John Doe
Anonymous source
Delivered the Mossack Fonseca cache and later published a manifesto against inequality. Still unnamed in public. The remaining mystery score in this dossier is mostly this identity.
The cast is a source, two German reporters, a consortium director, two prime ministers and a law firm's name.
Thousands of clients are in the files; six figures explain how English memory is organised.
People
Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier
Süddeutsche Zeitung reporters
First recipients of the files and authors of the German book that English desks treated as the origin story. They chose a consortium over a solo scoop.
Gerard Ryle / ICIJ
Consortium organiser
ICIJ's then director organised the shared archive and embargo. The method — local partners, one clock — is the journalistic exhibit.
Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson
Icelandic prime minister, resigned 2016
Left office after the leak showed an offshore company tied to the country's crashed banks and after a public confrontation. The cleanest early political result.
Nawaz Sharif
Pakistani prime minister, disqualified 2017
His family's London-property trail, aired from the Papers, became a Supreme Court case that ended his third premiership. A court aftershock, not only a headline.
Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca
Firm founders
Denied that their Panama City firm ran a criminal enterprise. The firm closed in 2018. Fonseca died in 2024 with legal matters still in the background. They are the corporate names, not a world-court verdict.
A source, a consortium and a handful of fallen leaders organise the story. Most file names never became defendants.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.