Panama Papers (2016): A year under embargo

On 3 April 2016 ICIJ and more than a hundred outlets began publishing 11.5 million files from Panama firm Mossack Fonseca, a leak that toppled governments and left a mixed dock of inquiries. On 3 April 2016, after a year of coordinated reporting, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) began publishing stories drawn from 11.5 million files — about 2.6 terabytes — from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. The source used the name John Doe. More than a hundred newsrooms in dozens of countries worked from a shared cache. The files described shell companies, trusts and the clients who used them, including heads of government, relatives of officials and well-known business figures.

Political shock was immediate. Iceland's prime minister, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, resigned after a televised confrontation about an offshore company. In Pakistan, the Supreme Court disqualified Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 2017 in a case that grew from the leak. Britain's then prime minister, David Cameron, faced questions about his late father's offshore interests. Other names — including associates of Vladimir Putin, denied by the Kremlin — drove a week of global headlines. Mossack Fonseca shut down in 2018.

The status is mixed because journalism produced resignations, inquiries and some convictions, not a single world court verdict. Many uses of offshore vehicles were legal. Some were not. This page records the leak, the consortium method and the public aftershocks. It does not explain how to hide assets or how to build a shell.