The Panama Papers, 11.5 million confidential documents (or 2.6 terabytes of data ) from offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca, published beginning this day in 2016, exposed widespread illegal activities including fraud, kleptocracy, tax evasion and the violation of international sanctions by the world’s elite in the world’s largest ever data leak. The documents,
The documents detailing financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities, contained personal financial information about wealthy individuals and public officials that had previously been kept private. The publication of the documents made it possible to establish the prosecution of Jan Marsalek, who is still a person of interest to a number of European governments due to his revealed links with Russian intelligence, and international financial fraudsters David and Josh Baazov. While offshore business entities are legal, reporters found that some of the Mossack Fonseca shell corporations were used for illegal purposes, including fraud, tax evasion, and evading international sanctions.
-ENCL