The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Inc. (ICIJ), is an independent global network of 280 investigative journalists and over 140 media organizations spanning more than 100 countries. It is based in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

, with personnel in Australia, France, Spain, Hungary, Serbia, Belgium and Ireland. The ICIJ was launched in 1997 by American journalist Charles Lewis as an initiative of the Center for Public Integrity, with the aim of exposing international crime and corruption. In 2017, it became a fully independent organization and was later granted

501(c)(3) nonprofit A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of 5 ...

status. The

Panama Papers The Panama Papers () are 11.5 million leaked documents (or 2.6 terabytes of data) published beginning April 3, 2016. The papers detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. These document ...

were the result of a collaboration with the German newspaper ' and more than 100 other media partners, with journalists spending a year sifting through 11.5 million leaked files from the

Panama Panama, officially the Republic of Panama, is a country in Latin America at the southern end of Central America, bordering South America. It is bordered by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north, and ...

-based law firm

Mossack Fonseca Mossack Fonseca & Co. () was a Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider. The set of confidential financial and legal documents included detailed information on more than 14,000 clients and more than 214,000 offshore entities, revealing the identities of shareholders and directors including noted personalities and heads of state—government officials, close relatives and associates of various heads of government of more than 40 other countries. ' first received the released data from an anonymous source in 2015. After working on the Mossack Fonseca documents for a year, ICIJ director

Gerard Ryle Gerard Ryle (born 1965) is an Irish-Australian investigative reporter who has written on subjects including politics, financial and medical scandals, and police corruption. From 2011, he has been director of the International Consortium of In ...

described how the offshore firm had "helped companies and individuals with tax havens, including those that have been sanctioned by the U.S. and UK for dealing with Syrian President

Bashar al-Assad Bashar al-Assad (born 11September 1965) is a Syrian politician, military officer and former dictator Sources characterising Assad as a dictator: who served as the president of Syria from 2000 until fall of the Assad regime, his government ...

." The ICIJ helped bring about the Corporate Transparency Act in the United States. The Enablers Act, included in the annual defense bill, was first proposed shortly after ICIJ's

Pandora Papers The Pandora Papers are 11.9 million leaked documents with 2.9 terabytes of data that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published beginning on 3 October 2021. The leak exposed the secret offshore accounts of 35 ...

investigation exposed widespread exploitation of lax financial disclosure rules in the U.S. Governments have recovered more than US$1.36 billion in taxes as a result of the Panama Papers project alone, and some continue to collect lost tax revenue.

History

In 1997, the Center for Public Integrity began creating the consortium. By 2000, the ICIJ consisted of 75 investigative reporters in 39 countries." In early November 2014, the ICIJ's

Luxembourg Leaks Luxembourg Leaks (sometimes shortened to Lux Leaks or LuxLeaks) is the name of a financial scandal revealed in November 2014 by a journalistic investigation conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. It is based on ...

investigation revealed that

Luxembourg Luxembourg, officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, is a landlocked country in Western Europe. It is bordered by Belgium to the west and north, Germany to the east, and France on the south. Its capital and most populous city, Luxembour ...

under

Jean-Claude Juncker Jean-Claude Juncker (; born 9 December 1954) is a Luxembourgish politician who was List of prime ministers of Luxembourg, prime minister of Luxembourg from 1995 to 2013 and president of the European Commission from 2014 to 2019. He also was List ...

's premiership had turned into a major European centre of corporate

tax avoidance Tax avoidance is the legal usage of the tax regime in a single territory to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable. A tax shelter is one type of tax avoidance, and tax havens are jurisdictions that facilitate reduced taxe ...

. In February 2015, the ICIJ website released information about bank accounts in

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

under the title ''

Swiss Leaks Swiss Leaks (or SwissLeaks) is a journalistic investigation, released in February 2015, of a giant tax evasion scheme allegedly operated with the knowledge and encouragement of the British multinational bank HSBC via its Swiss subsidiary, HSBC ...

: Murky Cash Sheltered by Bank Secrecy,'' which published information on 100,000 clients and their accounts at

HSBC HSBC Holdings plc ( zh, t_hk=滙豐; initialism from its founding member The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is a British universal bank and financial services group headquartered in London, England, with historical and business li ...

. In February 2017, ICIJ was spun off into a fully independent organisation, which is governed by three committees: a board of directors, an Advisory Committee, and the ICIJ Network Committee. ICIJ was granted nonprofit status from US tax authorities in July 2017. In 2017, the ICIJ,

the McClatchy Company McClatchy Media Company, or simply McClatchy and MCC, is an American publishing company incorporated under Delaware's General Corporation Law. Originally based in Sacramento, California, United States, and known as The McClatchy Company, it b ...

, and the ''

Miami Herald The ''Miami Herald'' is an American daily newspaper owned by McClatchy, The McClatchy Company and headquartered in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Founded in 1903, it is the fifth-largest newspaper in Florida, serving Miami-Dade, Broward County, Fl ...

'' won the

Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting The Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting has been presented since 1998, for a distinguished example of explanatory reporting that illuminates a significant and complex subject, demonstrating mastery of the subject, lucid writing and clear p ...

for the Panama Papers. In total, the ICIJ won more than 20 awards for the Panama Papers.

Selected reports

Global tobacco industry

From 2008 to 2011, the ICIJ investigated the global tobacco industry, revealing how

Philip Morris International Philip Morris International Inc. (PMI) is a multinational tobacco company, with products sold in over 180 countries. Marlboro is PMI’s most recognized brand, but in the last quarter of 2023, Iqos generated the greatest revenue. Philip Mor ...

and other tobacco companies worked to grow businesses in Russia, Mexico, Uruguay and Indonesia.

Offshore banking series

The ICIJ partnered with ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'',

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

, ''

Le Monde (; ) is a mass media in France, French daily afternoon list of newspapers in France, newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average print circulation, circulation of 480,000 copies per issue in 2022, including ...

'', the ''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'', '' SonntagsZeitung'', ''

The Indian Express ''The Indian Express'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper founded in 1932 by P. Varadarajulu Naidu. It is headquartered in Noida, owned by the ''Indian Express Group''. It was later taken over by Ramnath Goenka. In 1999, eight y ...

'', ''

Süddeutsche Zeitung The ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'' (; ), published in Munich, Bavaria, is one of the largest and most influential daily newspapers in Germany. The tone of ''SZ'' is mainly described as centre-left, liberal, social-liberal, progressive-liberal, and ...

'' and '' NDR'' to produce an investigative series on

offshore banking An offshore bank is a bank that is operated and regulated under international banking license (often called offshore license), which usually prohibits the bank from establishing any business activities in the jurisdiction of establishment. Due to ...

. They reported on government corruption across the globe, tax avoidance schemes used by wealthy people and the use of secret offshore accounts in

Ponzi Scheme A Ponzi scheme (, ) is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays Profit (accounting), profits to earlier investors with Funding, funds from more recent investors. Named after Italians, Italian confidence artist Charles Ponzi, this type of s ...

s. In June 2011, an ICIJ article revealed how an Australian businessman had helped his clients legally incorporate thousands of offshore shell entitles "some of which later became involved in the international movement of oil, guns and money." In April 2013, a report ( Offshore Leaks) disclosing details of 130,000 offshore accounts, some of which conducted international tax fraud. In early 2014, the ICIJ revealed that relatives of China's political and financial elite were among those using offshore tax havens to conceal wealth. In July 2019, the Mauritius Leaks showed how

Mauritius Mauritius, officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island country in the Indian Ocean, about off the southeastern coast of East Africa, east of Madagascar. It includes the main island (also called Mauritius), as well as Rodrigues, Ag ...

was being used as one such tax haven. In 2022, ICIJ partnered with the ''Washington Post'' to investigate the role of registered agents in

Wyoming Wyoming ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States, Western United States. It borders Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho t ...

such as Registered Agents Inc. to enable scams and financial crimes.

Panama Papers

In 2016, the ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'' received a leaked set of 11.5 million confidential documents from a secret source, created by the Panamanian corporate service provider

Mossack Fonseca Mossack Fonseca & Co. () was a Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider. The so-called

provided detailed information on more than 214,000 offshore companies, including the identities of shareholders and directors which included government officials, close relatives and close associates of various heads of government of more than 40 countries. Because of the leak the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, was forced to resign on 5 April 2016. By 4 April 2016 more than 100 media organisations had participated in analyzing the documents, including ''BBC Panorama'', and the UK newspaper, ''

''. Based on the Panama Paper disclosure, Pakistan Supreme Court constituted the Joint Investigation Team to probe the matter and disqualified the Prime Minister Nawas Sharif on 28 July 2017 to hold any public office for life. The ICIJ and ' received the Panama Papers in 2015 and distributed them to about 400 journalists at 107 media organizations in more than 80 countries. According to ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'',

Paradise Papers

In 2017, the German newspaper ''

'' obtained millions of leaked files known as the Paradise Papers, regarding

tax havens A tax haven is a term, often used pejoratively, to describe a place with very low tax rates for non-domiciled investors, even if the official rates may be higher. In some older definitions, a tax haven also offers financial secrecy. However, ...

, related to the Bermuda-based offshore specialist Appleby. The files were shared the ICIJ and later the media. They revealed that many of the tax havens used by Appleby are in the Cayman Islands.

Implant Files

In November 2018, the ICIJ published the Implant Files, the first global investigation into the medical device industry that tracked the harm caused by medical devices that have been tested inadequately or not at all. It took a year to plan and another year to complete. ICIJ partnered with 252 journalists from 59 media organisations in 36 countries to examine how devices are tested, approved, marketed and monitored. Anchoring the probe was an analysis of more than 8 million device-related health records, including death and injury reports and recalls. In total, the ICIJ won 11 awards for the Implant Files.

Mauritius Leaks

In July 2019, the ICIJ published the Mauritius Leaks, a datajournalistic investigation about how the former British colony Mauritius has transformed itself into a financial centre and tax haven. A whistleblower leaked documents from a law firm in Mauritius to the ICIJ, providing insight in how multinational companies avoid paying taxes when they do business in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

China Cables

In November 2019, the ICIJ revealed classified Chinese government documents leaked by exiled Uighurs, dubbed the China Cables which prove mass surveillance and

internment camps Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simp ...

Uighurs The Uyghurs,. alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central Asia and East Asia. The Uyghurs are recognized as the titular nationali ...

and other Muslim minorities in China's

Xinjiang Xinjiang,; , SASM/GNC romanization, SASM/GNC: Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Sinkiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the China, People' ...

province.

Luanda Leaks

In January 2020, Luanda Leaks revealed how Angola's richest woman,

Isabel dos Santos Isabel Kukanova dos Santos (; born 20 April 1973) is an Angolan businesswoman, the eldest child of Angola's former President José Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled the country from 1979 to 2017. As early as 2013 ''Forbes'' described how dos Santo ...

, used a network of Western advisors to amass a fortune. The investigation showed how dos Santos and her husband, Sindika Dokolo, built their empire taking advantage of many secrecy jurisdictions.

FinCEN Files

In September 2020, the ICIJ along with ''

BuzzFeed News ''BuzzFeed News'' was an American news website published by BuzzFeed beginning in 2011. It ceased posting new hard news content in May 2023. It published a number of high-profile scoops, including the Steele dossier, for which it was strong ...

'' published leaked documents from the

Financial Crimes Enforcement Network The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is a bureau within the United States Department of the Treasury that collects and analyzes information about financial transactions to combat domestic and international money laundering, terrori ...

(FinCEN) that describe suspicious financial transactions across multiple global financial institutions.

Pandora Papers

On October 3, 2021, the ICIJ began publishing 11.9 million leaked documents (comprising 2.9

terabytes The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

of data) that came to be known as the Pandora Papers. The ICIJ described the document leak as their most expansive exposé of financial secrecy yet, containing documents, images, emails and spreadsheets from 14 financial service companies, in nations including

and the

UAE The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a federal elective monarchy made up of seven emirates, with Abu Dhabi serving as i ...

, surpassing their previous release of the

in 2016, which had 11.5 million confidential documents. In total, the ICIJ won nine awards for the Pandora Papers including the

Overseas Press Club of America The Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) was founded in 1939 in New York City by a group of foreign correspondents. The wire service reporter Carol Weld was a founding member, as was the war correspondent Peggy Hull. The club seeks to maintain ...

's Malcolm Forbes Award for international business reporting and the

WAN-IFRA The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) is a non-profit, non-governmental organization made up of 76 national newspaper associations, 12 news agencies, 10 regional press organisations, and many individual newspaper ex ...

North American Digital Media Award.

Ericsson List

In February 2022, the ICIJ published the Ericsson List, an internal investigation into corruption inside the Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company

Ericsson (), commonly known as Ericsson (), is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. Ericsson has been a major contributor to the development of the telecommunications industry and is one ...

. It detailed corruption in at least 10 countries. Ericsson has admitted "serious breaches of compliance rules".

Uber Files

In July 2022, the ICIJ published the Uber Files, a leaked database of

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, a ...

's activities in about 40 countries from 2013 to 2017. The documents were leaked to ''The Guardian'', and shared with the ICIJ and a number of media organisations.

Deforestation Inc.

In March 2023, the ICIJ published Deforestation Inc., a nine-month investigation into

greenwashing Greenwashing (a compound word modeled on "whitewash"), also called green sheen, is a form of advertising or marketing spin that deceptively uses green PR and green marketing to persuade the public that an organization's products, goals, or ...

practices pertained by major environmental auditing firms. The investigation was conducted in collaboration with 39 media partners from 27 countries worldwide.

Cyprus Confidential

In November 2023, ICIJ and 68 partners reported on the financial network which supports the regime of

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...

. The roughly 3.6 million leaked documents were obtained variously via

Distributed Denial of Secrets Distributed Denial of Secrets, abbreviated DDoSecrets, is a nonprofit whistleblower site founded in 2018 for news leaks. The site is a frequent source for other news outlets and has worked on investigations including Cyprus Confidential with o ...

, , and the

Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) is a global network of Investigative journalism, investigative journalists. It was founded in 2006 and specializes in organized crime and corruption. It publishes its stories through ...

(OCCRP). They contain confidential information from financial services companies, mostly with connections to

Cyprus Cyprus (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Situated in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical orientation are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the List of isl ...

, and show that country to have strong links with high-up figures in the Kremlin, some of whom have been sanctioned. The investigation purports to show "how 67 of the 105 Russian billionaires on the 2023 Forbes World’s Billionaires List used financial services firms on the island to hide their wealth and keep it out of reach from Western sanctions". The investigation was initiated by

ZDF ZDF (), short for (; ), is a German public-service television broadcaster based in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate. Launched on 1 April 1963, it is run as an independent nonprofit institution, and was founded by all federal states of Germany ( ...

Der Spiegel (, , stylized in all caps) is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of about 724,000 copies in 2022, it is one of the largest such publications in Europe. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

and ICIJ, and involved more than 270 journalists from 69 media companies worldwide, including the political journal "frontal", the

, the

Guardian Guardian usually refers to: * Legal guardian, a person with the authority and duty to care for the interests of another * ''The Guardian'', a British daily newspaper (The) Guardian(s) may also refer to: Places * Guardian, West Virginia, Unit ...

, the Austrian

Der Standard ''Der Standard'' () is an Austrian daily newspaper published in Vienna. It is considered a newspaper of record for Austria. History and profile ''Der Standard'' was founded by Oscar Bronner as a financial newspaper and published its first editio ...

and the Swiss research network

Tamedia TX Group AG (formerly Tamedia AG) is a media company headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. Through a portfolio of daily and weekly newspapers, magazines and digital platforms, as well as own printing facilities, it is the largest media group in ...

Data journalism

In the course of the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers investigations, ICIJ was challenged to learn about and implement various technologies to manage international collaboration on terabytes of data – structured and unstructured (e.g. emails, PDFs) – and how to extract meaningful information from this data. Among the technologies used were the

Neo4j Neo4j is a graph database management system (GDBMS) developed by Neo4j Inc. The data elements Neo4j stores are nodes, edges connecting them, and attributes of nodes and edges. Described by its developers as an ACID-compliant transactional d ...

graph database management system and Linkurious to search and visualize the data. The data-intensive projects involved not just veteran investigative journalists, but also demanded

data journalists Data ( , ) are a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted formally ...

and programmers. ICIJ's research platform is called Datashare. It is free and open source. Datashare was developed by ICIJ together with Swiss university

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (, EPFL) is a public university, public research university in Lausanne, Switzerland, founded in 1969 with the mission to "train talented engineers in Switzerland". Like its sister institution E ...

. In 2021, Datashare was improved to make 11.9 million records (2.9 terabytes) available to more than 600 journalists. Also in 2021, the ICIJ's technology team built a new open-source platform, Prophecies, to make data fact-checking more efficient. ICIJ's public Offshore Leaks Database a repository of information on companies registered in tax havens. It uses machine-learning techniques to analyze data. The ICIJ also provides advice on the use of other public databases, as well as research assistance to partner journalists.

Collaborative journalism

The ICIJ's collaborative journalism model has been described as a new departure for global journalism that embraces collaboration. ICIJ's cross-border collaboration, involves more than 140 newspapers, television and radio stations, and online media organizations, and is marked by transparency and peer scrutiny. The stories that result from the collaboration are published simultaneously around the world and made available to readers free.

Funding

The ICIJ is funded by donations. Financial supporters of the project include the

Adessium Foundation The Adessium Foundation is a charitable foundation based in the Netherlands. It was created in 2005 by Gerard van Vliet and his family. Budget and beneficiaries Its annual budget is between fifteen and twenty million euros. This is distributed to ...

, the Bertha Foundation, the

National Endowment for Democracy The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization in the United States founded in 1983 with the stated aim of advancing democracy worldwide and counter communism, communist influence abroad, by prom ...

and the

Open Society Foundations Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is an American grantmaking network founded by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the world, with the s ...

Awards and recognition

ICIJ's collaborations have received several awards, including the 2017

. Their work to uncover financial secrecy was nominated for the 2021

Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize (Swedish language, Swedish and ) is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the Will and testament, will of Sweden, Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobe ...

. In 2021, the ICIJ also won a News Emmy along with PBS Frontline for its Luanda Leaks investigation and was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for the FinCEN Files. In 2022, the ICIJ was awarded the Katharine Graham Award for courage and accountability by the White House Correspondents’ Association. ICIJ also received an Honourable Mention award at the 2022 Allard Prize for International Integrity. The ICIJ organized the bi-annual ''

Daniel Pearl Daniel Pearl (October 10, 1963 – February 1, 2002) was an American journalist who worked for ''The Wall Street Journal.'' On January 23, 2002, he was kidnapped by Jihadism, jihadist militants while he was on his way to what he had expected wou ...

Awards for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting''. The award is currently not being awarded.

GuideStar Candid is an information service specializing in reporting on U.S. nonprofit companies. In 2016, its database provided information on 2.5 million organizations. It is the product of the February 2019 merger of GuideStar with Foundation Center. ...

, a nonprofits evaluator, gave the ICIJ a "Gold Seal of Transparency" in 2019.

References

External links

* * {{Authority control News agencies based in the United States Online person databases Organizations established in 1997 Organizations based in Washington, D.C. News leaks 1997 establishments in Washington, D.C. Offshoring Paradise Papers Panama Papers Pandora Papers Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism winners International Consortium of Investigative Journalists Investigative journalism