Trouble in Paradise? Everything you need to know about the latest data leak

The deforested land of the Sarigua area in Azuero Peninsular in southeastern Panama lies utterly barren and saline after heavy deforestation in the past 100 years, January 30, 2003. After seven months without rain in a country which usually receives rain most of the year, Panama is seeing one of its worst droughts in living memory, intensifed by heavy deforestation. Picture taken January 30, 2003.

The Paradise Papers are a huge leak of financial documents pertaining to the use of offshore accounts by numerous politicians and public figures across the globe.

The documents were first obtained by the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung and were then reviewed by the International Association of Investigative Journalists in association with 96 publications from around the world.

In India, the documents were reviewed over the last 10 months by news daily Indian Express, who has vowed to publish everything relevant about this case in 40 separate reports starting Monday night.

In terms of the number of names, among all the countries represented in the data, India ranked 19^th, a report in the Indian Express said. Incidentally, a majority of the records investigated were from Bermuda-based law firm Appleby.

Although, Appleby does not deal in giving tax advice to its clients, the firm is a prominent member of the global group of lawyers, accountants, bankers and other officials who are responsible for setting up offshore companies and managing bank accounts for clients for one or more of the following purposes – to avoid or evade taxes, to manage real estate assets, to open escrow accounts, to purchase airplanes and yachts by paying low tax rates, or to simply use offshore accounts to move millions of dollars across the globe.

Detailed below is everything you need to know about the Paradise Papers, including some of the Indian names mentioned in the papers.

1) The Paradise Papers have exposed investments of a Russian firm in social networks Twitter and Facebook along with scores of other smaller transactions of similar nature.

2) The Papers revealed that US President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, who is also a billionaire, holds a stake in a shipping company called Navigator, which operates a lucrative partnership with Sibur, a Russian gas company part-owned by Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law Kirill Shamalov.

3) The Paradise Papers also revealed that as much as £10 million of Queen Elizabeth II’s private money was invested offshore, in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, through the Duchy of Lancaster, which is one of the sources of revenue for the crown and is responsible for handling investments on behalf of the Queen’s £500 million private estate.

4) India has the 19^th most number of entities who feature in the Paradise Papers out of 180 countries. In all, there are 714 Indian entities in the Paradise Papers and Indian Express said it plans to reveal all of them in 40 stories starting Monday night.

5) Interestingly, Appleby’s second-largest client worldwide is Indian company Sun Group, which has as many as 118 offshore entities.

6) Among the other Indian entities named in the Papers are veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan, corporate lobbyist Niira Radia and movie star Sanjay Dutt’s wife Manyata, who featured under her former name Dilnashin.

7) Minister of State Jayant Sinha’s name also features in the Papers because of his past association with the Omidyar Network. Records of offshore companies linked to BJP Rajya Sabha MP and founder of Security and Intelligence Services (SIS) RK Sinha appeared on the Malta list. Jayant Sinha responded by saying that the transactions mentioned in the documents were not done for any "personal purpose".

8) Indian firms already embroiled in investigations such as the companies in the Sun TV-Aircel-Maxis case, the Essar-Loop 2G spectrum scam case, the Rajasthan ambulance scam, and fresh financial links in a CBI case against YSR Congress Chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy.

9) Appleby’s files also revealed that when former Indian liquor magnate Vijay Mallya, who is on the run from Indian authorities at the moment, sold his United Spirits Limited India to Diageo, the latter approached a London-based law firm to implement a massive restructuring exercise aimed at simplifying the complex corporate structure Mallya had created. The documents go on to reveal that close to USD 1.5 billion of USL Holdings’ loans, which were funnelled into four subsidiary companies in the form of debt, were waived off by Diageo.

10) There are also thousands of documents on India’s GMR Group that show an alleged attempt to avoid tax through a network of 28 offshore entities set up by Appleby.