Luke Harding, a former Moscow correspondent for The Guardian, was in Oxford to talk about his work as one of four hundredâodd journalists around the world who had access to the 2.6 terabytes of information about tax havensâthe so-called Panama Papersâthat were revealed to the world in simultaneous publication in eighty countries this spring. âThe economic system is, basically, that the rich and the powerful exited long ago from the messy business of paying tax,â Harding told an audience of academics and research students. âThey donât pay tax anymore, and they havenât paid tax for quite a long time. We pay tax, but they donât pay tax. The burden of taxation has moved inexorably away from multinational companies and rich people to ordinary people.â
The story of how hundreds of reporters around the world set to work on this vast database is racily told by the pair known in their office as the Brothers Obermay/ierâor as racy as anything involving complex tax structures can be. Their book should be read in journalism schools as well as by tax authorities.
As more and more data sloshed in, the Brothers Obermay/ier repeatedly had to purchase ever-larger computers to handle it. How on earth to secure, scan, search, store, order, distribute, edit, and share such vast amounts of information across continents? A new breed of data specialists from around the world had to be assembled to advise on encryption, creating databases, search software, data visualizations, graphics, and communications.
Itâs doubtful that any one news organization could have gathered together the amount of expertise needed to work on the material, still less have the language skills, legal resources, and local knowledge to grasp the significance of the characters and defend the stories that emerged. The kinds of collaborative journalism that began with WikiLeaks, Snowden, and the offshore leaks stories found new expression with the Panama Papers and are a pointer to future partnerships.