In this beautiful corner of Northwest Tasmania, an Asiaciti client bought agricultural land using a secretive maritime trust and company building.
ANTHONY WATSON: How the money came in is that the Canadian manager had a bag in Bermuda. The Bermudan fundraised money to a Singapore company, which acquired an Australian dairy farm.
But if you look at the ownership of the paper, the Singapore company is owned by trustees, two trustees of two Isle of Man trustees.
Asiaciti files indicate that the source of the proceeds from the sale was Canadian Stephen De Heinrich, a former director of the oil company Addax Petroleum.
PROMO VOICEOVER: We are a global gas exploration and production company.
In 2007 two top Addax officials admitted to bribing a former Nigerian oil minister with lucrative contracts. De Heinrich made a fortune after the company was sold for the US $ 7 billion.
BIRDS TWITTER, LOW COWS Tasmania farms sold to landowners this year at double the purchase price. Does the Australian Government know who owns property in Australia?
No, maybe not, and it’s one of the benefits of having opaque properties like companies. They both ... Also, they give the spirit of legitimacy -
"That's for an outside company, so it has to be OK."
But then you get company ropes. And then you will find companies owned by nominees, and nominees are often announced.
Or there will be companies controlled not by their shareholders but by creditors. And, therefore, it is difficult to choose where the controller comes from.
(TWITTER BIRDS) Tasmanian Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson remain in the latest senate investigation into external ownership.
He said it raised serious questions about the ability of the Foreign Investment Board to effectively monitor the inflow of Australian assets.
PETER WHISH-WILSON: Look, obviously, it is estimated that billions of dollars go into Australian buildings which are dirty money. And that money increases housing prices.
It makes housing less expensive for your typical Australia. And it is not right at all that the government knows that there are mistakes in our law, there are exceptions that need to be removed or loopholes - perhaps a better name - that need to be removed,
yet they drag their feet in doing this.
Now, that means, in fact, that means you know, your children or yourself are likely to buy the property, and, if they are on sale, there may be someone there wearing a suit that looks good, is very sharp and legitimate, but can be a representative working for an external kleptocrat or a person exposed to politics.
Now, because there are no rules for one of the gatekeepers in that series of transactions, which poses a serious risk to Australia.
And I think, you know, the anger that the Australian people would have shown if they had known that the corrupt money was buying their local jewelry on the crown and competing with the locals at auction ... yes, I think they would be angry about that.
Secrets of companies like Asiaciti rarely appear in the public domain unless one decides to take the risk of leaking confidential information.
GERARD RYLE: The source wanted two things. First, the source demanded anonymity. I think for security reasons.
And the second thing I was told was that he wanted to make these documents available to governments around the world.
And this was the best way to do it, according to reporters. Gerard Ryle spent ten years chasing the secrets of the world's richest taxpayers.
Continuing to return to it should be in the public interest.
We are not interested in anyone else's privacy. But when we look at these records, we are not looking at private matters, we are looking at things that should be made public.
I think it shows that there is a shadow economy, a dignified world out there that we don't know about, and that this is a country that enriches people who are already rich.
Are you linking a team of more than 600 journalists from international news partners, including Four Corners, who have spent months reviewing more than 11 million articles?
Asiaciti is one of 14 reward service providers. When you look at the secret world, you need to get information from that secret world to understand it.
I think all the leaks we had in the past, gave us only a small window in this world, but here we have 14 different windows.
And I think that's what allows this to be different from anything we've ever done before because it allows for this breadth of knowledge.
We can see how the earthworks, and how this parallel space works, in a way we have never done before. Within Pandora, Papers for politicians, world leaders, and former leaders and their secret treasures.
Jordan's King Abdullah II, who bought luxury homes worth the US $ 100 million from private maritime companies.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who has secretly used shell companies to buy a French charm. And Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, whose family secretly owned overseas assets worth more than the US $ 30 million.
We are talking about Myanmar generals. We are talking about people related to Robert Mugabe here in Zimbabwe. And we look at other African numbers, people who have been convicted or accused of money laundering or serious crimes.
SIREN WAILS Some Asiaciti clients have been in positions of authority for years. In 2014 Asiaciti was ordered to freeze goods to one of its most vulnerable customers.
The order was received by the US Department of Justice. FBI lawyer Debra LaPrevotte was chasing large sums of money looted by the former Nigerian president.
DEBRA LAPREVOTTE: President Abacha died in 1998, and this is suspected that, during his presidency, he stole, cheated, robbed ... just ashamed of $ 5 billion. So, in 2012, the FBI and the Department of Justice met and we began to investigate these funds.
And what we found was the contact of people who not only helped President Abacha put his hands on these funds, especially in cash, but those funds had to be removed from Nigeria.
In 2010 Asiaciti launched an overseas pledge of a long-serving man and President, Nigerian politician Abubakar Atiku Bagudu.
It was later stated in court papers that the two had: Asiaciti kept Bagudu working as a client regardless.
It was once, in 2013, when it became clear that Mr. Bagudu was listed on the US petition, and they could not say, "You know what?" There is enough here that makes us pause,
"so we will continue to close this account," or, you know, "please you are no longer our customer."
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