The month of April, 2013, marked the beginning of one of the biggest financial leaks in history.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists had just released the first stories from a global collaborative project into the world of offshore money. The Tax Justice Network, an advocacy group, claims that a large part of the world’s wealth is tied up in the secret area of offshore.

For over two years, journalists from more than 50 countries have worked together to shed light on this issue.

And here’s some of what they found:

Close relatives of China’s top leaders, including President Xi Jinping and former Premier Wen Jiabao, are revealed to have held secretive offshore accounts in tax havens that helped shroud the wealth of the Communist elite . They are among nearly 22,000 offshore clients from mainland China and Hong Kong whose names appear in the files obtained by ICIJ.

One of Denmark’s largest banks, Jyske Bank, is exposed for advising clients to stash their assets offshore to avoid Danish taxes.

former Macedonian economics minister is is revealed as the man behind a network of offshore companies that ran one of Serbia’s largest manufacturers into ruin. The documents reveal the dark tale of how powerful insiders quietly cashed in on the transformation of Serbia’s formerly state-run economy following the fall of dictator Slobodan Milosevic.



The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on June 14 released the Offshore Leaks interactive database that allows the public to search through more than 100,000 secret companies, trusts and funds created in offshore locales such as the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands and Singapore.



Thanks in part to the ICIJ “Offshore Leaks” investigation , tax evasion and offshore secrecy was a central theme of June’s meeting of G8 industrialized nations. The chair of that meeting, the British Prime Minister David Cameron, has gone on the record saying the time has come “to knock down the walls of company secrecy” that make the offshore system attractive to money launderers, fraudsters and other criminals. The Offshore Leaks Database helps remove a small part of this secrecy, opening up records that may help bring accountability to an industry that has long operated in the shadows .

Germany’s largest financial institution, Deutsche Bank , helped its customers maintain more than 300 secretive offshore companies and trusts through its Singapore branch.

300 secretive offshore companies



New light is shed on a half-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme in Venezuela that shuffled investor money among a maze of offshore companies, hedge funds and bank accounts stretching from the Cayman Islands to Switzerland and Panama, smoothing the way by funneling bribes to officials in Venezuela .

that shuffled investor money among a maze of offshore companies, hedge funds and bank accounts stretching from the Cayman Islands to Switzerland and Panama, smoothing the way by

Commonwealth Trust Limited , a BVI-based firm, is revealed to have set up companies involved in the Magnitsky affair, a case that’s strained U.S.-Russian relations and blocked American adoptions of Russian orphans

One of Mongolia’s most senior politicians says he is considering resigning from office after being confronted with evidence that he has an offshore company and a secret Swiss bank account.



says he is considering resigning from office after being confronted with evidence that he has an offshore company and a secret Swiss bank account. Newly uncovered documents link Maria Imelda Marcos Manotoc, the eldest child of the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and now a senior political figure in her own right, to two secretive offshore trusts and an offshore company. The Philippines’ Presidential Commission on Good Government is eager to find out if the entities might contain some of the estimated $5 billion that her father allegedly amassed through corruption.



and now a senior political figure in her own right, to two secretive offshore trusts and an offshore company. The Philippines’ is eager to find out if the entities might contain some of the estimated $5 billion that her father allegedly amassed through corruption. A prominent Canadian lawyer, husband to a Liberal senator , moved CA$1.7 million (US$1.1 million) to secretive financial havens while he was locked in battle with the Canada Revenue Agency over his taxes, according to documents in a massive leak of offshore financial data.



, moved CA$1.7 million (US$1.1 million) to secretive financial havens while he was locked in battle with the Canada Revenue Agency over his taxes, according to documents in a massive leak of offshore financial data. A corporate mogul whose business empire has won building contracts worth billions of dollars amid Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s massive construction spree is tied to the president’s family through secretive offshore companies.



massive construction spree is tied to the president’s family through secretive offshore companies. The prominent Thais listed in secret documents as owners of offshore holdings includes the former wife of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra , a sitting senator, a former high-ranking defense ministry official, Forbes-listed tycoons, and a former government minister whose assets in the United States are frozen because of her alleged links to Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe.



in secret documents as owners of offshore holdings includes Greek citizens who own or direct offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands and other tax havens rarely declare them to Greek tax officials, a review of more than 100 companies shows. Just four out of 107 offshore companies investigated by ICIJ are registered with tax authorities as the law usually requires, particularly when the firms hold assets or conduct business in Greece. Officials apparently have no record of the other 103 firms — or whether the owners declared any assets held by these entities or paid taxes on them.

A list containing examples of some of the most high-profile names uncovered in this investigation, along with records of their offshore companies. Those named come in the form of politicians, businessmen, army generals, tycoons, relatives of dictators, and are scattered across 29 different countries.

in this investigation, along with records of their offshore companies. Those named come in the form of politicians, businessmen, army generals, tycoons, relatives of dictators, and are scattered across 29 different countries. Finally, for those interested in how ICIJ managed to tackle records cache, the data manager of the project, Duncan Campbell, writes an in-depth explanation of how our journalists were able make sense of the 260 gigabytes of information obtained. Four large databases, half a million text, PDF, spreadsheet, image and web files were dissected to reveal over 130,000 records on the people and agents who run, own, benefit from or hide behind offshore companies.

We hope you enjoy these stories; there will be more to follow as our findings from China continue to emerge in the coming days.

If you have story tips, documents or other information about this issue, contact us at investigations@icij.org.

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