Herculean Task behind the Publication of Panama Papers

The publishing of Panama Papers toppled the world upside down. It’s very intriguing to know how the 400 investigative journalists from 80 countries, 100 + media outlets across the globe coordinated to create this massive leak.

Great Leaks of modern media history - Timeline
1971 – New York Times 7000 pages of Vietnam War Documents
1986 - The Hindu Published Bofors Scandal
2010 – Wikileaks published 1.73 GB of classified U.S. State Department Communications that revealed the dirty secret of the US. Government’s spying info.
2016 - 2.6 Terrabytes of data containing various types of mails and documents from Mossack Fonseka, a Panamanian Law firm.
The leak contains
4.8 million emails
3 million database files
2.1 million PDFs

How it started ?

It all started in the year 2014 – unknown source with the nickname John Doe contacted the popular German Newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung. Earlier the same newspaper published a small leak of Mossack Fonseca files to German government regulators. That could be one of the reasons made this invisible John Doe to contact this newspaper first. When the reporter asked why are you doing this, John Doe replied ‘I want to make these crimes public.’

The reporter and John Doe’s chat took place via encrypted chat rooms from different ‘chatting platforms’ on various occasions. Each time, they chatted with different names through PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encrypted email and chat systems.

Slowly, John Doe started to exchange documents one by one. Finally, what Suddeutsche Zeitung got was something unheard or unseen. The size is so big. Soare the names and scandals associated with those documents. It’s almost pointed out several big celebrities, business tycoons, prominent politicians, sportsmen. Considering the enormity of it scope and global scale, Suddeutsche Zeitung contacted the ICIJ – International Consortium of Investigative Journalism – a Washinton-based media think tank to coordinate the task.

Understanding the importance of this ‘leak’ , ICIJ’s top men landed in Munich to oversee the operation with the German Newspaper.

Over a period of several months, the newspaper accumulated nearly 11.5 million documents. So far this is the Biggest leak in the history and almost 2000 times larger than the Wikileaks Cablegate. The German reporter didn’t reveal on using what method he received huge terabytes of data due to security reason.

Considering the enormity of the documents, ICIJ swiftly coordinated with the media across the world since the data one way or the other connected to almost every single nation-state. According to them who better explain about the scenario in Uganda than the Uganda journalist. In that way, they thought the necessity of assembling the biggest ever journalist group in the world to smoothly carry forward the biggest ever investigative journalism exercise.

Having experience in coordinated such kind of leaks like - Offshore Leaks, Lux Leaks and Swiss Leaks, ICIJ now ready for this world-altering mission.

The technical team of ICIJ had created a two-factor authentication protected search engine for the leaked documents, the URL of that search engine they shared via encrypted email. From the BBC to India’s Indian Express – the popular as well as lesser-known to jump into the scene.

Fitted with real-time chat system, the site enabled the journalists to exchange notes, give tips offer help instantly across the globe. The ICIJ also insisted everyone share the info with their peers on what they are doing to conduct the whole operation in an equitable and fair manner. The international team of journalism initially brainstormed in Washinton, and they continued to meet at places like Munich, Lillehammer and London to chart out the research.

Over the period of 1 year, 400 journalists cross checked a large number of documents, including passport copies of several eminent personalities. In just one instance, a journalist found $ 2 billion hidden money connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin ! shows a sample of this ‘leak.’

The Flawless system of ICIJ:

The journalist found Mossack Fonseca created a separate folder for each bogus company. These folders contain email, contracts, transcripts and several scanned documents of a person / project or company. In some cases, there are thousands of documents. The team found that the data had to be properly indexed to make a search through a sea of information. For this purpose, the technical team had uploaded millions of documents into high-end computers. Using the optical character recognition (OCR) tools, they transform data into machine-readable digital files. The process converted the image and scanned pdf files into searchable text format files. This was a very important step. Because, it enabled journalists to browse through a large portion of the leaked documents with simple word-based search, something similar to Google search.

Now, the journalists start compiling the lists of celebrities which include prominent politicians, Interpol-notified criminals, popular athletes, movie stars, well-known politicians among others. The digital processing made this seemingly impossible task very easy and doable. Some small scandal connected documents contain just 2 to 10 names, in some documents the number of documents had crossed over 100 names. For example, the UN sanctions list contained more than 600 names. In just a few minutes and few clicks, the powerful search algorithm compared the lists with the mammoth 11.5 million documents.

The research and analysis of the team:

When the journalist found each name, they conducted a detailed research process and that raised the following questions:

What is this particular person’s role in the network of companies ?
Where does the money come from and in what form?
Where is it going – i.e. to which intended recipient is the final beneficiary?
The whole thing is legal or part of any ‘shadowy money deal?’

In general, having an offshore company is not legally wrong. But if you peer through the Panama Papers, it shows, on several instances, the celebrities used these bogus companies to transfer money to their proxy partners or simple stash their ill-gotten wealth. In most of the cases, the offshore service providing companies like banks, law firms, investment banks often keep their high-profile customers’ names in secret. If somebody traces the origin of these ‘proxies’ it will lead them to heads of state, popular politicians, well-known tycoons, and notorious criminals.

Moreover, the documents exposed several bribery scandals and corrupt politicians. The same law firm has maintained the accounts for more than 200 prominent politicians who are occupying high posts in various nation-states.

The notorious company:

All these documents are invariably linked to just one law firm in Panama – i.e. Mossack Fonseca, who creates bogus offshore companies and they have offices in more than a dozen locations across the globe. Here, anybody can purchase shell companies for as little as $ 1000. For which, they just get one company name. If required, they can hire a director. The law firm conceals the company’s true shareholder. The final result is an offshore company whose actual purpose and its organizational structures is closely guarded secret for the outsiders. The notorious law firm, Mossack Fonseca has created, transferred and administered hundreds of such companies in the past 4 decades. This law firm violated the international law, besides it helped thousands of individuals to evade tax and money laundering in a big way.

Each and every passing day, the tension is mounting. Because a large number of people should safeguard the secret. Without taking any formal oath, the journalists safeguarded the secret.

Result and Consequences:

Eventually, the papers were leaked exactly on 3rd April 2016 by all the media organizations across the world. As expected, it created uproar everywhere and toppled the Prime Minister of Iceland Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson.
The publication of Panama Papers came as a fitting end to its notorious criminal activities. When the journalists from ICIJ and Suddeutsche Zeitung tried to contact Mossack Fonseka, they refused to give any kind of credible explanation.
Finally, the two founders of the law firm - Mossack and Fonseca were arrested by the Panama Police on money laundering charges.

Both Fonseca and Mossack are popular in Panama’s business and political sphere. Fonseca is a former adviser to Panama’s President Juan Varela and Mossack was associated with Panama’s Council on Foreign Relations during 2009 to 2014.
If you are interested in this subject, you can view the following YouTube video to get more info.

by
Srini