Investigate Lankans cited in Pandora Papers – President

(FASTNEWS | COLOMBO) –  The President’s Media Spokesperson stated that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has instructed to conduct an inquiry into the Sri Lankans that were named in the controversial ‘Pandora Papers’.

Accordingly, the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery (CIABOC) was instructed to conclude the investigation in this regard within a month.

The Pandora Papers are 11.9 million leaked documents with 2.9 terabytes of data that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published beginning on 3 October 2021.

The leak exposed the secret offshore accounts of 35 world leaders, including current and former presidents, prime ministers, and heads of state as well as more than 100 billionaires, celebrities, and business leaders.

The news organisations of the ICIJ described the document leak as their most expansive exposé of financial secrecy yet, containing documents, images, emails and spreadsheets from 14 financial service companies, in nations including Panama, Switzerland and the UAE, surpassing their previous release of the Panama Papers in 2016, which had 11.5 million confidential documents (2.6 terabytes).

At the time of the release of the papers, the ICIJ said it is not identifying its source for the documents.