DETAILED DATA ON more than 200,000 secret offshore companies from the Panama Papers trove has been published online tonight.
The searchable database – built on just a portion of the documents leaked from the Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca – reveals more than 360,000 names of people and companies behind the anonymous shell firms.
Companies and people with Irish addresses feature in the online database published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The details can be viewed here.
It should be noted – there’s no suggestion that firms or individuals listed have broken the law or taken part in any wrongdoing.
Reports on the explosive dossier published last month linked some of the world’s most powerful leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, British Prime Minister David Cameron and others to unreported offshore companies.
The data forced the resignations of Iceland’s prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, and Spain’s industry minister Jose Manuel Soria.
Until now access to the total cache of 11.5 million documents, originally provided by a mysterious ‘John Doe’, was restricted to the ICIJ and a select group of international media.
‘In the public interest’
The journalists’ group said tonight it was publishing some of the information catalogued in a database “in the public interest”.
It says the database…
…allows users to explore the networks of companies and people that used – and sometimes abused – the secrecy of offshore locales with the help of Mossack Fonseca and other intermediaries.
But it said it was not making available raw records online, nor was it putting all the information from the records out, in part to prevent access to bank account details and personal data of those mentioned.
The data came from nearly four decades of digital archives of Mossack Fonseca, one of the leading firms in the world for creating secret companies.
It is not known how the documents came to light.
Mossack Fonseca says its computer records were hacked from abroad.
However they were obtained, ‘John Doe’ first provided them to the German newspaper Süeddeustche Zeitung, which then approached ICIJ to organise a collective analysis of them.
Since reporting on the Panama Papers started at the beginning of April, Panama’s government has been struggling to persuade the world that it is not a haven for tax-dodgers and money launderers.
With reporting by - © AFP, 2016
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