The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Gerard Ryle.
Remember those names, as they are about to rip open the world of offshore tax havens for all to see, and it isn't pretty. This is a story so huge it's tough to get your mind around it. As I was going to links to get information, their web site kept crashing, probably getting millions of hits.
It began several years ago when Gerard worked for the Sydney Morning Herald investigating a financial fraud case perpetuated by an Australian company Firepower International, and he followed a trail of leads to Hong Kong and other tax havens. In 2011 he moved to head the Center for Public Integrity and the ICIJ. One day, probably in late 2011 or early 2012 (he isn't saying, for reasons that will become clear) he received a computer hard drive with millions of documents (it came by mail in a plain brown envelope). The
total mass of data is reported to be 160 times larger than the trove of
State Department cables published by WikiLeaks in 2010. Somehow he had to analyze the mass of emails, Databases, Spreadsheets and images. He activated the Secrecy for Sale project and got assistance from hundreds of people around the world to clean, organize and analyze the data.
They are naming names and taking no prisoners in disclosing the movement of about $21 Trillion in tax havens around the world. There are 130,000 names, details of more than 122,000 offshore companies or trusts, and nearly 12,000 intermediaries (agents or "introducers"). By the way, that sum is about the GDP of US and China combined!
This will perhaps be the biggest story of the decade, maybe of the century. The people who control this $21 Trillion are not happy campers, they include Russian Gangsters, Drug Lords, major politicians, criminals, big bankers and just plain millionaires. I hope the person who provided the information never gets revealed. Here are some links to stories.
The Guardian - UK The Sydney Morning Herald The Toronto Star.
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