Once again, data from Cyprus that has become public highlights questionable financial flows – especially from Russia. Only a few are truly relevant – the question is: why are they appearing now? According to one expert, one thing is certain: “Cyprus is now in a state of complete stress.”
It was only a matter of time before the next batch of documents from the notorious offshore areas were leaked and assessed by an international team of journalists. Previous leaks – such as the offshore spill in 2013, the Panama spill in 2016, or the Pandora Papers in 2021 – had set the blueprint for this. The more the West strengthens its anti-money laundering efforts, the more outsiders will expect questionable financial flows occurring on their soil to become public.
In the current case, there were 3.6 million documents evaluated by 270 journalists from 55 countries and summarized under the heading “Cyprus Secret.” The documents, which were leaked to relevant research platforms, come from six financial service providers based in Cyprus and one service provider from Latvia. One of them reported that she was the victim of an extortion hacker attack.
But what does the data show? Why did they leak now? What consequences could it have?
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