Pandora Papers

The Pandora Papers are 11.9 million leaked documents with 2.9 terabytes of data that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published beginning on 3 October 2021. The leak exposed the secret offshore accounts of 35 world leaders, including current and former presidents, prime ministers, and heads of state as well as more than 100 business leaders, billionaires, and celebrities. The news organizations of the ICIJ described the document leak as their most expansive exposé of financial secrecy yet, containing documents, images, emails and spreadsheets from 14 financial service companies, in nations including Panama, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates. The size of the leak surpassed their previous release of the Panama Papers in 2016, which had 11.5 million confidential documents and 2.6 terabytes of data. The ICIJ has not named its source for the documents.

The ICIJ estimates that the total global amount of money held offshore (outside the country where the money was made) is between US$5.6 trillion and US$32 trillion.

In total, 35 current and former national leaders appear in the leak, alongside 400 public officials from nearly 100 countries and more than 100 billionaires. Some of the activities were legal according to the countries' respective tax laws. The majority of the files were dated from 1996 to 2020, with some older documents dating back to 1970. The data included 130 billionaires listed by Forbes, over 330 politicians, celebrities, members of royal families, and religious leaders.