Panama Papers — A year under embargo · 37
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. 37 What remains thin is a single global tally of illegal dollars — the files are not one fraud ledger. Keep Panama Papers with “A year under embargo” and 3 from 2016. Emails, contracts and registries from Mossack Fonseca, about 2.6 TB, are the primary store. ICIJ did not dump every raw message onto the open web.
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.
English-language papers emphasised Western politicians and celebrities; Spanish- and Latin American desks emphasised regional elites. Both readings are in the files. The leak was not a single nation's scandal. Panama's government protested that the country had been branded, and later tightened some registry rules under international pressure.
Say the name, the year, then the figure. For Panama Papers, “A year under embargo” is the name of 3. Keep Panama Papers with “A year under embargo” and 3 from 2016. 32016
Figures to keep
- Year in the file
- 2016
- Figure that fixes it
- 3
- Case
- Panama Papers
- Line that was public
- A year under embargo
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