Paradise Papers (2017)

The Paradise Papers are a set of 13.4 million electronic files that were leaked from an unknown source to the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. Afterwards, Süddeutsche Zeitung shared the leaked files with the Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) which collaborated with more than 380 journalists across the globe. Some details were made public on 5 November 2017

The Paradise Paper documents contain details of offshore investments. The documents contain emails, loan agreements and other forms of paperwork from the offshore legal firm Appleby, corporate service providers Estera and Asiacti,, as well as company registries from 19 tax jurisdictions.

On 20 October 2017, a now deleted Reddit account hinted at the existence of the papers, mentioning the word “Pandora” at the end of the post. The Following month, the ICIJ confronted and accused the offshore legal firm Appleby for its associations to the Paradise Papers.

Appleby announced that there was "no evidence of wrongdoing", and that "are unfounded and based on a lack of understanding of the legitimate and lawful structures used in the offshore sector."

On December 18 2017, Appleby pressed charges against the ICIJ's UK parters, being the BBC and the Guardian, in an attempt to find out about "what documents were taken and how many of their clients were affected."

The papers contain the names of over 120 000, with notable figures with financial affairs associated in the papers including, but not limited to, former Prime Ministers of Canada Jean Chrétien and Brian Mulroney, current King of the UK Prince Charles and the former Queen Elizabeth II, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, the Queen of Jordan Noor al-Hussein and former President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos.