What happens when 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries come together for the world’s biggest journalistic collaboration? A freakin Pandora’s box opens🤯
Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few days, you would know that Pandora papers have been making headlines everywhere. This investigation has implicated 35 world leaders, 300 public officials, 100 billionaires, rockstars, sportspeople and other business leaders from 90 countries for having unaccounted offshore properties, evading taxes and more😧
Sounds pretty sensational, doesn’t it? Let’s investigate🕵️♂️
What sent the World into Shocks? 2021 Pandora’s Box🎁
What’s the tea?☕
The basis of this investigation was the 2.94 terabytes worth of data leak of 14 offshore service providers.
We know what you are thinking…what do offshore services even mean?🤔
These are basically complex networks of companies that are set up across borders in places that are shrouded in secrecy. These places usually have no or very superficial tax regulations making them ideal for buying...and hiding assets maybe?🤷
So anyone who has an off-shore property is automatically guilty? Not at all. Loopholes allow you to own properties in tax havens. But hiding them in order to avoid paying taxes? Yeah! That definitely is not right. Moreover, over the years, offshore properties have been linked with money laundering, criminal activities and so these assets usually have a bad rep.
If you are curious about knowing what are some of the tax havens are, we will share the deets with you. The Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Switzerland, Singapore are some of the most talked-about ones. But hey don’t get inspired to do something wrong, coz we all know, karma is a …
Who all have been found guilty?
Well, the list is a long one but we will give you some of the juicy bits
- Czech Republic’s billionaire Prime Minister has allegedly bought A $22 million chateau in the French Riviera
- The King of Jordan is said to have bought Three beachfront mansions in Malibu via offshore companies
- Leaders of Kenya allegedly own millions of dollars worth of property as well as cash
And guess what many of these leaders including the PM of the Czech Republic have actually raised their voices against corruption in their own countries….ah! The irony
So what’s next?
As of now no one is being handcuffed and put in jail. However, many countries like Britain, Australia, India had said that they will conduct proper investigations on the basis of these claims🔍
Some of the ones who have been implicated shared their two cents, for example, while the Czech PM has claimed that he has done nothing wrong or illegal, the Jordan royal family stated that those assets were bought with their personal wealth and not taxpayers money💰
Is it fair to make the blanket statement that all who have been implicated in the papers are guilty? But at the end of the day, there is no smoke without fire. What we can’t deny is the presence of an unholy nexus between wealth, tax, evasion, and corruption. And since this nexus is believed to be so well protected and shrouded in secrecy, it becomes difficult for the government to trace it.
How will things unfold from here? Only time will tell. Till then we are listening to money makes the world go around in a loop💸
What’s up this week?
- Mark Zuckerberg’s personal wealth fell by over $6 billion in a few hours post Facebook outage
- Price of Domestic LPG has been hiked by INR 15
- World’s first malaria vaccine has been approved by WHO
- Ola has acquired geospatial services provider GeoSpoc to build the next generation of location technology
Retrospective Taxes Vs Companies- Crazy Tax Story
The showdown between Retrospective Taxes and companies may finally come to an end
But the companies have to fulfil a rather long checklist of conditions before govt. proceeds with dispute settlement⚖️
So what are these conditions? Let’s hear it from them
💭 Byte of The Day
Looks like Licious’ chicken finally gave its golden egg😉
Licious has become India’s first D2C unicorn
