Overview
- Christoph Zollinger, a former Mossack Fonseca partner, is on trial in Cologne and has admitted to aiding tax evasion, with prosecutors citing more than €13 million in damages and a verdict expected in the coming weeks.
- Hesse’s finance authority in Kassel, working with Germany’s federal police, led the data analysis and says it forwarded more than 2,500 Panama Papers data packages to over 30 countries to support investigations.
- The leak began in April 2016 when a whistleblower known as John Doe gave the Süddeutsche Zeitung about 2.6 terabytes of Mossack Fonseca files, which the paper shared with the ICIJ and roughly 400 reporters, work that later earned a Pulitzer Prize.
- Authorities worldwide have recovered more than $1.3 billion in unpaid taxes and adopted measures like the automatic exchange of bank data, yet experts say enforcement lags and an Oxfam-cited study estimated $3.55 trillion still sat hidden in 2024.
- Mossack Fonseca closed in 2018; co-founder Ramón Fonseca died in 2024, Jürgen Mossack was acquitted in Panama but has faced an international arrest warrant from Cologne since 2020.