The Pandora Papers put American trusts inside the offshore story

The Pandora Papers drew on more than 11.9 million files from fourteen offshore service providers. That broader base let reporters trace how clients and advisers combined companies, trusts, and jurisdictions to conceal ownership.

One especially revealing strand led to the United States. ICIJ described wealth moving into South Dakota trusts, where legal protections and secrecy could make assets difficult for outsiders to trace. The investigation challenged the assumption that offshore finance necessarily happens far from major Western democracies.

It also documented political figures whose private arrangements sat uneasily beside public commitments to transparency. Such conflicts require case-by-case evidence: owning an offshore company or trust is not, by itself, a crime.

The distinction from the Panama Papers is substantive. Rather than opening one provider’s filing cabinet, this investigation mapped a wider market in financial secrecy, including jurisdictions that simultaneously pressed other countries to disclose information.