
'Panama Papers' Offshore Leaks Database - astdb
https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/
======
smarx007
I think this DB was published around a month ago
([http://www.thereportertimes.com/panama-papers-icij-
offshore-...](http://www.thereportertimes.com/panama-papers-icij-offshore-
leaks-database-documents/23489/)) and you can get some quick and inefficient
import code for Neo4j here
[https://gitlab.com/berezovskyi/panama4j](https://gitlab.com/berezovskyi/panama4j)
(really slow, was hacked together during the Neo4j meetup). I will check this
DB after the PyCon Sweden today but so far I do not expect anything new
(except maybe a bit less "details temporarily withheld"). Here are the SHA256s
from the new DB release, nothing seems broken:

    
    
      804542be8e6b3896ff3001a49b0486f644598bfdd4cdd76dbb1f0d40c0fa7818  Addresses.csv
      94b4fd9d6578d9d83102cb5d4b139b94e1262d9dbe72f5aa97e9d6502aa94e5d  Entities.csv
      e44b48e248696656854849d2f984dd5e76a2645c28e99451b066c527a96b815b  Intermediaries.csv
      4687edf2bfb23c18e547838bcf4b9bfd36f5f4a960e924be4e4deb193023f115  Officers.csv
      ca91a23b6f6472fc7152e6b3ed4bd343fccc00a142627901485fbaf59c5be739  all_edges.csv
    

Sizes are the same:

    
    
      curl -sI https://cloudfront-files-1.publicintegrity.org/offshoreleaks/data-csv.zip | grep Length
      Content-Length: 37481567

------
chrismaeda
My guess is >99% of this data refers to corporations that are legitimate
businesses that are fully compliant with the law. US persons have been
required for years to disclose offshore bank accounts (through FBAR reports)
and other offshore financial holdings (through IRS Form 8938 on tax returns,
cf FATCA). I'm sure there is a team at the IRS that is busy comparing this
data set to the IRS database, and woe to anyone that has not disclosed their
offshore financial interests.

But it shouldn't be a surprise that people use offshore corporate structures
to manage offshore businesses. The main reason this is necessary in the US is
that the US taxes corporate profits worldwide, while other countries do not
(they have territorial tax systems and do not tax profits earned in other
countries). So US corporations have to set up these complex structures to
achieve tax rates that are comparable to other developed countries.

------
abhi3
Anyone knows why they are not willingly sharing the raw data with law
enforcement?

~~~
degif
The full database in CSV format (44.8GB) is downloadable via torrent
[https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/pages/database](https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/pages/database)

~~~
jgrahamc
Where do you get the 44.8GB number from? I see a 37.5MB zip file available for
direct download or via BitTorrent.

~~~
sbarre
The torrent does not appear to be working properly (at least for me, I see no
seeds and one tracker only that doesn't respond). But The direct download
works.

I would bet 45GB is the full raw text of all the docs, and that's not what
this is.

It's not a huge file but there's definitely a lot of data there.

This is just a database of the Entities (319,422), Addresses (151,128),
Intermediaries (26,643) and Officers (345,646).

They also include an "edges" file to indicate relationships.

~~~
justinclift
It's weird there are no seeds for you. I've been seeing it for ~20 hours or so
without issue.

This is the metadata for it, if that helps:

Name: offshoreleaks_data-csv.zip File: torrents/offshoreleaks_data-
csv.zip.6ffb15f06e409a58.torrent

GENERAL

    
    
      Name: offshoreleaks_data-csv.zip
      Hash: 6ffb15f06e409a58ab7d2a710784e4ef974da782
      Created by: 
      Created on: Unknown
      Piece Count: 144
      Piece Size: 256.0 KiB
      Total Size: 37.53 MB
      Privacy: Public torrent
    

TRACKERS

    
    
      Tier #1
      http://tracker.amazonaws.com:6969/announce
    

FILES

    
    
      offshoreleaks_data-csv.zip (37.53 MB)

------
grownseed
At least for the USA, I see a lot of entries for "EL PORTADOR" and "THE
BEARER" (essentially translations of each other).

Genuinely curious, does anybody know what these are?

A quick search didn't bring anything up and I'm not very familiar with these
matters. Thanks!

~~~
Randgalt
Most likely Bearer Shares:
[http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bearer_share.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bearer_share.asp)

------
naivepiano
You have to know either the jurisdiction (offshore country) of the company or
the name of the person. What would be quite valuable would be a search based
on the linked countries. E.g. companies/ppl linked to Italy.

~~~
pepyn
You can do this by leaving the search field blank and just selecting a
country, which returns all entities/officers/intermediaries/addresses for a
certain country

------
2close4comfort

      It is good to see it not only searchable but the raw data as well.  Too bad Greenwald was not this open with the Snowden leaks.

~~~
agd
How far to respect the source's wishes regarding controls on the material is a
tricky area. In this case, the source was happy with releasing large amounts
of raw data. In the NSA leaks, Snowden wasn't, and he imposed a condition on
Greenwald and Poitras not to release everything.

Does the journalist have more responsibility to the source or to the global
population? Many people disagree with Wikileaks style raw data dumps
irrespective of the source's wishes.

In summary, the ethics of leaking is complicated!

~~~
r3bl
> Many people disagree with Wikileaks style raw data dumps irrespective of the
> source's wishes.

I found it extremely ridiculous how WikiLeaks attacked the Panama Papers
leaker multiple times for not leaking full data to the public and accused my
organization of intentionally targeting eastern countries because one of our
donors is USAID, when, according to the official statement by the leaker that
came out a couple of days ago, the leaker tried contacting WikiLeaks multiple
times and then decided to pursue another way once he realized that WikiLeaks
simply isn't responding to him.

