guardian | Millions of internal records have leaked from Britain's offshore
financial industry, exposing for the first time the identities of
thousands of holders of anonymous wealth from around the world, from
presidents to plutocrats, the daughter of a notorious dictator and a
British millionaire accused of concealing assets from his ex-wife.
The leak of 2m emails and other documents, mainly from the offshore haven of the British Virgin Islands
(BVI), has the potential to cause a seismic shock worldwide to the
booming offshore trade, with a former chief economist at McKinsey
estimating that wealthy individuals may have as much as $32tn (£21tn)
stashed in overseas havens.
In France, Jean-Jacques Augier,
President François Hollande's campaign co-treasurer and close friend,
has been forced to publicly identify his Chinese business partner. It
emerges as Hollande is mired in financial scandal because his former
budget minister concealed a Swiss bank account for 20 years and
repeatedly lied about it.
In Mongolia, the country's former
finance minister and deputy speaker of its parliament says he may have
to resign from politics as a result of this investigation.
But the
two can now be named for the first time because of their use of
companies in offshore havens, particularly in the British Virgin
Islands, where owners' identities normally remain secret.
The names have been unearthed in a novel project by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists [ICIJ], in collaboration with the Guardian and other international media, who are jointly publishing their research results this week.
The
naming project may be extremely damaging for confidence among the
world's wealthiest people, no longer certain that the size of their
fortunes remains hidden from governments and from their neighbours.
