Known only as John Doe, the informant never revealed his identity or his gender. In a wide-ranging interview published in the German magazine Der Spiegel, the whistleblower said they feared a revenge attack and may never feel safe enough to reveal their name. “I may have to wait until I’m on my deathbed,” they said. The Panama Papers, published on April 3, 2016, were a landmark investigation into the previously hidden world of tax havens. It involved 400 journalists from news outlets around the world, including the Guardian, coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in Washington. It led to the resignations of prime ministers in Iceland and Pakistan, exposed a massive slush fund linked to Vladimir Putin and won a Pulitzer Prize. The data included 11.5 million files from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, whose work with accountants, banks and other lawyers allowed trillions in dark money to flow unimpeded through the global financial system. “Making the decision to gather the data I had at Mossack Fonseca took days and felt like looking down the barrel of a loaded gun, but in the end I had to do it,” the whistleblower said. In their first public comments since 2016, they said they came out of concerns about the extent to which the offshore system continues to run unchecked as the world “closers to disaster”. The interview was conducted by Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, former Süddeutsche Zeitung journalists who originally received the leak. The pair have set up their own investigative unit, Paper Trail Media, and shared the interview with the Guardian and other media outlets to coincide with its publication in Germany. The informant communicated using computer software that converted their responses into spoken words in order to disguise their identity. Apart from a manifesto published a month after the Panama Papers, they have never spoken publicly. They recalled the moment the first stories began to break as they shared a meal with friends. “I remember seeing the posts fly across social media by the thousands. It was as if I had seen nothing. A literal explosion of information. The people I was with were talking about it as soon as they heard it. I did my best to act like anyone hearing it for the first time would.” After the publication, governments around the world brokered deals to obtain the data, using it to pursue violators and collect more than $1.3 billion in back taxes and penalties. The UK’s tax agency, HMRC, has set up a Panama Papers taskforce, with estimates that it could raise more than £7bn in extra revenue. The whistleblower said they were let down by German authorities and the safeguards they asked for were never implemented. “Unfortunately, the German government breached their agreement soon after and from my perspective compromised my safety,” they said. “As soon as the German Federal Police had the facts, I was essentially left alone to defend myself without any protection. I felt that this was unwise as the threat to my safety was not reduced at all, if anything it was increased.’ They said the high-profile killing of a Chechen dissident in Berlin at the time, described by a court as “state murder on contract”, had shown how ruthlessly Russia’s security services would act on German soil. While some media outlets claimed the whistleblower was offered €5m for the Mossack Fonseca files shared with Germany’s federal criminal office (BKA), they said “the German government did not honor the financial deal we agreed”, which said that caused additional problems that compromised their safety. The whistleblower said German federal police repeatedly rejected his offer of more data on illegal offshore activity beyond the Panama Papers. “If the German government had really appreciated the importance of the Panama Papers, I am sure it would have been handled very differently,” they added. The BKA said it would not comment on how it obtained the data when approached about the allegations. The whistleblower also raised concerns about the lack of action by governments around the world to curb offshore activity. The UK has so far failed to impose transparency on the constellation of tax havens – from Jersey to the Caymans to the British Virgin Islands – under its jurisdiction. Their company records remain private, controlling the names of the owners of shell companies, which are used to own assets such as homes, yachts and private jets, or to open bank accounts and move money anonymously. “I am extremely happy, and even proud, that significant reforms have been made as a result of the Panama Papers,” the whistleblower said. “Unfortunately, it’s still not enough. I never thought that releasing the data of a law firm would completely solve global corruption, let alone change human nature. Politicians must act. “We need publicly accessible corporate registries in every jurisdiction, from the British Virgin Islands to Anguilla to the Seychelles to Labuan to Delaware. Now. And if you hear resistance, that sound you hear is the sound of a politician who needs to be fired.” The Panama Papers revealed how British Virgin Islands companies managed by Mossack Fonseca helped create a $2 billion fund, with some of the cash held in the name of a musician, Sergei Roldugin, who is godfather to one of his daughters Putin. The whistleblower said they could not risk revealing their identities because they believed they were being targeted by the Russian government. Propaganda broadcaster Russia Today broadcast a documentary in 2018 in which the opening credits showed the character “John Doe” given what the whistleblower described as a “torture-induced head injury”. They said: “It’s a risk I live with, given that the Russian government has expressed the fact that they want me dead.” The whistleblower said that for a long time the West saw Putin as a “nuisance” but a person who could be controlled with financial incentives. “Obviously, that didn’t work.” They said eliminating offshore activity was key to curbing the Kremlin’s influence, as well as the rise of authoritarianism in countries such as China, Brazil and the Philippines. “The shell companies that fund the Russian military are the ones killing innocent civilians in Ukraine as Putin’s missiles target malls. Shell companies disguising Chinese conglomerates are killing underage cobalt miners [Democratic Republic of the] Congo. Shell companies make these atrocities even more possible by removing responsibility from society. But without accountability, society cannot function.” The whistleblower welcomed sanctions imposed on Russia since its 2014 invasion of Crimea, but said more could be done. While Mossack Fonseca was forced to close and its founders were briefly jailed, many other companies continue to provide offshore services. “Sanctions are an important tool, but there are others. For example, the United States could raid some of the offices of offshore incorporators on American soil to send the message that this kind of activity is no longer acceptable. It would be easy for them to do so. But it hasn’t happened.”
