given rise to any complaints whatsoever.” In internal emails, an employee of offshore provider Trident Trust noted that Feng is a politically exposed person and therefore required further due diligence.

Linkhigh Trading is registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, but SEC records show that it is not active.

Pakistan

Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin

Tarin holds one offshore company, Triperna Inc., while three of his family members hold three others named Hamra Inc., Moonen Inc. and Seafex Inc. All four companies were registered in the Seychelles in 2014 to hold investments, according to the Pandora Papers. The records of all four companies are maintained by Tariq Fawad Malik, a financial consultant based in Dubai, who received company records and managed correspondence. According to Malik, the companies were set up as part of the Tarin family’s intended investment in a bank with a Saudi business. Malik told the ICIJ that, “as a mandatory prerequisite by [the] regulator, we engaged with the Central Bank of Pakistan to obtain their ’in-principle’ approval for the said strategic investment.” The deal didn’t proceed.

Tarin did not respond to ICIJ’s repeated request for comment. In a statement issued on the day of the Pandora Papers’ publication, Tarin said, “The off-shore companies mentioned were incorporated as part of the fund raising process for my Bank.”

Minister for Water Resources Moonis Elahi

The Pandora Papers reveal that in 2016, Moonis Elahi became a client of the Singapore-based offshore service provider, Asiaciti, hoping to invest $5.6 million in proceeds from an alleged loan scandal into a trust. When the offshore provider notified him of its obligation to report the investment to Pakistan tax authorities, Elahi called Asiaciti, raising “concerns” about the reporting requirements and deciding to terminate the trust. According to the leaked document, Elahi told Asiaciti that he would instead hold the investments in a U.K.-registered trust in his wife’s name, who as a U.K. tax resident, would not be subject to the same disclosure requirements. Elahi did not respond to ICIJ’s repeated requests for comment.

On the publication day of the Pandora Papers investigation, a spokesperson for the Elahi family told ICIJ partners that, “due to political victimisation misleading interpretations and data have been circulated in files for nefarious reasons. ” He added that the assets of the family “are declared as per applicable law.”

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