Paradise Papers: Appleby's 13.4 Million Files, Jersey and Wilbur Ross

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In 2017 the Paradise Papers leaked 13.4 million confidential documents, 1.4 terabytes of data, covering more than 120,000 people and companies. Most came from Appleby, an offshore law firm with roots in Bermuda, along with corporate service providers and business registries in 19 tax jurisdictions. The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung obtained the files and shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, whose more than 380 reporters mapped connections with graph database tools such as Neo4j and Linkurious. Appleby called it a cyberattack, not a leak, and said its work was legal. Most of what the files showed was lawful tax avoidance rather than evasion.

The documents showed Appleby helping Apple move two subsidiaries to Jersey, which has a zero percent corporate tax rate, after a 2013 U.S. Senate probe. Glencore's Australian arm ran about $25 billion in cross-currency swaps, and in 2009 Glencore made a $45 million loan to Dan Gertler tied to negotiations over Congo's Katanga copper mine. The files also covered Bono, Shakira, Lewis Hamilton's private jet, the Queen's Duchy of Lancaster, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Russian state money that flowed into Facebook and Twitter through Yuri Milner's DST Global. Appleby later sued the BBC and the Guardian.

• Lewis Hamilton's $27 million jet, registered via the Isle of Man, produced a $5.2 million VAT refund.
• The Duchy of Lancaster held offshore investments that included a stake in the rent-to-own retailer BrightHouse.
• Ross's Navigator Holdings had ties to sanctioned Russian oligarchs and Vladimir Putin's former son-in-law.
• Ross shorted Navigator stock the day before his response became public, and the shares fell 4 percent.
• Glencore took the Australian Taxation Office to the High Court to block use of the papers and lost.