ICIJ releases offshore leaks database revealing names behind secret companies, trusts

Users can search ICIJ information about more than 100,000 offshore entities and discover the networks around them
By Marina Walker Guevara

10:00 pm, June 14, 2013; Updated: 10:03 am, June 15, 2013

When Bernard Madoff built his $65 billion house of cards; when food distributors passed off horsemeat as beef lasagna in Europe; and when Apple, Google and other American companies set up structures to channel their profits through Ireland — they all used tax havens.

They bought secrecy, minimal or zero taxes and legal insulation, the distinctive products that tax havens market and that allow companies to operate in a fiscal and regulatory vacuum. Using the offshore economy is akin to acquiring your own island where the rules that most citizens follow don’t apply.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists publishes today a database that, for the first time in history, will help begin to strip away this secrecy across 10 offshore jurisdictions.