Now the team behind the previous leak, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) is preparing to send even more rich and famous to the cleaners with the next installment of Panama Papers. The ICIJ is about to unleash another huge data dump about how some of the world’s most wealthy and powerful people hide their cash. In a mail to Business Insider, ICIJ said that on May 9 it will “publish what will likely be the largest-ever release of information about secret offshore companies and the people behind them, based on data from the Panama Papers investigation.” ICIJ told BI that, “The searchable database will include information about more than 200,000 companies, trusts, foundations and funds incorporated in 21 tax havens, from Hong Kong to Nevada in the United States.” The Panama Papers are documents leaked from a hack on a Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. The massive data trove of nearly 2.6TB of data was leaked by the hackers to German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung. In turn, the paper shared the information with the ICIJ – which is made up of 107 media organisations in 78 countries. The leak belonged to a small, relatively unknown Panamanian law firm called Mossack Fonseca, which showed a massive global complex network of offshore companies helping the wealthy launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax. The details of the investigation has already claimed the scalp of Spain’s acting Industry Minister Jose Manuel Soria and Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson – both of which stepped down due to their links within the Panama Papers documents. This week, three people go on trial in Luxembourg on Tuesday over the so-called Panama Papers scandal.
