Pandora Papers exposes wealth of celebrities

Colombian singer Shakira and former cricket star Sachin Tendulkar of India are among the affluent individual people who have been named in the Pandora Papers investigation.

Shakira's lawyer said her offshore accounts were declared and that they did not provide any tax advantages.

Tendulkar's attorney said the cricket player's investment is legitimate and has been declared to tax authorities.

The Colombian-born pop music sensation is already well known for her tax troubles. Though she declared herself a resident of the Bahamas, authorities in Spain determined she was actually living in Barcelona from 2011 to 2014 but not paying taxes, and in July a Spanish magistrate cleared the way for her to go to trial on criminal charges laid in 2019.

Also read: Nearly 700 Pakistanis named in 'Pandora Papers'

The Pandora Papers reveal that even as that investigation in Spain was underway, she was incorporating new offshore entities in the British Virgin Islands, one of which, Titania Management Inc., has never previously been publicly revealed.

A copy of her Spanish ID is among the leaked files.

More than a dozen heads of state and government, including the King of Jordan and the Czech prime minister, have hidden millions in offshore tax havens, according to an investigation published Sunday by the ICIJ media consortium.

The so-called "Pandora Papers" investigation -- involving some 600 journalists from media including The Washington Post, the BBC and The Guardian -- is based on the leak of some 11.9 million documents from 14 financial services companies around the world.

Some 35 current and former leaders are featured in the documents analyzed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) -- facing allegations ranging from corruption to money laundering and global tax avoidance.