AKIPRESS.COM - Family members of at least eight of China’s current and former top-ranking political leaders appear in the Panama Papers as owners or shareholders of secretive offshore companies, according to reporting and documents published Wednesday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Washington Post reported.

The ICIJ is one of the publications that is reviewing the 11 million documents leaked from a Panamanian law firm that helped clients set up anonymous companies. The Washington Post has not reviewed the documents and cannot confirm their contents.

The ICIJ had previously reported that the documents show offshore companies were controlled by Deng Jiagui, the brother-in-law of Chinese President Xi Jinping, the head of China’s government and its Communist Party. It had also reported that the documents mentioned ownership of offshore companies by Li Xiaolin, the businesswoman and daughter of Li Peng, the premier of China between 1987 and 1998.

On Wednesday, the ICIJ reported additional information on the offshore holdings of relatives of two members of China’s Politburo Standing Committee, the seven-person body that heads the government, as well as of relatives of four more former Chinese leaders and Politburo Standing Committee members.

The newly released names include the daughter-in-law of Liu Yunshan, China’s current propaganda chief, and the son-in-law of Zhang Gaoli, the current vice premier.

They also include the granddaughter of Jia Qinglin, who served on the Standing Committee until 2012. Jia’s granddaughter Jasmine Li Zidan took ownership of an offshore company named Harvest Sun Trading in 2010 for $1, documents show. At the time, Li Zidan was a freshman at Stanford University, the ICIJ reported.

Later, both Harvest Sun and another British Virgin Islands company owned by Li Zidan were used to set up two similarly named companies in Beijing, the ICIJ reported. The offshore holdings structure prevented the family’s name from showing up on the public registration documents for the Beijing companies, the ICIJ says.