Offshore Leaks Database is a free search engine for Panama Papers. Everyone can use this website to look for companies and individuals that have offshore accounts according to Panama Papers. This awesome search engine is brought to you by ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalist). The website gives you the hold of a search engine which shows organizations and persons that have offshore accounts. This can help in finding companies, politicians, and criminals that are using their offshore accounts for tax evasion, money laundering, fraud and evading international financial protocols. However one thing to note is that owning an Offshore account is not illegal, but they can be used for illegal activities that I mentioned above. So if you find the name of someone you know on this website, don’t lose heart!
For those who don’t Know, Panama Papers are a set of documents that were leaked from a Panama based law firm called Mossack Fonseca. The database has information about 320,000 offshore entities. Offshore Leaks Database lists offshore accounts that were incorporated since 1977 and it spans over 200 countries. All of these are available to download through a torrent file and CSV files that have been broken down from 2.6 TeraBytes of information and 11.5 million documents from Mossack Fonseca’s internal database.
So let’s see what Offshore Leaks Database has in store for us.
How to Search Panama Papers for Persons and Organizations
Offshore Leaks Database is very easy to use and it gives you a ton of investigative information. This search engine for Panama Papers can search entities based on the country the entity originates from, and the jurisdiction that offshore account falls in.
Let’s take an example where I want to find the offshore connections of a very well known company or an individual. To make my search narrower, I clicked Search by Country, selected the country where the entity resides, entered its name and simply clicked on search. You can see I searched for the famous Hollywood star Emma Watson.
The Search will list all the offshore entities, officers, intermediaries and entity addresses that have ‘Emma Watson’ in them. It looks like we have a hit! Click on the desired entity to know more about them.
In my search for Emma Watson’s offshore connections, I found a connected company and an address. These both were modeled on an entity-node map which makes it easier for the users to track connections. You can see Emma Watson is a shareholder of Falling Leaves Ltd. On each node there is a number which signifies how many more connections it has. In the case of falling Leaves Ltd, it has 4 more connections which can be expanded by clicking its node.
Below the map is a list of connections that Emma Watson has in relation to her offshore account. As I’ve mentioned before, offshore accounts are completely legal. In Emma Watson’s case, she was using the offshore account for privacy, according to the media.
How to Download the Offshore Leaks Database
The whole database is open for download in converted CSV files. You can download it directly from this link. Since the total size of all files is pretty large, it costs ICIJ resources whenever a user downloads it. A better option is to share the file using the torrent file which you can download here.
How to Get More Information on Offshore Leaks through Offshore Leaks Database
You’ll get tons of more information about the Panama Leaks and latest development on the parent ICIJ website. If you scroll down from the search bar on the main page, you can explore the top countries and jurisdictions that harbor offshore accounts.
The Power Players at the bottom will give you a tour of people related to powerful and influential people who are often world leaders, their associates and other public officials. Clicking on an individual will tell you all you need to know about their offshore accounts and what they possibly use it for.
On the right of The Power Players, you can browse the key figures of the Panama Papers. There are lots of graphs that’ll illustrate when offshore accounts were incorporated, country with the highest number of intermediaries, popular tax havens, etc.
Final Words
Offshore leaks database is definitely the epitome of anti-corruption activism that lights the deep dark avenues of politics and capitalism on steroids (no, I am not a communist). This Panama Papers Search Engine can be used by journalists, anti-corruption bureaus, intelligence, etc all around the world. But I think it would come really handy to the general masses to educate them. This website deserves 5 stars.
Check out Offshore Leaks Database here.
