Frederik Obermaier presents: PANAMA PAPERS
The story of a global exposé
The story behind the world’s biggest leak of data starts with an anonymous email sent late one evening: “Hello. This is John Doe. Interested in data?”
Bastian Obermayer, investigative journalist on Germany’s biggest morning paper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, answers immediately – and receives information that stuns both him and his colleague Frederik Obermaier. It is data about hundreds of thousands of shell companies – created in tax havens around the world. The information provides an insight into a hitherto completely parallel world, where billions are hidden and administered in companies set up by Mossack Fonseca – a large Panamanian law firm. The hidden money comes from major corporations, European heads of governments, world leaders, dictators, oil sheiks, emirs and kings, mafia bosses, smugglers, drug barons, FIFA leaders, and from titled, super-rich and prominent people. The exposé is made public in April 2016.
Panama Papers is the story of a unique, internationally coordinated journalistic investigation into how a small elite, made up of people who believe they need answer to no one, managed to hide undreamt-of fortunes from the authorities in their own countries, and on a scale never seen before.
Bastian Obermayer, born 1977, is an investigative journalist with Süddeutsche Zeitung and member of ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists). He studied politics at the university of Munich and journalism at Deutsche Journalistenschule e.V., the German journalism school. Frederik Obermaier, born 1984, is the editor of investigative journalism at Süddeutsche Zeitung and is also a member of ICIJ. He studied politics, business geography and journalism in Eichstätt in Bavaria and in Bogotá in Columbia.
The presentation will be held to mark the publication of the Danish translation of the “Panama Papers”. The actual seminar will be in English.
Moderator Associate Professor Brooke Harrington, Department of Business and Politics, CBS.