The records were obtained from an anonymous source by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a non-profit organisation based in Washington.
The ICIJ report details billions of dollars of shadowy financial transactions moved through numerous offshore accounts.
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The documents, dubbed ‘The Panama Papers’, revealed the hidden offshore dealings in the assets of around 140 political figures, including 12 current or former heads of states.
The investigation into the documents, which was carried out by more than 100 media groups, revealed that major banks are big drivers behind the creation of hard-to-trace companies in the British Virgin Islands, Panama and other offshore havens.
The files list nearly 15,600 paper companies that banks set up for clients who want keep their finances under wraps, including thousands created by international giants UBS and HSBC.
According to ICIJ, the leaked internal files contain information on 214,488 offshore entities connected to people in more than 200 countries and territories.
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By GlobalDataICIJ will release the full list of companies and people linked to them in early May 2016.
The files expose offshore companies controlled by the prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, the king of Saudi Arabia and the children of the president of Azerbaijan.
They also include at least 33 people and companies blacklisted by the US government because of evidence that they’d been involved in wrongdoing, such as doing business with Mexican drug lords, terrorist organizations like Hezbollah or rogue nations like North Korea and Iran.
One of those companies supplied fuel for the aircraft that the Syrian government used to bomb and kill thousands of its own citizens, U.S. authorities have charged, ICIJ said in its press release.
The files also contain new details about major scandals ranging from England’s most infamous gold heist to the bribery allegations convulsing FIFA, the body that rules international soccer.
Panama’s government in a statement said that it will cooperate with any eventual judicial proceeding relating to the allegations in the report.
