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The Panama Papers, a breach we can all get behind
Now here's a breach and leak everyone can get behind (unless you're a billionaire despot, that is). Selected excerpts from the Panama Papers dropped on Sunday, an unprecedented snatch-and-grab of offshore tax haven records released to a handful of global news organizations. In them, the tax-avoiding dealings of the super-rich were exposed in a gigantic haul of data said to total around 11.5m files (2.6 terabytes). It was taken from shell-company specialist Mossack Fonseca by an anonymous source, who shared the Panamanian law firm's trove with German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Panama Papers firm says it was the victim of a hack
That gigantic Panama Papers leak revealing the sometimes shady tax haven dealings of the wealthy? If you ask the law firm the data came from, it's no leak at all... it's the fallout from an attack. Mossack Fonseca co-founder Ramon Fonseca tells Reuters that this "is a hack," not the action of of a rogue insider. His company even has a theory behind the hack that it's investigating, but he won't say what that is -- he'll only say that the firm has filed a complaint, and that there's a "government institution" looking into it.
The road to Panama: A history of whistleblowers and hacks
Yesterday, a coalition of journalists across the world launched the Panama Papers, a project to uncover the dirty secrets of the rich and powerful. An anonymous source provided reporters at the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung with a 2.6TB dump of files from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. The documents reveal a web of private, secretly-held offshore companies that can be used to hide a fortune or avoid paying tax. For instance, The Guardian accuses Russian President Vladimir Putin of hiding $2 billion in offshore companies that are "owned" by a close friend. It has taken anywhere up to a year for a team to scour the data to find some dirty secrets, and far more are likely to emerge as the files are analyzed. This didn't happen in isolation, however. It's just the latest in a long line of leaks and breaches that have put what some would prefer remain secret in the spotlight. Check out the timeline above to look at some of the most notable ones of the last few years.
Huge data leak reveals the hidden wealth of the rich and famous
In one of the biggest data leaks ever (even larger than the NSA wires leak in 2013), Panama-based legal firm Mossack Fonseca has seen 2.6 terabytes of its private data leaked to journalists. Shared with German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, it was then spread to a wider network of journalists globally -- 370 reporters from 100 media organizations have looked into the leak for a year. The research has already unearthed that 12 national leaders, including monarchs, presidents and prime ministers, have been using offshore tax havens, including a $2 billion paper trail that leads to Russia's Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, FIFA's attempts to clean itself up faces fresh criticism after the leak appears to connect executives being investigated to members of the ethics committee itself.
