David Cameron’s father Ian, six Conservative peers, three former MPs and several Tory donors are also linked to tax haven networks, the investigation alleges.

Despite the prevalence of offshore bank accounts and shell companies owned by UK based people and organisations, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs Office (HMRC) has only prosecuted 11 offshore tax evaders in the last five years.

The president of the United Arab Emirates has secretly built one of the single biggest offshore property empires in Britain, the Panama Papers reveal.

Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan owns dozens of central London properties worth more than £1.2bn through offshore companies supplied by Mossack Fonseca.

His property portfolio runs from the BHS building on Oxford Street to the designer outlets of Bruton Street and Mayfair’s Berkeley Square estate, where his tenants include Hermès, Stella McCartney and Annabel’s nightclub.

Swiss police have raided UEFA’s offices after its former secretary general and now FIFA president Gianni Infantino became embroiled in the Panama Papers scandal.

Documents leaked from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca reportedly show he signed a contract on behalf of UEFA to sell TV rights for the Champions League and other club competitions.

It’s just the tip of a much bigger iceberg. “The size of the leak is unprecedented, but the tricks Mossack Fonseca has allegedly used for its clients are neither new nor surprising. Anonymous shell companies and the failure of governments to require lawyers, corporate service companies, or banks to collect beneficial ownership information on clients leave the door wide open for dirty money to flow around the globe virtually unhindered,” says Heather Lowe, the Director of Government Affairs for Global Financial Integrity, a Washington DC-based consultancy.

Law firm Mossack Fonseca, which has been at the center of the Panama Papers leak, acted for an Iranian oil company that had been blacklisted by the U.S., the Guardian reported, citing the leaked documents. The company reportedly realized that the Iranian oil firm Petropars Ltd. was a blacklisted company only in 2010 when another client accidentally fell foul of the U.S. sanctions imposed against the energy firm.

There is nothing illegal about moving money offshore. To begin with, during the 1970s it was a way of moving cash around at a time of widespread currency controls across Europe.

Buying and selling dollars, for instance, was much easier for banks if the trades were done offshore. If you lived in a country where a corrupt or predatory government might seize your assets, then moving your wealth offshore to protect it also made sense.

But the offshore industry has evolved substantially since then. And the secrecy surrounding it has become increasingly unpalatable for world leaders, who have been calling for more transparency. David Cameron and Barack Obama chief among them.

HM Treasury
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many people were (a) prosecuted and (b) convicted for (i) off-shore tax evasion, (ii) in-shore tax evasion, (iii) tax credit fraud, (iv) VAT fraud, (v) smuggling and (vi) other tax-related offences in each financial year since 2010-11.

The information is not held in the format requested. HM Revenue and Customs’ centrally held data records the primary reason for the court case. The central data does not separately identify smuggling cases or use the term ‘in-shore evasion’ when recording the number of prosecutions or convictions.