Welcome to a special nostalgia edition of ICIJ’s newsletter — let me set the scene for you.
It’s April 3, 2016, in Washington, D.C.
I’m sitting in a tiny, windowless office into which we’d managed to squeeze two desks, three computers, a printer and, unusually, a cameraman with a tripod that took up most of the free floor space.
I’d slept about two hours out of the past 72, hadn’t showered or shaved in far too long, and I was eternally grateful that my colleague, Will Fitzgibbon, had allowed me to appropriate the (brand new, unused!) toothbrush from his desk drawer. In the four small adjoining rooms that passed for our offices sat the handful of staff that comprised the tiny ICIJ team, fielding frantic calls from our 100 global media partners and tying off last-minute edits to a package of stories that we’d decided, alongside more than 370 reporters around the world, to call the Panama Papers.
It was relatively quiet, despite the undercurrent of nervous energy. I don’t think any of us had the faintest idea that, from our humble, dingy (and slightly noxious) offices, we were about to change the world.
We published the Panama Papers at 2 p.m. Much of the next few weeks was a blur. Our phones rang non-stop, and our office became a never-ending carousel of reporters, colleagues, cameras and security guards. We watched on tiny screens, all agog, as tens of thousands of protesters filled the streets in Iceland, Pakistan, Malta, the U.K. and elsewhere. We raced to keep up with a relentless onslaught of news, from high-profile political resignations to armed police raids of legal offices to lawmakers shouting their outrage and proposing urgent reforms in various parliaments around the world. We lost track of the number of times we had to repeat our findings into expectant microphones, and we apologized endlessly to our neglected loved ones as we worked long into every night, just trying to keep up.
And so we truly learned the full and awesome power of collaborative, deep-dive investigative journalism.
Exactly five years have now passed, but still the Panama Papers continues to be mentioned daily in news stories citing new laws, new investigations, new scandals. It has become shorthand for the sort of financial chicanery that is now dissected and bemoaned in a more prominent, regular global conversation. It is a touchstone for issues like economic inequality and injustice, and it is a rallying cry for authorities, officials and activists trying to put an end to malicious financial secrecy.
For ICIJ, the Panama Papers has become just one part of a constantly-growing dossier of data-driven investigations that continue to shine a light on the shadowy underbelly of the global economy. From Luanda Leaks to the FinCEN Files, our investigations have empowered governments and citizens alike to take action, to expose and punish wrongdoing, close loopholes and begin to mend the broken systems that are exploited by a wealthy and powerful elite.
This five-year anniversary is more than just a trip down memory lane. It is a moment to take stock of what has changed since then and, perhaps more importantly, what hasn’t yet changed — and what can be done.
Over the course of the next month, in addition to keeping you up to date with the latest news from all our investigations, we’ll be taking you behind the scenes of five years of Panama Papers impacts, lessons and insights. And we hope that, in doing so, we may also help you see the far-reaching power of independent investigative journalism — journalism that needs your support.
Together, we can continue changing the world.
More from us soon,
Hamish Boland-Rudder
ICIJ's online editor
P.S. As an ICIJ subscriber, you’re officially invited to join us for a free, live event featuring documentary filmmaker Alex Winter, and award-winning Panama Papers journalists Emilia Díaz-Struck, Bastian Obermayer and Rita Vásquez as they share their own unique stories from behind the scenes of the Panama Papers. Find more details and RSVP here.
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