主题：四万亿美元！ -- 张lini

Relatives of at least five current and former members of China’s top leadership have been exposed as holders of offshore accounts, as part of a revelatory report by investigative journalists.

The leak, part of a package of 2.5 million files obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, points to nearly 22,000 offshore clients with addresses in mainland China and Hong Kong and 16,000 offshore clients from Taiwan.

The ownership of secret offshore accounts does not imply any illegal conduct, but the obscurity of such accounts makes auditing a very difficult task at best.

Deng Jiagui, brother-in-law of China’s President Xi Jinping, as well as Wen Yunsong and Wen Ruchun, two children of former premier Wen Jiabao, appear to hold offshore accounts, according to the ICIJ.

Other prominent names on the Cook Islands or British Virgin Islands accounts include relatives of Deng Xiaoping, former president Hu Jintao and former premier Li Peng.

The report also mentions some of China’s most prominent entrepreneurs, including China’s richest woman, Yang Huiyan, the majority shareholder of property developer Country Garden Holdings; China’s richest man Pony Ma Huateng, founder of internet giant Tencent; and real estate billionaire Zhang Xin, who founded Soho China.

It also includes names of officials who have been implicated in the ongoing graft investigation against China’s former security czar Zhou Yongkang, the nation’s highest-profile probe in recent history.

Many mainland companies have long resorted to using offshore subsidiaries to sell products at low prices in an effort to avoid taxes.

The subsidiaries can, in such structures, resell the products at higher prices without the oversight of Chinese tax authorities and then repatriate the profits, without the fiscal burden to China, or opt to keep them abroad, avoiding China’s restrictive regime on cash outflows.

Around US$400 billion have been brought back to China through trade invoicing since 2006, the Washington-based think tank Global Financial Integrity (GFI) estimated in a report released earlier this month.

The ICIJ report claimed it discovered evidence “that many Chinese companies and individuals have used offshore entities to engage in illicit or illegal behaviour”, citing offshore accounts by former officials of the now-dissolved Ministry of Railways and state-run shipping giant Cosco who have received jail sentences for graft in recent years.

It is unclear who leaked the documents, which the ICIJ said came from two companies that help set up offshore accounts: Portcullis TrustNet in Singapore and Commonwealth Trust Limited in the British Virgin Islands. The number of companies TrustNet established for clients in greater China more than tripled from 1,500 to 4,800 between 2003 and 2007, ICIJ said.

In April, the group of journalists released a first batch of files, which already pinpointed some account holders in Hong Kong, but the consortium seems to have kept most of its China-related findings under wraps until Wednesday.

The ICIJ said it would announce more details on its findings in the coming days.

In response to the leaks, Clark Gascoigne, spokesperson for GFI, told South China Morning Post on Wednesday that the results did not come as a surprise as China has become the biggest exporter of illicit capital. (Full story here)

However, he also said the offshore accounts would have an impact on China's economy in terms of widening inequality and exacerbating corruption.