A trove of documents from a Panamanian law firm is rattling politics around the world. After being leaked to a German newspaper, an international consortium of over 100 newspapers spent a year analyzing the data and the results provide some troubling— though not unexpected — insights into international money flows. High dudgeon over tax cheats and conflicts of interest have already claimed prominent scalps, but those concerns must be leavened by the acknowledgement that not all secrets are illegal and shell companies can play a valuable role.
Some 11.5 million documents, the equivalent of 2.6 terabytes of data, were taken from the files of Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm that specializes in providing international corporate services worldwide. The Suddeutsche Zeitung shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a nonprofit organization and they, along with dozens of journalists around the world, explored the data.
The information provided insight into nearly 215,000 offshore shell companies and more than 14,000 clients. That list included 143 politicians and their families and close associates and 12 world leaders such as the presidents of Argentina and Ukraine, the prime ministers of Iceland, the United Kingdom and Pakistan, along with the king of Saudi Arabia.