Perhaps more than anything else, the Pandora Papers – the tranche of documents published last night, which reveal the secret wealth of the world’s rich and powerful – tell a story about Britain.
There’s the role, for instance, played by the British Virgin Islands, an overseas territory of the UK that functions as a tax haven. Czechia’s multimillionaire prime minister used the territory to hide his ownership of a chateau in France. Others, including the family of Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta and Vladimir Putin’s PR man, have made similar use of the islands to conceal wealth – while Tony and Cherie Blair reportedly saved £312,000 in stamp duty when they bought a London property from a company registered in the British Virgin Islands in 2017.
Then there’s London itself. The leaked documents show how the King of Jordan squirrelled personal cash away in the capital’s property market, as did key allies of Imran Khan, Pakistan’s president.
