• Dubai's Princess Latifa, who failed to escape her 'evil' father, is set to hit the US courts
• UK court: Dubai ruler abducted and tortured two of his daughters
• Saudi princess allegedly 'abuses' Paris decorator, threatens 'kill the worthless dog' - man files complaint

During his Thursday floor speech, Senator Johnson pointed out that 63% of all coronavirus Delta deaths in the last 7.5 months were fully vaccinated individuals. Obviously, the recent surge in cases and deaths is NOT a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

• The Pandora Papers: A nothing burger really
• Could the CIA be behind the leak of the Pandora Papers, given their curious lack of focus on US nationals?

• Expert opinion: Financial whistleblower states Panama Papers was a CIA operation
• Disinfo campaign commences: Panama 'leaks' target West's enemies, ignore NATO criminals
• Wikileaks accuses Panama leaker ICIJ to be Soros-funded "soft-power tax-dodge", criticizes limited release of data
• RT releases documentary The Panama Chronicles: How America's enemies were targeted
• Pepe Escobar: Panama leaks a 'limited hangout' psy-op set up by US intelligence

The Pandora papers reveal that Volodymyr Zelensky and his entourage own offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands, Belize, and Cyprus, three flats in London worth $7.4 million, and that the Ukrainian president potentially received dividends from a company he no longer officially owns. The documents also reveal the Ukrainian President's potential involvement in the laundering of $40 million belonging to Igor Kolomoysky, for which the oligarch has been placed under sanctions by the US.

But the offshore scheme does not end there. The Pandora papers reveal that another close associate of Zelensky, SBU chief Ivan Bakanov, used a tax haven for his company Davegra Limited, registered in Belize. This company is the main owner of Maltex Multicapital Corp, and is said to be hiding details of the real owners, namely Zelensky, his wife and friends, says the Pandora papers investigation. In 2019, Bakanov sold the company to Yakovlev.

While this first part of the Pandora papers concerning Zelensky would in itself be enough to trigger impeachment proceedings against him in Ukraine, it is not the most scandalous part.

Indeed, the Pandora papers reveal that Zelensky is allegedly involved in Igor Kolomoysky's financial shenanigans, for which the oligarch has been placed under sanctions by the US.

The documents indicate that in 2012, the Kvartal 95 group of associates registered more than a dozen companies in the British Virgin Islands, Belize and Cyprus, with Maltex Multicapital Corp at the centre of the network.

The Pandora papers reveal that 40 million dollars were transferred via the Cypriot branch of Privatbank (then owned by Igor Kolomoysky) to this network of companies as a "capital contribution" in a totally non-transparent manner. Moreover, one of the companies that headed Kvartal 95 had an account in this bank. The Cypriot branch of Privatbank was used by Igor Kolomoysky to launder millions of dollars.

This information from the Pandora papers would confirm the information published after the Ukrainian presidential election, which indicated that Igor Kolomoysky had withdrawn more than 41 million dollars from offshore accounts at Kvartal 95.

Zelensky, with his law on oligarchs, which is just a pretty facade with nothing behind it, tried to fool Soros and the United States, who were counting on this law to bring down the Ukrainian oligarchs and take back their assets. A monumental mistake that could cost him and his mentor Kolomoysky a lot.

Some 565 Israelis are listed in the Pandora Papers, published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, according to Shomrim, an Israeli investigative journalism nonprofit organization that took part in the investigation.

Former Labor Party Justice Minister Haim Ramon is among the high-profile Israelis named in the report. Ramon's name comes up in connection to a dubious tourism real estate deal in Montenegro with Austrian casino magnate Martin Schlaff.

Also named in the papers is secretive Israeli diamond magnate Beny Steinmetz, who was convicted this year of bribery in a Geneva court.

Steinmetz was accused of having set up a complex financial web, including a system of front companies, in order to pay bribes — partly through Swiss accounts — so that Beny Steinmetz Group Resources (BSGR) could obtain mining permits in Guinea's southeastern Simandou region.

Another prominent Israeli named is Likud MK Nir Barkat.

According to the report, the eToro company that Barkat has holdings in is registered in the Virgin Islands, despite the majority of its offices being located in Israel. While having a company registered in a tax haven is not always illegal per se, it may violate the Knesset Ethics Committee's guidelines.

Prime Minister Imran Khan promised Sunday to "investigate" Pakistani citizens connected to a massive probe into the hidden wealth of politicians worldwide, after members of his inner circle were implicated in the report.

One of Khan's predecessors, Nawaz Sharif, was ousted by the country's Supreme Court in 2017 over allegations made in the Panama Papers.

In total, the ICIJ found links between almost 1,000 companies in offshore havens and 336 high-level politicians and public officials, including country leaders, cabinet ministers, ambassadors and others.

Though they may be embarrassing to certain individuals and companies, the Pandora Papers' revelations of offshore assets are not a challenge to the US government or the Western system of corporate power, sceptics say.

But despite those and similar examples, sceptics believe that the Pandora Papers won't do much good in tackling the worst kinds of corruption. Unlike what was revealed by the transparency website WikiLeaks or NSA leaker Edwards Snowden, "few - if any - important [players] in the West will be exposed," predicted journalist Alan MacLeod, who writes at the independent outlet Mint Press. Corporate media's hyping of the leak is a good indicator of how unthreatening it is to the Western establishment, he said.

The ICIJ compiled a bunch of graphs detailing the statistics of the new leak. One map, titled 'Where are the 336 politicians in the Pandora Papers from?' shows exactly zero such individuals for the US. The US is a major destination for people interested in offshore arrangements for their riches, the investigators pointed out, thanks to trust-friendly jurisdictions like South Dakota, Florida, and Delaware.

The Grayzone's Ben Norton sarcastically touted the absence of American politicians as evidence that they are "all pure and free from corruption." Journalist Mark Ames joked that "honest incorruptible oligarchs" like George Soros and Pierre Omidyar are likewise nowhere to be seen in the new ICIJ disclosure - just like in the previous ones.

American super-billionaires may have been somehow screened out from the disclosure - or simply don't need to utilize services to optimize their wealth and dodge taxes. Wondering whether the recurring peculiarities of the leaks indicate Washington's hand behind them is hardly conspiracy thinking.

The Trump administration gave the CIA extra powers to engage in disruptive cyberoperations, and the agency "wasted no time in exercising the new freedoms," according to a 2020 Yahoo! News report. The operations included not only cyber sabotage, but "also public dissemination of data: leaking or things that look like leaking," an intelligence source told the outlet.

That angle does not necessarily apply to the ICIJ investigations, and even if it did, it would be irrelevant to facts that the investigators established, as long as the underlying materials are authentic. At least, that was the long-held standard for journalism before Western media decided that some leaks are more equal than others, and if one exposes potential corruption of presidential candidate Joe Biden, it can be ignored and suppressed.

Snowden, one of the biggest leakers of our time, found the story "very serious" - but he also found humor in the fact that, even after two previous leaks, offshore operators "are still compiling vast databases of ruin, and still secure them with a Post-It Note marked 'do not leak.'"