A major leak of property and residency records has revealed the owners of hundreds of luxury properties in the secretive Emirate of Dubai – a hub of finance and trade, both licit and illicit, between Europe, Asia and Africa. Finance Uncovered has explored the records as part of a team of investigative journalists assembled by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) to dig into the data, first obtained by the US non-profit C4ADS. It contains about 54,000 addresses with 129,000 owners from 181 countries. Among them are world leaders, business moguls and sporting superstars, but also individuals linked to organised crime, corruption and other suspiciously-acquired sources of wealth. According to the UK’s National Crime Agency, the United Arab Emirates was the most favoured destination for laundered UK assets by value between 2011 and 2015. Billions of pounds of stolen tax revenues from countries around the world are thought to be hidden in Dubai’s golden sands.
— source financeuncovered.org