A landmark piece of investigative journalism has uncovered the Panama Papers: files revealing a vast network of tax havens serving celebrities and the powerful.
The release of the enormous archive of files dubbed the Panama Papers, originating from the Mossack Fonseca law firm in Panama, has uncovered a system of worldwide exploitation of tax havens. One hundred and seven international newspaper newsrooms spent nine months studying no fewer than 11.5 million dossiers that had been held at the law firm founded in 1977 by German national Jurgen Mossack and Panamanian Ramon Fonseca, specialists in the domiciliation of offshore companies.
The Panama Papers trace the full activity of the firm up to the end of 2015. The documents were published after the law firm itself sent an email to its clients on 1 April confirming the data leak. An outraged Fonseca condemned what he described as "a crime, an offence" and "an attack against Panama".
The story of the investigation begins more than a year ago, when a source in possession of encrypted documents from the law firm contacted the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. The newspaper's editorial team realised the scale of the work was enormous, and so decided to bring in the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the same non-profit organisation that had published the "Offshore Leaks" in 2013.
From this was born a global network of cooperation that made it possible to analyse the colossal volume of files. Le Monde, among the newspapers that took part in the investigation, explained that "in total we are talking about 2.6 terabytes of data, studied by 370 journalists in France, India, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, the United States, Brazil and Japan." Something like 1,500 times WikiLeaks.
And the result is extraordinary: what is being described as "the biggest data leak in the history of journalism" involves thousands of people across the world. Among them, Le Monde specifies, are "twelve heads of state and government, six of them currently in office." Added to these are 128 political figures and 29 of the 500 wealthiest people on the planet according to the Forbes rankings.
All of them are said to have taken advantage of the tax benefits offered by the law firm. A system built on more than 214,000 offshore companies created or administered by Mossack Fonseca, registered across twenty-one tax havens and used by clients from more than two hundred countries. A veritable financial tour of the world spanning Luxembourg, Switzerland, the British Virgin Islands, the Samoan Islands, the Seychelles, Monaco and the Bahamas.
A feature by the weekly l'Espresso names, among the notable Italian figures, businessman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, former Forza Italia senator Marcello Dell'Utri and former Formula One driver Jarno Trulli. It also appears, moreover, that the names of two Italian banking institutions recur: Ubi and Unicredit.
At the global level, the names that emerge include Russian president Vladimir Putin, football star Lionel Messi, suspended Fifa president Michel Platini, former French Budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac and Icelandic prime minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson. Companies linked to the family of Chinese president Xi Jinping also feature, as does the name of Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, along with that of the (now deceased) father of current British prime minister David Cameron.
