What is Panama Paper? The Secrets of Dirty Money !
The Panama Papers is a global investigation into the sprawling,
secretive industry of offshore that the world's rich and powerful use to
hide assets and skirt rules by setting up front companies in far-flung
jurisdictions.
Based on a trove of more than 11 million leaked files,
the investigation exposes a cast of characters who use offshore
companies to facilitate bribery, arms deals, tax evasion, financial
fraud and drug trafficking.
Behind the email chains, invoices and
documents that make up the Panama Papers are often unseen victims of
wrongdoing enabled by this shadowy industry. This is their story.
For more, go to panamapapers.icij.org
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Hamish Boland-Rudder
PRODUCER: Carrie Ching
ANIMATION ARTIST: Arthur Jones
REPORTER: Will Fitzgibbon
NARRATOR: Eleanor Bell Fox
......
Over a year ago, an anonymous source contacted the Süddeutsche Zeitung
(SZ) and submitted encrypted internal documents from Mossack Fonseca, a
Panamanian law firm that sells anonymous offshore companies around the
world. These shell companies enable their owners to cover up their
business dealings, no matter how shady.
In the months
that followed, the number of documents continued to grow far beyond the
original leak. Ultimately, SZ acquired about 2.6 terabytes of data,
making the leak the biggest that journalists had ever worked with. The
source wanted neither financial compensation nor anything else in
return, apart from a few security measures.
The data provides rare
insights into a world that can only exist in the shadows. It proves how
a global industry led by major banks, legal firms, and asset management
companies secretly manages the estates of the world’s rich and famous:
from politicians, Fifa officials, fraudsters and drug smugglers, to
celebrities and professional athletes.
A group effort
The Süddeutsche Zeitung decided to analyze the data in cooperation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
ICIJ had already coordinated the research for past projects that SZ was
also involved in, among them Offshore Leaks, Lux Leaks, and Swiss
Leaks. Panama Papers is the biggest-ever international cooperation of
its kind. In the past 12 months, around 400 journalists from more than
100 media organizations in over 80 countries have taken part in
researching the documents. These have included teams from the Guardian and the BBC in England, Le Monde in France, and La Nación
in Argentina. In Germany, SZ journalists have cooperated with their
colleagues from two public broadcasters, NDR and WDR. Journalists from
the Swiss Sonntagszeitung and the Austrian weekly Falter
have also worked on the project, as have their colleagues at ORF,
Austria’s national public broadcaster. The international team initially
met in Washington, Munich, Lillehammer and London to map out the
research approach.
proach.
Making of
..............
The data
The Panama Papers include approximately 11.5 million documents – more
than the combined total of the Wikileaks Cablegate, Offshore Leaks, Lux
Leaks, and Swiss Leaks. The data primarily comprises e-mails, pdf
files, photo files, and excerpts of an internal Mossack Fonseca
database. It covers a period spanning from the 1970s to the spring of
2016.
Moreover,
the journalists crosschecked a large number of documents, including
passport copies. About two years ago, a whistleblower had already sold
internal Mossack Fonseca data to the German authorities, but the dataset
was much older and smaller in scope: while it addressed a few hundred
offshore companies, the Panama Papers provide data on some 214,000
companies. In the wake of the data purchase, last year investigators
searched the homes and offices of about 100 people. The Commerzbank was
also raided. As a consequence of their business dealings with Mossack
Fonseca, Commerzbank, HSH Nordbank, and Hypovereinsbank agreed to pay
fines of around 20 million euros, respectively. Since then, other
countries have also acquired data from the initial smaller leak, among
them the United States, the UK, and Iceland.
The system
The
leaked data is structured as follows: Mossack Fonseca created a folder
for each shell firm. Each folder contains e-mails, contracts,
transcripts, and scanned documents. In some instances, there are several
thousand pages of documentation. First, the data had to be
systematically indexed to make searching through this sea of information
possible. To this end, the Süddeutsche Zeitung used Nuix, the same program that international investigators work with.Süddeutsche Zeitung and ICIJuploaded
millions of documents onto high-performance computers. They applied
optical character recognition (OCR) to transform data into
machine-readable and easy to search files. The process turned images –
such as scanned IDs and signed contracts – into searchable text. This
was an important step: it enabled journalists to comb through as large a
portion of the leak as possible using a simple search mask similar to
Google.The journalists compiled lists of important
politicians, international criminals, and well-known professional
athletes, among others. The digital processing made it possible to then
search the leak for the names on these lists. The "party donations
scandal" list contained 130 names, and the UN sanctions list more than
600. In just a few minutes, the powerful search algorithm compared the
lists with the 11.5 million documents.
The research
For
each name found, a detailed research process was initiated that posed
the following questions: what is this person’s role in the network of
companies? Where does the money come from? Where is it going? Is this
structure legal?Generally speaking, owning an offshore company
is not illegal in itself. In fact, establishing an offshore company can
be seen as a logical step for a broad range of business transactions.
However, a look through the Panama Papers very quickly reveals that
concealing the identities of the true company owners was the primary aim
in the vast majority of cases. From the outset, the journalists had
their work cut out for them. The providers of offshore companies – among
them banks, lawyers, and investment advisors – often keep their
clients’ names secret and use proxies. In turn, the proxies’ tracks then
lead to heads of state, important officials, and millionaires. Over the
course of the international project, journalists cooperated with one
another to investigate thousands of leads: they examined evidence,
studied contracts, and spoke with experts.
Among others, Mossack
Fonsecas’ clients include criminals and members of various Mafia groups.
The documents also expose bribery scandals and corrupt heads of state
and government. The alleged offshore companies of twelve current and
former heads of state make up one of the most spectacular parts of the
leak, as do the links to other leaders, and to their families, closest
advisors, and friends. The Panamanian law firm also counts almost 200
other politicians from around the globe among its clients, including a
number of ministers.
The company
The
company at the center of all these stories is Mossack Fonseca, a
Panamanian provider of offshore companies with dozens of offices all
over the world. It sells its shell firms in cities such as Zurich,
London, and Hong Kong – in some instances at bargain prices. Clients can
buy an anonymous company for as little as USD 1,000. However, at this
price it is just an empty shell. For an extra fee, Mossack Fonseca
provides a sham director and, if desired, conceals the company’s true
shareholder. The result is an offshore company whose true purpose and
ownership structure is indecipherable from the outside. Mossack Fonseca
has founded, sold, and managed thousands of companies. The documents
provide a detailed view of how Mossack Fonseca routinely accepts to
engage in business activities that potentially violate sanctions, in
addition to aiding and abetting tax evasion and money laundering.
About Süddeutsche Zeitung
Headquartered in Munich, Süddeutsche Zeitung
(SZ) is one of Germany’s leading newspapers. SZ has a total readership
of 4.4 million for its print and online media. Its investigative
journalism team counts five people, three of which are members of the
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The Süddeutsche Zeitung
has won a number of prestigious awards for its research work. Its team
has cooperated with other media organizations on a number of projects,
including Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, and Lux Leaks, which ICIJ
coordinated. At the beginning of 2015, an anonymous source began sending
the Süddeutsche Zeitung data from Mossack Fonseca, a provider of offshore companies. This marked the beginning of the Panama Papers project.
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