More than 330 politicians from 90 countries, 35 current or former heads of state, 133 Forbes billionaires whose combined fortunes exceed 64 trillion Ksh and 46 Russian oligarchs. This is just the tip of the iceberg from an investigation that has been analyzing nearly 12 million documents from a total of 14 offshore service providers, already called ‘The Pandora Papers’, and published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. There are many familiar names in the field of politics and sports, football particularly, as three names were mentioned in the reports: Pep Guardiola, Carlo Ancelotti and Angel Di Maria.Investigation: LFC fan spat on Pep Guardiola’s staff during the derbyAccording to the documents, published by El Pais, Manchester City coach Guardiola reportedly held his current account in Andora until 2012, used tax amnesty in that country and what’s even worse, he had not declared this to the Spanish Tax Agency. The money on the account is apparently Guardola’s salary from his playing days with Al-Ahli from 2003 to 2005. The Spaniard apparently also had a register business in Panama, Repox Investments, between 2007 and 2012, which were the years he worked at Barcelona, first as coach of the B team and then the first team. He used this business to ‘safeguard his identity’ in a measure on the initiative of the Andorran bank.FIFA’s bureaucracy wheels are in motion and it won’t matter whether fans want twice as many World CupsPSG forward Angel Di Maria’s name also appears in the “Pandora Papers”. The Argentinian, just like Pep, used Panama in his attempt not to declare his income related to image rights in a bank account in Switzerland since 2009. Between 2013 and 2017, he would have paid more than eight million euros into this account. There is also a firm called Trident Trust, a service provider which opened it’s offices in the Channel Islands in 1978 and the firm became interesting to Spanish authorities when the Madrid public prosecutor accused Real Madrid coach, Carlo Ancelotti, of failing to pay just over €1 million in taxes in 2014.
