The journalism organisation that received 11.5 million documents exposing the way global leaders hide their assets is set to release a giant batch of those documents to the public on Monday.
The International Consortium of Journalists did not release all the documents, which have become known as the Panama Papers and have already led to the downfall of one world leader and several financiers. Instead, the consortium conducted a “careful release” of documents that shields personal information of the people named, including bank account numbers, passport information, email addresses and telephone numbers.
Monday’s release is expected to be big, with information on 200,000 off-shore entities used by the rich and powerful around the world to avoid public scrutiny. Those off-shore accounts are legal but can be used to avoid taxes and hide criminal activity.
Until now, all the information from the Panama Papers was held by the consortium and more than 100 media organisations in over 80 countries working together on the project. Journalists at those publications have been publishing stories about the contents of the papers, but had not made the source material public.
The source of the leak is an anonymous person known only as “John Doe.” He obtained 11.5 million internal documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca and provided it to Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
He wrote in the newspaper last week that thousands of prosecutions could come from a full release of the papers. “They should all be prosecuted accordingly with no special treatment,” the source wrote. (USA Today)