Back in April 2016, the Panama Papers were a leak of 11.5 million documents. The papers detailed financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities.

Last month, the Pandora Papers were published.  These papers contained similar content on more companies and are the largest leak to date, coming from a much wider array of offshore providers than previous leaks: 14 in total.

The files contain details of secret deals and hidden assets of some of the world’s richest and most powerful people. The cache includes 11.9m files from companies hired by wealthy clients to create offshore structures and trusts in tax havens such as Panama, Dubai, Monaco, Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.

The Pandora papers reveal the inner workings of what is a shadow financial world, providing a rare window into the hidden operations of a global offshore economy that enables some of the world’s richest people to hide their wealth and in some cases pay little or no tax.

There are emails, memos, incorporation records, share certificates, compliance reports and complex diagrams showing labyrinthine corporate structures. Often, they allow the true owners of opaque shell companies to be identified for the first time.

Corporations everywhere are using shell companies and tax havens around the world to misuse intellectual property. We wrote about it in this story. The mainstream media however focused mainly on important, well-known individuals and their involvement in this practise. They only touched very lightly on the corporate side of the story.

The Future Shapers are investigating this practice in more detail and are looking for help. Interested in uncovering the murky details of the Panama, Paradise and Pandora papers? Join the Future Shapers for a deep dive into the ICIJ treasure trove of files and various intellectual property registers around the world and become part of a crowdsourced investigation!

Please contact us here for more information and to learn how you can get involved.