bschott007

For Frederik Obermaier, 32, an investigative journalist at the German newspaper behind the Panama Papers leak, the main revelation of the world’s largest-ever document dump was that the biggest names among those secreting their riches away in tax shelters were not necessarily residing in the most historically shadowy corners of the globe but were “everywhere.”

Yet among the hundreds of Americans revealed in the Panama Papers—which arrived on the desk of his colleague Bastian Obermayer (no relation) at his Munich-based newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, just over a year ago—there were none of the bold-faced names you might expect, he tells Newsweek.

“There’s not anybody like [President Barack] Obama, no Hillary [Clinton] in the data and no Donald Trump,” he says. “Everyone should be aware, there are American names in the data, but they are not as big or prominent in the U.S. as elsewhere, because you have so many companies inside the U.S. who will set up tax shelters, Americans don’t have to go to Panama. But there are still plenty of Americans in the data, and you’ll be hearing more about this in the days and weeks ahead.”

Considering the size of the leak is so massive:

• How hard has it been linking names of those in the papers who are relative nobodies to the rich and powerful?

• Has the Web of interconnected shell companies proven difficult to unravel?

• Have you run into any Shell companies which deal with shell companies not listed by more than a name in the documents? I.E. companies which are administered and handled by law firms other than Mossack?

• Big Question: Do the number of American-owned or American-intermediaries controlling shell companies via Mossack decrease after the 1980's invasion of Panama?

• Is there any correlation between the number of American shell companies and the Free Trade Agreement between Panama and America?

Btw: sincerely thank you for this work you are doing.

Oh, I want one. Want one bad!

Be a reporter associated with the ICIJ is about the only way.

So will you be releasing at any point the raw data (un-redacted) so that it can be uploaded into a searchable database independent of your team?

They have repeatedly said, NO. There are innocent people in the leak with legit reasons for having Shell companies. Their personal information is in there. There is NO reason to make that information available to the public, especially as that would open up the reporters to personal lawsuits.

Nick: ...The german newspaper that first got the data and ICIJ have exclusive control. But they shared it with nearly 400 journalists around the world. And they're working to bring in other responsible news partners to help analyze the data further. The decision to keep exclusive control over the data was driven by journalism ethics, not profit. In today's media world, a big exclusive gets you web traffic, yes, but the profits are small. And it would have been irresponsible to publish the data in its entirety + violated the privacy of people who committed no wrongs. Do you think it would have been better to completely crowd source this effort?

Also:

Tim: As I think we mentioned earlier, ICIJ will be releasing lists of names and offshore companies sometime in May. Am I worried that people will believe we're hiding high-profile names from the public? Not in the least. High-profile names would make for hot news stories. We're red-blooded journalists. We live for these kinds of stories.