An Express investigation into the Pandora Papers reveals how individuals and businesses are pushing the envelope to evade detection, using loopholes in the law at home and the lax jurisdiction of tax havens.Pandora Papers Highlights: In part 5 of the Pandora papers investigation, we take a look at the offshore footprints of India-born Singapore billionaire Arvind Tiku who was ranked by Forbes in 2021 as the 18th richest in Singapore with a net worth of $2.2 billion.
Tiku is not just another businessman. His business associates include LN Mittal, chairman of the world’s largest steel and metal company, ArcelorMittal, and Timur Kulibaev, son-in-law of former President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev.
The 51-year-old has established The Sai Charan Investment Holding Trust in Singapore, of which Auctus Investments Ltd, a British Virgin Islands company, is the prime investment holding vehicle with assets of $199.4 million, show records of Trident Trust, a global corporate services company headquartered in BVI.
Another figure to feature in the investigations is Radhe Shyam Saraf. Saraf, who owns a group of companies running a chain of Hyatt hotels in the country, has settled his properties in tax haven Belize through two trusts, according to the Pandora Papers.
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An Express investigation into the Pandora Papers reveals how individuals and businesses are pushing the envelope to evade detection, using loopholes in the law at home and the lax jurisdiction of tax havens.
Six years ago, around the time desperate homebuyers approached courts against Unitech Group promoter Sanjay Chandra, his wife Preeti Chandra set up an offshore family trust structure and changed her nationality, records in the Pandora Papers investigated by The Indian Express show.
Records of corporate service provider Trident Trust show that Unitech Group defaulted as early as 2009 on servicing a $210-million loan from Credit Suisse for investing in realty projects in India.
Last Monday, Preeti Chandra and Sanjay Chandra’s father Ramesh Chandra were arrested by the Enforcement Directorate probing the Unitech money laundering case. In March, the ED had stopped her from boarding a flight at Delhi. The agency claimed she was “involved in laundering and layering of funds deposited by home buyers”. Read the full report here.
Niharika Raje, wife of BJP MP Dushyant Singh and daughter-in-law of BJP leader and former Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, is named in the Pandora Papers as a “beneficial owner” of an entity in Belize, a tax haven in Central America.
According to records from Panamanian law firm Alcogal (Aleman, Cordero, Galindo & Lee), Niharika Raje is a “beneficial owner” of Octavia Limited, incorporated in Belize.
A declaration by Panama-based trust Rendor Overseas SA on November 12, 2010, stated: “We have no beneficial interest in the holding of 1 ordinary share of USD 1 each standing in our name in the capital of Octavia Limited of 60 Market Square, Belize City, Belize…the whole of the said share being held for Niharika Raje of Lekha Vihar, Scindia Potteries, Near Bikaji Cama Place Flyover, 110066 New Delhi, India absolutely (hereinafter called the Beneficial Owner).” Read the full report here.
Until two years ago, Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty, who migrated from Karnataka to the Gulf in the 1970s to set up a worldwide healthcare and hospitality empire, was considered one of the richest Indians, ranked in the Forbes list of billionaires with a net worth of $3.15 billion.
Today, he faces a travel ban. Indicted by the Karnataka High Court, he has been told to come clean on his assets. This, after a 2020 report from investment firm Muddy Waters, highlighted his high borrowings which are today pegged at $6.6 billion. His assets in the UAE and his companies in the London Stock Exchange frozen, Shetty is back in Bengaluru — only to face charges of non-repayment of debts to a slew of Indian banks. (Read more)
In January 2009, just six months after the family sold its 34.8 per cent stake in Ranbaxy Laboratories to Japanese pharma major Daiichi Sankyo for around $2.4 billion, Malvinder Singh and his younger brother Shivinder Singh set up two offshore firms in the British Virgin Islands, records in the Pandora Papers investigated by The Indian Express reveal.
These records show that the two firms, Clonberg Holdings Ltd and Forthill International Ltd, own an apartment each in London. Besides, they show, Shivinder Singh mortgaged some properties of Forthill International to borrow £5.1 million from Barclays Bank.
Both Malvinder and Shivinder are in Tihar jail for two years on charges of alleged illegal diversion of funds and money laundering. Mails sent to their families did not elicit any response. (Read more)
Radhe Shyam Saraf, who owns a group of companies running a chain of Hyatt hotels in the country, has settled his properties in tax haven Belize through two trusts, according to the Pandora Papers. These also show his links and transactions in offshore destinations such as the British Virgin Islands and Liechtenstein.
According to documents of Panamanian law firm Alcogal, Saraf and his wife Ratna are settlors of The Devita Trust, Belize, which was created on April 4, 2006. The sole beneficiary of the trust is their son Umesh Saraf. A spreadsheet dated February 5, 2018, names Girish Sunder Jhunjhunwala as the trust protector. The trust is one of the shareholders of the Saraf Investments Limited, Mauritius. (Read more)
US lawmakers are set to respond to the Pandora Papers with landmark legislation that would crack down on professional enablers who move dirty money for corrupt clients.
The bipartisan measure would require a broad array of middlemen — including lawyers, accountants, real estate professionals, trust administrators, art dealers, financial advisers and public relations professionals — to ensure they aren’t laundering black market income.
“Disclosures within the Pandora Papers are the clearest demonstration yet of the historic threat posed by foreign corruption,” says a joint statement by US representatives Tom Malinowski and John Curtis. “Billions of dollars of dirty money belonging to adversarial actors are flooding the United States.” Read the full report here.
Manoj Prasad, booked by the CBI for alleged extortion, owns two offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), the Pandora Papers show.
Son of a former officer of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), Prasad was booked by the CBI when the agency’s then Director Alok Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana were engaged in an acrimonious public faceoff.
In Globex Advisors Limited, one of his two BVI companies, Prasad is among three directors and owns 40 per cent stakes. In the second company, Justforajob.com Limited set up in January 2016, he is the sole director. Read the full report here.
Wockhardt chairman Habil Fakhruddin Khorakiwala incorporated an offshore firm in Panama in 2011 — and within four years held shares worth $20 million in the company along with 11 other family members, according to records in the Pandora Papers investigated by The Indian Express.
Family members of Khorakiwala with shares in the Panama firm, Barrymil Investments SA, include the top faces of Wockhardt, the Mumbai-based pharmaceutical giant: Murtaza Khorakiwala, managing director; Huzaifa Khorakiwala, executive director; and, Zahabiya Khorakiwala, non-executive director.
Records show that at the time of incorporation in 2011, the capital of Barrymil Investments SA was $10,000, divided into 10,000 shares of $1 each. Read the full report here.
Layered ownership structures, accessed as part of Pandora Papers investigation, reveal the offshore footprints of the promoters of Bharat Hotels Group which was raided in connection with its “undisclosed foreign assets” by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) in January 2020.
According to records of Trident Trust (BVI), a corporate service provider, investigated by The Indian Express, Bharat Hotels promoter Jyotsna Suri’s interests in hotel projects Dubai and London were held by an offshore subsidiary of Deeksha Holdings Limited, the largest shareholder (40.41%) in Bharat Hotels Limited.
In 2017, Deeksha Holdings was held 73% by Jyotsna Suri. Read the full report here.
In 2007, within two years of the merger of Dubai-based Emaar and Shravan Gupta-owned MGF, a British Virgin Islands (BVI) firm invested USD 2 million in the joint venture, according to the Pandora Papers.
Gupta was the beneficial owner of a company in BVI where its Finance Ministry issued two notices after his name surfaced in the HSBC Bank (Geneva) list of Indian account holders.
A resolution on Asiatrust Limited, provided by AsiaCiti Trust, shows that in 2007, Zala Holdings Limited (ZHL), BVI, invested 2 million USD in Emaar MGF with ANI Capital Holdings India Limited, Cayman Islands. ZHL’s 100 per cent shareholding was owned by Churchill Trust, Cook Islands. Asiatrust Limited, also based in the Cook Islands, was trustee of the Churchill Trust. Read the full report here.
Supreme Court lawyer Harish Salve, a former Solicitor General of India, acquired The Marsul Company Limited in the British Virgin Islands in 2015 to own a property in London, Pandora records investigated by The Indian Express show.
Salve was allotted 50,000 shares in Marsul on September 15, 2015, according to the Register of Members prepared by the company’s agent, Aleman, Cordero, Galindo & Lee Trust (BVI) Ltd or Alcogal. A Register of Members is essentially a list of a company’s shareholders. Read the full report here.
For decades, Douglas Latchford cut a romantic figure: The genial Englishman was an explorer of jungle temples, a scholar and a connoisseur seduced by the exquisite details of ancient sculpture.
Helicoptering into remote Cambodia to visit Khmer Empire cities, he risked land mines to satisfy his curiosity. Beginning in the 1970s, he amassed one of the world’s largest private collections of Khmer treasures, mostly Hindu and Buddhist sculpture, the remains of a civilization that flourished in Southeast Asia a thousand years ago. He co-wrote three glossy books on the subject.
“The sculpture and architecture created by the Khmer to honor their gods and their rulers are among the major artistic masterpieces of the world,” he wrote in the first of the three, “Adoration and Glory.”
Yet while Latchford professed reverence for Khmer achievements, he was also trafficking in and profiting from antiquities pillaged from that civilization’s sacred temples, according to US prosecutors, part of a decades-long ransacking of Cambodian sites that ranks as one of the most devastating cultural thefts of the 20th century. Read the full report here.
A Mumbai-based jeweller, whose firm has defaulted on loan repayments to 19 Indian banks, set up a web of offshore firms with cross holdings to route funds along with a billionaire Saudi-businessman linked to a Mexican drug lord, reveal the Pandora Papers investigated by The Indian Express.
Records pertaining to Antrix Diamonds Exports Pvt Ltd, an Indian firm promoted by Ajay Gandhi, show that Singapore-based Andin Investments owned more than 20 per cent stake in Antrix Diamonds which owes over Rs 500 crore to public sector banks in India and has been declared a wilful defaulter.
Andin Investments is held by two offshore firms — Shertha Limited, Mauritius, and Zoom Investments & Securities Limited in Dubai. Both Shertha and Zoom are owned by two firms, Ace Investments in Dubai and Infinity Investments Securities Limited in the BVI. Read the full report here.
Two former officers of the Indian Revenue Service, one who was arrested for alleged corruption and money laundering, and another who was an Income Tax Chief Commissioner, have Swiss bank accounts, an investigation of records in the Pandora Papers by The Indian Express shows.
Homi Rajvansh (IRS, 1985 batch) was Additional Managing Director of National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) when he was booked on charges of corruption and money laundering and for giving undue gains to private parties while in office.
Fresh records, investigated by The Indian Express, show that the Swiss OAG (Office of the Attorney General) had, in 2013, seized all records as evidence and imposed sanctions on two offshore companies set up by Rajvansh: Horsham Technologies Ltd and Wairoa Industries Inc.
Both these firms were set up by the Trident Trust in the British Virgin Islands (BVI).
Former Income Tax Chief Commissioner Sushil Gupta figures in Pandora Papers in a Trident Trust company registration form.
It shows that Gupta registered a company Allied Trading Ltd in January 2017 describing himself as the “business owner” of an Indian company Hopewell Tradelink. Read the full report here.
Niranjan Hiranandani, the founder of Mumbai-based real estate major Hiranandani Group, and key members of his family were beneficiaries of a Trust with assets of over $60 million.
Niranjan was the “reserve director” in at least three firms set up in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) by his Dubai-based son, records in the Pandora Papersinvestigated by The Indian Express show.
The BVI Business Companies Act provides for the nomination of a reserve director to act in the event of the death of the sole director of a company. Read the full report here.
Tushar Vashisht, son of former Haryana DGP Shriniwas Vashisht, set up HealthifyMe Wellness Private Limited (HWPL) which runs an AI-based health and fitness platform in India, through his Singapore-based holding company. AsiaCiti Trust records show this Singapore company is linked to Lang Capital Fund owned by Kirill Androsov, a former aide of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Documents show that questions were raised on some of the transactions of the LCF to various entities including HealthifyMe. Read the full report here.
Several people surrounding Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, including ministers and family members, have been named in the Pandora Papers leaks.
The papers, which were shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), reveal that many of the country’s powerful military generals, businessmen and media owners have transferred millions of dollars through offshore companies.
More than 700 prominent Pakistanis were named in the investigation, released on Sunday. Read the full report here.
In early 2018, workers in a London warehouse carefully loaded an oil painting of Lakshmi, the Hindu deity of wealth, onto a van bound for Switzerland.
The painting, by 19th-century Indian master Raja Ravi Varma, depicts the four-armed goddess clad in a red sari with gold ornaments and standing atop a lotus flower. It was one of 31 works of art, altogether worth nearly $1 million, that were being shipped to the Geneva Freeport in Switzerland. That vast, ultra-secure warehouse complex, larger than 20 soccer fields, stores among its many treasures what the BBC once called “the greatest art collection no one can see.”
The owner of “Goddess Lakshmi,” and the artworks in transit with it, as recorded on the packing slip, was a Samoan-registered shell company with an unremarkable name, Pacific Commodities Ltd. But a cache of leaked documents from Asiaciti Trust, a Singapore-based financial services provider, indicates that a politically connected Sri Lankan, Thirukumar Nadesan, secretly controls the company and thus is the true owner of the 31 pieces of art. Read the full report here.
An adviser to Malaysia’s prime minister needed help managing companies in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur and in Hong Kong. Prosecutors say he and his associates used the companies to divert hundreds of millions of dollars from a government economic development fund.
A Russian maker of Kalashnikov rifles, under international sanctions for bad behaviour, wanted to sell its shares in a large copper mine to a shadowy business in Mongolia. The sale triggered a corruption probe of the then-Mongolian prime minister.
Tech giant Apple Inc. was shopping for a tax haven to stash its mountain of offshore cash.
They all had a friend in America’s biggest law firm. Read the full report here.
Lalit Khaitan and his family, owners of Radico Khaitan, manufacturer of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL), have their assets in offshore trusts, the Pandora Papers show.
According to documents of the Trident Trust, British Virgin Islands, a trust deed for Timberlane Trust was settled between Timberlane Group Foundation, Panama (settlor), and Trident Trust, BVI (trustee), in 2012.
The deed mentions Lalit Khaitan and Abhishek Khaitan as “beneficiaries” of the trust. Lalit is Chairman and Managing Director of Radico Khaitan Limited and his son Abhishek is its Managing Director. (Read more)
Facing bankruptcy proceedings in UK since June 2020, steel baron LN Mittal’s younger brother Pramod Mittal claimed zero income, total assets under £150,000 and denied ownership of his long-time London residence.
He did these to justify an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) in which he offered to pay £4.4 million — or just 0.19% — of the £2.5 billion he said he owed to 20 creditors.
The IVA was approved by 75% of Mittal’s creditors last October. Records investigated by The Indian Express show that Direct Investment Limited, the British Virgin Islands company Mittal claimed he owed over £1 billion to, and Meadswell Estates Limited, another BVI company that Mittal claimed owned his London residence, belong to a Trust in which Mittal himself is a beneficiary.
In effect, he was his own creditor and approved his own agreement. (Read more)
The Goverment Monday directed a multi-agency probe involving the Central Board of Direct Taxes, Enforcement Directorate, Reserve Bank of India, and Financial Intelligence Unit to investigate the cases of Pandora Papers.
“The Government has directed today that, investigations in cases of Pandora Papers leaks appearing in the media under the name ‘Pandora Papers’ will be monitored through the Multi Agency Group, headed by the Chairman, CBDT,” said a statement issued by the Ministry of Finance. (Read more)
There are at least 380 persons of Indian nationality in the Pandora Papers. Of these, The Indian Express has so far verified and corroborated documents related to about 60 prominent individuals and companies. What do the Pandora Papers say about these entities? Also, if trusts are not illegal, what is the investigation about? Read our explainer to know more.
Secret records of Pandora Papers investigated by The Indian Express show several cases of big-ticket loan defaulters who declare themselves bankrupt before recovery tribunals – some have even arrested – but hold billions via offshore entities abroad.
These details, to be featured in the coming days in the investigative series, include a set of Mumbai-based businessmen in the real-estate sector who owe Indian banks more than Rs 88,000 crore. These businessmen are in jail and since 2007, Pandora papers reveal, they set up a string of offshore companies in the BVI and in the Bahamas and one of them was set up to hold sizeable assets.
Then there is a Kolkata-based businessman, slapped with the biggest ever Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) notice of Rs 7,220 crore, who has opened offshore firms in the BVI through Trident Trust Company, records from The Pandora Papers reveal. Read more.
According to news agency AP, Jordan's King Abdullah II on Monday denied any impropriety in his purchase of luxury homes abroad. A statement by the Roya Court stated, "These properties are not publicized out of security and privacy concerns, and not out of secrecy or an attempt to hide them, as these reports have claimed. Measures to maintain privacy are crucial for a head of state of His Majesty's position." The king added that no public funds were used.
An investigation into the Pandora Papers by the ICIJ shows that the Jordan's long-ruling monarch, King Abdullah II, has secretly owned 14 luxury homes in the United Kingdom and the United States, purchased between 2003 and 2017 through front companies registered in tax havens. Their value totals more than $106 million.
Prime Minister Khan welcomed the Pandora Papers exposing the ill-gotten wealth of elites, accumulated through tax evasion and corruption and laundered out to financial “havens”.
“My government will investigate all our citizens mentioned in the Pandora Papers and if any wrongdoing is established, we will take appropriate action. I call on the international community to treat this grave injustice as similar to the climate change crisis,” he said.
He said that just like the East India Company plundered the wealth of India, ruling elites of the developing world are doing the same.
The brother of billionaire Gautam Adani set up a company in the British Virgin Islands three years ago, records in the Pandora Papers investigated by The Indian Express reveal. He now claims that the company has been “closed”.
The records show that Vinod Shantilal Shah Adani, elder brother of Gautam Adani, set up Hibiscus RE Holdings Limited in the British Virgin Islands in 2018. Vinod Adani, who is a Cyprus national residing in Dubai, is the sole shareholder of this offshore firm with 50,000 shares, and a director since May 2018.
This is not for the first time that Vinod Adani’s name has figured in a company registered in a “tax haven”. His name appeared in Panama Papers, which was reported by The Indian Express in 2016, in connection with a company set up in the Bahamas on January 4, 1994 — just months after the formation of Adani Group’s flagship company Adani Exports. Read more.
The now arrested promoter of bankrupt travel firm Cox and Kings Ltd, Ajay Ajit Peter Kerkar, owns two BVI trusts and is connected to at least half a dozen offshore firms, an investigation of records in the Pandora Papers reveals.
Records show that between September 2015 and October 2016, Kerkar, through Castleman Management, became a guarantor to a $45-million loan given by Cayman Islands-based SSG Secured Lending Opportunities to Kubber Investment (Mauritius) Pvt Ltd, a shareholder of Cox and Kings.
Incidentally, Kubber Investments is being probed by ED for allegedly siphoning around $15 million from the sale proceeds of Holiday Break Education Limited, a UK subsidiary of Cox and Kings. Read more.
Despite a sweeping enforcement crackdown including attachment of properties worth hundreds of crores in India and Dubai, members of the Iqbal Mirchi family have been one step ahead of authorities with fresh offshore deals that link a retired Pakistan Army general as well, an investigation of data contained in the Pandora Papers shows.
Iqbal Mirchi was a trusted aide of underworld gangster Dawood Ibrahim and was wanted by the Mumbai Police and the Enforcement Directorate. He was arrested by Scotland Yard in 1994 and died of a heart attack in London in 2013.
Significantly, after the Panama Papers expose, the Mirchi family transferred several offshore companies from Mossack Fonseca to the Trident Trust of British Virgin Islands, just in time before the Panamanian law firm shut shop in March 2018. This was done as part of what is referred to in Trident Trust emails as the “MossFon” project. Read more.
The Pandora Papers show that corporate lobbyist Niira (Nira) Radia is a “do not contact client” of corporate service provider firm Trident Trust Company BVI, who has been conducting her offshore transactions through London-based Sanjay Newatia, a former Credit Suisse banker.
Radia, whose name earlier figured in both The Panama Papers and The Paradise Papers, once again figures in the Pandora Papers with about a dozen offshore firms and a more detailed account of transactions executed by these firms including the purchase of a $251,500 watch in Dubai through one of her BVI companies.
"I have no shareholding in any of the companies mentioned in your mail; I do not recognize any of these companies and neither do I recognize the transactions which you have referred to," Radia stated in an email reply to The Indian Express. Read more.
An offshore stakeholder in JCT Ltd, which has been declared as a “non-promoter” by the Punjab-based textile giant, is linked to its own chairman and managing director Samir Thapar, records in the Pandora Papers investigated by The Indian Express reveal. This offshore entity is registered in the British Virgin Islands, where Thapar is also the beneficial owner of another company, the records show.
A certificate of incumbency issued by Trident Trust (BVI) in September 2011 records Thapar as the holder of all 50,000 shares of Musk Holdings Ltd (BVI). While records in Pandora Papers list Thapar as the sole shareholder of Musk Holdings, JCT’s official documents identify “non-promoter” Francatina Development Inc as the ultimate beneficial owner.
Company records and The Indian Express investigation of records in the Panama Papers, leaked in 2016, show that Francatina Development was linked to another BVI company, Alport Ltd, which also held a “non-promoter” stake in JCT Ltd. Read more.
Captain Satish Sharma, Congress leader, friend of the Gandhi family, and a former Union Minister who passed away in February this year, had offshore entities and properties abroad, the Pandora Papers show.
At least 10 members of Sharma’s family including his wife Sterre, children and grandchildren are among the beneficiaries of a trust, the Jan Zegers Trust — a declaration Sharma never made to the Election Commission while filing poll nomination papers.
According to documents of the AsiaCiti Trust, the Jan Zegers Trust was incorporated in the Cayman Islands in 1995 — Sharma was then Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas – and later under the governing law of New Zealand. Another trust, named the JZ II Trust, was incorporated in New Zealand in October 2015 when Sharma was a Rajya Sabha member. Read more.
Popular Bollywood actor Jackie Shroff was the prime beneficiary of a trust set up in New Zealand by his mother-in-law, records in the Pandora Papers investigated by The Indian Express reveal. He also made “substantial contributions” to this trust, which had a Swiss bank account and owned an offshore company registered in the British Virgin Islands, records show.
On November 29, 2005, Claudia Dutt, the mother of Shroff’s wife Ayesha, formed Media Trust, which is registered with London Fiduciary Trust Company Limited (LFTC) in New Zealand, a trustee company that provides trust and corporate services. Media Trust was terminated in September 2013.
According to the memorandum concerning the trust, Shroff’s son Jai Shroff (Tiger Shroff) and daughter Krishna Shroff were the other beneficiaries. Read more.
A trove of leaked documents obtained by the ICIJ shows that the Jordan's long-ruling monarch, King Abdullah II, has secretly owned 14 luxury homes in the United Kingdom and the United States, purchased between 2003 and 2017 through front companies registered in tax havens. Their value totals more than $106 million.
Advisers to the 59-year-old monarch, who awards an annual prize for transparency in his name, spared no effort to conceal his real estate holdings, the records show. Accountants and lawyers in Switzerland and the British Virgin Islands formed shell companies on the king’s behalf and concocted plans to shield his name from public and even confidential government registries.
On two documents, BVI corporate administrators at the firm Alemán, Cordero, Galindo & Lee, better known as Alcogal, checked boxes to declare that no one connected to one of the king’s companies was involved in politics – even though the king has the power to appoint governments, dissolve Parliament and approve legislation. Read more.
On July 8 this year, market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) barred Allegro Capital Private Ltd and its majority shareholder, Bengaluru-headquartered Kunal Ashok Kashyap, from trading in the stock market for a year, ordered disgorgement of wrongful gains of Rs 24.68 lakh with 12 per cent interest for three-and-a-half years, and penalised them Rs 10 lakh each for insider trading in Biocon Ltd shares.
What SEBI or the regulatory authorities did not know then was that Kunal Kashyap is the ‘Protector’ of The Deanstone Trust, set up in New Zealand in July 2015 by Mauritius-based Glentec International, the ‘Settlor’. Glentec, which holds shares of Biocon Ltd, is 99 per cent owned by John McCallum Marshall Shaw, a British citizen and husband of Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Executive Chairperson of Biocon Ltd, a Rs 7,360-crore biotechnology enterprise.
The Deanstone Trust is part of a complex structure, as per records investigated by The Indian Express. In effect, Kashyap is a financial advisor and protector of the Trust whose corpus comes from Glentec. He is also a Director in Mazumdar Shaw Medical Foundation along with Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and her husband John Shaw. Read more.
The ICIJ has found that on the day of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony, a company was incorporated in the British Virgin Islands that would pave the way for Konstantin Ernst's secret 23% stake in a state-funded privatization deal worth a billion dollars.
An Oscar-nominated film producer, Ernst, then 53, had been boss of Russia’s leading TV network, Channel One, for as long as Putin had been president, and he had played a critical role in creating Putin’s image as the savior of the Russian state.
Files leaked to ICIJ show that nine months after the Olympic torch was extinguished, Ernst became a secret partner in a deal to buy 39 aging but valuable Soviet-era cinemas and surrounding property from the city of Moscow. The deal was financed by VTB Bank, a state owned institution that has been referred to as Putin’s “piggy bank”.
The properties were sold at the minimum price set by a Moscow government-run auction. A legal challenge alleged that the auction was designed to effectively exclude all but the partnership in which Ernst, behind layers of shell companies, held a stake. Read more.
This is a very valid question. True, there are legitimate reasons for setting up trusts — and many set them up for genuine estate planning. A businessperson can set conditions for ‘beneficiaries’ to draw income being distributed by the trustee or inherit assets after her/ his demise.
But trusts are also used by some as secret vehicles to park ill-gotten money, hide incomes to evade taxes, protect wealth from law enforcers, insulate it from creditors to whom huge moneys are due, and at times to use it for criminal activities. The Indian Express investigation reveals this.
Overseas trusts offer remarkable secrecy because of stringent privacy laws in the jurisdiction they operate in. A lot depends on the intention behind setting up an offshore trust — and if the taxman can provide evidence that suggests mala fide intent by the trust, then the courts tend to back the tax department in their attempt to recover the taxes due.
Read some key tacit reasons why people set up trusts here.
There are at least 380 persons of Indian nationality in the Pandora Papers. Of these, The Indian Express has so far verified and corroborated documents related to about 60 prominent individuals and companies. What do the Pandora Papers say about these entities? Also, if trusts are not illegal, what is the investigation about?
What do the Pandora Papers reveal?
The Pandora Papers reveal how the rich, the famous and the notorious, many of whom were already on the radar of investigative agencies, set up complex multi-layered trust structures for estate planning, in jurisdictions which are loosely regulated for tax purposes, but characterised by air-tight secrecy laws.
The purposes for which trusts are set up are many, and some genuine too. But a scrutiny of the papers also shows how the objective of many is two-fold: i) to hide their real identities and distance themselves from the offshore entities so that it becomes near impossible for the tax authorities to reach them and, ii) to safeguard investments — cash, shareholdings, real estate, art, aircraft, and yachts — from creditors and law enforcers.
A month before fugitive diamond jeweller Nirav Modi fled India in January 2018, his sister Purvi Modi set up a firm in the British Virgin Islands to act as a corporate protector of a trust formed through the Trident Trust Company, Singapore.
Records investigated by The Indian Express show that the firm, Brookton Management Ltd, was set up in December 2017 to act as the corporate protector of The Deposit Trust.Records also show that Purvi and her brother Neeshal Modi are beneficial owners of three BVI firms: Integrated Investing Ltd; Xclusive Consultant Ltd; and Panera Assets Inc which, according to the ED, were used to launder money by Nirav Modi. Read more.
Leaked documents reveal that key members of Khan’s inner circle, including cabinet ministers, their families and major financial backers have secretly owned an array of companies and trusts holding millions of dollars of hidden wealth. Military leaders have been implicated as well. The documents contain no suggestion that Khan himself owns offshore companies.
Among those whose holdings have been exposed are Khan’s finance minister, Shaukat Fayaz Ahmed Tarin, and his family, and the son of Khan’s former adviser for finance and revenue, Waqar Masood Khan. The records also reveal the offshore dealings of a top PTI donor, Arif Naqvi, who is facing fraud charges in the United States.
The files show how Chaudhry Moonis Elahi, a key political ally of Imran Khan’s, planned to put the proceeds from an allegedly corrupt business deal into a secret trust, concealing them from Pakistan’s tax authorities. Read more.
Indian cricket superstar Sachin Tendulkar, who has been a Member of the Upper House of Parliament, along with members of his family, figures in the Pandora Papers as Beneficial Owners of an offshore entity in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) which was liquidated in 2016.
Sachin, with wife Anjali Tendulkar and father-in-law Anand Mehta, as per an investigation of records of Panama law firm Alcogal which are part of Pandora Papers, are named as BOs and Directors of a BVI-based company: Saas International Limited. The date of liquidation of Saas International Limited is significant as it came three months after the Panama Papers expose.
In Alcogal spreadsheets, Sachin Tendulkar and Anjali Tendulkar also figure in logs where they are categorized as Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs). In one registry of PEPs, Sachin Tendulkar is listed on account of him being an MP and is put in the “high risk” category. Read more.