'Pandora Papers': Why is it so difficult to clamp down on tax evasion?

It is the biggest ever data leak exposing how the world's richest and most powerful keep their wealth offshore, hidden from the tax man. Journalists from around the world, including at DW News, have spent years sifting through this trove of data – and the results reveal a global offshore shadow economy inhabited by billionaires, celebrities, and political leaders. 

Paradise Papers leak reveals secrets of the world elite's hidden wealth

The project has been called the Paradise Papers. It reveals:

• Millions of pounds from the Queen’s private estate has been invested in a Cayman Islands fund – and some of her money went to a retailer accused of exploiting poor families and vulnerable people.
• Extensive offshore dealings by Donald Trump’s cabinet members, advisers and donors, including substantial payments from a firm co-owned by Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law to the shipping group of the US commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross.
• How Twitter and Facebook received hundreds of millions of dollars in investments that can be traced back to Russian state financial institutions.
• The tax-avoiding Cayman Islands trust managed by the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s chief moneyman.
• A previously unknown $450m offshore trust that has sheltered the wealth of Lord Ashcroft.
• Aggressive tax avoidance by multinational corporations, including Nike and Apple.
• How some of the biggest names in the film and TV industries protect their wealth with an array of offshore schemes.
• The billions in tax refunds by the Isle of Man and Malta to the owners of private jets and luxury yachts.
• The secret loan and alliance used by the London-listed multinational Glencorein its efforts to secure lucrative mining rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
• The complex offshore webs used by two Russian billionaires to buy stakes in Arsenal and Everton football clubs.

Panama: Yes, There's A Canal; For The Real Tourist It's Let's Play Hide The Cash

A storm is coming

By Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer

The interrogation room in which Iceland’s recent history was rewritten is sparse, furnished only with a table, some chairs, and a computer. A camera is fixed to the wall, and the frosted, double-glazed windows have completely blocked out the sound of the gale-force winds in Reykjavik’s Faxafloi Bay.

It was in this room that some of Iceland’s most powerful bankers, executives, and investors had to answer to special investigator Olaf Hauksson. A tall man with a heavy build, Haukkson has spent the past six years investigating the transactions that brought Iceland’s economy to its knees in October 2008.

It's ok because we, the great unwashed don't count or understand the need and motivation to hide vast wealth from the world's governments.  We, are the peasants living in a modern world believing we have a say in who governs us and life's outcomes. We don't as these documents prove.  Mass Delusion and we're all in.

Playing both sides

By Thomas Kistner, Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer, and Mauritius Much

FIFA the bastion of openness and transparency 

• Revealed: the $2bn offshore trail that leads to Vladimir Putin
• Iceland’s PM faces snap election over revelations
• What you need to know about the Panama Papers