As we know, the Pandora Papers are the third load of offshore leaks that were published in October 2021. Of course, there are Tory party donors included in the files and mentions of the crown estate. Just one example is the internal review over a £67million London property owned by Azerbaijan’s ‘multimillionaire ruling family’: the property was acquired for £33.5million in 2009, by an offshore company owned by the Presidents 11 year old son. Yes, you read that right. That story is almost stranger than Prince Charles accepting a suitcase filled with £3million from a former Qatari PM.

If a video explanation is more of your thing, Luke Harding and Lowkey break down the Pandora Papers – where “ordinary citizens pay taxes, and the rich not so much”. Visit here.

Gerard Ryle, the director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) said leading politicians who organised their finances in tax havens had a stake in the status quo, and were likely to be an obstacle to reform of the offshore economy. “When you have world leaders, when you have politicians, when you have public officials, all using the secrecy and all using this world, then I don’t think we’re going to see an end to it. This is the Panama papers on steroids”.

According to a 2020 study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) at least $11.3tn in wealth is held offshore. The sheer mass amount of money held in offshore accounts is its own economy in itself. No wonder governments around the world are taking from the poor, the rich have put all of their money in offshores.

U.K. chancellor Rishi Sunak recently said “I don’t think it is a source of shame because actually, our track record on this issue is very strong. I can’t take credit for that – my predecessor George Osbourne especially, lead the world in improving, a couple of things, one is something called transparency, making sure that we know who owns things. The second thing is exchanging data between tax authorities and enforcement authorities. The Independent Global Authority, FATF, has said that we are one of the best in the world at this. But as you’ve seen from the papers, it is a global problem. There’s a global dimension to it. And we need other countries to cooperate with us to tackle this, but we are determined to do that, and as I said a track record on this is very strong”. I feel like I’ve just wasted my own time typing that. What absolute babble. Sunak is then reminded, “The official figures show that a half of all Russian money laundering happens in this country”. To which Sunak hastily repeated his figures that he probably found online this morning “Yeah, and the independent global body FATF, said when they last looked at this in 2018, that we were probably one of the world’s best places to tackle money laundering”.

Now, let’s call a spade a spade – Rishi Sunak worked as an analyst for investment bank Goldman Sachs for years before he moved on to hedge fund management. Sunak’s former manager at Goldman, Richard Sharp, has donated more than £400k to the Conservative party and was appointed the chancellors advisor in April 2020. So, here’s Rishi, with years of financial experience and his advisor with multiple years of financial experience, yet official statements are as vague and non-expert as somebody who has no experience in the realm of finance. Does that make sense to you? It makes no sense to me. Isn’t now your time, Rishi Sunak? The chancellor was asked direct questions about areas he has years of experience in, yet we get the equivalent to a GCSE answer, if that.

Of course, it’s not at all related to the January 2022 announcement that the Treasury has written off a total of £5.8 billion, which is believed to have been ‘unlawfully taken’ in COVID-19 payments lost to fraud during the pandemic. Don’t be so silly!

Let’s explore just how wrong Rishi Sunak is.

“FATF has said we are one of the best in the world at this”

Not only did Sunak choose to minimise what’s happened and what it actually means, he claimed the FATF state that England is leading the way in transparency. This misrepresents what the FATF actually found, which was “a well-developed and robust regime” that was also at significant risk of “funds having links to crime and terrorism”. Left that bit out though didn’t he.

“U.K. tax avoidance not a source of shame”

I mean, let’s give it to Sunak – he’s not wrong about it not being a source of shame. Just days after the Pandora papers leak, Boris Johnson took another holiday to a private villa in Spain. On Thursday 14th October 2021, the Guardian reported that documents suggest Boris Johnson’s holiday villa is linked to offshore tax havens. Who owns that villa? Zac Goldsmith. Who is Zac Goldsmith, you may ask? A senior government minister who was appointed by Johnson to the House of Lords in 2019. As pointed out by none other than the former deputy editor of the guardian, Paul Johnson, on Twitter:

As found by journalist Roberto Saviano as early as 2016, “Britain is the most corrupt country in the world”. As of 24th January 2022, it was reported that the minister responsible for Whitehall efficiency quit, after criticising lamentable track record in tackling fraud in a flagship state-backed coronavirus business loan scheme. Financial Times, Agnew stated “The oversight by both BEIS and the British Business Bank of the panel lenders of BBLS has been nothing less than woeful… They have been ably assisted by the Treasury who appear to have no knowledge or interest in the consequences of fraud to our economy or society.” It’s not new information that the U.K. is, as the Byline Times said in October 2021, ‘a haven for dirty money’. A recent report by Chatham House found that at least 2bn of UK property is oligarch-owned. The nickname ‘Londongraad’ is very much warranted, yes.