The cache of leaked documents provides names of politicians and others linked to more than 175,000 Bahamian companies registered between 1990 and 2016. ICIJ and its media partners are also making details from the Bahamas corporate registry available to the public.

Unlike the Panama Papers, which consisted of 11.5m emails, contracts, audio recordings and other documents from one law firm, ICIJ says the information listed in the new Bahamian documents is plainer in content.

The new data does not make it clear, for example, whether directors named in connection with a Bahamian firm truly control the company or act as nominees, employees-for-hire who serve as the face of the company but have no involvement in its operations.

The new leaked documents include the names of 539 registered agents— corporate middlemen who serve as intermediaries between Bahamian authorities and customers who wish to create an offshore company. Among them is Mossack Fonseca, the law firm whose leaked files formed the basis of the Panama Papers. The firm set up 15,915 entities in the Bahamas, making it Mossack Fonseca’s third busiest jurisdiction.

Among the names in the Bahamian files is that of Neelie Kroes, a former EU commissioner for competition policy from 2004 to 2010. She is listed as a director of the Bahamian company, Mint Holdings Ltd from 2000 to 2009, according to documents reviewed by the ICIJ.

Kroes, through a lawyer, told ICIJ and media partners that she did not declare her directorship of the company because it was never operational. Kroes’ lawyer blamed her appearance on company records as ‘a clerical oversight which was not corrected until 2009.’ Her lawyer said the company, set up through a Jordanian businessman and friend of Kroes, had been created to investigate the possibility of raising money to purchase assets – worth more than $6bn (£4.6bn) – from Enron, the American energy giant. The deal never came off, and Enron later collapsed amid a massive accounting scandal.

Also named in the leak is home secretary Amber Rudd MP, who previously worked at JP Morgan and then in venture capital in the City. Tax campaigner Richard Murphy has called for the resignation of Rudd.

Miles Dean, managing partner of Milestone International Tax criticised Murphy’s comments. He said: ‘Suggestions that Amber Rudd should resign, or even answer serious questions, because she was a director of a company established in a tax haven are completely illogical.

‘This was several years prior to Amber Rudd becoming an MP and has no impact on her ability to act as home secretary, her career prior to politics was in finance and venture capital.

‘Offshore entities are used very frequently in finance, as tax neutral pooling vehicles for onshore and offshore investors, collective investment schemes and so on. There is nothing untoward about such arrangements.’

ICIJ’s database of offshore information is here: https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/