1.4 terabytes in size, the trove contains 13.4 million files and it was made public by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
The leak focuses on a law firm called Appleby which has offices in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.
The list of those exposed includes the Queen’s private estate, an aide of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Irish rock star Bono, to name just a few. The leak has illustrated how the offshore financial system is tightly connected to global politics, corporate giants and notable individuals holding vast levels of private wealth.
The Paradise Papers comes hot on the heels of other notable data leaks. The most famous is still last year’s Panama Papers which was absolutely massive by comparison with 11.5 million documents and a 2.6 terabyte data size. Just to put that into perspective: that’s 1,500 times more data than Wikileaks’ dump of U.S. diplomatic cables in 2010. The Paradise Papers are the second-largest data leak to date at 1.4 terabytes.
The company at the centre of the storm, Appleby, has denied any wrongdoing by itself and any of its clients.