May 2018

Key findings:

• Leaked records uncover the secretive companies and bank accounts of some of West Africa’s most powerful politicians and corporate moguls, including a Mali presidential candidate, the mayor of Cote d’Ivoire’s richest city and a member of the Togolese ruling dynasty inner circle
• Files also reveal details behind a Seychelles company of a longtime friend of Nobel Prize-winning Liberian ex-president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf who helped lobby on behalf of a mining company
• Honorary consuls, including several representing European countries, used offshore companies and accounts to avoid taxes and keep money out of sight from authorities in West Africa
• A Canadian multinational used a letterbox company as a conduit and avoided paying millions of dollars in tax to Senegal, one of the world’s 25 poorest countries

...West Africa Leaks is the largest-ever collaboration of journalists from West Africa.