wo of Indonesia’s coordinating ministers are mentioned in the latest leak of financial documents, dubbed the Pandora Papers, which revealed they had established offshore shell companies in tax havens, allegedly tying them to unreported wealth stored overseas.
Made up of 2.9 terabytes of data, the Pandora Papers have exposed the client names and private information of 14 financial firms that manage shell companies in tax haven countries.
Among them are Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister Luhut Pandjaitan and Coordinating Economic Affairs Minister Airlangga Hartarto, both of whom were clients of Trident Trust, a financial services company that has offices in tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands and Panama.
The documents were obtained by the United States-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) from an anonymous source and then shared among more than 600 journalists in 117 countries, including Tempo, the only Indonesian media organization that has direct access to the documents.
According to documents obtained by Tempo, Airlangga owns two companies in the British Virgin Islands that are managed by Trident Trust, namely Buckley Development Corporation established in 2010 and Smart Property Holdings Limited created in 2012.
The Pandora Papers further revealed that Airlangga, who is also chairman of the Golkar Party, had cited investment purposes and insurance and trust fund management as reasons for setting up the companies.
In an interview with Tempo, Airlangga denied any knowledge of either company.
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