The Paradise Papers are a set of over 13.4 million confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investments that were leaked to the German journalists Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer of the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. The newspaper shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and a network of more than 380 journalists. Some of the details were first made public on 5 November 2017, and further stories continue to appear. The documents originate from the law firm Appleby, the corporate services providers Estera and Asiaciti Trust, and business registries in nineteen tax jurisdictions. They contain the names of more than 120,000 people and companies. Among those whose financial affairs are mentioned are, separately, AIG, the then Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth II, the president of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos, and the US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. The release of the documents resulted in scandal, litigation, and the loss of positions for a number of those named, as well as in legal action against the media outlets and journalists who published the papers.
Background On 20 October 2017, an anonymous Reddit user hinted at the existence of the Paradise Papers. Later that month, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) approached the offshore law firm Appleby with allegations of wrongdoing. Appleby stated that some of its data had been stolen in a cyberattack the previous year and denied the allegations made by the ICIJ. After media outlets began reporting on the documents, the firm said there was "no evidence of wrongdoing", adding that it was "a law firm which advises clients on legitimate and lawful ways to conduct their business" and that it did "not tolerate illegal behaviour". Appleby also asserted that the firm "was not the subject of a leak but of a serious criminal act" and that "this was an illegal computer hack". It added: "Our systems were accessed by an intruder who deployed the tactics of a professional hacker." The documents were acquired by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which had also obtained the Panama Papers in 2016. According to the BBC, the name "Paradise Papers" reflects "the idyllic profiles of many of the offshore jurisdictions whose workings are unveiled"—the so‑called tax havens, or "tax paradises". The data breach comprises some 13.4 million documents—totalling approximately 1.4 terabytes—drawn from two offshore service providers, Appleby and Asiaciti Trust, and from the company registers of nineteen tax havens. Journalists from Süddeutsche Zeitung contacted the ICIJ, which has been investigating the documents together with 100 media partners. The consortium made the data available to these partners using Neo4j, a graph‑database platform designed for connected data, and Linkurious, graph‑visualisation software. This enabled journalists across the globe to work together on the investigation. The documents were released by the consortium on 5 November 2017.
Companies named According to the papers, Allergan (the manufacturer of Botox), Allianz, Apple Inc., Facebook, Global Vantedge, McDonald's, Nike, Inc., Siemens, The Walt Disney Company, Twitter, Uber, Walmart, and Yahoo! are among the corporations that own offshore companies. According to The Express Tribune, "Apple, Nike, and Facebook avoided billions of dollars in tax using offshore companies." Among the Indian companies listed in the papers are Apollo Tyres, the Essel Group, D S Construction, Emaar MGF, GMR Group, Havells, Hinduja Group, the Hiranandani Group, Jindal Steel, the Sun Group and Videocon.
Apple
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