The Panama Papers are a trove of about 11.5 million leaked documents of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that reveal the large-scale use by firms and wealthy individuals of offshore shell companies. Photo by AFP
WASHINGTON: Confidential records of more than 200,000 offshore accounts in the Panama Papers will be published online on Monday, in the express hope that public scrutiny of the newly released material will generate further tips about possible corruption and tax dodging.
“We think this is a logical next step in the investigation,” said Gerard Ryle, director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the Washington-based organization that has been co-ordinating reporting on the records.
“We have 370 journalists around the world looking at the data, but it’s so vast, I mean 11½ million documents,” Ryle said. “We know we’ve missed things.”
Ryle said his organization hopes members of the public will scour the new Panama Papers data release and flag any potential malfeasance they spot.
The information, to be released online at 2 pm EDT in a searchable database, will list:
• The names and addresses of more than 200,000 offshore companies included in the Panama Papers leak.
• The name of anyone listed as a director or shareholder of the offshore companies in question.
• The identities of dozens of intermediary agencies that helped set up and run those accounts through Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm from which the records were leaked.
Until now, only a number of high profile names have been made public since a group of global media outlets broke the news of the massive document leak last month.
The Panama Papers database being made public on Monday will allow searching for a person or offshore company by name and then mapping out links between individuals and offshore entities.
However, actual documents will be withheld, including copies of passports, telephone numbers, Mossack Fonseca’s internal emails and, in some cases, financial records. This material will remain available only to the ICIJ and its journalist partners.
Starting Monday, news agencies around the world will be combing through the newly released data, which will no doubt prompt a flood of new articles detailing the involvement of politicians, business people, and other national figures. – Bernama