Panama Papers : The 11.5 million-file cache

A leak that became a global civic file The Panama Papers are the type case of cross-border investigative journalism: a named firm, a dated dump, a consortium and a scatter of national outcomes rather than one dock. Mossack Fonseca, based in Panama City, was a large incorporator of offshore companies. The leaked material included emails, contracts and corporate registries spanning decades. ICIJ's public database later listed officers and intermediaries; it did not publish every raw email. Scale in this atlas is about the size of the cache and the geographic spread of names, not a single stolen cash total.

John Doe's manifesto, published later, framed the leak as a protest against inequality. German reporters Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier received the first contact at Süddeutsche Zeitung. ICIJ, then directed by Gerard Ryle, organised the collaboration so that local desks could read local names — a method later reused on Paradise Papers and Pandora Papers.

Iceland's resignation was the cleanest early political result: a prime minister who had not disclosed a company tied to crashed Icelandic banks left after public anger. Pakistan's Panama case became a multi-year Supreme Court and accountability-bureau fight that ended Sharif's third premiership. Other countries opened tax audits that produced fines more often than prison.