International Consortium Of Investigative Journalists Research Articles

Are beneficial ownership laws important? Exploring the impact of Panama, FinCEN, and Pandora Papers on beneficial ownership laws in the UK and the US

Money laundering and reverse money laundering, also known as terrorism financing, have emerged as critical issues in the 21st century, posing threats to security, economic stability, and the integrity of financial systems. This article explores the growing use of anonymous shell companies as a method for executing money laundering and reverse money laundering. It focuses on two key jurisdictions: the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (US).The research draws on case studies published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, including the Panama Papers, FinCEN Files, and Pandora Papers. These case studies have prompted regulatory changes in beneficial ownership This study examines the practical implementation of laws, comparing the approaches of the UK and the US. It addresses the vulnerabilities revealed by the aforementioned case studies and assesses the actions taken by these countries in response to the leaks. The study evaluates the progress achieved in enhancing beneficial ownership regulations and reducing anonymity in shell company creation.In conclusion, this article provides insights and recommendations for future developments in this critical area.

“Everyone freaks out when the leaks are made”: data leaks, investigative journalism and intelligence practice

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the history of data leaks and investigative journalism, the techniques and technology that enable them and their influence in Australia and abroad. It explores the ethical and professional considerations of investigative journalists, how they approach privacy and information-sharing and how this differs from intelligence practice in government and industry. The paper assesses the strengths and limitations of Collaborative Investigative Reporting based on Information Leaks (CIRIL) as a kind of public-facing intelligence practice.Design/methodology/approachThis study draws on academic literature, source material from investigations by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and a survey of financial crime compliance professionals conducted in 2022.FindingsThe paper identifies three key causal factors that have enabled the rise of CIRIL even as traditional journalism has declined: the digital storage of information; increasing public interest in offshore finance and tax evasion; and “virtual newsrooms” enabled by internet communications. It concludes that the primary strength of CIRIL is its creation of complex global narratives to inform the public about corruption and tax evasion, while its key weakness is that the scale and breadth of the data released makes it difficult to focus on likely criminal activity. Results of a survey of industry and government professionals indicate that CIRIL is generally more effective as public information than as an investigative resource, owing to the volume, age and quality of information released. However, the trends enabling CIRIL are likely to continue, and this means that governments and financial institutions need to become more effective at using leaked information.Originality/valueOver the past decade, large-scale, data-driven investigative journalism projects such as the Pandora Papers and the Russian Laundromat have had a significant public impact by exposing money laundering, financial crime and corruption. These projects share certain hallmarks: the use of human intelligence, often sourced from anonymous leaks; inventive fusion of this intelligence with data from open sources; and collaboration among a global collective of investigative journalists to build a narrative. These projects prioritise informing the public. They are also an important information source for government and private sector organisations working to investigate and disrupt financial crime.

Complex systems of secrecy: the offshore networks of oligarchs.

Following the invasion of Ukraine, the USA, UK, and EU governments-among others-sanctioned oligarchs close to Putin. This approach has come under scrutiny, as evidence has emerged of the oligarchs' successful evasion of these punishments. To address this problem, we analyze the role of an overlooked but highly influential group: the secretive professional intermediaries who create and administer the oligarchs' offshore financial empires. Drawing on the Offshore Leaks Database provided by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), we examine the ties linking offshore expert advisors (lawyers, accountants, and other wealth management professionals) to ultra-high-net-worth individuals from four countries: Russia, China, the USA, and Hong Kong. We find that resulting nation-level "oligarch networks" share a scale-free structure characterized by a heterogeneity of heavy-tailed degree distributions of wealth managers; however, network topologies diverge across clients from democratic versus autocratic regimes. While generally robust, scale-free networks are fragile when targeted by attacks on highly connected nodes. Our "knock-out" experiments pinpoint this vulnerability to the small group of wealth managers themselves, suggesting that sanctioning these professional intermediaries may be more effective and efficient in disrupting dark finance flows than sanctions on their wealthy clients. This vulnerability is especially pronounced amongst Russian oligarchs, who concentrate their offshore business in a handful of boutique wealth management firms. The distinctive patterns we identify suggest a new approach to sanctions, focused on expert intermediaries to disrupt the finances and alliances of their wealthy clients. More generally, our research contributes to the larger body of work on complexity science and the structures of secrecy.

Uncovering Russian Money Through Tracking Data Relationships

Abstract Neo4j’s Alicia Frame explains how the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has gained greater transparency on financial and political connections using graph technology.

“We Have to act Like our Devices are Already Infected”: Investigative Journalists and Internet Surveillance

ABSTRACT Internet surveillance has become a crucial issue for journalism. The “Snowden moment” has shed light on the risks that journalists and their sources face while communicating online and has shown how journalists themselves can be targets of surveillance operations or other forms of malicious digital attacks from different actors. More recent revelations, such as those coming from the “Pegasus Project”, have underlined even more dangerous threats posed to the safety of journalists, increasingly targeted with spyware technology. Due to the sensitivity of their work and sources and given their strong “watchdog” role in democracies, investigative reporters are in a particularly dangerous position when it comes to the potential chilling effects of surveillance on their work of journalists. This paper analyzes investigative journalists’ views and self-reflections on the impacts of Internet surveillance on their work by means of in-depth qualitative interviews with reporters affiliated with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and working in Italy, Germany, Hungary, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK. The paper touches on different angles of the Internet surveillance issue by analyzing journalists’ concerns about national and international surveillance players and the overall impact of surveillance on news work.

Cumplicidade e impunidade: uma análise pós-colonial do envolvimento do setor bancário na corrupção transnacional

Esta pesquisa aborda a corrupção, reconhecendo a importância das redes transnacionais informais na perpetuação da corrupção. O objetivo geral é compreender, sob a lente pós-colonial, como a corrupção se constitui um fenômeno transnacional. Realizamos uma pesquisa qualitativa, com a análise de documentos sobre casos de corrupção envolvendo um grande banco internacional: o HSBC Holdings Plc. O material empírico foi extraído da organização International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) e do jornal britânico The Guardian, sendo submetido à análise temática. O mapa temático final destaca dois temas que desvelam as relações coloniais: a cumplicidade dos agentes do sistema financeiro com os infratores e a impunidade do colonizador com esses mesmos agentes. Os resultados apontam para um padrão histórico de leniência e conivência do banco com criminosos, com diversos processos acusatórios encerrados com acordos, resumidos às multas que, por maiores que fossem em relação às práticas da justiça até então, não representavam sanções que inibissem as eventuais reincidências.

Financial Inscriptions and Social Accountability Processes

Social media is changing the practice of social accountability. The release of the Panama Papers on April 3, 2016 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) unleashed a tsunami of over 5 million tweets decrying corrupt politicians and tax-avoiding business elites, calling for policy change from governments, and demanding accountability from corporate and private tax avoiders. The current study uses 297,000+ original English-language geo-codable tweets with the hashtags #PanamaGate, #PanamaPapers, or #PanamaLeaks to consider how financial inscriptions participated in the subsequent Twitter conversation. We specifically examine four aspects of the Twitter- based social accountability process that get at, respectively, the public’s message-based reactions to the Panama Papers, the nature of the emergent social accountability interest network, the participation of financial inscriptions in network interest definition activities, and the “reactivation” of network members by the subsequent release of the Paradise Papers in late 2017. The results illustrate that financial inscriptions, as well as value-based inscriptions, participated in the emergence and coalescing of a social accountability interest network. Furthermore, both active and latent network participants were subsequently reactivated by the release of the Paradise Papers a year and a half later.

The Digital Spotlight: Applying a Connective Action Framework of Political Protest to Global Watchdog Reporting

Digital technologies have transformed advertising markets causing disruption to the funding of traditional media. Yet, paradoxically, the digital age also provides new opportunities for journalism, enabling innovations in investigative reporting on a global scale. However, the transition of investigative journalism from a single newsroom to a multi-newsroom model—involving large-scale transnational collaboration, use of social media networks to extend audience reach and impact, and data journalism to analyze mass data leaks—is understudied. This paper adapts a conceptual framework usually applied to large-scale political protest movements to large-scale collaborative investigative journalism. It aims to show how Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg’s “logic of connective action” can be adapted to understand different forms of networked action such as global collaborative watchdog reporting. Bennett and Segerberg identify three distinct types of large-scale protest formations and this paper contends that these can be approximated to fit different types of large-scale transnational collaborative investigative journalism. Using a case study methodology and interviews with investigative journalists, the article develops a framework to differentiate between types of large-scale investigative collaborations. The framework helps to understand differences between the collaborative investigative reporting efforts of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), WikiLeaks, and Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency (NSA) leaks. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this article seeks to advance theoretical understandings of global watchdog reporting in the digital age.

Luxembourg tax agreements: did the companies involved in tax agreements with the Luxembourg government do any better than others

The Luxembourg tax agreements (LTA, agreements initiated by the Government of Luxembourg to boost investments) area financial scandal leaked for the first time to newspapers in November of 2014 by a group of journalists from the international consortium of investigative journalists. The EU authorities (state aid) have concerns that the companies involved in the LTA were able to reduce their taxes, and that these agreements were signed by multinationals only for tax avoidance purposes thereby avoiding the taxes to be paid in the EU. At the same time, multinationals claim that the LTA were used by them to pursue other management goals, such as expansion of their presence in the EU market and for investment decisions. This paper evaluates whether US multinational companies from the S&P 500, which had been involved in the LTA of 2005–2008, were able to reduce their worldwide tax obligations. By comparing results from various difference-in-difference regressions: traditional, quantile, and semiparametric, I have found that these companies may have saved more on taxes than other US multinationals on the S&P list, which in directly confirms the arguments of EU authorities about the tax aggressiveness of those companies involved in the LTA.

Novel findings of hidden relationships in offshore tax-sheltered firms: a semantically enriched decision support system

Since the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) released the Offshore Panama Papers Leaks Database (LeaksDB), researchers were able to access a graph database (GraphDB). This research article demonstrates that exploiting a challenging graph database like the Panama Papers can be performed using the Semantic Web capability (Ontotext Platform). In using these capabilities it also reports several interesting findings from GraphDB, such as the following: (1) there are more than 4000 companies registered in Cayman Islands but owned by Taiwanese people (or companies); (2) almost 50% of these offshore companies are claimed to be owned by people (or companies) in America, followed by Asia with 36%, then by Europe with 13%; (3) by far, the most connected Offshore agency is listed under the anonymous name “THE BEARER”; (4) “Mossack Fonseca” law firm played an intermediary role in 12 countries (Switzerland, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, United Kingdom, Brazil, Chile, Czech Republic, Israel, Peru, Singapore, and Thailand); (5)“Morgan Stanley” played some intermediary role in Asian countries (Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong); and finally, (6) countries such as China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have an immense number of related offshores entities owned by individual persons; whereas, countries such British Virgin Islands, Jersey, or Panama have an enormous amount of offshores entities owned by companies.

A Critical Analysis of FDA Guidance for User Percentile Device Design Criteria Versus Currently Available Human Factors Engineering Data Sources and Industry Best Practices

A staggering report was recently released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) indicating that 83,000 deaths and 1.7 million injuries were linked to medical device adverse events reported over the last decade (Diaz-Struck, 2018). Furthermore, a 2013 report by McKinsey & Company suggested that such adverse events and associated quality issues cost the medical device industry between $2.5 billion and $5 billion per year on average (Fuhr, George, & Pai, 2013). There is also indication that some aspects of both medical device human factors engineering (HFE) design and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) HFE validation criteria may not provide proper methodologies for selecting and testing patient populations. This may lead medical devices that pass FDA HFE validation to still exhibit significant use errors when utilized by actual patients in the real world. This paper explores the possible sources of HFE performance problems with medical devices and links potential problems to HFE validation methodologies within the FDA HFE guidance framework. The paper also examines device design teams’ failure to utilize HFE best practices in the design and testing of medical devices. Critical conclusions drawn from this analysis suggest that, currently, medical devices may not be designed and validated according to the full percentile range recommended by FDA guidance and HFE best practice. The analysis also indicates that both the FDA and medical device design teams have failed to understand that designing devices to meet a specific range of user needs includes not only physical attributes, but also a wide range of percentile-based cognitive and physiological HFE performance variables. This problem is potentially causing patients who reside at the extremes of percentile distributions (i.e., those with extreme, but acceptable degrees of functional and/or cognitive limitations) to not be able to use devices successfully, which may significantly impact clinical outcomes. The analysis additionally indicates that such failure to design for proper percentile extremes is related to respondent recruiting methods and, more generally, a lack of awareness regarding HFE theory and best practice. Furthermore, for certain categories of modern medical devices, including drug delivery devices, little to no validated HFE percentile-based device design data exists to facilitate medical device development. These issues are not limited to the design of medical devices, but also apply to the design of secondary components of the device system, including device packaging, labeling and instructions for use. To resolve such issues, the authors propose generation of an HFE medical device design criteria dataset for use by development teams during design and testing. The FDA may also reference the proposed dataset during HFE review and validation.

The Panama Papers investigation and the scope and boundaries of its networked publics: Cross-border journalistic collaboration driving transnationally networked public spheres

Although journalism has long been considered a profession of lone wolves, its present and future is shaped by collaborative practices of various kinds. The investigation of the Panama Papers by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and its more than 100 media partners worldwide is an impressive example of collaborative journalism across media, language and national borders. This article focuses on the impact of such cross-border journalism projects on the transnationalization of public communication in digital media environments. It addresses the question of what kind of ‘networked public sphere’ was created by the revelations of the Panama Papers, exemplified by the communication structures that evolved on the networking platform Twitter. Digital media such as Twitter have the potential to constitute more grounded public spheres than traditional media and to foster interconnections between different publics across national and language barriers. We trace whether or not the transnational collaborative Panama Papers investigation paved the way for a networked public sphere characterized by (1) transnational attention to the issue and (2) transnational interconnections through Twitter users interacting across country and language boundaries and thereby contributing to global public communication.

The microcosm of global investigative journalism: Understanding cross-border connections beyond the ICIJ

Investigative journalism across national borders is well known for the large projects, initiated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), with hundreds of reporters in many countries who collaborate to produce coverage such as the Panama Papers. However, there are also many examples in the field of global investigative journalism that are microcosms of their larger counterparts. These smaller or ‘microcosm’ cross-border collaborations are instigated and carried out by a small group of reporters, possibly including freelance reporters. Like their larger counterparts, ‘microcosm investigations’ can also lead to sociopolitical change and thus are deservedly classified as investigative journalism. Microcosm investigations can therefore be viewed as part of a suggested global fourth estate that is calling power to account. The purpose of the article is to examine the characteristics of ‘microcosm’-oriented global investigative journalism and to demonstrate the similarities and differences compared with its larger and more visible counterpart. The empirical material consists of interviews with Australian journalists who were shortlisted as finalists and who won national journalism awards, sponsored by the Walkley Foundation. The findings indicate that new technologies that enable cross-border collaboration are enabling the emergence of a global fourth estate. In the concluding discussion it is argued that for the expansion and mainstreaming of global investigative journalism, the multiple small-scale projects undertaken should collectively be viewed as equally important, if not more important, than the fewer but larger and better-known collaborations. Microcosm collaborations offer opportunities for the proliferation of cross-border media coverage that can be accomplished even by relatively small media outlets.

Tax Avoidance through Advance Tax Rulings – Evidence from the LuxLeaks Firms

Our empirical study tests the effect of special tax deals on tax avoidance by multinational corporations. In 2014, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published confidential documents identifying hundreds of firms worldwide that had benefited from advance tax rulings. We find that after engaging in an advance tax ruling in the tax haven Luxembourg, firms have lower worldwide effective tax rates than nonruling firms. The results are robust even if we mitigate a potential bias via propensity-score matching. Consequently, this study gives evidence for corporate tax avoidance through special tax deals in the form of advance tax rulings.

How lobbying blocked European safety checks for dangerous medical implants

Industry lobbyists have wrecked plans to overhaul safety regulations for medical devices in Europe, report Simon Bowers, Deborah Cohen, and colleagues from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Meanwhile, confidential...

Killing secrets from Panama to Paradise: Understanding the ICIJ through bifurcating communicative and political affordances

This Machine Kills Secrets is how Greenberg explains the widespread adoption of digital encryption and anonymity tools in practices of disclosure. We consider how that machine works, to the extent that new and sustained political practices in society have emerged through digital disclosures. We offer the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) as a paradigmatic case to inform new metaphors of what disclosure is and what it does in democratic governing. The empirical work focuses on how ICIJ’s data mining, manipulation and visualisation interface with traditional governing institutions of accountability. The article relates the affordances present in the ICIJ to modes of societal control that are available through Brighenti’s consideration of visibility as a social category and governmentality scholarship through three theoretical moves: bifurcating affordance theory on communicative and political planes, relaying a complimentarily delineated model of media apparatus and considering how such apparatuses shift towards proto-institutions.

Colaboración transfronteriza y el futuro del periodismo investigativo

Cuando los periodistas de la vieja guardia ya empezaron a dar por enterrado al periodismo, el Consorcio Internacional de Periodistas Investigativos (ICIJ, por sus siglas en inglés) aparece como una red colaborativa basada en Internet. El australiano Hamish Boland Rudder, editor de la ICIJ, relata cómo armaron una historia global con 35 medios de comunicación mundial sobre las empresas offshore, la evasión de impuestos de celebridades, políticos y personalidades de todos los países del planeta. Así surge el periodismo de vigilancia.

Leveraging learning innovations in cognitive computing with massive data sets: Using the offshore Panama papers leak to discover patterns

Exposing learners to cognitive computing concepts involves new learning strategies. Because cognitive computing is probabilistic, using massive sets of data is fundamental in understanding these concepts. One data set is the release of the Offshore Panama Papers Leaks Database (LeaksDB) in May 2016, in which researchers were able to access this graph database as part of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) Offshore Leaks investigation and to draw conclusions about companies, trusts, foundations, and funds incorporated in 21 tax havens. For the purpose of this research, GraphDB Server was installed and configured by faculty members from a mid-western university. In addition, DBPedia and GeoNames repositories were linked to LeaksDB, leading to the discovery of interesting patterns about these Geo facade relationships between Officers (persons or companies) and Countries.

Cracking Shells

In early 2016, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released a report detailing thousands of leaked documents demonstrating how a Panamanian law firm had, for years, helped wealthy clients conceal their financial activities through the use of offshore shell companies. The Panama Papers, as the leaked documents came to be known, directed renewed attention at the use of shell companies. Shell companies are used by the world’s wealthy and powerful to lower their taxes, but are also used by tax evaders, criminal organizations, and terrorists. While much of the renewed attention has been directed at offshore tax havens such as Panama, the United States is itself considered a tax haven by many, largely due to states such as Delaware, which has long catered to individuals desiring secrecy. In response to the Panama Papers, numerous international jurisdictions have looked to strengthen their laws governing the creation of shell companies and considered the mechanisms used to facilitate exchanges of information. This Article will examine one of those responses—the European Union’s Anti-Money Laundering Directive—as an example of the changes the United States should apply to its own domestic laws and as an example of the multilateral framework needed to address a global issue. This Article will argue that the United States should follow the European Union’s Anti-Money Laundering Directive’s lead in strengthening its laws regarding the disclosure of beneficial ownership information, creating shared registers of beneficial owners, implementing penalties for noncomplying entities, and moving towards creating multilateral, as opposed to bilateral, agreements to combat the misuse of shell companies.

The Panama Papers: Official Statements from Caribbean Countries

Caribbean governments have shown mixed reactions to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ leak of over 11 million records from international law firm Mossack Fonseca & Co. Some Caribbean governments have criticized the media’s coverage and characterization of international financial services centres as tax evasion havens. Those same countries have generally reiterated their compliance with international standards. Notably, many countries have announced new investigative, regulatory, or enforcement measures to be taken since the release, while certain others have not.