Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who was elected in 2019 on a pledge to clean up his country's notoriously corrupt and oligarch-influenced economy, is also named in the leak. The department last year said Adani’s only relevant licence was an “associated water licence” that would allow it to extract groundwater as necessary from coal deposits. As part of the Peroza expansion, Ericsson and its partner Asiacell needed to haul cell towers and equipment from Erbil, in northern Iraq, to Ramadi, in the middle of the country. A transportation contractor, Cargo Iraq, offered two options, according to the report: the “legal way” and the “Speedway.” Ericsson’s compliance department, which monitors the transnational company’s activities, prepared the confidential records with the help of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, a high-powered New York law firm, which handled its defense in the U.S. bribery probe.

The Pandora Papers reveal that Chaudhary has companies in the British Virgin Islands and Singapore in the names of his wife and three sons, Nirvan, Varun, and Rahul.Ericsson and its subcontractors kept working. The day after ISIS swept into Mosul in 2014, the company was searching for contractors to work on Asiacell’s Peroza Project upgrade, the internal report said. As Ericsson’s sales agent, Jawhar Surchi helped the company navigate Iraq’s bureaucracy for 15 years. Through his firm, Al-Awsat Telecommunication Services, Surchi secured contracts for Ericsson with government agencies and the mobile operators Asiacell and Zain. He denied winning contracts through bribery or engaging in any sort of corruption and said he never saw Ericsson do so. Of the allegations, he said,”somebody is trying to discredit” his company. “Whatever is said is from jealousy.’’

The revelations come amid fierce industry competition, especially with Chinese power player Huawei, for control of telecom networks in the 21st century. Telecom giant Ericsson sought permission from the terrorist group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to work in an ISIS-controlled city and paid protection money to smuggle equipment through ISIS-held zones on a route known as the “Speedway,” according to a leaked internal investigation. Once again Britain’s role as an enabler of global corruption and money laundering has been exposed with the same loopholes exploited to funnel suspect wealth into the country," said Duncan Hames, Director of Policy at Transparency International UK. ICIJ and its partners verified the leaked internal records’ authenticity and spent months examining scores of other documents. Journalists also interviewed a former Ericsson contractor kidnapped by ISIS, former employees of Ericsson, government officials, contractors and other industry insiders in Iraq, the United Kingdom, the United States, Jordan, Lebanon and elsewhere. During the campaign, Zelenskiy transferred his 25 percent stake in an offshore company to a close friend who now works as the president's top adviser, the files suggest.Ericsson hired the Simpson Thacher law firm to monitor the company’s internal corruption investigations. The legal team was composed of three former U.S. officials, including Cheryl Scarboro, who previously served as chief of the SEC’s anti-bribery unit.