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Over the past year, investigative journalists across the world have been sifting through 11.5 million internal files from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

which shared the huge trove with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Stories about the data, which have been dubbed the Panama Papers, have been published by news organizations everywhere from Argentina to Sweden.
We know a lot about the trove of documents, but there's also a lot we don't know. (The ICIJ 

 a full list of companies and the people linked to them in "early May.")


Here we try to answer some basic questions about the story.

says only that it was contacted by an "anonymous source" over a year ago.



Ramon Fonseca, the director of Mossack Fonseca, 

 that the firm had suffered "a successful but 'limited' hack."


, the documents make public the offshore accounts of 140 politicians and public officials. The documents don't necessarily detail anything illegal, but they do shine a light on the shadowy world of offshore finances.
Back in 2012, our friends at Planet Money 

. Doing so, they explained why some people might want to legitimately hide some aspects of their business. But, as Adam Davidson put it at the time, it's hard to imagine that people going through such great lengths to obfuscate parts of their business want to do it for entirely legitimate reasons.


The allegations in many of the Panama Papers stories is that the individuals implicated were allegedly laundering money or hiding some connections that would be detrimental.

-- What does the law firm Mossack Fonseca have to say about all this? 


Basically that it has done nothing wrong. The firm sent 

 to ICIJ saying that "we have not once in nearly 40 years of operation been charged with criminal wrongdoing."
Indeed, 

, it is "not illegal in many cases to have offshore bank accounts. But they are used in some instances by wealthy individuals and criminals to hide money and business transactions, and to avoid paying taxes."


-- What about the big names I've seen in headlines? Are they in trouble? 


Maybe, but a lot of what these documents reveal is circumstantial. For example, Vladimir Putin was not directly linked to any of these secret accounts. Instead, the documents reveal that close associates of the Russian leader 

funneled as much as $2 billion through offshore accounts

.

In one case, an offshore entity was given about $1 billion by a state-controlled Russian bank. That same entity, for example, also lent the owners of a ski resort about $11 million in 2010-11. 

, Putin is a reputed guest of the resort and his daughter Katya got married at the resort in 2013.


Perhaps the most clear-cut case revealed so far comes from Iceland, where the documents show that country's prime minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, and his wife had a stake in a company seeking millions of dollars from failed Icelandic banks.

 that thousands took to the streets, and the alleged conflict of interest could bring the government "crashing down."


-- What effect will this have on the offshore world?

Nigel Green, of the financial consultancy deVere Group, minimizes what the leak tells us. According to deVere, mechanisms are already in place around the world to make it "almost impossible to hide money."
At 

, says the revelations could lead to a "great crisis" for capitalism.


-- Is there one story I should read about this? 


To understand the issue, listen to the Planet Money piece we embedded above. To understand how all of this can affect an entire city, 

read the Miami Herald's piece based on the papers

reports that shadowy corporations may be propping up the condo market in the city. It may not be all dirty money flowing through South Florida, but these documents connect some politicians in Brazil who are under investigation for corruption to some superfancy condos in Miami.
The bottom line, the paper reports: "Money from people linked to wrongdoing abroad is helping to power the gleaming condo towers rising on South Florida's waterfront and pushing home prices far beyond what most locals can afford."  Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Business and Economic News

Who leaked the papers? Are the schemes uncovered illegal? We answer some pressing questions about the huge document leak.

Here's what you need to know (so far) about 'Panama Papers'

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