Public Money in the Leaks: What the Paradise Papers, Wi...

Three very different document troves have shaped the last decade of financial disclosure: the Paradise Papers, released by a global consortium of journalists in 2017; the WikiLeaks archives; and the still-growing set of records known as the Epstein files. They are usually filed under scandal. Read for money rather than for gossip, they share a quieter and more useful theme. Each one exposed money moving through public, quasi-public, or tax-advantaged institutions, the kind the public subsidizes or is asked to trust, rather than simple private theft. And the recurring surprise is not that laws were broken. It is how much of what they revealed was perfectly legal, and how much of the damning detail comes from the institutions' own investigations.

That is the discipline this piece keeps. Almost nothing below was adjudicated as a crime. The interest is in what is legal, what it costs or forgoes for the public purse, and what official reviews themselves concluded. Where a person is named, it is because a primary source names them, and appearing in a leaked or unsealed document is not by itself evidence of wrongdoing. That last point is not a throat-clearing formality. It is the single most important rule for reading any of this honestly.

The Paradise Papers: legal avoidance at the institutions we subsidize

The Paradise Papers were 13.4 million documents, drawn largely from the offshore law firm Appleby and released beginning November 5, 2017 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and more than 380 reporters (ICIJ). ICIJ has always been explicit that appearing in the data is not evidence of illegality, because offshore structuring is frequently legal. That caveat is exactly what makes the public-money angle interesting: the story is not crime, it is the tax code.

The clearest example runs through American universities, institutions that are tax-exempt precisely because the public has decided their mission is worth subsidizing. ICIJ found more than 100 colleges and universities among the roughly 25,000 offshore entities it added to its database from the leak (ICIJ). Schools including Columbia, Dartmouth, and Johns Hopkins used offshore "blocker" corporations for parts of their endowment investing. The mechanism is worth understanding, because it is entirely lawful. When an endowment makes debt-financed investments in private equity or hedge funds, the income can trigger the Unrelated Business Income Tax, a levy that applies even to tax-exempt entities. By routing those investments through a corporation incorporated in a zero-tax jurisdiction like Bermuda or the Cayman Islands, the offshore entity, rather than the university, absorbs the tax. No court has called this evasion, and ICIJ did not allege the schools broke any law. It is legal avoidance, done by institutions the public underwrites, and the debate it opened is about tax policy, not criminality.

The corporate version was Apple. After a May 2013 hearing of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations put its Irish tax structures under a spotlight, Apple sought a new offshore home and, the Paradise Papers showed, secured tax residency in Jersey, a Crown dependency with no corporate profit tax, for key Irish subsidiaries (ICIJ). ICIJ reported that Apple had held about 111 billion dollars in cash in its Irish shadow companies before the hearing and, after the reorganization, held a roughly 252 billion dollar mountain of cash offshore. Apple disputes the framing. It says the changes did not reduce its tax payments in any country, that it remained among the world's largest taxpayers, and that it paid about 1.5 billion dollars in Irish tax over three years (CNN). Both things are on the record: the restructuring happened, and Apple's rebuttal stands beside it.

Even the British Crown appeared. The Duchy of Lancaster, the private estate that funds the monarch, held about 10 million pounds, roughly 13.1 million dollars, in offshore funds in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, including about 7.5 million in a Cayman fund and 6.53 million in a Bermuda one (CNN). The Queen was not accused of any wrongdoing, and the Duchy said the investments were legal and that it was not aware of downstream holdings. The reputational hook was one of those downstream holdings, a stake in a rent-to-own retailer later ordered by British regulators to compensate customers for irresponsible lending. Again the surprise is not a crime. It is that the plumbing of a public institution ran quietly through zero-tax islands.

WikiLeaks: an honest caveat, and the costs it put a spotlight on

WikiLeaks is the weakest leg of this story for a pure public-money reading, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than dressing it up. Its 2011 "Guantanamo Files" released 765 secret Detainee Assessment Briefs covering most of the men held at the prison (WikiLeaks). Those documents recorded the detention and assessment process, the human and legal record. They did not contain budget figures. Anyone who tells you WikiLeaks revealed what Guantanamo costs is conflating two different things.

The cost, however, is independently documented, and it is staggering. Holding roughly 40 detainees runs the government more than 540 million dollars a year, about 13 million dollars per detainee, a figure from 2019 New York Times reporting cited by Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group, which notes the true cost is higher because some of it is classified (Human Rights Watch). For comparison, a prisoner at the federal supermax in Florence, Colorado costs on the order of 78,000 dollars a year. On a per-prisoner basis Guantanamo is the most expensive detention on earth by a factor of more than a hundred. The same pattern shows up in the roughly 750 million dollars it cost to build the United States Embassy in Baghdad, the largest and most expensive embassy ever, opened in 2009 (background reporting). Neither figure is a WikiLeaks revelation. What the leaks did was force sustained public attention onto programs whose costs are documented elsewhere, which is a real if indirect contribution to the public-money conversation.

The Epstein files: money that moved through elite institutions

The largest and most institution-heavy of the three troves is the set of records surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, and here the strongest sources are not leaks at all. They are the investigations that universities and companies commissioned into themselves, plus congressional and Justice Department reviews. The through-line is money, tax-advantaged and reputational, moving through institutions the public funds or trusts.

Start with the universities. MIT's own fact-finding report, conducted by the law firm Goodwin Procter and released in January 2020, found the Institute had received 850,000 dollars directly from Epstein across ten gifts between 2002 and 2017 (MIT). More striking, it found Epstein had helped facilitate a further 7 million dollars to the Media Lab, 2 million attributed to Bill Gates and 5 million to Apollo co-founder Leon Black. The 2020 report accepted the donors' accounts that this was their own money and found no evidence Epstein's funds were being laundered. That conclusion has not aged cleanly. In early 2026, a Justice Department release of roughly 3 million pages included emails from 2012 to 2014 that appear to contradict the earlier account, showing Epstein coordinating with Gates's advisors on MIT donations and helping arrange the Black gift (The Tech, MIT's student newspaper; CNN). No crime has been alleged against the donors, and the point is narrower and more institutional: the 2020 finding that the gifts were "completely independent" of Epstein is exactly what the later documents reopened. MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito, who had cultivated Epstein after his 2008 conviction, resigned in September 2019.

Harvard's own report, released in May 2020, found the university took 9.1 million dollars from Epstein between 1998 and 2008, with no gifts after his conviction (Harvard). The largest single gift, 6.5 million dollars in 2003, created the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics under professor Martin Nowak, who let Epstein keep an office with keycard access and visit more than 40 times between 2010 and 2018, after the conviction. The timing is the point worth being precise about. The money mostly predated the 2008 conviction; the scandal is the continued campus access afterward. Nowak was sanctioned by Harvard in 2021, sanctions later lifted, and he remains on the faculty.

The largest sums appear in the case of Leon Black, and this is where the documented-versus-alleged line has to be walked most carefully. An independent review by the law firm Dechert, commissioned by the board of Black's firm Apollo and released in January 2021, found that Black had paid Epstein 158 million dollars from 2012 to 2017 for trust, estate, and tax-planning work, and found no evidence Black was involved in Epstein's crimes (Apollo). Black was never criminally charged and denies wrongdoing. The public-money angle is the tax planning itself. According to the Senate Finance Committee, Epstein advised on grantor retained annuity trusts that reportedly saved Black about 600 million dollars in future gift and estate taxes, work for which Black paid Epstein 20 million dollars, and the committee raised questions about whether the arrangements improperly kept more than 1 billion dollars out of his taxable estate, adding that the IRS had reportedly never audited the trusts (Senate Finance Committee). Black's attorneys have said the tax ideas originated with other advisors and were already public. In June 2026 the committee referred its findings to the House Oversight Committee, citing 170 million dollars in payments to Epstein, a larger figure than Dechert's 158 million because it covers a different scope, and noting a separate 62.5 million dollar settlement Black reached with the United States Virgin Islands (Senate Finance Committee). A congressional referral is not a charge or a finding of guilt, and the tax planning is characterized throughout as legal avoidance rather than adjudicated evasion. That is the honest level of certainty.

Two more matters of official record round it out. The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility concluded in November 2020 that former United States Attorney Alexander Acosta had exercised "poor judgment" in the 2008 non-prosecution agreement that let Epstein plead to state charges, but found he did not commit professional misconduct or break the law, and found no evidence the deal was driven by corruption or by Epstein's wealth (reporting on the OPR finding). And beginning in January 2024, a federal judge ordered the unsealing of thousands of pages from a civil case, a process that continued through the larger 2026 releases. Courts and reporters stressed a rule that bears repeating for every single name in those files: appearing in the documents does not establish wrongdoing, and many people named had no evidence of any against them (NPR).

The through-line

Put the three troves side by side and the surprise is consistent. What they exposed was rarely cartoon villainy. It was legal structures and institutional choices moving money through entities the public underwrites or is asked to trust: tax-exempt university endowments parking investments in Bermuda, a corporation island-hopping its cash to a zero-tax jurisdiction, a monarch's estate quietly invested offshore, a detention program costing more than a hundred times a supermax cell, and a convicted offender routing tax-advantaged millions and reputational access through elite campuses and a billionaire's estate plan. Almost all of it was legal, or at least never adjudicated otherwise, which is precisely why it is worth understanding. The scandal that makes headlines is the crime. The story that actually costs or forgoes public money is the structure, and the structures keep operating, and the files, as the 2026 releases showed, keep coming.

Fact-check notes and sources

Every figure was checked against a primary or authoritative source; links are inline. Almost nothing described here was adjudicated as a crime, and that is stated throughout.

The Paradise Papers (13.4 million documents, mostly from Appleby, released from November 5, 2017 by ICIJ and 380-plus journalists, with ICIJ's own disclaimer that inclusion is not evidence of wrongdoing): ICIJ. The 100-plus universities, the blocker-corporation and UBIT mechanism, and the naming of Columbia, Dartmouth, and Johns Hopkins: ICIJ; this is legal tax avoidance, and no illegality was alleged. Apple's Jersey move after the May 2013 Senate hearing and the 111 billion and 252 billion dollar cash figures, with Apple's rebuttal that it did not reduce its taxes and paid 1.5 billion dollars in Irish tax: ICIJ and CNN. The Duchy of Lancaster's roughly 10 million pounds offshore: CNN; the Queen was not accused of wrongdoing.
WikiLeaks (the 2011 Guantanamo Files as 765 Detainee Assessment Briefs that documented the detention record and not costs): WikiLeaks. The independently reported cost of Guantanamo, more than 540 million dollars a year for about 40 detainees, roughly 13 million each, against about 78,000 dollars at the federal supermax: Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group citing 2019 New York Times reporting, with true costs partly classified. The roughly 750 million dollar Baghdad embassy: background reporting. Both cost figures are independently reported, not WikiLeaks revelations.
The Epstein files (MIT's 850,000 dollars in direct gifts across ten gifts from 2002 to 2017 and a further 7 million dollars, 2 million from Gates and 5 million from Black, that Epstein helped facilitate, per the 2020 Goodwin Procter report, whose "independent of Epstein" finding was reopened by Justice Department documents released in early 2026): MIT, The Tech, and CNN. No crime has been alleged against the donors. Harvard's 9.1 million dollars from 1998 to 2008, the 6.5 million dollar 2003 gift to Martin Nowak's program, and the post-conviction access (Nowak's 2021 sanctions were later lifted): Harvard. Leon Black's 158 million dollars paid to Epstein (2012 to 2017) per the Dechert review that found no evidence he was involved in Epstein's crimes; the GRAT tax planning reportedly saving about 600 million dollars and the Senate's more-than-1-billion-dollar question with no IRS audit; and the June 2026 referral citing 170 million dollars and a separate 62.5 million dollar Virgin Islands settlement: Apollo/Dechert and the Senate Finance Committee. Black was never charged and denies wrongdoing; the 158 and 170 million figures reflect different scopes; the tax planning is characterized as legal avoidance, not adjudicated evasion; a referral is not a finding of guilt. The Justice Department's "poor judgment" finding on Alexander Acosta's 2008 agreement, with no misconduct or corrupt motive found: reporting on the OPR report. The January 2024 court unsealing, with the rule that being named is not evidence of wrongdoing: NPR.

This post is informational and journalistic, describing matters of public record: leaked and unsealed documents, institution-commissioned reports, congressional investigations, and court and agency findings. It is not legal or financial advice, and it does not allege that any named person committed a crime. Offshore structuring and estate tax planning described here are lawful unless a court has ruled otherwise; appearing in a leaked or unsealed document is not evidence of wrongdoing. Individuals and institutions are discussed as nominative fair use from the public record, with documented facts distinguished from allegations throughout.

Public Money in the Leaks: What the Paradise Papers, WikiLeaks, and the Epstein Files Actually Show