Pandora Papers (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

Transcript

[Music] Washington DC late 2019 the international Consortium of investigative journalists began receiving a trove of leaked documents in all nearly 12 million confidential Financial files from firms that set up shell companies and offshore accounts for clients seeking to keep their wealth in the shadows the leaked records are called the Pandora papers and they expose a financial system that Shields the deals and assets of some of the world's richest and most powerful people we arrived at the conclusion pretty quickly that this was going to be bombshell material bank accounts of politicians that showed tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets that had never been publicly associated with these politicians or public figures [Music] before connect owners over the past two years journalists from 15 news organizations including Frontline have been examining the leaked documents emails spreadsheets contracts hi I'm zinsky I'm based in Toronto Canada and I'm from Bosnia from Chile I am based in Washington DC in an online meeting Frontline producers Evan Williams and James Oliver joined other journalists working on the story to discuss where the reporting was leading looking at it there seems to be a lot of Russians and there are a lot of Russians there are a lot of people from the Putin's Inner Circle that meeting is the starting gun that sets hundreds of journalists off around the globe within 12 or 24 hours you have reporters from the Philippines to Israel to Brazil who are announcing that they've found offshore secretive deals related to finance ministers or their transport minister or billionaires from their country and see who are the owners of in the documents the reporters were tracing how billions of dollars were being hidden from tax author ities criminal investigators creditors and the public hey Greg early on we began talking to Greg Miller of the Washington post about what he was Finding they're all kind of Windows into bigger stories that you've been covering for a long time and then you see wow there's more to that story than I than I was capable of seeing or understanding previously and you have to build it out with material outside the files around this time a report surfaced on a Russian investigative website about a woman named spana kvan it was a story about a woman from St Petersburg who had become mysteriously extremely wealthy this very detailed account they connected her to the Russian President Vladimir Putin their story alleged that she had a secret relationship with Vladimir Putin and that they had in fact perhaps even had a child in around in or around 2003 journalists from the ICI collaboration searched for the names F Lana caran and they found it the files showed her listed as the beneficial owner of a company based in the British Virgin Islands it was called Brockville development the documents surrounding that shell company indicate that it was created to hold property and then it indicates that that property is located in Monaco we traveled with Miller to Monaco to find out more on the Mediterranean Sea Monaco is a low tax principality popular with wealthy people from around the world Miller and two other reporters were here trying to flush out cag's Holdings and her connections to Putin yorg Schmidt is an investigative reporter from Germany's sudo ziton Luke Harding is from Britain's Guardian newspaper and has reported on Putin's Inner Circle I kind of know these guys I spent four years in Moscow as the Guardians buau Chief there um and one thing I do know about them is they're very secretive especially when it comes to money but also they're rather paranoid we're here for what I think is one of the most important stories and one of the most fascinating stories in the Pandora papers what the reporters were finding in the leaked documents was yielding fresh evidence of how those close to Putin like granogi were amassing hidden fortunes abroad what's happening is that Putin and his friends his kind of inner circle particularly friends from St Petersburg have become extremely rich um mainly on the back of State Resort ources oil gas um things like that and that they've created these colossal um offshore structures where their assets are being hidden and also that it's being done with help from the West it's being done by an army of accountants lawyers company formation agents in this tax Haven and other places in the case of cranek a month after her child was born the shell company Brockville was formed and later purchased an apartment here here Luke Harding trolled through the property records and found the address which showed that Sedana Putin's close friend actually owned a rather nice flat in the marina just opposite us which she had bought for €3.6 million in 2003 5 months after she gave birth to to Putin's alleged daughter the journalists went to the apartment in the prestigious Monte car Star Complex a woman who answered the door said no one named spana cranek lived there San cranek did not respond to repeated requests for comment the investigative website proct has estimated her assets in Russia alone are worth around $100 [Music] million she was suddenly going a bit like Cinderella from being a cleaner in a store to having the lifestyle of a princess with properties in Moscow and St Petersburg where she's from in SOI on the Black Sea a share in a bank closely associated with the Putin regime called Bank Ria and I discovered a secret flat in Monaco nothing in the leaked documents directly linked cranek to Putin the Russian president has long-faced claims that he has helped enrich his inner circle and used them to hide in his own wealth allegations he and the Kremlin deny but in the Trove of leaked files there was something that tied konek and others close to Putin together they all had used the same Financial firm Moors Roland in Monaco this comp here in Monaco has done a lot of work for people who are very close to Vladimir Putin this company moris Roland shows up in the documents as one of the companies that work with Putin allies to set up shell companies one of those Putin allies found in the documents is oil Trader Gennady timchenko he's a close associate of President Putin and has been accused of using his connections to a mass an oil trading Fortune estimated at $20 billion as with cranek mors Roland Monaco helped timchenko by setting up shell companies used by yacht and jets and it also assisted in setting up a company that would become part of his oil trading empire the documents also show that Moors Rand Monaco set up a shell company for Peter colan a childhood friend of Putin who since died he was suspected Ed by us officials and others of holding hundreds of millions of dollars in assets for him one of the biggest questions about Russia is how does it work for Vladimir Putin there's widely held suspicion among Financial experts and US officials and Western intelligence officials that he uses something something called wallets basically individuals who he trusts the supposition is that they are then enlisted to set up accounts holding money that really belonged to him a law firm representing Gennady timchenko said that he has always acted entirely lawfully throughout his career and business dealings Moes Rand Monaco officials declined to comment on the firm's work for clients citing confidentiality they said in a statement that at all times it complied with its obligations and applicable laws and regulations [Music] unlike with Putin in many cases the leaked documents were leading directly to world leaders themselves yeah lovely okay there we go with ICI reporter will Fitz Gibbon we started examining these figures we're certainly seeing powerful people for various reasons maybe for tax purposes maybe simply to hide the fact that they're multi multi multi multi-millionaires from their own citizens who often live in poverty in all there were more than 300 public officials around the world and 14 cases involving current leaders of countries very quickly we established a patent which was that hundreds and hundreds of politicians from heads of state to ministers to diplomats were active participants and beneficiaries of this offshore system and I remember Dawning upon me quite suddenly how on Earth can we hope to reform the offshore system as so many experts say needs to be done if all of these politicians are benefiting from it one leader was the owner of more than 30 shell companies in this document he is referred to only as you know who this document shows 16 of the companies that he owned all registered in offshore tax Havens the owner Abdullah Al Sharif alhussein the address listed radan Palace Aman he is the king of Jordan who has championed government transparency the king and Jordan have been an important American Ally for a long long time has more or less gone along with the United States on its Adventures good and bad in the Middle East a country that the United States has compensated to the tune of billions of dollars for its role the leaked documents showed that while his country was undergoing increasing economic hardship he was making secretive Financial transactions using a network of offshore accounts when somebody has that many shell companies it raises a lot of questions right away what are they for how is he using them that's where the hunt begins one of the companies was called Nabisco Holdings Nabisco was listed in the Pandora papers as a company belonging to the king but it didn't have any extra information what we were able to do though was to obtain land records from Los Angeles and confirm that a company with that same name was the owner of a $33.3 million luxury Mansion overlooking the ocean in Malibu and then we realized actually that there were two neighboring houses right next door also owned by the King of Jordan through different shell companies based on the documents the companies tied to the king spent nearly $70 million on these [Music] homes the search for properties owned by the king's companies also led to Washington DC where records show he spent nearly $10 million on Luxury Condominiums in Georgetown this is not illegal in any way and our reporting doesn't suggest that that's the case I think it's very important for a few reasons let's remember that the first property here was bought in 2012 for about $6.5 million that's the same year in Jordan that thousands of people had poured onto the streets to complain about poverty and Corruption because it puts to sh relief the contrast between million doll luxury here and the reality of average jordanians who live under this king and the King's Holdings stretched even farther in London with Greg Miller we used information from the leaked documents and property records to find addresses in the city tied to King [Music] Abdullah so that line up with where we are here a 2 million pound property purchased by kir Enterprises aka the King of Jordan in all the documents show the King has spent millions of dollars over the past decade through shell companies for Real Estate here including 13 million for a collection of apartments near Buckingham Palace in the end our investigation revealed that the king had owned more than 30 shell companies and had used those companies to buy property around the world worth more than $16 million the king is a king he's expected to have money but I think what interested so many of us reporters about his secret property Empire was precisely that it was secret the US provides Jordan with more than a billion dollars in Aid every year in response to questions America officials said the funding is tracked carefully and they've seen no evidence it has been misused in a statement the Jordanian royal family said some of the facts were being distorted and exaggerated but they did not specify what they also said there was nothing unusual or improper with the king's transactions and that the homes are for both official and private visits as for the secrecy the statement said it's for the privacy and safety of the king and his family thank you for joining everyone good to see you all here in early 2021 the ICI held an online meeting to discuss a new and surprising aspect of the reporting coming from the documents we finally have some data about the kinds of people who are using secretive trusts that are in the United States they were focusing on evidence that wealthy people from abroad were using trusts to hide money in the US interesting if you find that take a look it may be an interesting lead we began working with Washington Post reporter Debbie sener to investigate how you doing it's a little bit overwhelming right now and it and it it's getting a little bit easier for me is as the days go on and I I become more familiar with the documents one of the things that is surprised me most this early on and I'm just starting and still working at it is you know I always thought this was an issue offshore you know this was an issue somewhere else in the Caribbean somewhere in an island uh perhaps and what I'm finding and what I'm focusing on at this early stage is how the US and specifically some states in the US that you wouldn't expect are really helping to um really you know becoming goto destinations the US has long condemned offshore Financial Havens but the document showed how people have been Sheltering their money in States promising protection and secrecy that rival traditional offshore locations will Fitz Gibbon and Debbie seniper noticed in the documents that one state stood out South Dakota I'd heard rumors of South Dakota being an increasingly aggressive tax Haven and attracting billionaires and millionaires from around the world I simply just started to dig into the data searching South Dakota into our search box in these 12 million records that we had and pretty quickly I got a sense that there was something there that I wanted to explore we early on found a document in the leaked records that showed that there were a number of trusts established in South Dakota and of course our question was who's establishing trusts in South Dakota you know what why would someone from 2,000 miles away turn to sou Fall South Dakota and we just really wanted to answer that question the reporters found clients from 41 countries had set up more than 200 trusts in South Dakota and other states there is no evidence in the documents that the trusts held criminal proceeds which they are barred from knowingly accepting but nearly 30 of them held assets connected to people or companies accused of fraud bribery or human rights abuses if you set up a trust in South Dakota those records can be sealed by a court so that's an incredibly strong incentive for someone whose primary objective is to make sure that his or her assets are not discoverable by a reporter or their tax Authority back [Music] home this document shows a South Dakota trust for Colombian textile magnet Jose du anbar Amar had a well publicized past before setting up the trust he had forfeited 20 million to the US government as part of a settlement of a drug money laundering case he died in 2020 the documents also show three trusts in South Dakota created for Ecuadorian Bankers William and Roberto isas the brothers had been convicted in absentia in Ecuador for embezzling government bailout money from their failed Bank the trusts owned several shell companies in the British Virgin Islands one held a family inheritance valued at5 to1 million the Isaiah's conviction was later overturned amid controversy neither of the brothers responded to requests for comment about the [Music] trusts what we found so far is that roughly 20 high-profile politicians and industrialists from countries ranging from Ecuador to India who have been in trouble in their home countries for everything from Human Rights abuses to banking fraud move their assets and wealth into the United States um under the noses of investigators we're talking about people who have been in all kinds of trouble accused of some very bad things who are using this system to hide their wealth not only uh potentially from the governments and the taxing authorities in in their home countries but also from the victims in their home countries who might have a claim to some of that money two companies are prominent in the leaked documents Trident which created ambar's trust and the South Dakota trust company which was used by the aias brothers neither firm would answer questions about their clients but said in statements they follow applicable regulations and perform extensive due diligence we realized that over the years a whole industry of Banking and Trust leaders had pushed legislation at the state level to make South Dakota into this worldwide destination for foreign wealth and they did this by passing a number of laws that really appeared incremental at the time but they were huge in this industry the center of this industry is sou [Music] Falls over the past decade the amount of money and trusts in the state has more than quadrupled to $360 billion fueled by dozens of laws that help protect trust from creditors taxing authorities and foreign governments I was struck when I came in from the airport last night that the the whole skyline of sou Falls so to speak is Banks and trusts okay we'll give this a shot we came here with sen zipper and Fitz Gibbon to meet a former lawmaker who has raised concerns about how the state has made itself such a welcoming place for the trust industry part of what's troubled me about this trust industry frankly is that they have basically captured the state legislature and can essentially pass whatever they they put together I think they are trying to design a system that works well and is safe however I also know that there are people in the world who are just as smart and would take advantage of you if they thought they could and that's my concern is that we get ourselves set up where all of a sudden uh you know we become like a Switzerland or like a Panama I would be concerned about reputational damage to the state the South Dakota division of banking said in a statement it routinely audits trust companies and that the firms are required to do intensive vetting with extra attention to foreign clients but the leaked documents have heightened concerns about the secrecy of trusts and the limitations of existing state and federal oversight and regulation we already found evidence of people credibly accused of crimes and other wrongdoing you know breaching the US Financial system what about terrorists what about drug traffickers what about dictators or their Associates we just don't know because though we had almost 12 million documents that's just this little tiny glimpse into this thriving industry in the United States over the past month journalists from around the world have published hundreds of stories stemming from the leaked Pandora papers we have never seen this many heads of state ministers politicians and Global billionaires in one location before my interest as a journalist is to connect these stories to contemporary issues in our society and the ills of our society and many experts say that the secret Financial system is a part of that and they're the kind of stories I'm hoping that we can tell [Music] [Music] for more on this and other Frontline programs visit our website at pbs.org [Music] Frontline FR Minds Pandora papers and massacre in El Salvador are available on Amazon Prime video oh [Music]