The 11.5 million-file cache
Archive
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.
The cache is the exhibit. Journalism authenticated stories against it; courts then used or ignored those leads.
What remains thin is a single global tally of illegal dollars — the files are not one fraud ledger.
Exhibits
ICIJ Offshore Leaks database
Document
A structured public search of companies, officers and intermediaries. It is a research tool, not a guilty list.
John Doe manifesto
Statement
The source's later text states a political motive. It does not identify the person and is not a court finding.
Iceland and Pakistan public files
Court
A resignation after televised confrontation and a 2017 Supreme Court disqualification are the hardest political-legal exhibits.
National tax-audit results
Ledger
Some countries published extra tax collected after the leak. Figures vary by year and agency and should be dated, not globalised into one number.
2017 Pulitzer citation
Press
The prize records the English-language canonisation of the project. It is cultural evidence, not a verdict on clients.
How strong is the record?
That the files are real95
Partner newsrooms and later official inquiries treated the cache as authentic.
Source identity15
John Doe remains unnamed in public.
Uniform criminality of names30
Appearance in the files is not a conviction. Many structures were legal.
Political aftershock80
Resignations, a disqualification and a wave of audits are documented.
Evidence is a mountain of corporate paper and a valley of uneven courts.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.