What the Pandora Papers Reveal

The FRONTLINE Dispatch

GBH

News

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In October 2021, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists — with 150 partner news organizations around the world, including FRONTLINE — began publishing the results of an investigation based on a massive leak of confidential documents. The leaked files, known as the Pandora Papers, exposed a secretive financial system that enables the world’s wealthy and powerful to hide their money and assets from creditors, taxing authorities and governments. The revelations have reverberated across the globe.

In this episode of The FRONTLINE Dispatch podcast, FRONTLINE producer Evan Williams and ICIJ reporter Will Fitzgibbon, both featured in the November 2021 short documentary Pandora Papers, from ICIJ and FRONTLINE, join FRONTLINE executive producer Raney Aronson-Rath to discuss some of the investigation’s key findings, the ongoing impacts, and the importance of global reporting collaborations.

“The basic principle of ICIJ really is one of journalistic equality, I think. Recognizing that the smartest reporter in New York City or Washington D.C., is never going to have the experience or the ability to find a story in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or in the Philippines, right?" Fitzgibbon says. "And that's why we provide access to the data and bring on reporters from more than 100 countries. Because we know that, hidden in these documents, are only stories the reporters from those countries can tell."

The Pandora Papers documentary is now streaming on FRONTLINE’s website, the PBS Video app and FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	We arrived at the conclusion pretty quickly that this was going to be bombshell material.
0:07.7	Bank accounts of politicians that showed tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars
0:12.2	worth of assets that had never been publicly associated with these politicians or public
0:16.3	figures before.
0:17.6	When somebody has that many shell companies, it raises a lot of questions right away.
0:21.7	What are they for?
0:22.7	How is he using them?
0:23.7	That's where the hunt begins.
0:26.3	In October of 2021, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with news organizations
0:33.4	across the world, including frontline, began publishing the results of an investigation
0:38.7	into a massive leak of secret offshore financial records.
0:43.0	Very quickly we established a patent, which was that hundreds and hundreds of politicians
0:48.5	from heads of state to ministers to diplomats were active participants in beneficiaries of
0:54.2	this offshore system.
0:56.3	The leaked files, known as the Pandora Papers, expose a financial system that shields the
1:01.6	deals and assets of some of the world's richest and most powerful people.
1:06.1	The revelations have reverberated across the globe.
1:09.1	The collection of nearly 12 million files.
1:11.8	The biggest leak of financial records in history.
1:14.8	Detailing as some of the world's wealthy from rule-leaders to celebrities hide their
1:18.3	assets from authorities and tax collectors.
1:21.3	With me now, our frontline producer Evan Williams, an ICIJ reporter, will sits given to
	...

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