#ThrowBackToday: Five years back today, the infamous Panama Paper leaks embroiled the rich and the wealthy

On April 3, 2016, the infamous Panama Papers leak began which exposed 2.6 terabytes of data with personal financial information of several wealthy people across 200 nations. This data was from Mossack Fonseca, a former Panamanian law firm. What's startling about this is that Mossack Fonseca shell corporations (a company that exists only on paper but might have bank accounts) was used by the rich for fraud, tax evasion and other purposes. Basically, it's was used as a way of hiding their wealth offshores.

From The Queen to Madonna, several shocking names featured in the list including Keira Knightley, Lewis Hamilton, Donald Trump, Jackie Chan and others. Over 1,800 Indian names were disclosed during the leak as well. Some of the names are Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, DLF owner K P Singh, Gautam Adani’s elder brother Vinod Adani, Ajay Devgn and many others.

READ ALSO: #ThrowBackToday: Recounting one of the many cases of Aadhaar data leaks that was reported

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published these investigations into the financial affairs of the wealthy and stated, "There are legitimate uses for offshore companies and trusts. We do not intend to suggest or imply that any people, companies or other entities included in the ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database have broken the law or otherwise acted improperly."