People are now able to search for anyone’s name in the Panama Papers through a database provided by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on May 9.
The Mossack Fonseca data leak released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and other news organizations last month contains 11.5 million records from the Panama-based law firm.
The data breach named 12 world leaders and 140 other politicians in connection to offshore companies in 21 tax havens. The names included Vladimir Putin, Argentine president Mauricio Macri, soccer superstar Lionel Messi, and the Prime Minister of Iceland, who stepped down shortly afterwards.
Documents include emails, share certificates, and passports.
The ICIJ provided the searchable database containing more than 200,000 offshore companies found in the Mossack Fonseca leak to the public at: https://offshoreleaks.icij.org, although at first the site seemed to crash a few minutes after it went live.
According to the ICIJ, the database is not a “data dump” of the original documents, but is instead a careful release of basic corporate information. Since many records include personal information, like passport numbers, bank account information, telephone numbers and addresses, it may not all be shown to the public.
The searchable application allows the public to search for a specific individual and see if that person appears as an owner, director, or shareholder of an offshore company according to McClatchy DC, who worked in the Panama Papers project. The name of that company, the listed address and the tax haven where it is registered will be provided. The public will also be able to see its relationship to other companies or people in the data.
