The whistleblowers who brought us The Paradise Papers and The Panama Papers risked their freedom and even their lives (Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated for reporting on the stories). Years later, financial secrecy havens are still on the rise, and it's easy to think that all that blood and treasure thrown at ending money laundering and corruption was wasted.

A Turkish court has sentenced journalist Pelin Ünker to 13 months' imprisonment for her participation in reporting the Panama Papers, a massive leak of documents from the tax-evasion enablers Mossack-Fonseca.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists teamed up with the Norbert Zongo Cell for Investigative Journalism (Cenozo) to delve deep into 27.5 million files from the Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, Panama Papers and Paradise Papers to investigate how the super-rich in 15 West African countries have looted their countries' wealth and then smuggled it offshore through a network of tax-havens, even as their countries starve.

Daphne Caruana Galizia, one of the lead journalists on the Panama Papers story, has been assassinated by a car-bomb in the town of Bidnija in northern Malta.

On Friday, a variety of news outlets around the world published the Malta Files, a cache of 150,000 documents leaked "from a Malta-based provider of legal, financial and corporate services," revealing, among other things, that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was secretly given a $25M oil tanker (!) — Read the rest

The 2016 Panama Papers story confirmed that many world leaders were availing themselves of money-laundries to secretly funnel their wealth offshore, with results ranging from severe embarrassment to radical changes in governments.

John Key, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, was ejected from the country's parliamentary debating chamber yesterday when he repeated ignored the Speaker of the House's calls to yield the floor, continuing to rant even after his microphone had been cut off.

A joint report by RNZ, TVNZ and Nicky Hager accuses New Zealand of being at the heart of a gigantic money-laundering operation for the corrupt elites of Latin America.

"John Doe," the mysterious whistleblower who released the largest-ever leak of confidential documents in world history — papers from the Panamanian law firm Mossack-Fonseca, a key player in the offshore dark money industry — has published their first-ever public statement.

In New York, a federal prosecutor has opened a criminal investigation around the "Panama Papers," an archive of materials leaked from a Panamanian law firm that reveal a massive, secretive network of places where the world's most rich hide their riches. — Read the rest

Officers acting on behalf of the attorney general of Panama raided Mossack Fonseca's office on Tuesday. Ramon Fonseca, the company's co-founder, insists that the firm had "broken no laws, destroyed no documents, and all its operations were legal."

What do you do if you're a spy and you want to make untraceable transfers of dirty money without having your funding of your country's nominal enemies exposed to the voters whose money you're spending? You hire Mossack Fonseca to open a numbered account in an offshore tax-haven, naturally.

There are many conspiracy theories about the source of the Panama Papers leak. One of the more prominent theories today blames the CIA. Bradley Birkenfeld is "the most significant financial whistleblower of all time," and he has opinions about who's responsible for leaking the Panama Papers rattling financial and political power centers around the world. — Read the rest

$24 and up, get 'em before they're sued. (via Joey DeVilla)

If you've got $50M you need to hide, and want to be able to move around invisibly, what better way than to buy a painting through a secret, numbered offshore account, stick it in a vault in Basel, whence you can liquidate it, retrieve it, and move it on a moment's notice.

Follow the exposure of his interest in an offshore business – and several days of insisting that he would not resign – the prime minister of Iceland has resigned.

Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson has resigned, the deputy chair of Iceland's Progressive Party said Tuesday.

On Sunday, 100 news outlets published the first tranche of articles based on the largest leak in history, 2.6TB worth of records from Mossack Fonseca, the third-largest lawfirm specializing in confidential offshore shell-companies.

The fact that Ian Cameron — father of UK Prime Minister David Cameron — ran a firm called "Blairmore Holdings" that rich Britons used to move their assets offshore and out of reach of UK taxation is no secret.

An anonymous source has handed 2.6TB worth of records from Mossack Fonseca, one of the world's largest offshore law firms, to a consortium of news outlets, including The Guardian.

The Pandora Papers leak is absolutely massive. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in Washington DC obtained almost 12 million documents— more than the Panama Papers and the Offshore leaks and nearly as many as the Paradise Papers. The group says the documents "reveal the inner workings of a shadow economy that benefits the wealthy and well-connected at the expense of everyone else." — Read the rest