The Panama Papers

A landmark collaboration between newsrooms around the globe exposing the rogue offshore finance industry.

“We needed months of research, of fact-checking, of really digging into these files in order to find those stories of public interest that are going to make an impact on society.”

Marina Walker, Deputy Director ICIJ

Congratulations to the whole Panama Papers team, winners of the GEN Data Journalism Awards Investigation of the Year for 2016!

Involving 2.6 TB of data and 11.5 million documents, the Panama Papers was the biggest leak and the largest cross-border investigation in journalism history. For one year, more than 370 reporters in about 80 countries dived into this massive trove of documents that exposed like never before how the offshore economy works. Inside the leaked files lay the secrets of the high-level clients of one of the world’s leading firms in the creation of offshore companies, Panama-headquartered Mossack Fonseca.


For more on this investigation, visit: panamapapers.icij.org and panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de

The Panama Papers is the largest collaborative data journalism research in history exposing how the secretive offshore finance industry works through the analysis of leaked documents from Panamian based firm, Mossack Fonseca. For a year, 11.5 million documents were analyzed by a team of more than 300 journalists from 76 countries and 100 newsrooms, coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). This collaboration made possible researching and fact-checking the 2.6 terabytes of data and transform it into stories of public interest with a global and local impact. They also used innovative open source technologies to secure and analyze the data, such as optical character recognition applied by journalists at Süddeutsche Zeitung to make the data searchable and machine-readable.

As a result, a myriad of articles, data visualizations, and videos were published in multiple news outlets such as the BBC, The New York Times, La Nación in Argentina and ABC in Australia; exposing the people and crimes facilitated by the offshore companies, from bribery, financial fraud and tax evasion to arms deal and drug trafficking, and the victims of these violations. This mobilized government investigations in more than 80 countries around the world and help recover $1.2 billion in 22 countries.

Awards & Nominations :

Association of Foreign Correspondents in Spain special citation,Data Journalism Awards Investigation of the Year,Datanami Editor’s Choice for Top Big Data Achievement,Eppy Awards Best Collaborative Investigative/Enterprise Reporting with 1 million unique monthly visitors and over,George Polk Award for financial journalism,Gold Barlett and Steele Award for investigative journalism,IRE award for innovation in investigative journalism and the Gannett Award for innovation,La Asociación de Directoras y Gerentes de Servicios Sociales Media Award​,Maria Moors Cabot Prize Special Citation,New School ​University’s inaugural Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism ​A​ward,New York Press Club’s Gold Keyboard Award,Online News Association’s Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism Award for large newsrooms,Perfil Freedom of Expression Award,Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting,Talend Data Masters Grand Prize winner,Techies Awards Innovative Team of the Year,The American Society of News Editors’ O’Brien Fellowship Award for impact in public service journalism,The Society of American Business Editors and Writers’ “Best-in-Business” Award for reporting on banking and finance,Walkley Awards Business Journalism award finalist

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